Hey everyone, I have a question about frequency masking. When in a mixing session I'm followin these steps through;

-static mixing
-clear the resonances
-compress, saturation etc.

Then, when the sounds are sitting their own frequency spaces, some of them collision with each other. For example, snare hit around the 100 hz and male vocal some peaks same frequency too. usually I'm cutting vocal's peak with narrow Q at 100hz for the let snare be more noticable. That's ok i guess. But It's turning a rabbit hole when the project file got like 50+ channels in it. Is there any way to solve this issue with easier way or tips & tricks to deal with it?

 

One other technique after you've cut the usual suspects, the narly freqs (good name for a band?!), you could sidechain some dynamic EQ on the snare, triggered by the vox. Because of course those cuts you made are static, and sometimes it seems a shame to get too cut crazy.
Your first two steps are sound, though. But yeah; a rabbit hole as you say.
Also I have to say that apart from the usual cuts, I have seen many good engineers over many decades not worry about masking at all! Just saying.

Vox are paramount though!

 

Yes, you are definetly right about that. The most iconic sounds in the past made by analog eq, relatively broad then today's parametric equalisers.

I was using regular sidechain compressor to guitars for avoiding supress on vocals. This time gonna use some dynamic eq to do that. While speaking, can I use mid/side eq to seperate this elements, like cut guitar's high frequency on the mid side so let them ring on the sides and vocals gonna take much clear space on the middle where they belong?

 

Nice idea. Yeah, whatever works for the song I guess.
With specifically guitars in a track (ie. 'song'; in the UK we mostly call a song a track!), I've either been a) in a more vocal/poppy genre been keeping the lows to the mid channel or b) in a harder more rocky genre been keep some lows in the sides to give a warmer wider feel to the track.

Just out of interest, are you tracking all these instruments yourself?
You definitely sound like you know what you are doing anyway.

Only other time saver will be to just work on sub-groups of your instrumentation, making some nice broad strokes. I love working like that, rather than going too in depth with every channel.

 

I am keeping low elements on mid all the time. But idea of widening some low mid frequencies sounds really useful. gonna try that asap.

I am tracking instruments with ablitiy of my hearing mostly, but always have spectrum analyzer on my mix bus. When i doubt about my instincts, opening analyzer and checking closely. ( I hope I understand your question right, not a native speaker, sorry about if there is a misunderstandings)

about working with sub-groups; I am kinda new on mixing. About a 8 months more or less. First three months, just read about process. Focused on theories instead of practice. Every single engineers mentioned about how important are creating a buses, sub-groups. And I got the habbit automaticly grouping multi-mic recorded elements immediately for avoiding phase shifting on filtering-eqing stage. then creating another group for drums, vocals (verse and chorus needed), guitars, synths and mix bus before the master channel. This is absoultely the life saver hint about mixing and must be 'have to' like coloring the tracks. i recommend everyone as a newbie.

 

Try to avoid getting bogged down in every little channel of the 50+ track mix, trying to make the perfect adjustments to each is a fool's errand since they all flow together downstream and the sound changes yet again on you, calling for more adjustment.

Same thing with resonances, that nasty frequency you removed from the guitar felt great to get rid of in solo, but in the complete mix it's very possible that you'll really miss that nasty peak, since it's helping the guitar read so much better in the mix. Of course this doesn't always apply, soemtimes the nasty resonance just has to go, no two ways about it. What always applies is being judicious about it, never just remove a peak you're seeing and hearing, like you're a mixing robot. Maybe that natural resonant peak/nastiness is actually wonderful for the mix.

Removing every peak and tweaking every channel mechanically to "perfection" in isolation can really bland-out your end result. Makes everything feel samey-same. Maybe that's what you want for some tracks in the mix, make them samey-same and blended, then let certain others jump out at you and be different and wonderful.

 

Haha. I meant are you playing the instruments yourself? Acoustic/electric/vst?

 

haha, nope I'm using multitracks for my practice.

 

so I should eq while all the tracks playing background instead of solo eqing, then check it solo for nasty frequencies for cut. If it is not irritating on the mix, just let it be.

 

Ah! Cool.
By the way when I said:

...is because 'sound' also means 'solid/true' in a slang English way!
The first two steps:

...are the staring points.

 

nice! I am improving my mixing skills and English same time!

 

There is no 'should' really.
And I don't think he was saying that you should only EQ in context of the mix; although many swear by it.
After basic EQing of individual tracks, I constantly do both things!

 

Haha. I've just remembered there is another context where 'sound' means 'good', as an exclamation.

 

hmm.. I think i got it now (special thanks to my dictionary)

wow! sound fits in every situation perfect

 

- https://www.soundonsound.com/sound-advice/q-can-static-eq-tackle-masking-effectively

 

i read it all, it explains a lot. thanks!

 

Some masking/overlapping is needed. The problem is when there is too little or too much masking. Try to keep the masking to a healthy blend.

 

^^^
should introduce the tracks in order of importance, if each newly added instrument is less important than the previous one, then you can be pretty confident about which one needs to be fitted around the other, as and when masking conflicts arise

 

i see. well, for better understanding to we decide where is the ideal point can we discuss over one of the examples? let me upload a one clip over here: https://clyp.it/ko0w1cu2

in this clip i wanted to snare pop off so i cut some frequency from the guitars same with snare (around 100hz). same thing on the vocals, but this time i used dynamic eq to take off guitars on mid side -instead of cut stereo- , leave mid side for the main vocal. Is it ok to do like this or is that any easier/effective way to do it?

 

So when I listening raw track, i need to decide which element gonna be under the spotlight. I guess except vocals right? vocals need to be important element in track except the instrumental tracks ofc.