I am working on a track and am trying to apply some basic EQ knowledge that I learned from YouTube tutorials. At one point I want to apply an EQ to a bunch of tracks so I group them together in a Buss channel and apply the EQ on that. I lowered some of the 2k-4k frequencies by about 3db and applied a high pass filter at around 200Hz.

I'm using Sonarworks Reference with my headphones so I'm used to tracks not sounding "right" whenever I turn it on. I didn't think much of it and continued mixing, but always wondered why everything sounds like crap, and why I just can't make it sound good.

Then I wanna look up the EQ again to make some more adjustments to it and to my surprise, it turns out everything I do on that Buss channel affects every other channel. So I must have accidentally included all tracks into the Buss and not just the two or three I had planned to. And then it turns out, that EQ affected everything... And I didn't notice it for two days and mixed into that. I turned it off and suddenly everything sounds rich and full. I just needed to adjust some of the elements because now they didn't sound right.

How could I not notice something so significant

 

Don't worry. I'm turning knobs for over 20 years and still make mistakes like that once in a while. Even redoing the same fuck-ups and then have to think: how did I fix that last time?

 

Psychoacoustics. Believing is hearing. You believed that everything's ok with the other tracks, so your brain made you hear it. But after a short break this effects is gone - luckily.

BTW, wrong thread title, must be 'How can I be so stupid'.

 

Last edited: Jan 20, 2020

Not gonna lie, there were a few times when I was sat there tweaking knobs for 30 minutes thinking I'm getting it close to perfect now, only to discover down the line that EQ I'm tweaking was bypassed the whole time...

If the universe didn't teach us the humble-bug way once in a while, just imagine what superstar assholes we'd all be.

 

Any significant amount of time immersed in listening to any project will either falsely convince you that A) you are working on the worst piece of crap in the whole of history and it can never be saved or B) you are perfecting the greatest piece of music in the whole of recorded history and it is damn near perfect. Neither is likely to be true. You have to walk away frequently and get your objectivity back, especially in headphones.

 

That happened to all of us.

 

That moment when you bypass all fx in your project and it sounds WAY better

 

Does this qualify as more stupid than anyone else so far?
I wear reading glasses. I don't like losing them so when I take them off, there are only a few places in the house where I am likely to leave them. When looking for them, having exhausted all the places where I expect to find them, and then having a momentary panic and thinking "where the hell are they?", I discover them on my nose.
Come on - there must be a prize for that.

 

Losing your glasses on your head is, of course, common. Losing them on your face is sort of impressive though

I lost my car keys once and looked for them for 5 hours. They were in the fridge.

 

Just checking - I assume you hadn't parked your car in the fridge ???

 

No, I think I had come home, grabbed something out of the fridge and somehow put them down in there in the process...

 

Last week I had toothache. Reading that brought it all back!

 

Haha it seems like this is more common than I had thought
And believe it or not I had the same thing with my glasses a couple of times. Tends to happen when I'm more tired than usual.

I have now learned that I need to take frequent breaks from mixing for it to make any sense. No point in having mixing sessions of more than a few hours at a time.