Not much to contribute here except a small anecdote : I once analyzed Steely Dan's Babylon Sisters (the wav. file) because to me it's one of the best mixes of all time, especially for its air. I was surprised to see there was just a slight, tiny bump above 10-15khz compared to other songs.

Here's the song for reference. Listen to how much air it has, so much that you could fall into the mix and find yourself in the studio.

 

This only goes to show how subjective sound is, but I have to admit that to me the high frequencies in track seem a bit excessive, particularly on the percussive transients, but this is my feedback after hearing it through cheap yamaha hs-8's.

 

Steely Dan was the epitome of the California Smile (tm) eq. But, as many have pointed out, done right it sounds great. You have to match the mix style to the music.

 

I have hs-8's too I use sonarworks tho.

 

Without the rolloff everything hurts and is sounding hard and ugly.
What really matters is the midrange.
A good sounding midrange will make you almost forget that bass and treble are missing. Therefore mixing on Auratones works so well. When the mix sounds very good on the Auras, you switch on the fullrange speakers and

 

Is this what modern music spectral balance look like? looks so bass heavy
(talking about the third picture, izotope's one)

 

Maybe because the target once was a pink noise + the bass bump nowadays is more on the brown noise side … still rolled off around 10khz, from 90s to 2025

 

That's a rolloff only from a pure technical perspective. Our ears are super sensitive to that area, so what looks like a rolloff actually sounds like a straight line. Music today is quite bright. Take Sabrina Carpenter - Taste or Bed Chem. Always correlate the spectral analyzers with the equal loudness curve if you want to get a more accurate analysis.

 

Is there an analyzer that has equal loduness curve preset? All the analyzers seems to have noise ratio aspect

 

Not possible because the equal loudness is dependent on mix density. So very dense mixes will match maybe one of the top curves (the 90-100), and a less denser mix the 75-85 curves

 

Toray still applying the rolloff at 10khz and always worked. Viewed the graphs and still the rolloff at 10khz for all the new songs. Never understand why here you say that it's unusual (don't mean do be rude obviously)

 

That's how it is done. You do not want to have a flatline up to 20khz, thats very unpleasant for people who still hear those frequencies. Unfortunately there are a lot of mixes out there that do not follow these ancient 80ies and 90ies mixing-rules. And because those mixes exist I have a slow HF-Leveler in my chain when I listen to music.
Like one of those rules I have been taught was: A highhat shall not do tss-tss, it shoud do sh-sh.
A classic beginners mistake is dailing in high-fs into stuff where it should be taken out.

 

most of that pop music stuff is probably so badly produced that the mastering engineers decided to cut off all that distortion shit.

 

Last edited: Dec 10, 2025 at 11:21 PM

after i have read it three times i am still not sure what you mean with "natural".

a bandlimited rect wave from a synthesizer plug-in for example goes up to 48 khz if you produce in 96khz, and if you later create a 44 kHz CD master from it you should not see any "roll off" or whatever before around ~20 kHz.

both the energy and the peak of the 20khz tone contained in the square are identically with the energy and peak of a 200Hz tone.

if you record a real hihat or ride, it will easily contain a lot of material between 10 and 20kHz, and not some -24db less than between 5 and 10, like we see it in picture #1.

there is only one credible explanation, and that is that filters have been used, wherever, and for whatever reason.

given how many people still use hard clipping here and there my above post might be less ironically than one could think.

 

It seems hi-hats would be the most common offender for annoying high frequencies.
Especially with a continuous beat.
Good reason to put a phaser on that fucker
I think I am kidding, but maybe not

 

roll off at 10k is deranged,,, you can roll of at 18khz, and 30hz.. Pretty standars, for masters.

 

I have to say that usuay the problems >10khz are more related to vocals, probably condenser microphones or ultra boosts in mixing