So they say having insturments with same frequency creates masking issues

but sometimes i think if the instruments have much different timbre its not a problem?

so why is the focus more on if there's frequency masking when the timbre can be solving the problem on its own?

unless i'm totally wrong...

thanks

 

An example is the base drum and the bass guitar, the listener should later perceive or hear each instrument. In other words, each instrument should have its own space. If the frequencies are too similar, it sounds muddy and one instrument cannot assert itself. Either you play an octave higher or lower or intervene massively with the EQ.

 

1. Not necessarily issues, think of layers (i. e. violin section)
2. Therefore this only matters when the instruments should differentiable (i. e. acoustic piano and acoustic guitar). Then you need to emphasize and attenuate different freqs for these instruments and/or move them to different pan positions. You can for instance easily differentiate two distorted guitars when panned to the extreme left and right.
3. This depends also on the attack. It's impossible to cut all vocal freqs out of a snare (or vice versa) and obtain their character. But you can differentiate them due to their different attack. Although it's recommended not to emphasize the same freqs in both of them.
4. It also depends on the level of these freqs. BD, bass, snare and vocals share the same pan and freq range ( ~ 200Hz - 6kHz) but hopefully (after mixing) not with the same level for the specific freqs.

 

If I might add to @No Avenger's suggestions, a very effective and transparent (if used properly) way to work around those issues is spectral panning.

Say you have two instruments that sit more or less on the same frequency range. You can have both instrument sitting in center, but pan certain frequencies left/right to create some timbral separation. Most parametric EQs allow panning for each band, although it sounds more natural to pan the whole spectrum gradually (ie. the higher the frequency, the more panned it is, the lower the frequency, the closer to the center it is). Goodhertz PanPot is a great set-and-forget tool for that, and Melda's MSpectralPan allows you to dive really deep into it.

And as a bonus, you can create some trippy effects by taking a single sound and panning different frequencies all over the stereo field, then modulating them so they travel around, flip the polarity on one channel etc.

 

Careful with this method. If the sound has no width (i. e. percussions, guitars, ...) you can easily rip the sound apart and this does not sound good, IMHO, if you want to keep it natural.

? Most?

 

Hmm now that you mention it I use this mostly with synths. It's been a while since I used it on acoustic material, but in my memory it works when you do the higher frequencies > more panned thing I described. The panning separate bands thing definitely sounds unnatural.

It's been a looong time since I used anything else than FabFilter, I seem to remember Ableton's stock EQ didn't allow it back then, maybe I'm wrong. I guess all of them allow nowadays? Makes sense hahah.