Hello,

I'm really looking to know what's going on with the EQ
Every website/tutorial I check, They have put fingers on certain frequencies for something.
Then you go to another tutorial and boom another frequencies in between those with new info

All of this had made me confused, OK maybe reading them all and working with EQ get you to the point after some time, maybe not. But ... is there any kind of tutorial that teaches it the proper way? All the information properly listed and explained. How did you guys master the EQ? How do you use it?


Regards,

 

EQing is mainly about experimentation. Move those bells up and down, left and right and hear what it does to the sound. Then enhance your knowledge with tutorials, there's plenty to choose from.

ADSR Sounds - EQ Mastering Tutorial
Home Studio Corner - Understanding EQ

 

Last edited: Aug 28, 2015

Besides that tutorials out there ..

this can come handy :





You can DL this chart as PDF here : http://www.offbeat.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2012/06/eq-chart.pdf

 

Lol. I thought you meant "mastering-EQ", not "how to master EQ'ing".

First. there are no fixed settings. You just need to find/recognize/learn the frequency spectrum - sub, mud, boxiness, paper, mid range, upper mid range, low high, nasality, clarity, fizzle, air, etc

Then learn the different EQs/filters - lowcut/highpass, highcut/lowpass, shelving, bell, notch, comb, bandpass, etc etc

This takes time. There's basically no way around it. You just need to get to work.
There is no "one tutorial only". You need to watch many, many tutorials and read tons of info on EQs...and then experiment yourself (and make mistakes) and make up your own mind.

 

Last edited: Aug 28, 2015

There. I rephrased it, hopefully it's now clearer

 

no offense brother all cool .

all men & women with your sig are friends of mine & my ears

 

Also, EQing is not a lot about experimentation, doing things wandering through bells noticing what the bells and shelvs does, that's mostly in the beginning of learning EQ or if you intend using the EQ as a sound design tool, then yeah.

The real usage of EQ is about hearing what's wrong with that song/track first then apply it accordingly. The "frequency regions" you learn in the tutorials are just for reference, which works mostly on the material which that tutor used in his examples.
Does that track sounds boxy? Cut some low-mids. Does it sounds harsh and overly bright, use a shelf and decrease a few dbs with it. Lacks lows? Add more.
Too much lows? Use a low shelf and bring them down. Sounds nasaly? Cut some freqs in the mids, finding the spot is easy. If your ears already learned the frequency regions, you can spot it by ear in a fraction of second. Cut where your ears told you so then bypass and see if it sounds muddier without it and clear with it. If so, done, you just EQed it. If it still needs a finetuning of the spot, move the bell slowly and see where the sound gets the cleanest. Also be careful with overcleaning stuff, for example not all the low-mids are bad. There's where the "body" of a track lies. If you do too many cuts in that area in your whole project, the song might come out sounding thin and harsh at the same time, because the spectrum is not even in order to balance the way the song hits your ears.

If you take the reference frequencies spots from the tutorials too seriously, you'll end up doing cuts in spots where your song didn't need or boosts in areas where your song didn't need either. Your ears are the ultimate judge of the stuff you EQ yourself.

 

The simplest explanation why there aren't standard frequencies to eq is that those frequencies are dependent on your song.
One of simplest factors is the key of your song. Take the same song, pitch it up or down by even a semi-tone, and your previous eq decisions are no longer valid.

At best you could only ever be given a range of frequencies where you could find a sweet spot for your song.

 

Take your favorite sounding song (within a similar genre of what you wish to EQ) and stick it in a DAW. Then put a spectrum analyser after it.

Now take your track (Preferably the mix-down) and place that on a different channel with an EQ and another instance of spectrum analyser, and A/B the differences between the pro one and yours whilst varying the EQ on your track.

Note:- you will NEVER get them to sound the same with just an EQ, as they will have undoubtedly used several plug-ins AND hardware too, possibly even two or more EQ as well, but you can learn a great deal by this little exercise.

 

Many thanks for that chart n12n0, that will come in handy

 

TL;DR.. Perhaps the answer to your question lies closer to the question "Why does one need to use an equalizer for?"


Ah a great question my friend, and one that took me many, many frustrating years to learn.. I approach this response with a bit of trepidation because I feel almost inadequate to express the sheer amount of knowledge that is required to express the answer accurately..and please fellow audio experts, if I make a mistake, please correct me and I will update: First, I really believe your question is a symptom of a few fallacious methods that have become popular, and they are ones that have fooled me for many years.

The answer to how to master EQ, at least for me:

Spoiler: My Opinion

If one wants to know the proper way to use an eq, then one must first endeavor to understand what it can do. As an analogy of why this is important, think of a hammer. One usually needs not ask what a hammer is for because of its simplicity.. but what makes it simple is not because of its nature, but because of our advanced understanding of it that makes it simple.. An equalizer too is a tool, one that can be understood just as thoroughly as a hammer.

So, in other words, the question should not be how do I use this tool, but rather what is this tool capable of. When one works from this perspective, one does not ask how to use an equalizer, one asks how can I use this equalizer to achieve the effect that I want, and can I achieve the effect I want with this tool?

From a mixing perspective, an equalizer modifies (through attenuation or amplification) the levels of a certain set of frequencies of a sound source.

The question is why would one want to do this?

the technical reasons to use eq
1) correct audio problems that are not pleasant to listen to (resonance , sometimes phasing etc)
2) adjust instruments to dictate the way the sources interact with one another.. should there be separation? should there be blending?

below are the creative reasons that one might use eq
1) to flatter or make it less conspicuous by making certain elements of a sound more quieter or loud
2) to replicate a sense of nostaligia or recalled themes by reproducing their aural effect on the memory -- for instance, by using an eq to give a vocal a telephone effect, it gives the listener the same feeling of listening to someone over the phone.. you can eq a sound to make it sound like it is coming from another room.. these creative effects are all for the purpose of "forcing" the listener to produce an achieved emotion through aural recall

nanos gigantumhumeris insidentes... I take no credit for this, for I learned this through David Gibson

Now here's a guide to understanding equalization using analogies and no abstract words like muddy, bright, or brittle

Spoiler: Long Exposition

step 1) sit down in your mixing position and listen to an acoustic song with full instruments, preferably live.. a good reference might be Radiohead "High And Dry"

step 2) close your eyes and imagine that you are watching the band or musician play that song live on a live stage... .. make this your sound stage, and think of it like a visual painting in your mind... notice how the vocals are right in the middle ..just like how most bands have vocalists stand in the middle of a live stage..
now oh you hear a kick drum in the song, you say? now where is it located on the sound stage? in the middle you say? just like how bands usually put their drummers in the middle of a live stage? and what about the guitarists? oh? they're to the right and left of the vocalist? just like on a live stage right? You see my point? Panning and volume is nothing more than placing instruments on a sound stage...and for our purposes we want to think of that sound stage as a visual painting in the technique I will continue to explain.

Now when we have few instruments..it's not a big deal, because everything gels together and doesn't get in the way of each other... but what happens when you got like 5 guitarists, 4 backup vocalists, a drummer,
:dancing: percussionist, keybaords, as well as the usual 5 piece band? Well, in live stage, it's not that big of a deal because sound propagates just fine and the limit is only defined by how much SPL the live space can handle.

In digital sound, in the digital sound stage there is a limit though.. and that limit is called the digital ceiling.. going above it causes digital clipping or digital distortion.. yuck man...

yes.. volume and smart panning helps.. but sometimes as a conductor, you want more control.. this is where eq comes in.. eq picks up where volume leaves off, it is simply a more fine tune volume knob that allows us to move certain positions of a sound source back and forth in the sound stage...

for example if you have a guitarist and a drummer smack dead in the middle of the sound stage..the drummer is playing a sparse beat four on the floor beat.. the snare doesn't play that often so it doesn't conflict with the body of the guitarist right..and the kick .. yeah that doesn't conflict with the guitarist either because the guitar's sound doesn't reach that low.and the kick's space doesn't reach high as the body of the guitar.. but oh man those hi hats and the high strings of the guitar are really clashing.. man.. but i like the way the guitarist sounds with the drums.. but i like the cymbals better. if i use volume, then everything will be moved, i only want it so the high parts don't conflict..

well! no problem.. here comes eq to rescue the day.. eq can come in and make quieter the high sections of the guitar so that one can more clearly hear the hi hats... (this translates to attenuating the high frequencies of the guitar that occupy the same space as the high frequencies of the drums)


do you see? an eq allows us to make adjustments to the sound stage so that the instruments fit in together and play nice together and that we can make a decision what should be heard better and what should not be heard so well... all of that comes together to form your own personal style, since what you deem as acceptable is your own choice -- that's what style is, a repeated preference of choice, and it's a hell of a lot better way to mix than looking at charts and saying.. oh so the guitar body is at 250 and uhh.. the beater of the kick is at 5khz... haha.. sorry my friend, but no it's not. not all the time my friend...

Now the next logical progression after adopting this is to learn be able to accurately paint that visual sound stage as best as you can.. good ears means you can make more precise adjustments.. think of a painter when he looks at a frame.. he knows the slightest variations of colors matters.. well.. as aural painters, things have not changed.. the slightest details still matter..

Now I know this is a lot of information, and it took me over an hour to write this..but it took me many, many more hours just to even learn this..

The key here is to try to make mixing in a perspective that you can understand.. I attached myself to David Gibsons' method because it gave me a way to make fine adjustments.. to give more practical words that translate to the tools that I use..
I never thought i would think of things the way I do when I first started,
but well...Compression? what the hell is that? I just call it making something a brighter color or a softer color. Chorus and phasing? I call that tint and hue.. reverb? i call it background...

Now I know this might not make a lick of sense to some for some for some of you and it might make a whole lot of sense to others.. i wrote this for the latter.. because maybe you, like me 5 years ago, have all this knowledge, but aren't quite capable yet of connecting the dots to make mixing purposeful or quite as controlled of a process as you would like it to be..

I hope this is helpful for you.. it certainly would've been helpful for me in the past lol

so now that you know..
as those masters told stories with their hammer, you too shall create you stories with these god damned

[SPOILER="Maybe next topic']
Know what to listen for in those gold ear cds to more quickly be able to tell the difference between 1khz boost/cut vs a 2khz boost/cut and what q -- good advice to help you get the most of your ear training sessions..
[/SPOILER]

 

Have missed your answer, now I have finished reading. All the info that I knew but explained in most 'connecting' and visual way.
I already feel I know more. Thank you for sharing your great knowledge, I appreciate it

 

IMO Learning the frequencies to cut is better than learning what to boost (boost = increase the gain: so easy...).

 

Last edited: Sep 12, 2015

Go and find some of the tuts of PUREMIX, they have an excellent one on eqing vocals which gives you plenty of info on what to look for.

 

All the great responses have been given. I can only add a thing I've just started doing that seems to be paying off. Please, take my words with a pinch of salt. The principle is this: Mixed down tracks can help you find global EQ settings, and it's hard to decide for individual tracks or groups of tracks. This is what I've started doing:

I use multitrack stems as references. Say you mix a grunge style song. Use Smells Like Teen Spirit multitracks and check the drum balance against your own drum bus. Find the EQ (and compression) that is around that sound if you like it, then layer up the bass and listen to the drums and bass of your own project. Add the vocals, guitars, etc., and do A/Bs. Use a spectrum analyzer. Of course, you are not mimicking such settings. You can't. You use them as reference points to know early on you are in the ballpark or not. Once you find a within-the-mix balance, you can move on from it and make it your own.

I'm just experimenting with this, but it seems to save up some time in making the early decisions of mixing right.

If anyone else does something like this or if you feel I'm screwing my head with this method, please elaborate, though I don't mean to hijack the topic. It's just my 2 cents.

 

please don't do this guys! You will get very, very unnatural results most of the times, unless the songs are almost identical in key signature, arrangement, tempo, etc, etc, etc..

The reason is that you are superimposing musical information from two different songs and forcing them to breed with one another. if you EQ match one song to another, it is like forcing a different, unrelated frequency shape onto another song (can also be described as forcing a key signature onto another song) excl:this is not a super accurate way to describe this, as I am not sure if there is a realistic way of EQ matching in real-time and real-life scenarios... but I feel the description is near the mark as far as 'musical effect'.

And ever for percussion, you still should not do this - what gives a kick its particular greatness is not dependent on another kick.. let me explain a practical repercussion as well: what happens when your client has tuned his or her drums to the song's key signature (which is VERY common in dance music).. if you eq match a song of a different arrangement, key signature, etc to your client's song... it's like putting a very ugly tattoo on someone...

i think eq matching, like auto volume gain on equalizers, gets WAY too much attention. I can only imagine very unique and rare cases of audio correction where eq matching would even be remotely useful.. but then i'd much rather reach for an audio restoration program to fix things if they got that bad...



if I could impart advice on a beginner is look at mixing as an expressive art... we as mixing engineers are tasked to find or create the beauty within a sound and then to put those parts together to create a coherent, emotional audio experience.

badly paraphrased: "I did not make the sculpture .. i merely removed the marble that was around it.."

Here are some good tips and rules I for the visual type of mixing that I prescribe to..

1) panning is your lateral placement on a 2D sound stage
2) reverb is the dropshadow of an object on a 2D sound stage
3) compression is the intensity of color and size of an object on a 2D sound stage
4) equalization is your shadows and your tints of your objects on a 2D sound stage
5) equalization also affects the vertical size of the objects on a 2D sound stage
5) volume also affects the size of an object in different ways than compression on a 2D sound stage
6) phasing, flanging, chorusing is the visual movement and direction of an object on a 2D sound stage
.......
and a new one that makes me feel so late to the party..
101) Waves S1 is god-like and lets you bend the curvature of sound...

 

this is the problem with todays "music". too much engineering involved, everything HAS to be the best sonically. where is the music damn it ???

 

It was last seen (or heard) in the 70's & 80's

 

Thanks. Good point. I hadn't thought of it that way. It's great I mentioned it early and got replied. I'll keep this in mind.