Using EQ to make your music seem louder

T

thomaswomas

New member
Hi, it's been a while since I've been on this forum but thought this would be a great place to ask this question.

I've been writing some music along the lines of the movie trailer sound cos I'm really into the big cinematic sound of some of those composers. One guy I really like is Zack Hemsey. I love the fact that he has created some great pieces of music without having real strings or choir etc. Basically all the stuff that the top hollywood composers are privileged enough to use on a regular basis. But his music still competes with all the other guys in my opinion and he really brought a fresh approach to the trailer music genre.

So I started remixing one of my tracks and used his track 'Mind Heist' as a reference (the one with the BRAAMS!). One thing I have noticed is the EQ of the track which makes it 'seem' much louder. It sounds like there is a lot of mid EQ's in the track. I always remember a really great producer telling me that the top American Engineers/Mixers really like to crank up the mids and high frequencies to make a mix sound louder. I am definitely hearing it in this track. It's still got a lot of punch though. I imported the track into my session and lowered the volume so I had a realistic reference. But even when both tracks are hitting the same db level on the meters his track still sounds much louder and jumps out much more.

I realise his track will have been professionally mastered and you can see the level pretty much stay in one place during the bigger sections (although the peaks on the wave image don't look squashed like a lot of other loud music I have listened to) but I'm wondering whether the mastering engineer pushed the mids and highs or it's more down to compressors and limiters to achieve this level. Or was the track mixed with this mid\high EQ boost and therefore already 'seemed' louder before mastering?

Here is a section of the Zack Hemsey Track (lowered in volume to match my mix)

https://www.dropbox.com/s/omy1znenz5e6x0a/Mind Heist.wav?dl=0

Here is a snippet of my current mix

https://www.dropbox.com/s/phj99kvn0mnst8q/MASTER_04.wav?dl=0

Here's a pic of the my meter comparison. My track is on the left

Untitled 1.jpg

And here is a pic of the files in the session showing the wave levels

Untitled 2.png

I'd love to hear anyone's thoughts on this

Thanks
 
Last edited:
See the wavefrom (blue/mindheist)? That's called brick walling, and it's the tell tale sign of heavy compression used during the mastering stage. They may be using mid/high frequency priority as well, to make it jump even more, and possibly ducking the bass so it punches through when necessary.

Listening, your mix sounds better to me. Better sound stage and "room". Their mix sounds like it's brickwalled. This is a perfect example of overpriced engineers ruining what was probably a very good mix for sake of winning the loudness war.

Once you finish your mix and move on to have it mastered it will sound good (assuming you don't hire a small penis dillweed to ruin it for you), which should be more important than how loud it is. Right?
 
Last edited:
It's mostly about balance.
You can't have a ton of mids and highs with out offsetting the bottom and vice-versa.
Your eq decisions are based on what you hear in your room and through your monitoring system, so those have to be dialed in or you'll be chasing your tail...
It's also gotta sound good at loud and low volumes through both craptastic and stellar systems..
 
If you're into looking at waveforms instead of using your ears, try this, Thomas: Rip a wave file from a favourite band's cd and import it into your DAW as a new project. You may be happily surprised to see that the wave looks very much like the one in the top picture (your mix), and not at all like the bottom picture. This will show you that a master is more than making something loud.

For even more fun, take the wave you imported and slap a limiter on it. Play with the limiter and make the song louder. Does it sound better when it's louder? I bet not. Bounce the wave to another file and look at what the limiter did to the professionally mastered song. Use your ears to decide.

My 2 cents,
Timbo
 
Thanks for the replies. You've all pretty much echoed what I generally thought about the topic and offered some great advice too. I'm definitely not one of those guys who puts loudness over quality and I totally fall into the 'keeping the dynamics' camp when it comes the loudness war. I just wanted to see if there were other techniques I was missing that involved using EQ to bring up the perceived level of a mix without resorting to limiters and compressors too much that could kill the dynamics. I'm definitely an ears before eyes kind of guy too!

I do feel like I am missing something though when comparing my mixes to others. There are even some local producers I know who don't have their stuff mastered but their tracks just seem to have more about them and just seem to jump out of the speakers more. I'm talking about the cinematic and orchestral film score kind of genre. I just feel like my tracks lack some sparkle and and punch in places. But then that is more for the mixing forum I guess.

Thanks for taking the time to offer your input :)
 
You should post a mix (or section of music) in WAV form in the Mix This! forum and see what others can do with it, and if someone posts something you like you could always ask them what they did/used. I bet it's a matter of applying a few common mastering techniques to get your mixes to jump, without pushing them so far they get murky/over-compressed. I did a lot of experimenting a few years ago and fell into a less-is-more mindset when it comes to mastering. If the mix is good, mastering (at best) is a fine tuning process, UNLESS you want it loud in which case a good mastering engineer will push the mix to its very limit before it turns to mud. Poor mastering engineers push it until the needles in their meters reach the point they want, regardless of the audible results.
 
Pinky said:
You should post a mix (or section of music) in WAV form in the Mix This! forum and see what others can do with it, and if someone posts something you like you could always ask them what they did/used. I bet it's a matter of applying a few common mastering techniques to get your mixes to jump, without pushing them so far they get murky/over-compressed. I did a lot of experimenting a few years ago and fell into a less-is-more mindset when it comes to mastering. If the mix is good, mastering (at best) is a fine tuning process, UNLESS you want it loud in which case a good mastering engineer will push the mix to its very limit before it turns to mud. Poor mastering engineers push it until the needles in their meters reach the point they want, regardless of the audible results.
Click to expand...

Yeah, I'd give it a go too.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top