HP Filters

Nola

Nola

Well-known member
I've read several sources saying to put HP filter on everything, and then other conflicting sources saying never to do that and it kills a mix. For the former, on drums they suggest things like 40hz, bass 80hz, guitars 125hz. I do this myself, and find it cleans up the low end pretty nicely. BUT, would bell curves notching out bits of the low make for a nicer mix? I'm sure it varies by mix and genre, but in general, what do you guys who are pros do? Let's assume a generic "rock" genre. Thanks!
 
always use your ears...
no need to hp things that don't need it.

if you are 'guessing' at what you are hearing because of insufficient monitors or an untreated room,
then i'd take care of that first.
 
I usually HPF everything except the kick,bass, maybe the floor tom, and things like keys or samplers. Now to clarify, not all HPF are equal, different consoles may have different slopes or frequencies so try it and see. If you switch the HPF in and really don't hear any difference or it sounds better leave it in, if it kills the sound leave it out.

My opinion is that if you have multiple channels with no HPF in you are actually stacking sub frequencies on channels were the sound has no sub frequencies but may have rumble or slight hum, so filter it out. Remember we are taking stuff below 100hz., Try talking through a mic with only 100hz and everything else cut, maybe using a 31 band eq, and see what 100 hertz sounds like. Also remember that most HPF's start the cut at 100 Hz (some 80HZ some 120 Hz), so the 100 Hz is still there and the volume is reduced as the frequencies go down. Have a listen to 50 Hz with the graphic, even better still have a listen to 25hz, LOL, we are down in the rubbish.

Alan.
 
Use you ears MkII :)

I listen to my tracks, solo'd and or in different combinations as needed.
Asses the situations.
If they don't have excess low content, no worries move on.
If they do--- I look at amount.. and shape (response) of the content.
Then I decide what kind of filter, where and how much.

A lot of times there's overlap in which kind of filter might be as applicable as another (bell, shelf or HP

I guess it's simple enough just to HP everything. Nothing terrible happens. If you don't go too far :>)

The denser the mix the tighter the pieces need to be fit.
Sometimes a bit of chaos in the lower octaves can be a good thing.
 
Thanks, doods. Yeah I have no space in my apartment even for monitors, so it's only headphone mixing, which makes the low end very difficult. HPing everything kind of gives an insurance that it won't get too boomy down there given the monitoring limitations. Do you think it's unreasonable, given a good/standard recording of each, to HP the kick at 40hz and the bass at 80hz? I've been letting the kick occupy from it's fundamental up to the basses fundamental, then letting the bass take over from 80hz upward. I'll notch out around 103 b/c this bass has a weird resonance there, too. Does this seems reasonable?

I feel my mixes lack some clarity and can't pinpoint if it's something in the low end or a buildup in the mids. Seems the more transient an instrument the more it muddies things up. Like I notice the snare and acoustic guitar in my mixes kind of turn the mix to shit when I add them in. Both, to me, have a harshness or clang to the sound, even when recorded well. So maybe a transient designer type program is needed. If a pro could write up an article on how to achieve clarity in dense mixes that would be pretty amazing. Or is that even possible? Could be my mixes are just too dense.
 
What pro would track frequencies he doesn't want : ) In a DAW, anyway, it is easy enough to get any kind of slope and freq. you want. I only do my own stuff and sometimes worry about it as I generally look at unneeded frequencies as EVIL. With MICs and other instruments it's not a big deal to filter up front. In the DAW, I can render my cookie cutter filtering and just have sculpting EQ active. Some people are pretty aggressive with filtering and it wouldn't hurt to experiment with that
 
Nola said:
I've been letting the kick occupy from it's fundamental up to the basses fundamental, then letting the bass take over from 80hz upward.
Click to expand...
You're aware that the low E on a bass guitar has a fundamental right around 40Hz? When played that low, most of what we actually hear as the note is really one of the first couple octave harmonics. 40Hz is really just too low to actually hear, so you can have all kinds of buildup in that area and not really notice anything other than a lack of headroom - you can't get the rest of the sound as loud as you'd like without clipping or causing your compressors to go weird.

It's also worth mentioning that an HPF on the kick at 40Hz won't stop its 80Hz+ overtones which will still be competing with that range in the bass guitar. A lot of time it is that first octave up - the lower range of what we can actually hear with our ears - where the really ugly mud starts to become noticeable.

Like other people said it really is best to deal with these things by only actually recording what you want to hear. That starts with the notes the things are actually playing, then the sounds you choose for them, then mic placement and all that. Then you carve away if necessary at the end.

I used to be one to highpass everything and very often in around the ranges you're discussing. It did make a positive difference in my mixes, but when I started paying more attention to my sources, it became less and less necessary.
 
I often trim some lows out of the bass guitar and turn up the volume, gets the bass in the mix without over loading the low end. Oh and I am a bass player, I often set my live stage sound up with the low end reduced for clarity, the sound guys love it, and the bass is in the Front Of House subs anyway.

Alan.
 
HP will take mud and clutter out of you mix. Too much and it has no body. Too little and everything is fighting for attention.
 
I don't think its all that much to find a more musical body for the missing muddiness. " Somebody go find that synth guy with the pads" ! When I'm in that mood, I can draw blobs on paper showing freqs I got L, R, & C - and what need to hit, or, whatever
 
I high pass most of my tracks. The cutoff frequency varies. Most of what you're filtering out is sub-audible crap that clutters up the mix and triggers your compressors without adding anything of value.
 
witzendoz said:
I often trim some lows out of the bass guitar and turn up the volume, gets the bass in the mix without over loading the low end. Oh and I am a bass player, I often set my live stage sound up with the low end reduced for clarity, the sound guys love it, and the bass is in the Front Of House subs anyway.

Alan.
Click to expand...

Well, I sure appreciate lean bass in my monitoring.
 
witzendoz said:
I often trim some lows out of the bass guitar and turn up the volume, gets the bass in the mix without over loading the low end. Oh and I am a bass player, I often set my live stage sound up with the low end reduced for clarity, the sound guys love it, and the bass is in the Front Of House subs anyway.

Alan.
Click to expand...

Yeah I like bass that is thin yet has just enough body, kind of like McCartney. How would you suggest getting that?
I try to get it by rolling off a lot of the low (under 80) and then cutting the boomy frequencies, then turning up the now thinner bass. Is there anything more to it?
I'm not a fan of really thick low end unless it's an upright bass or fits the song...like, I do enjoy the tone of the thick bass, but it just muddies things up so much that as I began to mix I started to hate thick bass.
 
I use HPF by default mixing live because of bleed. In the studio I do whatever makes it sound right. Usually that means low shelves instead of HPF.
 
Your vocals aren't going to add anything positive to the mix at 60hz, and your bass isn't going to be nice at 20hz, just like your snare doesn't have much to offer at 50hz...etc... Like someone said above, use a LPF and see what those instruments sound like at those frequencies. You can take out what you don't need. That's a basic EQ fundamental, really. Otherwise, it all just adds up and clutters up the bottom for the things that actually need those spaces.
 
andrushkiwt said:
Your vocals aren't going to add anything positive to the mix at 60hz, and your bass isn't going to be nice at 20hz, just like your snare doesn't have much to offer at 50hz...etc... Like someone said above, use a LPF and see what those instruments sound like at those frequencies. You can take out what you don't need. That's a basic EQ fundamental, really. Otherwise, it all just adds up and clutters up the bottom for the things that actually need those spaces.
Click to expand...

Yeah. I know/agree and do it, but I recently came across a guy on youtube (mixbus tv i think?) who said HPing everything is am amateur's mistake. I personally like doing it, especially since I'm in headphones. I just never heard someone say it's an error to do it for all instruments, and in fact when I was teaching myself all this years ago I read the opposite over and over. I guess the bottom line is to listen for ourselves and decide. I personally like the HP (with cuts at reasonable frequencies) on every track.

Another thing I read is that there will actually be a bump in frequencies where they're cut. That I never knew, and I'm not sure why it would happen.
 
I think the wise thing is to question each of the tools. See if there is any funny stuff going on with your frequency analyzer, or, whatever tools of that nature one may have. Frequency tools can can muck-up wave forms. Running tones through your mixer to a scope may make you wonder
 
if you have something like SPAN across your master buss,
you can solo each track, and actually see how much info is in the low side of each track.

could be, that what you really need in a bass drum track is 33hz....
and what you actually need to cut, is 80.

that's why blanket statement approaches to eq just generally do not work.

or, it's a case of "what you don't know you are missing, you wont miss"
:D
 
If your monitoring setup is adequate then you don't need to rely on generic advice from the internet. Your speakers will tell you what needs to be done.
 
I normally boost 45-50hz on the kick and around t0hz on the bass, so he filters on those instruments wouldn't work for me.

I wait until something turns into a problem before I bother to fix it.
 
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