Wacky EQ method

M

Monkey

Cabin boy
So I've come up with another one of my harebrained ideas that, as many crappy movies have said, is so crazy it *just might work.* The last time was long ago, but it got a mention by Dragon, so I'm proud. (See https://homerecording.com/burn_cds.html)

Anyway, I'm not so wonderful at EQing, but when I finish mixing my track to wavs, I sometimes listen to them in Winamp, like I listen to other music. Winamp has an EQ feature with various presets or you can do it however you like. I noticed that some of my songs sounded better through Winamp's EQ, and thought, "Well I want everybody to hear it that way." So I just got it to sound good (you can mess with it on the fly instead of waiting for some program to process the sound) and then played it back with a plugin that, instead of sending the sound out the speakers, writes it to a new wav file. (Nullsoft Disk Writer is how it's listed in my plugins list.)

Presto, the new file sounds like the old one plus the EQing I did in Winamp.

Now, I don't have studio monitors, so doing this probably won't make my music sound good on OTHER people's systems, but if you do have studio monitors, yet you're still as doofless as me when it comes to expertise, perhaps this will work for you.

Comments? Accolades? Spontaneous gifts of love?
 
EQ

Sooooo....what your saying...is that you used Winamp as an EQ plug-in in a round-about way....would this be any different than if you had a good EQ plug-in for your audio-editing software?
 
Well, maybe not, I'm not really qualified to say, since I've only ever used cheap but adequate software and have had to juggle various functions between several programs. So I don't know if you folks using fancy ProTools or whatever can do this in a simpler way, but my multitracking software doesn't have plugins. :)

Also, I just find the Winamp EQ to be easy to use and intuitive, and I can quickly try different presets to see what sounds kinda like I want. Another piece of software I have can do various EQ adjustments but it takes some time to process each time you try something new.

So I didn't think that perhaps this post is maybe like saying, "Check out this great way I came up with for getting the most out of your wood stove" when the rest of you are cooking with gas. Oh well, if it helps, use it, if not forget it.
 
That's what I did.. well not really..
After mixing and exporting my track, I happen to not like the sound, I tried using the equalizer settings from WINAMP (Full Bass and Treble).. The music became more clear due to the EQ settings.. I run Sound Forge and copied the settings from WINAMP and apply it to all my songs.. :)
 
WHOA!!

What a coincidence!! While reading through this forum I am playing with the eq on WinAmp thinking "Damn this sounds alot better than it did before, I should remember the settings for Cubase!!"

I guess what this is telling me is that I am alot better at eqing with a no brains needed type of setup. <ie Winamp>

Space
 
eh...I think this much EQ on any song is not such a good idea.

i mean, if you EQ to the amount most of those presets do (they turn those things up to + mass, haha)...and then you save your wav like that....and THEN open that newly EQed one back up into winamp (where you still have the EQ set to + mass), you'll be basically double EQing it. does it not sound harsh to you?

i dont know...sounds sketchy. not to mention, who knows what winamp REALLY does. it seems to me that it would also raise the volumes to a bunch of clipping if there is so much EQ - so it has to be compensating for that somewhere right? it's just built into the software though, so i dont know what it's doing...maybe somebody does.

a - your safer to do your EQ's in your editing program, where you have more control.
b - the less EQ you'll have to put over an entire song, the better.
1 - try to get the instrument to sound that good in the first place, while tracking.
2 - eq each track individually to make the mix sound more crisp if needed, or whatever needs to be done.
3 - then, you wont need to use all those crazy EQ settings in winamp!
i dont know, that's just my thinkings...haha
 
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