better way to do a high pass cut?

[djclueveli]

is there a better way to get rid of most of the frequency under 100hz on vocals besides doin a high pass because the high pass doesnt seem to work to good and i listen to commercial acapellas and the vocals still sound thick even tho most of under 100hz is almost totally gone.

[bennychico11]

did you think a high pass at 100 was going to magically make your vocals sound perfect?

there's hardly anything (IF anything) below 100Hz in the vocal range anyway.
Take a look at the frequency chart on this page: http://www.servername.net/southside/

[Grilled_Cheese]

Why are you doing a high pass at 100Hz?

Just wondering...

Do you think the vocals need it? Or are you just trying to EQ yours according to another (possibly professional) recording?

Different voices need different EQ, and some don't need any.

[LeeRosario]

yeah you really do have to play with it.

You find that not everything fixes itself perfectly to preset numbers. Also, you may be fixing to use a shelving type EQ over a HPF in that situation as well.

The difference being that filters are designed strictly to attenuate frequencies above or below the desired frequency, while shelves allow you to attenuate or boost a certain range of frequencies while still retaining some control on how much and how wide an area you affect.

So you may be wanting to tone down those frequencies rather than completely attenuate. Of course listening to it at the same time.

[SouthSIDE Glen]

What about the entire signal chain before the EQ? Is it up to snuff?

Starting with the vocalist. If he/she does not sound good enough to make a commercial recording when they are singing on their own with no microphone or nothing, no amount of EQ is going to help.

Then there's the microphone. Are you using a high quality vocal mic?

In a decent room?

Is the mic going into a decent preamp?

Is that preamp sending to a decent digital converter or analog deck?

And is the gain staging all along the way tuned properly?

Get all that right, and the compression and EQ necessary to get a good sound will come relatively easily. Get a combination of any two of those off by a considerable amount, and you have a steep, slippery uphill struggle ahead of you, at best.

And cutting sub bass from vocals via shelving or HPF, while it may be good for the purposes of avoiding LF buildup, especially if you are stacking tracks, will have little effect on the vocals themselves; certainly not in the manner of "thickening" them up in any way.

Your ears should tell you what's missing in the character of the sound. If you don't know how to connect in your head what you actually hear to the representitive numbers yet (a waaay too common problem around here), start playing around with either your parametric (preferred) of a 15-band or greater graphic. Start playing with moderate frequeny boosts, starting around 100Hz and slowly working you way up to about 350Hz or so. If you find any frequencies that sound muddy or honky, cut them by a couple of dB. If you find ones that sound warm or rich, and have the characteristics you're looking for, try booisting them by just a couple of dB in turn. But you should (in general) try to do more of cutting the bad freqs than boosting the good ones.

But putting a great vocalist in front of a great mic will get you 70% of the way there first.

G.

[RedStone]

hey I regularly forget about boosting the frequencies I want to hear... I get too concerned with the ones I don't like ... booya! thanks for that little wake-up, SouthSIDE Glen.



tis a great balancing act

[SouthSIDE Glen]

Originally Posted by RedStone

hey I regularly forget about boosting the frequencies I want to hear... I get too concerned with the ones I don't like ... booya! thanks for that little wake-up, SouthSIDE Glen.



tis a great balancing act

The balancing act part is right. And of course EQ boosting is always an option.

However, I find a lot of truth in the old maxim "Use EQ boost to make things sound different; use EQ cut to make things sound better."

As always, thaere are exceptions to such maxims, but it's a really good one to keep in mind when working out EQ curves.

G.