Better EQ

E

eamici

New member
I've been reading about the importance of EQ and the limitations in that department on Porta studios. I've got a Tascam 414mkII and would like to know how to improve the EQ capabilities. Questions:
1) If I need to purchase a separate equilizer, what type and which ones are recommended fore a $150 budget
2) If I get one, how do you get it to work with the Portastudio
3) Once hooked up, can you EQ the tracks differently ie vocals in tracks 1 & 2, Guitar in 3 and Bass in 4 all need different EQ profiles??? Can this be done if they all play at once?
 
youre recording on casettes? those need help on the high frequencies.

if you want to EQ already recorded parts then you need an EQ for each track or 2 channel EQ for each 2 tracks.

4 single channel or 2 dual channel. your manual should show how to hook them up.

if i were you i would run everything through a nice mic preamp and compressor and a parametric EQ BEFORE recording.

you can get all this in one box from behringer or joe meek for 150 - 200$ and it will improve your sound immensely.
 
One trap to look out for is the idea of running all your tracks through a cheap EQ. Even if the EQ helps a bit you want to be carefull about the poor specs on most cheap EQ's. Just running through them on bypass can degrade your tone noticeably.

The meeks are pretty cool but they may not be suitable for all your tracks. If your portastudio has any EQ than the first thing to try is using a lot of bass cut on all you non bass or kick tracks. That one little adjustment can help tremendously.
 
EQ improvement

Tex
The porta studio has 2 EQ tone conrtols hi/lo I bekeive at 10Khz & 100hz respectively. What exactly do you mean by bass cut...drop the lo knob as much as it can go? If you could give me a quick course on how these knobs work it'd be a help. By varying the db for each am I just altering the frequencies at 10k and 100 or are other freq involved?

One problem I can't seem to resolve is this low hum or drone that occurs only during vocals. I'm just singing without instruments about 10" away from the mike. Upon play back the backround sound is clean and free of this hum, but as soon as the voice kicks in, there's an drone sound that stops when the singing does. On playback it's more assoc with the woofer in the bass unit of my suroundsound system I'm using with the porta studio.
 
The EQ on your board is going to start cutting or boosting the levels of that freq (10khz or 100hz) and gradually cut or boost all the other freq below 100hz or above 10khz. You can be pretty agressive with the low cut on most things.

In general it's better to cut than to add but if it sounds good than do it. Be carefull trying to add high's with EQ. A slight boost is ok but if you get too crazy with it can really start to make the track sound weak and crappy.

Dont EQ a track while listening to it soloed. Always EQ while listening to the track in the mix with the other instruments. That is why it's also a good idea not to use EQ while tracking (except maybe a little bass cut). Just because something sounds good by itself doesn't mean it will sound good when mixed with everything else.

You mention your surround sound system. If you can get some real monitors. It helps when tweaking sounds to hear what your really doing.

Your vocal problem is throwing me for a loop. Try some bass cut and see if that helps. Without hearing it it's impossible to really say but my guess is that it's either a freq that your room really accentuates or some common problem like Pops or sibilance (very essy) that your are using different terms for. You record with headphones right? If you are listening thru monitors while tracking it could be feedback.

Ditch the casette recorder ASAP. It is extremely hard to make anything sound good on those. Using any kind of digital recorder would give you the single biggest improvement in sound quality.
 
cassette is just fine for learning to record.

if you get a meek ( i think its the vcq3) for 199 you will be able to use it with any digital recorder you get later.

it doesnt have a real parametric EQ but it will be a lot better than the EQ on your tascam.

behringer has a seperate parametric EQ unit for about 120$ but i think the behringer ultra voice pro vocal strip would do wonders for you. it has preamp compressor and eq for 150$!
 
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