ashcat_lt
Well-known member
Well I think that if you're adding anything by default and adjusting by eye, that's probably a mistake. You must listen and adjust based on the sound itself and how it sits in the mix. Remember that most filters aren't particularly steep, and the "cutoff" frequency is actually just the point where it's 3db down. It will often attenuate higher frequencies some, but also might not attenuate the lower frequencies as much as you want. That's where the slope/bandwidth/Q of the filter comes in, which leads to...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.
Many filter both digital and analog can develop a certain amount of resonance near the cutoff when they start to get steep, so that if you're trying to get a lot of attenuation of frequencies just below the cutoff, you end up with a boost just above. It can be a balancing act sometimes. Or it can be a sylistic choice.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.
Which of course is true to the whole question anyway. Like with everything else, it completely depends on what you've got and what you're shooting for. Some mixes - especially denser ones - really do require that most of the instruments occupy a strictly controlled frequency space. Other mixes kind of want that overlap and interplay. At the extreme, it's a question of whether you're shooting for "real" or "hyper real". It's some kind of irony that sometimes to make the mix larger than life you have to make the individual elements smaller than in real life.
I was going to say something like that, too. I'm fucking ruthless in a live situation. Stage rumble and handling noise and the fact that both mics and speakers are essentially omnidirectional at low frequencies... Cut em out unless you absolutely need them!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.