Should I Hi-Cut My Mix At 15000hz?

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benage

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I have read online that I should by hi-cutting my mix at 15-16,000hz during mastering and after spectrally analysing a few mp3 this seems to be common place. What is the point of this and is it recomended?
 
benage said:
I have read online that I should by hi-cutting my mix at 15-16,000hz during mastering and after spectrally analysing a few mp3 this seems to be common place. What is the point of this and is it recomended?
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The main reason that MP3s are like that is because that is part of what the MP3 compression encoding process does itself, not because the engineer does that on the master. Even if you have a lot of stuff above 15k, most of it will be removed in turning it into MP3 anyway.

There is no reason to automatically low pass 15k. In fact, on quality recordings made through a good mic and preamp, some of the elusive "air" that makes the difference between a good vocal recording and a great one comes from the upper nether regions.

The only reason to high cut - or apply ANY EQ - is if you ear or your gear tells you that the signal needs it. If you have something happening up there that should not be there, filter it out. If not, then don't worry about it.

G.
 
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I've only seen this 15kHz choppy garbage from bad MP3 encoders. I know some people actually do it on purpose for some odd reason (because they thought it was the "pro" thing to do after seeing so many spectrum from other MP3's with no high end), but I certainly don't see any valid reason at all to do it.
 
Thanks for your help guys, I did try a hi cut and to my ears it sounded slightly worse but I thought maybe these frequencies might be considered 'shrill' at high volumes or something. Plus I heard this thing on the news a while ago that teenagers have a better hearing at very high freqencies than older people and I thought It might be for them, I think i'll leave them in though, thanks again.
 
benage said:
Plus I heard this thing on the news a while ago that teenagers have a better hearing at very high freqencies than older people and I thought It might be for them, I think i'll leave them in though, thanks again.
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Watch the spectral view. If there is nothing unusual at high frequencies, then there is no need to filter.
Most noise I find there nowadays are mirror frequencies introduced from poor resampling. Try sampling (not ripping) from youtube or myspace. Those have strong mirror frequencies above 11025 Hz and they infact do sound annoying. Filtering those off results in a somewhat muddy, but also in a more natural sound. In any case far from HiFi, though. Also some toys like singing dolls sound similar (not talking about pre digital implementations, of course).

Cases where you generally can low pass filter are recordings from analog radio and television. FM radio is limited to 15 kHz. Above that are various sub carriers and mirror frequencies. Similar with television, plus the line frequencies straying in.

Roland's digital synthesizers (MT-32 and Sound Canvas) operate at a 32000 Hz sample frequency with no oversampling, thus a 16 kHz low pass can be applied to get rid of those mirror frequencies. They are low enough that I don't hear the difference, though.

You certainly shouldn't do that just because someone else did it.
 
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