Anyone run their audio through an eq (flat) that has a spectrum display as a guide for mixing? What I mean is, play a music source that is your target for your mix and try to get your audio to resemble the spectrum display. I know, I know,,,,,,,,,,,,I'm getting pretty desperate here.
Spectrum display as guide??
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Blue Bear Sound
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The best guide to use is your ears! You can't hear with your eyes!! 
ryanlikestorock
New member
I usually have something like that running to help me visually identify EQ problems that I'm hearing. It's not always the right way to solve the problem, but sometimes it helps.
Massive Master
www.massivemastering.com
Damn straight - If everything sounds good, don't worry about what it looks like.
If you're having a problem with a specific frequency that you're having trouble identifying, THEN turn on the display to help find it.
If you're having a problem with a specific frequency that you're having trouble identifying, THEN turn on the display to help find it.
You might hate yourself if you go there - worse you might not come out for yearsFarview said:
Massive Master mentioned looking at the visual frequency spectrum when you're having trouble finding something. I'll add that it can assist learning about individual instrument ranges, give you some idea of dynamic energy of freq ranges over the course of a song, help you balance your room acoustics, etc. Lot's of people use them, lot's of people don't. I guess you can tell by looking at studio shots who uses them for the most part.
Specifically though, looking at a full mix is interesting and educational and can be useful if you are able to use your ears at the same time and don't simply learn how to push your mix into someone elses curve without learning what to listen for. Where to get a good full mix - you can start with your favorite commercial recording although you have to remember many of those have had the loudness adjusted at the mastering engineer shop so you're not really looking at what the mixing engineer did.
Spectrums can also be useful when you're mixing in a new room or auditorium or using new equipment or something like that. You can also look at one to see if your sub-bass is set too high so you can roll off at 10-20-40 Hz whatever you like - many systems don't go under 30Hz so you can't really hear that stuff down there. There's also a tool available called GlissEQ that allows you to overlay track spectrums in real time if you want to do a bit of frequency carving and see what you are carving. The fun thing to do is turn it on after you've finished just to 'see' what you've carved - I think you carve less if you're not watching, I do anyway.
You can also set the spectrum analyzer to average and watch a commercial recording to see what the slope is and what hinge point was used. I think the Ozone Mastering guide mentions a hinge at 6KHz or something on top of a -3dB/octave pink noise slope. You can start getting into those kind of broad adjustments. Expecting to use one to balance or smooth the lo-mids or high-mids might be expecting too much - unless you're trying to identify a problem in there that you can't hear by sweeping an EQ or something.
I guess I'm saying spectrum displays are useful as a guide - I'm thinking if I keep mine on for the entire song then I'm overusing it. Maybe I'll look at it after it's over and check the general slope and bass or something...
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masteringhouse
www.masteringhouse.com
getgo said:
There are far too many variables to copy by rote, but you can get a general idea from some well-respected examples that have the same instrumentation and texture. For example looking at the curve of a rap song is going to give you a general idea of the balance between the low end and other freqs vs. a rock or pop record.
What you will find however is that simply copying the curve isn't going to give you the same results. Likewise making 2 songs the same level on a meter is not going to necessarily make them the same perceived "loudness". There are subtleties beyond what the meter is showing such as the harmonics produced by the material, phase considerations, and interaction with the other intruments. A 1k tone can look the same on a spectral analyzer as a guitar that is centered around 1K, but we all know they sound completely different.
I do agree with y'all about using the ears not the eyes. I guess I just meant to have a peek and see where there may be holes in the spectrum and making some adjustments from there. I ran some stuff through one and made some changes to the song I am currently working on and I feel I am getting closer. With my old mix, it seemed that the voice and all guitars were fighting for the same spot in the mix. I zero'd everything out and made a couple tweaks hear and there and I seem to be gaining ground on this one.
Theoretically that should work, but unfortunatly it dosn't. Why? Because the things that bring every song into perfect balance are always going to be different than every other song.
Spectrum displays are cute for reference, but aren't useful if you don't know how to use one.
The best tip, use your ears.
Spectrum displays are cute for reference, but aren't useful if you don't know how to use one.
The best tip, use your ears.
Alanfc
New member
I think it would be cool to use one for a couple weeks, just to see where all the instruments fall. I'm finding that sweeping and listening give me differing levels of pleasure/displeasure with guitar freq's every time I sit down to practice it.
I just got an idea but tell me if this is way off......
on my Windows media player we have all those options for "visualizations" when listening to CD's. I usually have it on the bouncing green EQ bars. Could those even be slightly useful? In peeking into other band's spectrums?. Then of course burning my own waves and looking at mine too. I mean just as a rough look?
I just got an idea but tell me if this is way off......
on my Windows media player we have all those options for "visualizations" when listening to CD's. I usually have it on the bouncing green EQ bars. Could those even be slightly useful? In peeking into other band's spectrums?. Then of course burning my own waves and looking at mine too. I mean just as a rough look?
The free VST Voxengo plugin SPAN will give you a very accurate look at both frequency balance as well as the overall RMS/Peak RMS dynamic 'crest' as Bob Katz would say.Alanfc said:
http://voxengo.com/freevst/#VoxengoSPANVST
You can import whatever tune you like in your mixing application and use this as an insert to 'see' what it sounds like, from a frequency domain FFT point of view that is ! I use it a lot myself, hehe.