Which mids for mixing?

C

Chill

New member
I recall reading several posts/ sources which said essentially "sort out the mids and you will have your mix"...seems like that often comes up in discussions of monitor speakers without much low end like the NS10. I considered sticking an EQ on the master out to hear mostly the mids to which that saying applies, but I'm not sure which frequencies are "the" mids for the purposes of the rule of thumb.

What frequencies are they?
 
Chill said:
But I was trying to scoop those and then severely compress and limit the mix, but it's a nondescript mess with no dynamics. :shrug: ;)

Seriously though, what bandwidth approximately?
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I'm serious too. It's the frequencies in the middle.

In numerical terms it's about 500-6000hz.

The real point is that you shouldn't be worrying about the numbers of it. Use your ears, not your eyes. It's kinda hard to offer any advice without actually hearing it. If you are aware of a troubling sound that you are trying to get rid of, do a paramtric sweep until you find the offending frequency and then cut it a bit.

The phrase "sort out the mids and you will have your mix" does not to my knowledge sum up the art of mixing. You may have heard someone say that after listening to someone elses mix, but it's certaibnly not he be all and end all.

The best advice I can offer is to turn off all EQ's, set all the faders to unity, and just listen to it, adjusting only the volume faders as you go, and perhaps the panning. Once you have things sitting in the right place, it's just a matter of listening to it as a whole a few times without touching anything, and decide what you think needs doing. Don't automatically play with the mids as a matter of course, but if there is an offending frequency somewhere, give it a bit of a cut. I'm sure you know the basics of mixing though. Just don't get bogged down in numbers of specific frequencies. Do what sounds good to your ears, not what looks good on paper.

Was there any reason why you needed to compress or limit the mix?

I'm sorry if it sounds like I'm having a dig at you, that's not my intention. I'm just trying to help :)
 
Chill said:
I recall reading several posts/ sources which said essentially "sort out the mids and you will have your mix"...seems like that often comes up in discussions of monitor speakers without much low end like the NS10. I considered sticking an EQ on the master out to hear mostly the mids to which that saying applies, but I'm not sure which frequencies are "the" mids for the purposes of the rule of thumb.

What frequencies are they?
Click to expand...

It not that the ns10 lacked lows, but the REASON they lacked the lowend. They where not ported which naturally will cause the f3 point to start sooner, they also had a shorter delay in the lowend (non-ported) which helps keep the waveform together, plus they where pretty low in distortion (not talking electrical distortion but acoustical) there are other reasons that I just learned about, the cone material and it construction was unique... Anyway if your monitors are ported you could try stuffing them to give you semi-closed and see how that sounds. I've always been drawn to closed box designs myself, I'm using a closed box 2.1 system (about 5-6 years now, going to switch to a 3-way nearfield soon) and will never go back to a flabby ported system!
 
It wasn't just that the NS10s had weak lows, they actually had about a 5dB bump in the mids.

Anyway, while I find the attitude that if you fix the mids you fix the mix to be a bit simplistic - I mean, you still have to get the rest right also, they can be the most troublesome area for many people.

Don't scoop anything. You're throwing out a lot of the good with the bad when you do that, and you'll wind up with a mix that'll be lacking much of it's backbone.

The mids run - as stated - from about 1k to about 6k, give-or-take, but typically the real problem frequencies come in around 3k-5k. But don't just attack those assuming anything. As said, you gotta use your ears. Scooping = death.

The good ol' parametric sweep works wonders here. Run it on your individual tracks before summing them together and you'll likely avoid much of your typical "mids problems" from the get-go. Add to that some judicious differential EQing (taking 2 or 3 dB away from this track at this frequency while adding a couple of dB to that track at the same frequency in order to give them each a tonal balance that fits like a jigsaw puzzle) and you'll be three-quarters of the way home before you even mixdown. Then on the 2mix, if the mids still seem a bit honky sounding, a final parametric sweep on the 2mix should take you the rest of the way.

P.S. this takes knowing your monitors, too. People who liked the NS10s (I was never one of them, myself) tended to be folks who needed the boosted midrange they gave to expose the mids. You gotta know your speakers and know how the mids translate on them to know that you're getting the mids truly right, and not just right-sounding on those speakers.

G.
 
Thanks for the tips, gang. I agree, the mids are not the sole objective in mixing, what I was thinking about was how to use EQ as a tool to focus in on a common problem area, and to figure out where that area is.

And the scoop and severe compress comment was intended as a joke in response to what I thought was a joke from legionserial...tried to communicate that with the shrug and wink emoticons. Yah, I think midrange is important, and especially so on overdriven guitar tones.
 
To the OP, my interpretation of "sort out the mids and you will have your mix" is that everything has to fit together in that range since it is prominent in our hearing. This does not necessarily mean eq'ing anything. Maybe pulling down volume on a drum room mic kit will open up a space for the bass guitar for example.
 
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