Rules of thumb for EQing?

[moresound]

the guy probably did that because his recording was muddy to start with. If you record the stuff right, it won't need any eq. (just one man's opinion)

And a good one at that!!!!

 

[schie2645]

i eq everything set my peaks and listen to the playbacks till it blends . also youtube has board setting videos on thair that kinda exsplain decible levels drum gates and so on . most just blend to what you hear a good set of earphones is required . for me anyway

 

[diggy_dude]

But until one does have the ear, the rest is all completely useless; the arguments about charts, about acoustics, about gear, everything. You might as well just throw it all out if you don't first get the ear. One cannot mix or master without it, novice or not. And if you got the ear, you don't much need the chart.

Well, there's no arguing that, but you're putting the cart before the horse. The ear doesn't come first when one is starting out. If it did, there would be need to train one's listening faculties.

Most educational regimes in our society are visually oriented. They heavily utilize visual tools such as textbooks, chalkboards, pencil and paper, the Internet, etc. Audio generally takes a back seat to the visual experience. Our mode of learning is more-or-less conditioned to rely upon visual tools. Training the ear is very much an exercise in breaking old habits. We start from where we are.

A-hah! So it's you who made that chart! So cool! I saw that thing when I was first starting out, and it really helped me get a grasp on EQ. Thanks!

See? Like it or not, your chart is useful to a lot of people.

 

[diggy_dude]

If you record the stuff right, it won't need any eq. (just one man's opinion)

The synthesist has an advantage in this regard. The toolkit is small (VCOs, VCFs, VCAs, LFOs, envelope generators, and mixers) and produces relatively simple waveforms. The waveforms' components (fundamental, harmonics, overtones, and formants) can be carefully designed. It's well within the realm of possibility to create instruments and arrange them in such a way that no post-recording processing is required.

 

[miroslav]

...there's a large fold-out reproduction of a similar chart (the 1941 Quinby chart) in Katz's book that I thought might be useful to the OP.

I have that one...I even laminated it and it's hanging on the wall behind my monitors!
Glen, you should make yours as printable PDFs. It has more detialed info and it's in color...the Katz chart is rather old-fashioned looking and only b&w.

It's OK for references, but the point Glen is making is that if you can't hear where/how a couple of instruments are overlapping and what the subsequent EQ adjustments are doing to that, the chart won't be very much help, especially since many things don't just overlap at one specific point...they overlap across a huge range, and your ears need to figure out where the overlaps are good, bad or neutral.

 

[diggy_dude]

...the Katz chart is rather old-fashioned looking and only b&w.

That's what I like about it.

It's OK for references.... your ears need to figure out where the overlaps are good, bad or neutral.

I'm not arguing that point. The charts will put you in the ballpark. After awhile, you find you know longer need a map to find third base, as it were.

 

[miroslav]

The charts will put you in the ballpark. After awhile, you find you know longer need a map to find third base, as it were.

Yeah...but what about the guys who really just came to watch the game, and are only trying to find the concession stand for a dog & brew?

 

[moresound]

there's the wind up the pitch ...... where is the mens room?

 

[grimtraveller]

Ear, ear ?

The ear doesn't come first when one is starting out. If it did, there would be need to train one's listening faculties.

Most educational regimes in our society are visually oriented. They heavily utilize visual tools such as textbooks, chalkboards, pencil and paper, the Internet, etc. Audio generally takes a back seat to the visual experience. Our mode of learning is more-or-less conditioned to rely upon visual tools. Training the ear is very much an exercise in breaking old habits. We start from where we are.

Yeah, but what about the days before the visual mixing cues ? Audio is precisely what it says on the tin - audio. We start from where we are with the ears that we have.

 

[diggy_dude]

Yeah...but what about the guys who really just came to watch the game, and are only trying to find the concession stand for a dog & brew?

I usually wait for the guy with a box full of beer and hotdogs strapped to his gut to come wandering by.

 

[miroslav]

I usually wait for the guy with a box full of beer and hotdogs strapped to his gut to come wandering by.

Then you must not be all that hungry and thirsty, and don't mind the wait.

 

[diggy_dude]

Yeah, but what about the days before the visual mixing cues ? Audio is precisely what it says on the tin - audio. We start from where we are with the ears that we have.

Look how long it took from the invention of the phonograph until the Beatles to start turning out decent-sounding recordings. Moreover, the means of production being cost-prohibitive to the layman meant that most of us only knew what we read about or saw on TV. The dearth of suitable equipment meant there was no impetus for audio production to become the popular activity it is today.

Yes, we start with the ears we have. Unfortunately, for most laymen, that's not saying much at all. We must bridge the gap between our conditioned, intellectual way of learning and a new, perceptual way. We start with theory and then learn to apply it as an art.

 

[SouthSIDE Glen]

Well, there's no arguing that, but you're putting the cart before the horse. The ear doesn't come first when one is starting out.

I know I'm in a minority - perhaps even a minority of one - but respectfully, I think it's exactly the opposite. Or at least it should be.

I think it's simple; first one does not need to get behind a mixing desk or a DAW screen in order to get the ear. One can get the ear with a stack of CDs, a CD player, and a brain long before they ever need to actually try to mix music.

And they should. If one can't get a pretty good idea of what they want or need to do to some tracks by LISTENING to them, they have no business stepping behind a mixing desk or DAW to begin with. There is no purpose otherwise. If you don't know what to do based upon what you hear, there's nothing to be done.

G.

 

[grimtraveller]

Look how long it took from the invention of the phonograph until the Beatles to start turning out decent-sounding recordings.

I don't know.....if you listen to music that was recorded in each decade from the 30s on, there were good recordings, average recordings and downright lame ones. That still applies now. That said, I'm not sure what your point is here.

Yes, we start with the ears we have. Unfortunately, for most laymen, that's not saying much at all. We must bridge the gap between our conditioned, intellectual way of learning and a new, perceptual way. We start with theory and then learn to apply it as an art.

Do we ? For many it's actually the other way round. It's going through the debates and pieces of info on HR that has got me even pondering the theoretical sides of things. But I've only been involved here for just under a year !

 

[benherron.rrr]

Question for anyone who cares to answer. What the heck is PARAGRAPHIC EQ? Saw an ad. for a PARAGRAPHIC eq'er on a site, it was called Sir something-or-other, wish I could remember. What does PARAGRAPHIIC mean? Did they just mean parametric and mis-spell it?

I might just make an ass out off myself now. . .

A Paragraphic EQ is one that works with seperate bands, like the hardwear EQ's you get and the EQ's you get in itunes, Windows media player etc. The ones where you have, for example a 30-band EQ so there are 30 sliders, each slider opperates a single frequency. A PARAMETRIC Eq are the ones that look like a graph, where you have upto 4 (usually) bands and you can alter the specific frequency, Q which determins how narrow the curve is.

The way I remember it is that they sound like they should be opposite, paragraphic sounds like it should be the one with the graph style, and parametric sounds like it should hve specific values. infact it is the other way round. Hope im right.

 

[diggy_dude]

I know I'm in a minority - perhaps even a minority of one - but respectfully, I think it's exactly the opposite. Or at least it should be.

It should be.

Glen, I think perhaps you underestimate the depth of social conditioning. It is practically a heresy against modern thought to suggest that one's own subjective experience is more valid than facts, figures, statistics, or telemetry readings. Indeed, a favorite tactic in debate is to try to invalidate any statement based on subjective experience by trotting out some cold, hard scientific fact or clinical study, or by citing some authoritative work on the subject at hand. A good example is mshilarious's reaction in this thread to my use of the term "mythic resonance" to describe the relatedness we feel to analog phenomena. Like Jung, one is considered a mystic or lunatic if one dares use poetic language or imagery to convey subjective facts.

 

[benherron.rrr]

Here I go!

In perfect honesty, None of this really matters!

In my young life If I have learnt anything, its that if you want to do anything you have to actually do it. When you learn how to drive, you could read 1000 books on how to do it theoreticly. Almost none of that would matter when you get in the car. You could know everything about playing any instrument in the world, but without actually touching the instrument you cant actually play it. Weather you learn from doing research and applying that into practical work, or like myself diving in head first and learning from practical application only.

It makes no difference. The only thing that matters is the sound of the song.
Eqing and mixing isn't about what SHOULD be done to it. its about what NEEDS to be done to it. Matters not what the values are where the cuts and boosts are. what really matters is how its making the overall picture sound.

 

[diggy_dude]

It makes no difference. The only thing that matters is the sound of the song. Eqing and mixing isn't about what SHOULD be done to it. its about what NEEDS to be done to it. Matters not what the values are where the cuts and boosts are. what really matters is how its making the overall picture sound.

There is some distance between hearing and knowing what needs to be done and knowing how to accomplish it. One could certainly twiddle knobs up and down their range all day until one stumbles upon the right solution, but it's more practical to use some generalized information to get it into the ballpark first and tweak things from there. Of course there will come a time when one's ear "remembers" what actions work, and one's hands will instinctively perform those actions. One doesn't learn to drive a car without knowing basic theory, i.e., the righthand pedal makes it go and the lefthand pedal makes it stop.

 

[SouthSIDE Glen]

It should be.

Glen, I think perhaps you underestimate the depth of social conditioning. It is practically a heresy against modern thought to suggest that one's own subjective experience is more valid than facts, figures, statistics, or telemetry readings. Indeed, a favorite tactic in debate is to try to invalidate any statement based on subjective experience by trotting out some cold, hard scientific fact or clinical study, or by citing some authoritative work on the subject at hand. A good example is mshilarious's reaction in this thread to my use of the term "mythic resonance" to describe the relatedness we feel to analog phenomena. Like Jung, one is considered a mystic or lunatic if one dares use poetic language or imagery to convey subjective facts.

I have no idea what 90% of that means or how it relates to the topic at hand. You're getting way too deep into what is otherwise a simple, irreducible fact; if you can't analytically hear, you can't mix music. There's nothing more to it than that.

It always baffles me when people ask, "What should I do with my bouzouki track?" or something similar. I don't know how else to reply to that than to ask them back, "What do you want to do with it?" Because until you do know what you want to do with it, there's nothing to actually do with it. And if there's nothing to actually do with it, then why even be there?

It's like driving, to use your analogy. Whether or not one knows how to drive, one needs to have somewhere to go (even if it is just a road trip ) One does not just grab the keys to a car, run outside, jump in the driver's seat, and then ask someone else where they are going. If you have nowhere you want or intend to go, then what are you doing behind the wheel?

G.

 

[SouthSIDE Glen]

but it's more practical to use some generalized information to get it into the ballpark first and tweak things from there.

We see this all the time on this board. It's also used as the reason for using preset values in people's plugs; it's a good ballpark to start in and tweak from there.

The two things that idea ignores are A) the fact that unless one has the ears, there's no way of knowing if they are in the right ballpark to begin with, and 2) that they are already in a ballpark from which they can tweak; it's called "bypass". If one can tweak from some arbitrary set of information from a chart, they can tweak from where they are already at.

And it's no harder. If you can tweak at all, you can tweak regardless of the starting point, especially considering that there's no guarantee that the starting point you pick is any good to begin with (unless you can hear that it is, of course ).

For folks who say my chart helped them, I say first, thank you for the appreciation . But I say second that it probably only helped them kid themselves; that they could have done it just as easily without the chart. But they *believed* that the chart or something like it was necessary to get started, therefore they believed that it truly helped them out of a hole. But the reality is that the hole was of their own making; that it was the belief that they needed some map, or "rules of thumb", or whatever you want to call it that held them back from just using their ears from the get-go.

G.