Eq confused

  • Thread starter Thread starter maxman65
  • Start date Start date
Youve got totally wrapped up in a pointless circular argument. Record some pink noise. Then use your controls to chop off the bottom, and the top wit( your phone using a free sound level app that shows energy and where it is. Remember that while one device can be set to shelve below 307.5Hz, with a 7dB per octave fall, others have a knob or two and far less precision in labelling. Almost certainly, your experiments are doing exactly what people have very carefully explained. The snag is you are expecting to hear something different. Use the pink noise and phone and you can see what the controls do. One of your diagrams shows a little triangular ramp, then a dotted line, then a descending ramp. That is exactly what the shelf filter does. Ive spent four hours trying to get a tom tom out of a drum vocal. Ive tried every filter i have. The low cut sorted the kick and nearly the snare. The tom, however, is almost on his lowest note. None of the filters is sharp enough. Not a fault, just science i guess.
 
Seems ok . Basically where I'm cutting seems to kill the ear wasp type territory . Beyond that better legato and performance will drag it up a bit more. Everything I do ends up sounding kind of old and washed out which I don't really mind provided there's nothing fatiguing harsh sounding
 
I can't say I often use a shelf EQ. I can see it purpose, but it seems like trimming with a meat clever. I want X below or above Y either boosted or gone (to summarize). When often the area I am looking for is a bit more subtle than that. But I could see its use in many circumstances.
 
This is the eq on my SSL Big Six.
It looks like it does Shelf Eq by default, but I can 'bell' the HF and LF independently.

bell eq.webp
 
DM60 said:
I can't say I often use a shelf EQ. I can see it purpose, but it seems like trimming with a meat clever. I want X below or above Y either boosted or gone (to summarize). When often the area I am looking for is a bit more subtle than that. But I could see its use in many circumstances.
Click to expand...
I take that back, I use it all of the time. Often rolling off below 40HZ and above 16KHZ. Didn't think much about that.
 
Hi tascam definitive answer by email :

" The eq is shelving with a tapered characteristic of 6db / octave "

Though I've no idea what sort of frequency range is represented by an octave
 
Blimey! Double. 6dB ver 100 to 200Hz or 6dB over 10KHz to 20KHz. This could explain some of your confusion, as logic dictates frequency probably just goes up in a linear manner. It doesnt. The usual graphs show frequency in a logarithmic style which has say, the usua claimed frequency response of 20 to 20,000Hz displayed with 10KHz not in the middle, but displaced sideways. 20 to 10k means just the very top octave is missing, and thats off the to right of a real piano’s highest note! 6dB per octave is common and not that radical a cut off. A gentle reduction really. 12dB is sharper cutoff.
 
Ok so if an octave is non linear in terms of frequency then the taper is more like some curve than a straight line
 
Here's an illustration of cuts (substitute upward slopes for boosts).

filter.webp
 
Ok so I kind of view this as being at the end of that 6db line which ends up as zero dB cut wherever it's cut spectrum ends
 
maxman65 said:
Ok so I kind of view this as being at the end of that 6db line which ends up as zero dB cut wherever it's cut spectrum ends
Click to expand...

The slope won't end after that octave. If you were to set the shelf at 5kHz with a 6dB/octave, it would be up or down 6dB at 10k (one octave is when the frequency doubles), it should hold that drop or boost the rest of the frequency range.

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maxman65 said:
Hi tascam definitive answer by email :

" The eq is shelving with a tapered characteristic of 6db / octave "

Though I've no idea what sort of frequency range is represented by an octave
Click to expand...

An octave is a very simple concept... you get the same "note" at double the frequency. You often see concert pitch referenced, that simply means that A(4) is defined as 440Hz and all other pitches are referenced to that point. The starting A(0) would be 27.5Hz. Low A(1) would be 55Hz. The next A is 110Hz, etc.

A frequency of 9400Hz would be a D (9th octave). The 10th octave would be 18800Hz. Unless you have really good hearing, it's doubtful that you would even hear the D(10) much less recognize it as a note.


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An octave is a doubling or halving of frequency.
An octave up from 100hz is 200hz. And octave down from 100hz is 50hz.
 
If you were trying to make it sound a little like Barber's "Adagio For Strings" you succeeded. Sounds pretty good to me, EQ-wise.
 
I like that, although im not sure what the eq is doing, because we dont know what it sounded like before
 
I don't really know either . But theres alot of it .
1.7khz -12db high band
1.6khz - 12db low band
Then again even more cuts on the "master "
- 7db at both those same selected frequency points . Also on the way in to the recorder I drag out the bass on the eq that comes with free cubase ai. Maybe -12db . There's three shaded areas but doesn't really seem to specify what your taking out basically the low shaded option . The effect to me is it seems to decimate things pretty substantially kind of old washed out sounding . But it does mean the playback levels tend to end up very low . I guess it's almost kind of lofi
 
I can only judge the end product. I hear nothing low fi at all. It just sounds like the violin and violas turned up on force with one cello and no basses. Perfectly ok, if that is what you want. I know that id just have made it sound differently. If the strings were done in cubase, i suspect that i would have used very little EQ, if any at all! When i do strings, i work on the principle they’re recorded to sound like the samples, so if i want more basses, or violins, i do it with volume, never EQ. That is not a rule, just how I compose. If there is a little ‘something’ in a track that i cant pull out, I would perhaps find that with EQ. Clicks, raspyness, string noise, that kind of thing. I dont know why you are slicing stuff off a real instrument. Your end product is fine, but i hear quality, not low fi? We must be talking about something different?
 
Excellent . I'll probably keep this same method as a kind of basic go- to broad brush stroke type default approach . Yes granted I've likely overkilled the low end at bit
 
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