How do you proceed to get a balanced Ferqquency Spectrum Mix ???

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EX -The Maniac

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Hello,

I just tried Har-Bal and it impressed me highly, because I just had to load my Mix into it and then adjust the overall spectral balance to smooth all the heavy peaks and valleys. After that I listened to the track and the Sound was awesome, it was completely perfectly balanced. Even after 1 million hours of mixing and mastering I wouldn't have got that Sound by just using my ears. With Har-Bal it's so great because you see the Spectrum and there are this really narrow peaks and valleys and they are especially the reason why the Sound was so bad. Because the Frequency irregulations are so narrow, but spread over the whole spectrum, it is impossible for a person like me to find them by ears and to know how many decibel they have to be boosted or cut.
Nevertheless I don't want to use Har-Bal for getting this spectral Balance, so I would like to know how professional Engineers and you guys proceed to get a perfectly balanced Sound. If I load professional Mixes into Har-Bal, that were mastered by Bob Ludwig for example, the frequency curve is so smooth, how do they do that. Is it more dependent on EQ oder more on compression?
 
EX -The Maniac said:
so I would like to know how professional Engineers and you guys proceed to get a perfectly balanced Sound.
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trust your ears, not the eyes.
honestly, how a sound looks in the computer doesn't matter when it hits your ears. There are so many factors involved (the way you hear, the response of the room you're in, the speakers, etc.) that a frequency graph in a computer can't show.
Don't worry about trying to get your mixes smooth and flat looking in a graphical program. Use it for finding problematic areas (ie. when doing noise reduction work or trying to find the ringing noise in the snare or something)...but don't rely on it to get you a better mix. Because then you start to pay way too much attention on how it looks and setting your EQ levels to get it to look a certain way....which is NOT what someone needs to do. And especially, don't waste time trying to get your mix to look like someone elses. No two mixes are ever going to look the same.
Use the ears.
 
I know, this is ....... a standard answer for this type of question ...... sry=)
But I really would like to get a little bit of advice, because I found out that if the spectrum is in visual mode flat looking, the music also sounds perfectly balanced. the sound is not the result of the flat curve, but the flat curve is the result of a perfectly balanced sound. So my question again, how can I get this sound without Har-Bal, maybe there are other software tools/plugins that can help me ?
 
No, there aren't. You achieve a well-balanced mix by tracking and mixing things the right way. Har-bal is a useless piece of crap.
.
 
That was the standard answer because that is the answer. That's the same reason that the standard answer to 1+1 is 2.

Instrumentation, arrangement, and a balanced mix will give you this. With some good EQ and compression, you can get this.
 
EX -The Maniac said:
I found out that if the spectrum is in visual mode flat looking, the music also sounds perfectly balanced.
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This is simply not true. You may have come across a case where the results of doing that were not displeasing, but overall that simply is not how it works.

You want proof? Take several CDs (not MP3s, but real releases) that you think sound good,sampling different flavors of music, and run them through a spectrum analyzer and see how har-bal'd they look.

Or if you want to take it from the other direction, har-bal everything and everything will sound the same. Viva la difference.

Everybody wants the million-dollar mix but nobody wants to work for it. Life is just one big Guntella.

G.
 
I know, you are all right. What I meant was, how do I find all this narrow irregularities in the frequency spectrum of my mix and how do I know if I must boost or cut for example at
512 khz + 4.2 db q-factor : 23
at 112 hz -5.7 db q-factor : 46
at 1019 khz + 2.6 db q-factor : 12

etc.

I mean of course it is easy to roughly balance a Mix by only adjusting the three broad bands like Lows, Mids and Highs. But that doesn't result in the desired balanced sound, because the narrow irregularities make the sound so bad. If you have at 1 khz a peak at -2db and at 1.5khz a dip of -20 db and at 2 khz again a peak at -1 db and this kind of irregularities everywhere in the whole spectrum, than it sounds bad.
Understand what I mean ?
So how can I find this peaks and dips and how do I find out how much I have to boost or cut each frequency ?

Example pics for better understanding : http://gm86.awardspace.com/
 
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EX -The Maniac said:
So how can I find this peaks and dips and how do I find out how much I have to boost or cut each frequency ?
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Well, the first step is to throw out all the spectrum charts; they are distracting you from getting the most out of your ears, and it's with your ears that you have to do it.

One your ears have 100% of your attention and brain cycles devoted to them, then it's time to go back to your individual tracks and get them sounding right and sounding right together (two differnet things) before you mixdown. And the best way to get the tracks sounding as right as possible in the mixing stage without too much work is to get the tracking as close as possible first :).

Peaks and valleys are natural to a degree. But if you have extreme unnatural peaks or valleys in your sound that are probably a function of frequency buildup cause by using either a)too much of the same musical instrument settings, b)too much of the same microphones, c)too much of the same ambients and d)an inattention to the spectral dimension when working the mix.

Note that the first two causes are handled in the tracking, as is part of the third. The rest of the third and the fourth cause are handled in mixing. None of this is handled in the mastering stage.

I recently got some stereo tracks of someone else's recordings that I was tasked to re-master. The original trackings have long ago disappeared, so the remaining copies of the masters were all i had to work with. There is such a horrendus buildup of stuff between 3k and 5k that can't entirely be removed from the masters without taking the good stuff out as well that I have had to accept that my remasters are going to sound...welll...less than perfect. Oh, BTW, this buildup is not really visible on a visible spectragram, and attempts at fixes using har-bal-style algorithms ended up sounding no better than what I could do myself. The only way to really fix it properly would be to go back and re-mix it, which of course is now impossible.

Where is did this buildup come from? There are some technical reasons having to do with condition of the tapes, the quality of the converters used, etc., but mostly it's because the original tracking and mixes were poorly executed. All the guitars sound the same, there is no real individual character to them, they share the same fundamentals and forments as the vocalist, I suspect that everything may have been recorded with SM57s and a couple of AKGs, and there is over use of a poor-quality reverb which just smears this stuff together. No mastering can fix that.

That may be an extreme example, but it makes the point. Products like Har-Bal - whether they work or not - are last-ditch tools designed to try to fix in the mastering stage what should never have been broken to begin when leaving the mixing stage.

If you wait for mastering to smooth the peaks and valleys, you've waited too long.

If you mix and master with your eyes, your ear quality will suffer.

The only way to engineer with yor ears is to get you ears into shape so you can recoginze what the different frequency areas actually sound like in general.

G.
 
So can you hear the difference in boosting at 1.75 khz about 2.6 db with a narrow q-factor of 45 ? I can't, I can only hear differences when I boost or cut with a broad q-factor, for example if I boost from 5khz - 8khz with 5 db or something like that. All this very narrow peaks and valleys I can't find by ear, because one for itself doesn't affect the spectrum sound much, but if there are many of this narrow peaks and valleys ithe overall track sounds really different.
Back to mastering. Is something wrong if one has to boost or cut many many freqnecies with a lot of db (about 10 db)? Does any kind of eq'ing many db lower the quality of the audio material and do mastering or mixing Engineers usually use EQ only very very little or do they also boost and cut many frequencies, would they ever boost or cut a frequency with 10 or 15 db ? And would they also boost or cut 20 or more different narrow frequency bands ?
 
Most mastering engineers don't boost or cut anything more than 2-3db.

Those peaks and valleys come from the sounds of the instruments in your arangement. If you don't like those sounds, change them.

You can't expect to have the spectrum balanced. Most instruments aren't balanced. If you put up something that is nothing but kick drum and bass guitar, how much 10kHz do you think your mix will have? This is really just foolish.

If you cant hear a 2db boost with a narrow Q, your monitors or your ears are not all that great.
 
EX -The Maniac said:
So can you hear the difference in boosting at 1.75 khz about 2.6 db with a narrow q-factor of 45 ?
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Well, sometimes with small changes like that it can indeed be tough to hear directly, but one should at least be able to notice the overall difference in feel that such a change causes. But yes, you should be able to hear something. If you can't, your ear and listening skills probably could use some work. Not suprising, if you've been relying upon your eyes.
EX -The Maniac said:
All this very narrow peaks and valleys I can't find by ear, because one for itself doesn't affect the spectrum sound much, but if there are many of this narrow peaks and valleys ithe overall track sounds really different.
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It sounds like you're still stuck on this visual peaks and valleys thing. You are over-dependant on the visual aspects of music to the point where it's adversely affecting your ears. Just forget about all that. Forget about it. That whole "smooth curve" thing is a siren song that'll just get you washed up on the engineering rocks. Just put the frequency analyzers away.

Worry about how something sounds, not how it looks. If something sounds too "honky", find where the honk is and get rid of it. It it sounds too dull, add some sparkle to it.

It's simply a matter of learning what the different frequency ranges sound like. This is a mantra I seem to be repeating a lot lately on these boards. Do a search on the words parametric, graphic and sweep in this forum and maybe in the "Recording Techniques" forum to look for posts detailing some simple exercies for quickly learning and memorizing the sounds of the frequency ranges and for training one's ear to hear them.

A cook has no idea if his dish has too much salt or not enough cumin if he doesn't know what the herbs and spices actually taste like and how they affect the flavoring of food. And no printed recipe is going to help him there either. Their eyes will never be able to tell them what something tastes like. Sound is no different from taste; you want to cook a good mix, you gotta know what the frequencies sound like before you can decide whether to add them or take them away.

EX -The Maniac said:
Back to mastering. Is something wrong if one has to boost or cut many many freqnecies with a lot of db (about 10 db)? Does any kind of eq'ing many db lower the quality of the audio material and do mastering or mixing Engineers usually use EQ only very very little or do they also boost and cut many frequencies, would they ever boost or cut a frequency with 10 or 15 db ? And would they also boost or cut 20 or more different narrow frequency bands ?
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There are no hard-and-fast rules, but think of it this way: It's the recording engineer's job to make things as easy as possible for the mixing engineer, and it's the mixing engineer's job to make things as easy as possible for the mastering engineer.

To put that another way, a mixing engineer should be spend most of his time creating the mix, not fixing problems caused by poor or inapropriate tracking, and a mastering engineer should be spending most of his time polishing the mix, not trying to fix dents and rust spots in it. When looked at that way, the idea is to try and get the need for a whole bunch of EQ to be as minimal as possible.

In the real world, major boosts or cuts in the mastering stage may be needed, but usually that is an indication of needing to fix a problem rather than just polishing what's there. If you find yourself regularly having to do a lot of major fixing like that in the mastering stage, it's time to re-examine your mixing technique and eliminate those problems as much as possible before they come up.

As far as the multiple narrow-band stuff, you're drifting back into the "smooth curve" siren song thing again. Forget about that. Pretend you never met Har-Bal and those curves. No, unless one is shooting for a special sound effect (but that's not what we're talking abut here), the need to attack a sound in that manner usually indicates a fairly major problem with the execution of the previous step.

G.
 
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To further add with this....


I think you really have to see and *hear* what's out there. In the beggining, I was a massive "flat EQ" crack head. If I didn't see a nice blend of all the spectrum, then I automatically thought the mix didn't work. That of course is one of the cardinal sins of mixing.

That comes from novice thinking. A good mastering engineer will tell you that a spectrum analyzer counts for absolutly nothing when it comes to making changes in EQ. (Alright, maybe not for alot)


When you happen to come by songs that are perfectly balanced visually, it dosn't mean that the next song that's slightly lighter on the highs was mixed poorly. Those "nice" peaks and valleys come from good technique, and chances are, the engineer dosn't need the visual conformation.

Songs will vary depending on the instrumentation and the approach in mixing. In the end, the ears will always outdo the eyes. The eyes can't take presedence over the ears. The eyes will actually make your ears beleive things that simply aren't true.

So trust me when I say it, the sooner you can ween yourself off the visuals, the better and more relaxed your mixing will be.

And like I said, check out lots of different songs and you'll see how different "good mixes" can look visually.


Occasionally I find myself pulling up a 3D spectral analysis of my mix just to satisfy the urge. Almost like when an ex-crack head takes a late night drive by the house he used to score drugs from.
 
Yes but I am not looking at the frequency spectrum, because I want it to look smooth. I don't like the sound, because it is unbalanced and whatever changes I do with an EQ by ear, I don't get it balanced, the peaks and valleys even become more. So the problem is I don't know how to use an EQ exactly the way so that the result will be a good smooth transparent sounding mix. I can spend hours and years for boosting frequencies here and cutting others there, but the result is never that balanced, as if I use something like Har-Bal. When I see the spectrum I adjust the peaks and valleys and after that I "have" the balanced sound, that I was trying to get for hours of EQing. Thats the problem, I don't want to be dependent on the visual things, I want to know how to use an EQ, when my ears tell me that the sound is to thin, I sweep the frequencies and find out for example to boost at 200 hz a little bit, but then it sounds also to harsh, so I cut a little bit of the high mids, but then it sounds to honky so I cut a little bit at about 500-700hz, but then it sounds again to boxy and so on and so on.
Understand what I mean ? It never sounds as balanced as it should, because if you boost or cut one frequency area, another is again dominating and you have to cut or boost there as well, than another and another, it is never balanced, because the problem is, there is not only bass from 60-200hz and low-mids from 300-800 hz and mids from 900-2khz and high mids from 3-5khz and so on. These areas can be easily balanced, but even if this 4 or 5 frequency areas are balanced, there are this many many smaller peaks.........but I've said that thousands of times now........
 
EX -The Maniac said:
I don't get it balanced, the peaks and valleys even become more. So the problem is I don't know how to use an EQ exactly the way so that the result will be a good smooth transparent sounding mix.
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OK, let's take this one step at a time. First off what stage are you talking about; are you referring to trying to EQ the mixdown or EQing an individual track? Second, what EQ or EQs are you using?

If you're talking about EQing a mixdown and the mixdown sounds so bad that you are chasing your tail like that, that is to me a pretty clear indication of one of two things: your EQ stinks (possible), or there are major problems with your mix and you need to go back and re-mix the individual tracks better instead of trying to fix a bad mix in the mastering stage (more likely).

If you are talking about individual tracks like drums or guitar or vocals that don't sound right and you can't get them to sound right, then you need to get into more detail of what the problem tracks are ("peaks and valleys" just ain't going to cut it in this discussion anymore ;) ).

EX -The Maniac said:
These areas can be easily balanced, but even if this 4 or 5 frequency areas are balanced, there are this many many smaller peaks.........but I've said that thousands of times now........
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And we've tried telling you a thousand times in return that those visual peaks are irrelevant and don't necessarily correlate to what you are hearing. Some peaks and valleys are actually GOOD. Please, please PLEASE, forget about Har-bal and those smooth graphs. Those smooth graphs are meaningless and have nothing to do with your problems. You really nead to un-learn what you think Har-bal has taught you about smooth graphs, because it has taught you the wrong thing.

Here's what you need to remember, in order:

Smooth response graphs do not necessarily mean good sound.

Bumpy response graphs do not necessarily mean bad sound.

Some of the best-sounding mixes to come down the pike have been about as rough-looking as 6-day beard.

What you are hearing as problems in you mix do not necessarily relate to what you are seeing on those graphs.

If you mention Har-bal or frequency response graphs or "peaks and valleys" one more time, you are really going to endanger your chances of getting good honest help here ;).

If your mixdown requires your chasing it around with an EQ for hours before it sounds better, then you probably need to re-do you mixdown and get the individual tracks sounding good and complimentary to each other before you mix them together into a stereo mixdown.

If you are seemingly doing all of this right and you still cannot get it going, then you just need more practice.

If you want more specific answers than that, the only way one could help you is to give a listen to one of your problem recordings and let the rest of us hear just what you are talking about.

G.
 
Peaks and valleys make for a good ride

I tracked some nasty-ass guitar feedback for one of my band's noise pieces. I pulled it up on the spectral analyzer after mixdown just cause I was still learning how to use WaveLab. When that feedback guitar kicked in, peaks rose out of that graph like the Loch Ness monster looking for prey. It was awesome.

Point is, each tiny little pixel on that thing represents a note, and just as a Bb sticks out in a song in E, boosting 420 Hz by 6 db is going to stick out in a song that relied on a poppy bass at 450 Hz. Kind of a weird/inaccurate analogy, but you know what I mean, those peaks should be there to let certain important frequencies shine and others provide a backdrop. It's color. It's why you use different mics/pres/processors on different parts, to get something about each instrument to stand out, and sometimes you leave a big hole where you can't get anything to fit, or pile stuff on where the song demands it.
 
It's all in the Mix

Dear Ex-Maniac


It sounds like your problem is with your mix, not Harbals ability to balance your sound. I use Harbal

2.0 amongst other mastering tools and it's basically an EQ (a very high quality one, mind you), it's not

magic, you have to know what you are doing with it, otherwise it could make a good recording sound

awful!!!!. The reason you can't get a balanced sound out of Harbal, is that you haven't got a balanced

mix!! I'm making a big guess here, but I've been mastering for about 7 years now and this sounds like a

classic case of things not fitting well into the mix.

Generally if when you tweak one frquency and then something else sounds bad and you keep chasing your

tail adjusting this and that but never getting everything sounding good at the same time STOP!.

Look at your mix, not your master. The mastering process is meant to enhance an already good mix. If

the mix is bad the master won't be much better.

Look at the frequency ranges which each instrument occupies in your mix and make sure they don't overlap

too much. This will help immensly in giving you a mix which is easy to master and gives you a balanced

sound. You should not have to do much balancing to a good mix, a little bit goes a long way!

I don't know what sort of instruments you've recorded, if you have used pre-recorded samples like many

people use or synths then your recording acoustics are not an issue.


But if you've recorded real instruments in a small studio, you will probably have some fairly resonant

peaks due to standing waves. You will need to tame these peaks before you can record. The best way to

tame them is to acoustically treat your studio with bass traps and lower mid range absorbers. The

second best way is to use a multiband compressor/EQ to flatten them out after recording, but on each

individual track. When I say second best, it's a very poor compromise to fix the acoustics in the mix,

but if that's your only option then it's better than nothing.

Irrespective of how you've recorded your instruments your listening environment is extremely important.

A small studio with boomy acoustics (which most small studios have) will make even a well balanced

recording sound like rubbish. The result of bad room acoustics are that you will always get recordings

that sound excessively loud in some frequencies due to their interaction with room acoustics. No amount

of fiddling around with Harbal or any other gadget will improve those acoustics.

Is your studio acoustically treated? If not then that's where I'd start. Then I would look at creating

a space for each instrument within the mix by using eq, panning, compression, reverb, delay so each

instrument occupies its unique sonic space both in space and in frequency.

Then when you listen to your mixdown it should blow you away with it's clarity. Only then can you be

sure you'll get a good master out of it.

Hope that helps, sorry no quick fixes here. Music is a very organic thing and can be very frustrating

at times.

Cheers
Theo C

http://www.theoc.co.nz
 
I usually don't use Monitors, but Headphones, when Recording, Mixing and Mastering.
In the posts above I talked about the Sound (Peaks and Valleys etc.) in the Mixing stage (as well as Mastering). The Peaks and Valleys do not result from the bad Mix, becuase I did not mix anything. I just record two tracks of classical/flamenco guitar and thats my music, nothing else. So there is not really that mixing process needed as when many instruments where recorded and I when I am talking about the bad Sound (peaks and valleys etc) I mean the Sound of one of the both tracks/guitars as well as both together. But even one by itself sounds not good, when recorded and it's probably caused by the bad room acoustics I have at my home studio. So the only possibility for me to solve the problem of the sound is and was EQ'ing. But as you mentioned the problem is, I EQ for hours but never get a good balanced sound because there are this room acoustics that I recorded together with the instruments sound and I can't blend them out.
So what can I do to EQ or compress each instrument ? Let's talk about a simple musical recording, mixing and mastering of a single solo instrument like a classical guitar. There are no other instruments on the recording, which have to be mixed, so what have I got to with this single recorded instrument if it sounds not right when recorded and I don't have the ability to improve the room acoustics ?
EQ ? How ?
 
You can't polish a turd. If you insist on recording turds, you will get turds in return.
 
wow dude.

this is a lot of mental masturbation.

just get the mixed balanced and call it a day.

you shouldn't even need eq to do this.

its a learning process.

next time, focus on what you want.

when you track, track each source to sound more balanced.

watch out for phase problems.

start from the beginning and the end result will be what you want.
 
You put your finger on the problem

Dear Ex-Maniac
You say you just recorded two guitars and nothing else. That's fine, but if you can't get 2 guitars to sound good together, look at the way you recorded them. How big is the room you recorded in?, how far from the nearest wall were you when you recorded?. What sort of mic/s did you use?, what position was the mic in when you recorded?, what sort of preamp?, did you use compression on the preamp? did you EQ the signal using the preamp?. These are fundamental things that you have to know before you can do a half decent recording of anything. Obviously if you had mastered them you wouldn't be asking why the sound you're getting doesn't sound good, you'd know!!!. The problem is no one else can answer these questions for you either. Asking how to get a balanced spectrum on your recordings is like asking "How big is a hole?", it's meaningless if you can't put it in context.

The previous posts had some good advice, I'd take it. Learn to record first, read books, magazines, internet articles, there is heaps of stuff out there!!! a lot of it free!!. Then when you learn all that and you still can't get a good sound, write back and ask for advice.

Cheers
Theo C

http://www.theoc.co.nz
 
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