Question about EQ in the mastering phase

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metalhead28

metalhead28

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I am in no way attempting to call what I do mastering. However, most of the bands I record are small timers and therefore the CD that they get from me will be the finished product. I always recommend professional mastering to them but it's just not something they consider important. Therefore I do try to get the mix sounding good enough and loud enough to impress people when they hear that I recorded it.

Anyway, on to my question.

On alot of the music that I use as a reference point when I'm mixing, I notice a similar trend where all the high end is basically lopped off above 15k or so. (these are all modern heavy metal mixes I'm referring to) I must admit that I am arriving at this almost totally visually, as the difference is not so audible to me when comparing it to my mixes which regularly contain plenty of information above that point.

I often low pass most of the tracks that don't need that top end information, but I never do for things like drum overheads.
However, if I wanted to reproduce this total absence of extreme top end, I'd have to cut those frequencies probably multiple times and I don't really want to do that to my mix.

Is this sort of thing something that is regularly done at the mastering phase? (with much better equipment :D ) And does doing this buy you any more dynamic range? I wouldn't think that this high end junk would eat up your range like excessive sub bass would but I could be wrong. (Sorry if I am using improper terminology ;) hopefully you all know what I'm talking about)

I'm basically curious about this because I'd like to be able to maximize my loudness without having to brickwall limit everything too much.
Should I even be worried about that top end?

Here is a screenshot showing a frequency spectrum that is common to my reference music. And I know that music is not visual, but I'm thinking about this much like I think about the extreme low bass. Even though I can't really hear it, I cut it out just to keep it out of the way.

Thanks for reading all of this. ;)
 

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Is your reference music mp3s? That's very common with mp3s, I believe they purposely shed high frequencies so they can get away with lower resolution.

It's atypical for any other music, and I would never purposely do it. There isn't much amplitude up there, but there is some, and using a brickwall filter to get rid of it would do unkind things to audio above 12kHz, which is quite audible.

As a matter of practice I would not low pass tracks. Guitars and bass don't really need it, they have little to no info up there, so it's just an unnecessary step.

Top end does very little to limit loudness, because the amplitude is small. Keeping the low end tight helps much more, since tubby bass has lots of amplitude but little apparent volume.
 
mshilarious said:
Is your reference music mp3s? That's very common with mp3s, I believe they purposely shed high frequencies so they can get away with lower resolution.
Click to expand...

Actually it is a "lossless" .wma file ripped from CD in Windows Media Player.


mshilarious said:
Top end does very little to limit loudness, because the amplitude is small. Keeping the low end tight helps much more, since tubby bass has lots of amplitude but little apparent volume.
Click to expand...

Basically my thoughts, I just wanted to hear some other opinions.

Thanks.
 
Actually it is a "lossless" .wma file ripped from CD in Windows Media Player.
Click to expand...

Is there any reason why you didn't go for ripping to WAV?

Just wondering...
 
Don't worry about it if you can't hear it. Worry about it if you can.

No, it's not going to help your dynamic range.

While in metal people are not as worried about "air" as in other genres, often times automatically lowpassing the high stuff out, even when you can't see it on a RTA, sucks the air out of the track or the mix and closes the mix in rather than giving it more room.

OTOH, automaticallly leaving it in there is going to be wrong if you have a lot of HF buildup in you mix that gives it an irritating edge. NOTE: Even if you had a lot of HF stuff going on, it won't necessarily show on an RTA. There are a few reasons for this, but it's mainly physics (the higher the frequency, the lower the necessary amplitude).

Stick to your ears and do what sounds good regarding the HF stuff; keep it if it sounds right, dump it if it doesn't. There is no servicable advantage to RMS or dynamic range one way or another that isn't directly linked to whether it sounds good or not. If you squash the life out of your recording and it sounds too harsh on the high end, then you know either to back off on the squashing or supress some of the HF. If backing off on the squashing is not an option because RMS is more important than sound quality, then supress the HF. If even after squashing it to within an inch of it's life it still sounds dull and lifeless, then maybe you need to keep the HF in.

But please don't sacrifice sound quality just for an extra dB of RMS. No one will care about a stinkin' decibel if the music is good. And if the music isn't good, then it really doesn't matter, does it?

G.
 
Synkrotron said:
Is there any reason why you didn't go for ripping to WAV?

Just wondering...
Click to expand...

WMP is the only CD ripping software on my studio computer, and it doesn't offer that option. At least not the version that I have.
 
metalhead28 said:
WMP is the only CD ripping software on my studio computer, and it doesn't offer that option. At least not the version that I have.
Click to expand...

Just to check, feed your soundcard out back into your soundcard, and record as a wav.

Edit: and play the CD using CD player.
 
SouthSIDE Glen said:
Don't worry about it if you can't hear it. Worry about it if you can.

No, it's not going to help your dynamic range.

While in metal people are not as worried about "air" as in other genres, often times automatically lowpassing the high stuff out, even when you can't see it on a RTA, sucks the air out of the track or the mix and closes the mix in rather than giving it more room.

OTOH, automaticallly leaving it in there is going to be wrong if you have a ot of HF buildup in you mix that gives it an irritating edge. NOTE: Even if you had a lot of HF stuff going on, it won't necessarily show on an RTA. There are a few reasons for this, but it's mainly physics.

Stick to your ears and do what sounds good regarding the HF stuff; keep it if it sounds right, dump it if it doesn't. There is no servicable advantage to RMS or dynamic range one way or another that isn't directly linked to whether it sounds good or not. If you squash the life out of your recording and it sounds too harsh on the high end, then you know either to back off on the squashing or supress some of the HF. If backing off on the squashing is not an option because RMS is more important than sound quality, then supress the HF. If even after squashing it to within an inch of it's life it still sounds dull and lifeless, then maybe you need to keep the HF in.

But please don't sacrifice sound quality just for an extra dB of RMS. No one will care about a stinkin' decibel if the music is good. And if the music isn't good, then it really doesn't matter, does it?

G.
Click to expand...

More of what I wanted to hear.

Thanks very much, SouthSIDE glen.
 
I think Musicmatch rips to WAV

would be intersting to compare the two files in a frequency analyser
 
mshilarious said:
Just to check, feed your soundcard out back into your soundcard, and record as a wav.

Edit: and play the CD using CD player.
Click to expand...

I believe I will try that. Now I am wanting to know if this is inherent to Windows Media Player.

Thanks
 
metalhead28 said:
I believe I will try that. Now I am wanting to know if this is inherent to Windows Media Player.

Thanks
Click to expand...

I checked Microsoft's site, but they don't fess up :mad:
 
mshilarious said:
I checked Microsoft's site, but they don't fess up :mad:
Click to expand...

I checked WMP help

will only rip to either WMA or MP3


Musicmatch is free...
 
I've noticed exactly the same thing with lot of metal recordings recently. Although the first time I noticed it was with my own stuff. Hadn't really paid much attention to the analyser previously when listening to music.

I spent hours and hours trying to figure out what was 'wrong' with my mixes, and why it didn't look more balanced They didn't sound like there was much wrong with them. I experimented by trying to mix visually. Obviously a disaster.

It was after a while of sitting listening to CD's in winamp and staring stoned at the analyzer, i realised that a lot of metal was the same. And at the same time a lot of metal wasn't. So I thought fuck it, who cares. It only mattered to me when I was looking at the meters. I don't think I've ever made a mix that looked balanced on a spec analyzer. Always registering tonnes of low, and not much high.

I don't think its inherent to media player. I never use media player.

I'm pretty sure I opened a cd that was like that in wavelab somehow, and looked at the meters in that and it was still the same. And this was a CD. Not an mp3 or wma etc.

I started a thread ages ago about it cos I just didn't get it....

I think Farview said

"Of course there are more lows than highs, lows have more energy. The spectrum analizer is measuring energy. If you listened to an 8k sine wave at 80dbspl, your head would explode. (or you wish it would) not so with an 80Hz sine wave at the same volume."
 
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metalhead,
how did you get a screenshot of your program? Did you have to get a special program just to do that? just curious.
 
coolsoundman said:
metalhead,
how did you get a screenshot of your program? Did you have to get a special program just to do that? just curious.
Click to expand...

you should have a "Print Screen" key on your PC keyboard. With your application window open press "Print Screen". Next, open Paint and press control + "V" and that will paste your image into the paint application. You can now save that and either upload it to your own webspace or attach it to a post here.


If you hold down the Alt key at the same time as the Print Screen then that action places a view of only the currently active window rather than the whole screen...
 
cool, I'll give that a try and then i'll post the picture in my previous post to show what I was talking about. thanks for the tip.
 
Well certainly high frequencies drop off a lot, nobody is trying to get a flatline frequency response or even a pink noise line. But a drop off a cliff at 15kHz indicates that something is going on. At a minimum, if you have cymbals in a song, there will be content over 15kHz, unless it is processed out.
 
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