When EQing only 3- 4 db??

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RobbieD

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Hey just wanted to know when eqing, should i never add or decrease more that 4 db, if so does this apply to any kind of instrument including vocals, also i heard somewhere that you should never add 3k to 5k to any instrument because it belongs to the vocals.. is this true? thanks
 
"It depends" --

You do what your ears and the mix are telling you to do.
 
There are no absolute rules other than "do what sounds right". By all means, keep any EQ as subtle as possible--but use what's necessary.

That said, the human voice does tend to sit between about 125Hz and around 6kHz, with most of the important information (i.e. the intelligibility) in the 1-3kHz range. For that reason, I tend to be very careful about boosting any instruments in the vocal range, particularly 1-3kHz. However, how well a vocal "sits" is as much or more to do with the relative levels as it is with EQ.
 
Basically what everyone else is saying;
Listen to the mix, if it sounds like you need to boost a bit, do it. Typically, you want it to be subtle. If you ARE adding that much boost to something, maybe you should go back and move the mix around and re-record it.
The things you've heard aren't wrong, just remember that when you hear "rules" like that in mixing, they're more so guidelines than actual rules.
 
How many eqs offer only 4dB of cut or boost?
 
Stuff to add, in no particular order.
Perhaps from the 'doing least harm mode, try clean-up and reducing first where there's too much- on all the tracks pretty much before going to boost/enhance mode.
Spending a lot of time in micro mode, or doing aggressive moves (high gain sweeping is a prime example), go back to without that eq to give your ears a chance to resettle. Or check back to it after some time.

There's normal fine tuning, a few db here and there, but going after resonances and such, typically very narrow but easily very deep.
 
Here are the steps to proper EQing.

1. Listen to the sound you have
2. Imagine the tone you want
3. Take not of the difference between what you have an what you want
4. Set the EQ to make up for the difference between what you have and what you want.

That is all there is to it. How much difference there is between what you start with and what you want to end up with is how much EQ you will need to add/take away of which certain frequency.

As with just about anything else in audio, how much you have to do to something is completely dependent on how far away from the finished sound you are when you start out.
 
Well obviously you want to do whatever the song needs, but as a general rule I like to contain my EQ tweakings to about 3db. Not the maximum I will change something, but rather the amount I will adjust it by when toying around. So like I'll bump it up 3...still not enough then I'll bump it up 3 more. Too much, then I'll find a middle point :D


Oh....and what all those guys up there said ^^^^ :laughings:
 
:laughings:

and yeah...just EQ what ya need to do.
Sometimes a db will do the trick....other times, like when doing a low cut (high pass) it'll be around a 24db cut.

My EQ will usually be a cut before it's a boost but if a boost is needed then that's what it gets.
:)
 
Why the hell do these types of questions keep turning up?

You do what you do to make it sound good.

Alan.
 
One other thing regarding EQ that isn't always obvious....

...sometimes it's better to do a slight cut to a bunch of other tracks (using a bus or sub groups generally) rather than a boost to the single track you're listening to. Put another way, you need to think about how the whole mix sits together rather than try to get each track perfect in solo mode.

Oh, and "what everybody else said". Hmmm...what did everybody else say?
 
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