Members Ambugaton Posted July 10, 2014 Members Share Posted July 10, 2014 Hey all, I have a quick EQ question. Our band typically only has kick drum, bass, vocals, and the occasional acoustic guitar running through our board. Now, I looked up the frequency range of each signal and nothing really surpasses 4k Hz. Would it be ok to cut everything above say... 5k Hz? I mean... would those frequencies even be used or heard? Thanks in advance. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members joedobronski Posted July 10, 2014 Members Share Posted July 10, 2014 http://www.audio-issues.com/music-mixing/all-the-eq-information-youll-ever-need/ there is all kinds of cool stuff above 5k - try it you should see right away you are missing something Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members Ambugaton Posted July 10, 2014 Author Members Share Posted July 10, 2014 I see... the chart I was using as a reference only showed the "fundamental frequencies" Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members dbMontana Posted July 10, 2014 Members Share Posted July 10, 2014 Related: If you have an iPhone/Pod/Pad take a look at the ear training app "Hear EQ" -- $0.99 I believe. It allows you to choose any song on your device and then in "Learn mode" allows you to boost or cut various frequency bands to hear what information is contained in that range and then in "Test mode" applies the same boosts/cuts and requires you to guess which band it is modifying. Suffice it to say there's important information above 4K. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members WRGKMC Posted July 10, 2014 Members Share Posted July 10, 2014 A typical mix may wind up like this Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members WRGKMC Posted July 10, 2014 Members Share Posted July 10, 2014 A typical mix may wind up like this. Some of the peaks come from the instruments themselves. The rest can be done with an EQ.. The key here is a thing called masking.. If you have too much bass on a guitar it may mask the Kick and bass Guitar. Too much mids and highs on bass and it may mask the guitar. Think of your instruments as having their own zones of operation. Like colors in a rainbow. They may overlap a little but the instruments occupy their own turf in the overall frequency spectrum. The mare instruments in a mix the more you have to narrow them to have them stand alone and be heard. When you have two instruments fighting for the same frequencies, all you wind up with is clutter and loss of clarity (masking) You have to use your ears for this of course, but you can usually find the main peaks of an instrument fairly easily. You can drop all your EQ sliders and bring up one at a time and when you find the bands that boost that instrument the most, you'll have an idea of that instruments frequency response. The other way is to use a frequency spectrum meter. You can even use one of those Home Hi Fi EQ's that have the digital readout for the different bands. Just set the EQ flat all the way across and feed it a signal from the board, then play say your guitar and see what the meters read. You'll likely get a peak similar to what you have in this pic. You do this for each instrument solo then you'll know what frequencies each instrument dominates. Then you can use a little EQ on the board to refine the peaks and even them up a bit. If you have too much overlap, then you use your mixer channel EQ to create a little space between them.. Its going to vary depending on mics, instruments etc. It will even change when you change musical keys but at least this will give you some idea what you're working with. You have to view it in its entirety and fit things in between 20~20K hz. If you have vocals at say 6K, and that's where some cymbal seems to be loudest, use the EQ to create a notch/valley at 6K so you have space there for the vocals to fit. That cymbal may not sound as good solo with that notch, but as a mix of the entire band it may be exactly what's needed to let the words of the vocals be heard without a bunch of cymbal wash drowning them out. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members dboomer Posted July 10, 2014 Members Share Posted July 10, 2014 Proportionally those frequencies are very small, but that doesn't mean they are not important. The easy test is go ahead a cut them and see if you hear any difference. I suspect almost everyone would answer yes they hear a difference. As a big general statement there isn't much value in cutting out the highest frequencies anyway however cutting out all lows you don't need is almost always a benefit. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members Koopdaddy Posted July 10, 2014 Members Share Posted July 10, 2014 So if those frequencies aren't "there", why would you need to cut them? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members WRGKMC Posted July 10, 2014 Members Share Posted July 10, 2014 So if those frequencies aren't "there", why would you need to cut them? That's the point in a nut shell. You can cut unwanted noise in some cases but you'd do it selectively. Maybe by judging what is being heard on stage vs what you're hearing from the PA and use a balance between the two. What a mic hears directly in front of a speaker can be very different then what you hear 25' away from a cab. A mic signal can be much more full frequency and you may not want all those highs coming from the horns and lows coming from the bottoms. Notching the offending frequencies and leaving what's rest can work if you know how to target the right frequencies. You may not need all the upper harmonics of an instrument to have a mix sound good and often times the added space created by eliminating them can make the overall mix more transparent. Driven guitars especially can often benefit by rolling off the lows and ultra highs to get rid of some of the harshness especially with some types of solid state amps which can be too overwhelming. Finding the upper and lower limits of an instrument is one part. Then shaping what's between those two limits is the other. My rule of thumb is, if the changes can be made at the amp to balance things better first, it usually results in better results if you have to tweak things at the board. Knowing your boards limitations is the other part. If I have a bass player running direct and I have the bass turned practically off on the mixer I can pretty much guess he's got too much lows pumping on stage. If I can get him to roll some off on stage I can run my board settings where they should be and get a more effective mix. With miced instruments you also have the option of using different mics to provide different EQ responses. If I don't like the midrange response of a guitar using an SM57 I may try one of my other mics to tame what's going on. I prefer not to have to bother a band to change their tones if possible, especially if they have a good groove going. But if I'm taxing my system to get good results and I know things can sound allot better, will move to that option if I have no other options to work with. I've had many sound men do work for my own band and If a sound man asked me to do a tweak, I could usually accommodate them. If it made the band sound better why not. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members Art Flood Posted July 11, 2014 Members Share Posted July 11, 2014 Interesting discussion. There is a tension between what sounds good as band and what sounds good to the individual. Often when the guitar player gets 'his sound' it doesn't fit in the mix without some eq especially cutting the lows. Cheers Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members Ambugaton Posted July 11, 2014 Author Members Share Posted July 11, 2014 All very interesting indeed. I was mostly wanting to eliminate as much unwanted frequencies for our practice room. It is literally the least ideal setting for loud music (no carpet, fake wood paneling on all walls and odd shape) but I messed around with the eq and mic/speaker placement yesterday and had a huge improvement. I can't believe I never thought of using the PA as just a monitor system... I feel dumb for having had speaker stands in that room at all. Oh well, everyday you learn something new. I am also getting pretty familiar with pin pointing trouble frequencies. I think Logic includes some type of RTA, might try that out too. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members dboomer Posted July 11, 2014 Members Share Posted July 11, 2014 Odd shaped is the best shape for music. Hang a coat to two in the room and you'll acoustically filter out the extreme highs anyway Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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