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4 band EQ tutorial


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Guys/Gals,

Where can a novice sound guy (from the stage) get online help? On my Allen/Heath mixwiz i have a 4 band semi parametric EQ. To be quite honest I wouldn't know if that's fit to eat. So far, our gigs have been praised for their great sound but I don't know how we're pulling it off. I've been doing some research but nothing makes sense. I'd like to take a good sounding FOH to and excellent sounding FOH and take advantage of this EQ. Right now I put on the phones and take each channel PFL, set the gain to peak at +6 and fool with the EQ knobs until it sounds ok. Any good youtube videos on the subject? If so, please forward link. Thanks as always.

 

Gizzy

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I'm sure some yahoo has created an Ask.com or YouTube flic on this, but it's really nothing more than what you just described....turn the knobs until it makes you smile. After you've turned the knobs for a while, you'll get to the point where you'll instinctively know which knobs to turn and how far to turn them for a given instrument with a given band in a given room.

 

As far as I'm concerned, flat is usually better than anything I do with the knobs. Seriously. If the rig is decent, and the room isn't awful, you rarely ever need to make any adjustments. I know it seems like a terrible waste of all those pretty and well-organized knobs, and goes against the "we can fix it!" mentality ingrained in all males of the species, but the sad truth is, flat sounds fine, most of the time.

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As far as I'm concerned, flat is usually better than anything I do with the knobs. Seriously. If the rig is decent, and the room isn't awful, you rarely ever need to make any adjustments. I know it seems like a terrible waste of all those pretty and well-organized knobs, and goes against the "we can fix it!" mentality ingrained in all males of the species, but the sad truth is, flat sounds fine, most of the time.

 

:thu:...with a decent system, flat is where it's at...:thu:

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I think most would say the flatter the better. If something sounds bad with a flat EQ, try to fix the source before messing with the EQ.

 

If you've got the source sounding as good as you can, one thing I've heard of doing if you're just getting started with your parametric sections is to turn the cut/boost knob all they way up (max boost), then sweep your frequency knob until the source sounds the absolute worst. You've just found the offending frequency for that EQ section. Now you can adjust the cut/boost knob back into the cut range so you're reducing the offending frequncy. You could do the reverse of that and cut all the way, sweep until it sounds the best, then adjust the cut/boost.

 

I'm not saying that's the best or most scientific way to do it, but if you're starting from ground zero, it's a start. But again, the flatter the better. If you have huge EQ adjustments, you can probably improve the source.

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In most cases, subtractive EQ is best. In the case of vocals (the most important thing in the PA), it is usually necessary to use a low-mid cut to compensate for the mic's proximity effect, and a high mid cut to compensate for the mic's presence peak.

 

The common method is to boost 6dB and sweep the frequency until you find the nasty spot, then cut.

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In most cases, subtractive EQ is best. In the case of vocals (the most important thing in the PA), it is usually necessary to use a low-mid cut to compensate for the mic's proximity effect, and a high mid cut to compensate for the mic's presence peak.


The common method is to boost 6dB and sweep the frequency until you find the nasty spot, then cut.

 

 

take that advice with a grain of salt.....

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I'd be happy to see a sound guy that can get the volume and mix right..one that knows how to EQ, bumps some volume for solos, can actually run some lights, do a little recording......that's about as easy to find as walking into the local bar and finding Pamela Anderson giving me the 'take me home' look....

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Channel strip EQ is for coloring/tayloring individual sounds, the main graphinc is for room tuning/system correction. Sweeping a vocal channel to find a freq isn't an issue but it should be corrected at the graph, besides the mid band eq can be quite wide and chop a lot out.

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