EQing- making things sound too 2d??

[-dubson-]

Does anyone know what i mean by this?

I'll have a nice pad or synth, eq it to make it fit into the mix better. Then it sort of looses its texture and sounds a bit tacky, especially with big chords and strings.

Am i just not very good at eqing (lol be honest)? Is there a certain way to deal with this at all??

[Echoi]

eq track parts to find the most resonant parts of a sound and then cut them right out

gain up full, Q up full, then have your synth/pad/kick/snare or whatever on solo and looped

slowly turn the frequency up to find the noisiest parts of a sound, then cut them

dont have your volume up loud while doing this either

you'll find these nasty frequencies are normaly from around 1000khz upwards

[-dubson-]

eq track parts to find the most resonant parts of a sound and then cut them right out

gain up full, Q up full, then have your synth/pad/kick/snare or whatever on solo and looped

slowly turn the frequency up to find the noisiest parts of a sound, then cut them

dont have your volume up loud while doing this either

you'll find these nasty frequencies are normaly from around 1000khz upwards

Thanks mate!

Not sure that really solves my problem though.. I mean that after i eq, which may involve taking those nasty resonant bits out, i often find that the sound looses some of its fullness. With synths maybe for instance, i'll have a big full string sample. I'll EQ then it sounds like some shitty midi keyboard strings, ends up with no texture.

Does that relate to resonance?

[gravity]

yeah dont EQ unless a sound actually needs it. i used to over EQ stuff for ages and you will lose a lot of the body of a sound if you do that. most sounds dont really need much in the way of EQ, maybe rolling off some bass or treble, and the odd notch if there is something really offensive in there. with notches dont take too much out, no more than a few db normally.

[Echoi]

eq track parts to find the most resonant parts of a sound and then cut them right out

gain up full, Q up full, then have your synth/pad/kick/snare or whatever on solo and looped

slowly turn the frequency up to find the noisiest parts of a sound, then cut them

dont have your volume up loud while doing this either

you'll find these nasty frequencies are normaly from around 1000khz upwards

Thanks mate!

Not sure that really solves my problem though.. I mean that after i eq, which may involve taking those nasty resonant bits out, i often find that the sound looses some of its fullness. With synths maybe for instance, i'll have a big full string sample. I'll EQ then it sounds like some shitty midi keyboard strings, ends up with no texture.

Does that relate to resonance?

it wont turn a shitty sound into a great one. but if done incorrectly, you can turn a good sound into a shitty one

you said you arent good at eq'ing so im giving you some tips.

generally, if you cut the right frequencies out, it helps alot

heres a pic to help show what i meant

[narcissus]

you might be EQ'ing too much, dubson. if you find yourself adding an EQ to every track and radically altering each one, you're probably overdoing it. for my synths, i find a rarely have to do a lot of EQ, if any at all. if i use any distortion, i usually cut a little in some places to make it sound more like the original sound.. but that's about as radical as it gets.

here's an experiment.. try doing a few tracks w/o ANY EQ. just use the faders to get things sitting together.. won't get you the most stellar mix maybe, but it might teach you a few things about blending sounds together.

[djake]

i generally just roll off the lows on most sounds that really dont need any lows, pads i usually just cut at 400Hz not a steep cut thou, and not always at 400Hz sometimes a bit lower depending on what the situation is.

[setspeed]

i'll have a big full string sample. I'll EQ then it sounds like some shitty midi keyboard strings, ends up with no texture.

Does that relate to resonance?

it relates to philosophy, i reckon!

why are you EQing it? (serious question) - what do you want to achieve? what is the end result you're going for?

[macc]

There's no such thing as 'bad frequencies', only wrong proportions. And they occur all over, not just above 1kHz. Correct the amount, there's no need to remove things completely.

Making massive sharp cuts/boosts, and/or doing too much eq generally, will cause havoc in the time domain and quite quickly rob your sound of depth. Use less eq, make better choices.

[bandshell]

Sounds like you're cutting the lows out too much.

[Echoi]

There's no such thing as 'bad frequencies', only wrong proportions. And they occur all over, not just above 1kHz. Correct the amount, there's no need to remove things completely.

Making massive sharp cuts/boosts, and/or doing too much eq generally, will cause havoc in the time domain and quite quickly rob your sound of depth. Use less eq, make better choices.

things tends to stick with you when you are just starting out. what i explained was one of the very first things i was taught.

always good to read what you have to say macc. ok, so no such thing as bad frequencies. but that method i explained, is that a bad thing to do?

[komanderkin]

Making massive sharp cuts/boosts, and/or doing too much eq generally, will cause havoc in the time domain and quite quickly rob your sound of depth. Use less eq, make better choices.

is that due to phase problems? i never really understood how that works. if i eq a sound quite a bit, do i mess it's phase up? ahd how/why does that happen?

this is my face when someone mentions phase.

[boko91]

I know exactly what the OP means. I used to get a track going and sounding good then I would go to the processing stage and EQ most things taking out all the low end coz i was so paranoid about muddiness. Only having my sub and kick under 200hz. Left my tracks sounding Digitally harsh and very 2D.

But after reading great advice on this very forum, I now just dip a little out between 100 and 200 to combat mud if needed and I split my pads and synths into 3 preSend Buses to have more control over the Freqs concerned. Keeps things sounding full and Phat!!

Thanks Macc and Depone

[narcissus]

Making massive sharp cuts/boosts, and/or doing too much eq generally, will cause havoc in the time domain and quite quickly rob your sound of depth. Use less eq, make better choices.

is that due to phase problems? i never really understood how that works. if i eq a sound quite a bit, do i mess it's phase up? ahd how/why does that happen?

this is my face when someone mentions phase.

no, "phase" describes an aspect of sound waves that you're not dealing with when it comes to EQ.

[macc]

Discounting linear phase eqs (which have their own rules/problems);

Phase shift is not inherently bad. Eq works by changing phase at/around the selected frequency. The lovely pretty GUIs on your plugin eq shows you what you're doing to the frequency response, it doesn't show you what is happening behind the scenes with the phase response. The two are tied together intimately and there's no getting around it. Phase essentially = time. Imagine a sine wave on your display being shifted left and right - that's phase shift. It's in effect moving things in time. Moving things in that way results in either an increase or decrease of gain, centred around the specified frequency, depending which way you move them and by how much.

Doing a very sharp boost or cut concentrates the same degree of phase shift in a narrower range - so the amount that a frequency is shifted relative to its neighbour is greater than it is for a wider filter. See the diagram below;

(from here)

These are for the same gain, greater gain change = larger phase change.

Look how the wider filter imposes the phase shift over a wider range, but the difference in shift between a given point and an adjacent point is less than in the narrower filter, particularly in the area around the centre frequency. So, to put it another way, things that were together in time are now a long way apart in time. With the wider filter, they all move, but by similar amounts.

The practical implication/result of this is that wider filters sound more natural/musical, and tighter filters ring more. Now start doing 6 bands of very tight eq and see what happens to the coherency of your sound. It will start to sound 'hollow', or two-dimensional. There's about a billion words you can use, but you know what I mean... it's why this thread started

This isn't to say that tight filters are evil - you just need to use them correctly. Sometimes they are just what you need, but remember that they have an effect quite some way from where you need them to. So better not to just wang things down 18dB - you can imagine the effect that will have on time coherency, which is a major contributor to depth.

[macc]

no, "phase" describes an aspect of sound waves that you're not dealing with when it comes to EQ.

In the nicest possible way, you have absolutely no idea what you're talking about.

[komanderkin]

well, i know that... to an extent. maybe.

i mean, afaik, phase ( ) is determined by the point in time in whic a waveform started oscillating. rougly speaking. anyway, that's clearly the time domain, so eqing, which is frequency-domain related, shouldn't have much to do with it.
but on the other hand, macc here for example said that abusing eq will also abuse your time domain. and i've also read about linear-phase ( ) eqs here and there. so if they are liner-phase ( ) eqs, what happens if i don't use a linear-phase () eq? and how does that mess up my stuff?

el phase -><- moi

EDIT // above was meant as a reply to this:

no, "phase" describes an aspect of sound waves that you're not dealing with when it comes to EQ.

[dankface]

4d is where its at get yo self a surround sound system

[komanderkin]

Look how the wider filter imposes the phase shift over a wider range, but the difference in shift between a given point and an adjacent point is less than in the narrower filter, particularly in the area around the centre frequency. So, to put it another way, things that were together in time are now a long way apart in time. With the wider filter, they all move, but by similar amounts.

cheers! your posts do wonders to other peoples mixes.

[narcissus]

no, "phase" describes an aspect of sound waves that you're not dealing with when it comes to EQ.

In the nicest possible way, you have absolutely no idea what you're talking about.

hmm, now that i think about it, you're right. thanks for the lesson. (doesn't help me, tho really ineresting nonetheless) but i think the dude was worried about having elements of his mix out of phase with each other, as is often mentioned as a no-no in mixing articles (because of mono mixdowns). that's what i thought I was responding to. obviously i understand nothing and shouldn't talk.