Three quick questions about EQ units

[z.electric]

Hi all, maybe this belongs in the production forums? (aieaieaie)

A quick fire round of "help me outs" is possible. These questions relate to EQ and frequency filtering.

1. For completely cutting a feq range (say everything below 50Hz), would I be better to use a filter or an EQ? It seems to me that a high pass filter (from a dedicated filtering unit) is more effective at precise cuts, wheres an EQ allows you to make more subtle adjustments to ranges of frequencies. Is that fair?

2. Is boosting a small frequency range on an EQ the same thing as cutting all other frequencies above and below, and then pushing up the overall gain on the track? Or does a boost do something different to a "reverse-cut" followed by an overall gain increase.

3. I really only use Ableton's inbuilt EQ-8. It seems to be good enough, but I find I have to be quite aggressive with it to get noticeable results (it might be my monitoring environment though). Are there suggestions for cheap/free EQs that people recommend which I can use as comparison tools, just to see if its me, or the VST?

Thanks everyone.

[jancivil]

H It seems to me that a high pass filter (from a dedicated filtering unit) is more effective at precise cuts, wheres an EQ allows you to make more subtle adjustments to ranges of frequencies. Is that fair?

not so much. the 'Q' setting is the factor. if it's a high Q, the cut (or boost) can be more surgical.



all the Q settings are at 10 or maximum here.

[jancivil]

2. Is boosting a small frequency range on an EQ the same thing as cutting all other frequencies above and below, and then pushing up the overall gain on the track? Or does a boost do something different to a "reverse-cut" followed by an overall gain increase.

no, it shouldn't through itself do anything to any frequencies but the area you're boosting. all it does, in a transparent EQ, is boost gain.

[lingyai]

3. I really only use Ableton's inbuilt EQ-8. It seems to be good enough, but I find I have to be quite aggressive with it to get noticeable results (it might be my monitoring environment though). Are there suggestions for cheap/free EQs that people recommend which I can use as comparison tools, just to see if its me, or the VST?

Free:

http://sonimus.com/site/page/downloads/

http://www.voxengo.com/product/marvelgeq/

http://sirelliot.blog.com/2010/12/05/si ... equaliser/

The EQ which comes with this free bundle:

http://www.meldaproduction.com/freevstplugins/

The first two on this page:

http://varietyofsound.wordpress.com/vst-effects/

Cheap:

$29: http://www.ddmf.eu/product.php?id=0

Also $29: http://www.ddmf.eu/product.php?id=2

The EQ which comes with the TB TrackEssentials bundle (25 Euros for all of them, very gnice stuff):

http://www.toneboosters.com/trackessentials/



Not absurdly cheap, but at £99 still a fantastic EQ for the money -- and fantastic, period:

http://dmgaudio.com/products_equality.php

I reckon others can suggest others

[Uncle E]

1. For completely cutting a feq range (say everything below 50Hz), would I be better to use a filter or an EQ?

Filter

It seems to me that a high pass filter (from a dedicated filtering unit) is more effective at precise cuts, wheres an EQ allows you to make more subtle adjustments to ranges of frequencies. Is that fair?

It's fair but not exactly accurate. Both can be precise but a filter, as you wrote above, completely cuts a frequency range by definition.

2. Is boosting a small frequency range on an EQ the same thing as cutting all other frequencies above and below, and then pushing up the overall gain on the track?

It does in theory, although the reality can be quite different, depending on the EQ.

3. I really only use Ableton's inbuilt EQ-8. It seems to be good enough, but I find I have to be quite aggressive with it to get noticeable results (it might be my monitoring environment though). Are there suggestions for cheap/free EQs that people recommend which I can use as comparison tools, just to see if its me, or the VST?

Get the 7 day demo of the Waves H-EQ. It can be transparent when using the Digital settings or have character when using the various Analog settings, allowing you to hear the differences you're looking for all in one plug-in.

[jancivil]

1. For completely cutting (say everything below 50Hz), would I be better to use a filter or an EQ?

'everything below x' (or above) is known as shelving and generally you want a filter. see in my image the arrow, at the left, the steepness is from -12 to -48. 'everything' wouldn't be very precise in that case; if the cutoff is absolute it would be true. it depends on the tool.

[Mister Natural]

3. I really only use Ableton's inbuilt EQ-8. It seems to be good enough, but I find I have to be quite aggressive with it to get noticeable results (it might be my monitoring environment though . . .

I've played around with a fair share of EQ VST efx & can tell you ; you need to spend more time with EQ8. It has amazing power to do just about anything you might like any "EQ box" to do.
Use EQ3 as the high-pass shelf you mention & then EQ8 to tune

. . . and rock your brains out

:=)

[xh3rv]

1. For completely cutting a feq range (say everything below 50Hz), would I be better to use a filter or an EQ? It seems to me that a high pass filter (from a dedicated filtering unit) is more effective at precise cuts, wheres an EQ allows you to make more subtle adjustments to ranges of frequencies. Is that fair?

Often a dedicated filter unit or plug would, by design, have some behavior that's perhaps more interesting but also less clean than than what one would expect in an EQ. At least that's the assumption I would start with unless there's a clue otherwise. [e] Talking about filters versus highpass or lowpass filters found in EQs.

2. Is boosting a small frequency range on an EQ the same thing as cutting all other frequencies above and below, and then pushing up the overall gain on the track? Or does a boost do something different to a "reverse-cut" followed by an overall gain increase.

You would use different shapes for boosting and cutting around - peaking versus shelving.

One problem with a lot of EQ advice is it talks about specific frequencies when really the shapes are meant to operate on a *range* of frequencies. For example, boosting a bass sound at 2k - it's possible to get the same amount of boost here with a peaking band at 2k, a high-Q lowpass at 2.25k, a high shelf or wider peaking band at 3k, or lots of variations and combinations thereof. These will of course all sound quite different! It depends on the input, but for a lot sounds I like the peaking is actually the best least often!

You will find a lot of opinions on cutting versus boosting and a lot of it is contradictory. It's really about habits though, IMHO, as it's there's only so much an EQ can do and it's just as abusable as any other effect. Ultimately if there's anything about it that doesn't quite sound right, it doesn't sound right - that's dead easy to say but harder to accept after getting trapped in tweaking a couple decibles for half an hour ...

3. I really only use Ableton's inbuilt EQ-8. It seems to be good enough, but I find I have to be quite aggressive with it to get noticeable results (it might be my monitoring environment though).

EQ8 is solid. It isn't anything special, but for an all-around EQ that's perfectly acceptable. There's a high quality mode which I would guess is oversampling.

However I would *not* tend to use EQ8 for especially noticeable results, more for what isn't noticeable afterwards. There's sort of a continuum between EQs and filters, noticeable effects are much more towards the filtering direction and EQ8 is about as far as it gets in the opposite direction.

[updog]

not to hijack the thread, but i have a related question: i did this master the other day and afterwards i found that i wanted to cut some of the low freqs. i didn't bother opening up the master project again and just opened up the track, and made a cut to the lows. this made the master clip a little. considering i only cut frequencies, how is a raise in volume possible??

[Uncle E]

not to hijack the thread, but i have a related question: i did this master the other day and afterwards i found that i wanted to cut some of the low freqs. i didn't bother opening up the master project again and just opened up the track, and made a cut to the lows. this made the master clip a little. considering i only cut frequencies, how is a raise in volume possible??

Some EQ's create peaks around the frequency point when cutting.

[Amon1973]

not to hijack the thread, but i have a related question: i did this master the other day and afterwards i found that i wanted to cut some of the low freqs. i didn't bother opening up the master project again and just opened up the track, and made a cut to the lows. this made the master clip a little. considering i only cut frequencies, how is a raise in volume possible??

I suppose the master was limited. If you apply another processor after the limiter, it will clip. Same is if you import a limited / mastered track into your DAW and add a processor to it. No matter if you cut - it will clip.

This could be due to the phase shifting brought in by the EQ, as using an LP EQ will reduce the extent of the overshoots, but not fully sure about this. I actually never got in depth about this issue, as I consider that a bad practice - it would be wiser to re-open the master project.

[Amon1973]

This could be due to the phase shifting brought in by the EQ, as using an LP EQ will reduce the extent of the overshoots, but not fully sure about this.

Just checked this importing a mastered track in my DAW and applying EQuality to it, comparing Digital and LP modes: it appears to be untrue.