How High Do You Pass?

[Sendy]

At college we were taught the dangers of excessive highpassing. Namely - a complete lack of a sense of realness and power. Sounds are generally formed from the bottom up, that's why a lowpass filter sounds more natural than a highpass filter. Overhighpassing can make things harsh and "blasty". Which is a pretty good description of how I hear a lot of badly mixed modern music.

That said, I'll highpass anything that contains DC offset, and anything that conflicts with the bass and kick. The trick is knowing when and how much, and that's mostly something you have to learn for yourself. Pads can be a real culprit for low end energy but on the other hand, if you want them to be warm - you need some of those lows there. It's all a balancing act.

One trick I like to use is to only highpass some things when the bass is playing. For example, in a section where the pad is playing without the bass, I'll remove the highpass, then activate it when the bass hits. It's almost like the bass is barging into the low end of the pad and knocking it out of the way

[Tricky-Loops]

@Tricky: you can Hipass Master until 40hz why under you can't ear and also over 16.000hz... I imagine You with 2 mega Subwoofer but I'm sure You deceive your ears..! As Rapper Do!!! ah ah ah

40 hz is too high IMO, and if you highpass at 16.000 Hz...well, you'll hear nothing anymore...

(And, no, I'm not a rapper but it's true that I love - intelligent !- hiphop except all this gangsta aggro stuff...)

[TIMT]

Pretty much never apart from the final master output which is usually like 20-30hz with equality.but i try to get the sounds and arrangement as close as possible so no highpassing is necessary.keep that phase rotation to a minimum which is still pretty audible at even 30hz hence why i try to avoid it but sometimes it isn´t possible






TIMT

[Turello]

@Tricky: 16.000Hz for loPass... Ulgly Gangsta!!! ahahahaha!!!

Serious: take care your ears!

[GFunk]

Re: the 2buss. If nessesary I will hp at @ 30 hz with 12db/oct slope. Other times even lower with a 6 db oct slope. Sometimes just a low shelf is all that's needed.

[Samplecraze]

Cleaning is the first and foremost step when mixing. Getting rid of redundant frequencies is not as easy as HP your mix at some magic frequency.

The best approach, and particularly with low end energies, is to use a spectrum analyser (as your ears are not going to hear much at sub-sonic levels), and filter the highest energy values that you cannot hear. We do this for two reasons: to prevent compressor bei9ng triggered by high energy values, and to create space for other frequencies.

[Mister Natural]

on the master, I use the "brick-walls" in Ozone5 set at 38cycles and 16.5k

sounds fantastic

[sharke]

It totally depends on the instrument, and don't forget that the slope is a factor as well. You also have to remember that a filter doesn't totally remove everything below the cutoff, it just attenuates it to the degree specified by the slope. Don't get hung up on figures, just do what sounds right. I've high passed bass parts as high as 150-200Hz because there was just too much boomy low end in them. The sub-50Hz frequencies are still there, they are just attenuated to a more sensible level.

As for other instruments, if it's quite a busy mix with lots of potential clashing and masking, what I'll do is high pass until the part just starts to sound too thin, then I'll back off a bit. In some cases, it's perfectly alright to thin a part out to the point where it sounds like crap when soloed. I've had rhodes parts high passed up to 500Hz before, because they were muddying things up too much. Listen to Patrice Rushen's "Forget Me Nots" - that rhodes has had a lot removed to make it sit so unobtrusively in the mix. If it was a bigger part of the arrangement they would have probably gone a lot easier on the filter.

And then there's high passing for reverb. I'll cut as high as 500-600Hz on a reverb send, and maybe around low pass around 10K, for a much cleaner sound which doesn't muddy the mix.

[murnau]

Cleaning is the first and foremost step when mixing. Getting rid of redundant frequencies is not as easy as HP your mix at some magic frequency.

The best approach, and particularly with low end energies, is to use a spectrum analyser (as your ears are not going to hear much at sub-sonic levels), and filter the highest energy values that you cannot hear. We do this for two reasons: to prevent compressor bei9ng triggered by high energy values, and to create space for other frequencies.

that.

[dune_rave]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kc-hWGXR7BQ

[Hermetech Mastering]

In mastering it completely depends on the track. Sometimes no high passing, sometimes 12, 18, 24, 30, 36 etc. As long as you are doing more good than harm to the sound, just go with what sounds the best.