NUGEN - Audio Monofilter What settings for MASTER? why is there HPF 20 Hz?

[Caine123]

hey guys,

im pretty unsure now, while learning more about mastering and having changed my master bus i analyze each plugin more specifically and checked this.

1st, this is my setting (mostly) on mastering would you change something?



i want to make sure with the plugin the bass(es) sit tight!

2. i wonder why this plugin cannot go lower that 20 HPF?

3. i see that the spectrumanalyzer from SirAudioTools and also SPAN (no pic) go only till 20 hz?


4. why and why does PRO-Q3 go until even 10 hz?

thx

[plexuss]

Because at those low frequencies it doesn't matter and you typically want to cut off those deep sub frequencies anyway. I can't think of an application where you'd want energy under say about 30Hz.

Also, from the manual (RTFM) it says:

HPF cut-off frequency. This control determines the cut-off frequency of the High
Pass Filter. Drag left and right to increase or lower the value. Dragging all the way
to the left will turn off the filter.

[legendCNCD]

Do you need the hpf at all?

[Caine123]

Because at those low frequencies it doesn't matter and you typically want to cut off those deep sub frequencies anyway. I can't think of an application where you'd want energy under say about 30Hz.

Also, from the manual (RTFM) it says:

HPF cut-off frequency. This control determines the cut-off frequency of the High
Pass Filter. Drag left and right to increase or lower the value. Dragging all the way
to the left will turn off the filter.

thanks a lot, the strange thing is when you pull it all the way to the left it doesnt say/show you HPF is off

[plexuss]

thanks a lot, the strange thing is when you pull it all the way to the left it doesnt say/show you HPF is off

I know. It's either an over-sight or they set the cutoff at 20 and consider it off. Take a look at it with plugin doctor etc to see what its really doing.

[Caine123]

thanks a lot, the strange thing is when you pull it all the way to the left it doesnt say/show you HPF is off

I know. It's either an over-sight or they set the cutoff at 20 and consider it off. Take a look at it with plugin doctor etc to see what its really doing.

thx a lot, never used plugin doctor, will check later today!

[plexuss]

I'm looking at Monofilter4 AU in Plugin Doctor. Indeed when HPF is 20, the response is flat. Plugin Doctor has a graph range of 2Hz to 30KHz and its showing flat response at 20. However, the HPF slider doesn't appear to be continuous and is actually graduated, based on what plugin doctor is showing. Here are the HPF settings and the resulting cut at the frequency selected:

setting : measured
20 : flat / off
21 : -0.7 dB @ 21 Hz
24 : -2.4 db @ 24 Hz
36 : -3.4 dB @ 36 Hz
47 : -4.2 dB @ 47 Hz
...
93 : -6.6 dB @ 93 Hz
105 : -5.5 dB @105 Hz
etc

I dont see anything resembling a mathematical curve and I wonder if this was tuned by ear. Or they are using an algorythm that isnt showing itself cleary with the small number of samples I took.

Thing is, it seems better to use HPF by ear than rely on the setting value. This might not work for some people.

[mystran]

4. why and why does PRO-Q3 go until even 10 hz?

I would imagine this is more of a question of letting you to drag the bands down a bit below 20Hz than it is about the spectrum analyser results at 10Hz being useful. With minimum-phase filters in particular the phase-shift can be somewhat significant an octave up, so if you're trying to do pure cleanup it might make sense to put the HPF at 10Hz even if your lowest bass is at 40Hz or so.

FFT resolution is rather terrible at 20Hz already even if you use a long window and low-frequency rumble usually shows up in the ~20Hz bin (since stuff bleeds into adjacent bins anyway), so extending the graph further down is not terribly useful for spectrum analysis. I guess something showing the "true DC" bin would be useful, but you can't do this with a log-frequency plot (which can't ever reach zero; that's just how logarithms work), so you'd need to show it separately.

Now.. Monofilter apparently is trying to manage the stereo field of the bass. Since there really should not be anything below 20Hz anyway, there's no point in managing the stereo field of such signals and I'd guess they probably figured if you want to turn filter all the way down, it'd make sense to disable it completely and avoid pointless phase-shift... or if it's running in linear-phase mode, then it could be that they'd have to increase the latency to allow the cutoff to go lower (every time you go an octave down with linear-phase filters, you need twice as long filter with twice as much latency to get the same response at the new frequency) and figured it's just not useful in practice.

[Caine123]

thx a lot guys, i left it at 20hz!

would you change something in this range still?

stereo to mono is from right point 125hz to mono 70hz



i think this should be pretty stable for a coherent low end? (of course mixing should be fine of course).

[mystran]

THX standard apparently says subwoofer cutoff is at 80Hz, some setups might have it a bit higher... so what you're proposing seems like a good starting point even though I'd personally also consider the actual mix and adjust as needed.

One thing to note is that even if you want "wide bass" it's usually fine to have frequencies below 100Hz or so approach mono, as long as said "wide bass" is wide at higher frequencies... because ears are weird and not terribly sensitive to direction at low frequencies if there are stronger cues at higher frequencies.

[Caine123]

THX standard apparently says subwoofer cutoff is at 80Hz, some setups might have it a bit higher... so what you're proposing seems like a good starting point even though I'd personally also consider the actual mix and adjust as needed.

One thing to note is that even if you want "wide bass" it's usually fine to have frequencies below 100Hz or so approach mono, as long as said "wide bass" is wide at higher frequencies... because ears are weird and not terribly sensitive to direction at low frequencies if there are stronger cues at higher frequencies.

thanks a lot, im still wondering, cause yes i mostly mono down everything in the low end, cause i always thought it might also give MUDDY sound if not in mono, seems it is 2 different topics?

i analysed a LOT of tracks, commercial ones and most look like this or nearly



so there is clearly no mono sum up here if in mixing or mastering.

i tested to set it to more stereo on my side and mono-ise and i dont feel something different, more that the impact is more centered.

i dunno club soundsystems/pa soundsystems but can they reproduce stereo bass at all? not that i mono down everything below 50-80hz and later regret it.

[mystran]

THX standard apparently says subwoofer cutoff is at 80Hz, some setups might have it a bit higher... so what you're proposing seems like a good starting point even though I'd personally also consider the actual mix and adjust as needed.

One thing to note is that even if you want "wide bass" it's usually fine to have frequencies below 100Hz or so approach mono, as long as said "wide bass" is wide at higher frequencies... because ears are weird and not terribly sensitive to direction at low frequencies if there are stronger cues at higher frequencies.

thanks a lot, im still wondering, cause yes i mostly mono down everything in the low end, cause i always thought it might also give MUDDY sound if not in mono, seems it is 2 different topics?

Nah, it's roughly the same thing and the idea with subwoofers is precisely that there's not much point having stereo at very low frequencies.

Some science: the wavelength of sound at 100Hz is about 3.5 meters, at 50Hz it's about 7 meters. At these scales the (30cm or so) size of the head is so insignificant that it has little effect on the advancing wavefront. Because the sound is essentially passing through the head and because the phase-shift from the time-delay is tiny, there really isn't much of anything that the ears can even theoretically use as a localization cue.

If we have full range stereo and wide signal at low frequencies, then essentially what you get is just a situation where the sound varies based on the listening position relative to the speakers. Usually that's not terribly useful and you also no longer get to take advantage of the extra +3dB headroom that centered sounds get.

For reverb ambiance in large spaces some low-frequency (not really sub-bass, but like slightly higher up) stereo might be useful.. and it's not like you necessarily need to completely mono the track.. so if you have a mix where the bass is well centered to begin with, perhaps disregarding a bit of reverb, then filtering out the stereo content might simply be unnecessary.

Finally, a caveat applies to all analyzers: none of them are perfect. In the picture you posted we see that the low bass is fairly narrow. That's what you want. Completely eliminating all stereo (unless you mono the whole thing) is both unnecessary and probably impossible.

[dionenoid]

i dunno club soundsystems/pa soundsystems but can they reproduce stereo bass at all? not that i mono down everything below 50-80hz and later regret it.

Subs are always mono.

The only thing is that pretty much every PA system has different crossovers, meaning that the point below where things become mono are different. That's why there is no rule for monoizing bass, but in my experience you can easily keep everything below 100hz mono.

Some clubs and and PA's are even completely mono. Or have pretty high crossovers. That's why it always pays to check your mix in mono.

[Caine123]

ok guys, again thanks for all your posts, i just made some final tests and also recorded my quick beat SESSION where i also used monofilter on different elements only to seperate mono/sides and deactivated the master monofilter.

i couldnt turn my volume much up now at nearly night here and i got 2 Adam monitors + subwoofer.

1. test and i think i kinda proved that commercial tracks are not mixed and mastered like we learn from various posts/videos and blogs? or that theroie is not like the practical part? again im no pro but i just couldnt find the proof yet.

https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/ve1ruxit ... p8ppk&dl=0

Forum Beat Test
i show the oad, kick and bass which have low frequencies and i eq'ed them. you see in Metric that my low end is quite big and when i add monofilter on the master it gets very narrowed down. i think my beatexample isnt very big in difference with and without monofilter kinda small difference but i couldnt test it on louder volume now.
then i switched of the monofilter on master and used 3 instances on the 3 elements only a bit different set to mono the low end. sure the result is nearly the same then....

2. now i took the commercial track from Prodigy and checked the CD Rip WAV File and you see the lowend is pretty wide too, and still it doesnt sound muddy and very nice mixed!
then i just slapped Monofilter on it and you see it gets narrowed down and i think the juice in the lowend kinda is a bit thinned down too but not so big but still. and (not in the video) i checked the mono part in solo mode and just heard bass of course, doesnt it proof there is no mono mix at all too?

https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/s94cslks ... fcgjo&dl=0

so in the end, doesnt my tests and showcases show that this whole low end has to be in mono not the truth is in reality?

im not wanting to sound arrogant, again im learning and trying to understand what is told in various sources. but maybe all this everything below 80hz +/- is all blabla and not reality done and has a negative impact? (of course if mixed before properly).

again i never expected analysing over 50 commercial tracks from VARIOUS genres that NONE and again NONE has a thin/narrow low end, not at all .

[dionenoid]

im not wanting to sound arrogant, again im learning and trying to understand what is told in various sources. but maybe all this everything below 80hz +/- is all blabla and not reality done and has a negative impact? (of course if mixed before properly).

again i never expected analysing over 50 commercial tracks from VARIOUS genres that NONE and again NONE has a thin/narrow low end, not at all .

Just do what most producers do : Use an eq to filter out the sides below around 80 - 100 hz. Then your tracks will look exactly like in that Prodigy example.

Most ppl use Pro-Q3, or comparable. I'm using Equilibrium for this task, and the stereo image in Metric AB looks exactly like other commercial releases, and exactly like tracks by artists that i know to use Pro-Q3 for this task.