EQ'ing - Additive OR subtractive?

[rpc9943]

Hey

just wondering when mixing tracks down do you use a lot of additive or subtractive EQ, and why? Should you use it subtly or in grand quantity?

RonC

[Funkybot]

Try to cut frequencies as opposed to boosting them, this will cut down on noise and give you more headroom plus it just generally sounds better to cut lows than it does to boost highs. And use as little EQ as possible, this is because most EQs introduce phase distortion as they basically work by playing with the signals phase to make the cuts/boosts happen, and lots of EQ will just seem less natural. Now linear phase EQs delay everything and don't create the phase distortion (thus they sound very neutral) but I've heard that they screw with transients in a wierd way (which I've never heard myself, but who knows).

[useruseruser]

At first, if your final mix requires heavy EQing, so there is probably anything wrong with your instrumentation / internal mixing.

At second, for mastering you merely use the EQ to compensate and optimize for some other (following) mastering steps, like multiband compressors, saturators, exciters, stereo enhancers and so on.

Third, what to boost or to damp with EQing depends concretely on the audio material of the mix and your taste. You should apply exactly the amount, the song even "needs".

.

[mystahr]

I have learned to only cut so as to spread the energy of the various tracks over the entire mix. Often cutting just a tiny bit will suddenly creat more room and energy rather then less. It's a matter of training your ears and just go at it as much as you can. Trial and error is about the only way to get a little bit control over this mystical part of music making.

[useruseruser]

Excessive EQing should be merely applied to single tracks /instrumentation of the track. Even while mixing.

Don't try to correct anything wrong sounding, if all the tracks are already mixed togeter (regardless, that this still may be possible b.t.w ...).

.

[Lunch Money]

Well, try to get your EQ proper on individual tracks, for sure, but there's nothing wrong with using another EQ at the end to balance it all out.

Greg

[nibbzious]

excessive amounts of subtractive EQ. the more stuff I can cram in there the better. I only use additive EQ on drums.

one can use reverb and delays to fill in the blanks

[useruseruser]

Yeah! Why not limiting all the sound spectrum up to the last remaining sine partial ...

.

[RandyHancock]

The reason I try to cut instead of boost is because a boost is really a cut after you compensate for the volume change. Most of the frequencies I end up "cutting" (not boosting) should have been left alone. I'd rather get rid of a frequency that is getting in the way of another part than get rid of everything but a small band that I boosted. I always end up compensating with other boosts (especially the high end) anyway so my eq curve just looks like somthing I could have done with a cut and left more of that sound in the mix that was probably good to begin with.

It also depends on your source. If there are LOTS of parts going on, you might be better off just boosting because each part is only going to get a very small part of the frequency spectrum. But if the source is sparse, you'll want to have each part as big sounding as possible, so you'll probably only need a few small cuts for the whole thing.

Just rememeber that the whole point is to get every part to have its own little (or big) spot in the frequency spectrum. Whether you boost or cut doesn't really matter that much.

-Randy

[jones-y]

Here are my general guidelines for myself:

If I'm doing corrective EQ, I generally subtract.

If the EQ is used as an element in sound design (creative EQing), all bets are off.

[dvdvelde]

(Jackel and hyde) Yes , an equalizer with 1000 EQ bands or filter will do the job. And that is what Harbal does, it has a 7000 band filter inside as i do understand. The only problem is is you match the source with reference in harbal (you just match all lines) it will flatten out all responces. Thats why they suggest only to correct peaks... or wobble out the spectrum... (the problem with a 1000 band EQ or 7000 band filter is that the Q-factor goes up to 100! or more , and this is sonically not done. Calculations mean floating point numbers round off, and strange elements will appear due to the high Q factor in use)...

[dvdvelde]

If you do EQ'ing , when you are adding or substracting frequencies and you do much of it, you might consider using gain instead of so much EQ.
The EQ line should remain around the 0 db line, if it is much higher or lower, consider doing some gaining...