CMU School of Drama


Friday, April 14, 2017

In The Studio: Using Multiband EQ To “Fix It In The Mix”

ProSoundWeb: Before there was digital recording, before spring reverb, even before analog tape, there was EQ. Equalization is one of the oldest tools in the audio engineer’s arsenal, and one of the most useful.

Used judiciously, EQ can do wonders to de-clutter a crowded soundscape. Used with precision, it can remove offending sounds we hadn’t necessarily intended to capture. Used correctly, a bit of EQ can be all that’s needed to make peace between dueling guitars, scoop the mud from the heaviest drums, or make a mundane vocal stand up and shine.

1 comment:

wnlowe said...

I really don’t know how much people understand the phrase “garbage in, garbage out.” Audio engineers are expected to perform miracles so much. It is funny to think that one of the few modern tools that have been invented to assist audio engineers to turn garbage into something good is heavily ridiculed — autotune. Of COURSE it doesn’t sound natural — it is taking bad music and making it actually correct through using computers. There is nothing natural about that. It would be interesting to see what music celebrities remained if society as a whole accepted the fact that audio engineers are human and didn’t force them to develop tools like autotune and other tools which provide audio engineers with super-human tools, eliminating the requirement of extensive training and a studio. Instead, people with minimal sonic knowledge can try to mix and master with a laptop from wherever they want to with tools like autotune which just perpetuate the outrageous tasks given to audio engineers.