So I’ve been watching some videos on the SoundGym curated courses section, and came across this during a course on EQ.
The guy basically says that any time you make a cut, you need to boost the frequency next to it. Or something. It’s not super clear. But is there any truth to this? I’ve never heard it before, and it doesn’t really make sense to me. Here’s where he explains it for the first time, sort of. Starts around 17:11.
I’ve never heard it before either, and it seems strange to call it a rule of thumb, but it actually is kind of an interesting concept.
Pultec EQs do this when they boost (they put a small cut just above the boost shelf). I’ve found that putting a bit of resonance (boost) on a HPF like he does in this video tends to work well too. I’ve never extended the concept to band cuts/boosts, but it a quick test I just did, I liked the results I got with both cutting and boosting. I think it’s definitely worth looking into more.
So here’s what’s going on. Ever hi passed a bass guitar and felt some energy drop off with it? The reason you would boost behind the cut is to compensate for that energy drop-off from the lost frequencies. And you might do the opposite if you lo-pass. Say you cut overheads at 12K to prevent abrasive cymbals from clashing with your room mics. But then they disappear in the mix. So you’d maybe boost at 11K just to make sure the important stuff in that area doesn’t get too buried. Its to make sure the cymbals still heard in some way, even though they are hi-cut.
As Boz pointed out, it certainly not a rule of thumb. And its completely unnecessary in some cases.
99% of what he is saying is to use high pass and low pass to limit the bandwidth on an individual instrument, and center the eq on the meat of that particular piece. Pretty normal way to carve an individual space for each instrument. The hard part is compensating when parts conflict, especially the voice in your type of music. Your best practice would be to make sure you made cuts on everything around your voice and work backwards from there.
The reason you would boost behind the cut is to compensate for that energy drop-off from the lost frequencies.
This is precisely what he is saying at the end, but if you do all the carving properly most of it is getting the levels right, and seasoning to taste.
Okay thanks for the input! I’ve sometimes used resonant high pass filters. I can at least play around with it some more.
I tend to do it a lot on high pass filters. PSP’s NobleQ has boost and attenuation controls on the low band like a Pultec so it kind of encourages you to do it… Never occurred to me to do it on a LPF or bandpass as well. Interesting.
I guess most EQs limit you in that respect as you would need to use 2 bands, So if you do it on the mid band, you would use both bands just for the 1 ‘notch’.
Might be an idea for an interesting EQ… Pultec style controls on every band! Maybe simplify it and just have a ‘resonance’ switch for each band.
For the mid band do you boost the high side, low side or both?
Similarly if you boost/shelf, would a corresponding cut be useful?
Let me just jump in here for a moment as I think I know what he is saying. You see, when you have too much assaidilation, you get overload bypass correlation resistance. It’s very common. To offset the high freq module impacts and adjust to the low passive respondicipicators, you would simply need to add some low carb ultra sonic impass conduction loops. Yes, and I recommend between 32.45 Khz to maybe say 14 gigawatt. Oh, and some gauze pads of course.
