Common practices with low cuts

[alanfc]

What do Fugazi and Hoobastank have in common?
They were the closest CDs layin around when I decided to do this frequency analyzer test. I did so because I gave my band the first of several "Real" mixes of our CD I just finished, and the first comment was "I couldn't crank it in my car cuz the low end was distorting my speakers." Great. What a bunch of weenies. But really I tried in my car too and got the same result. (YOU SHOULD HAVE TESTED FIRST ALAN) - I know.

Part of the reason for no upstairs/downstairs car tests is because I thought I had figured out my monitors, that is, if I feel the rumble of the bass a little on my table, then its right. Too much or too little rumble, its wrong. So then I pulled out the frequency ANAL-yzer and imported Fugazi's "Waiting Room" and Hoobastank's "Same Direction". Then pasted in one of my mixes too.

My Frequency analysis, on the low end:
On my mix, a big fat bulging waveform up high and off the page to the left, like encompassing 40hz on down to 10hz or something,whatever, just off the page.

Fugazi, a nice tight round hill with its apex around 80-100 hz, even on the heavy parts. It sounded heavier than mine of course but had no BOOM and wasn't flying off the page on the low end. I suspect a professional Mix engineer had worked on this

Hoobastink- loud bassy total assault on my senses, BUT, on the low end, they had a nice hard slope below 40hz too.

I then put an EQ on my stereo file with a steep low cut and was successful in matching their low end shape. Going more for Fugazi's type thing.

I have stumbled on to something here I'm sure. So WHAT Alan.
Question is coming.

So I've gone to one of our songs and on the Bass tracks and Kick tracks and made extremely steep low cuts on these, till I just just barely feel the rumble on my table.

Quite excited , I then put the freq. analyzer on my master bus and played the full band mix, and WTF the stupid low end still shows as hyped up where it was before.

So is the way to deal with this always going to be on the stereo file at the end of the process? Should I put some of the low end back into the original tracks so as not to rob them of any positive warmth/girth? And then kill it off later? Of course I'm fiddling with this myself but I wanted to know a little bit of the method behind the low cuts.

thanks for any comments, if you made it this far

[earth tones]

Frequencies like 20 or 30 Hz are merely felt, more than heard. When doing the Golden Ears training and 30 Hz was cut or boosted in a song, it was barely noticeable. Like phantom limb syndrome, if that makes any sense. Anyways, low frequencies eat up headroom, since their larger wavelengths demand more energy to be reproduce, therefore many introduce LF roll-offs, on certain instruments and their mix, to keep the low end tight and for available headroom. While LF characteristically contains more energy than HF, we have a non-linear perception of these spectral energies, which makes these LF's harder to hear, per dB gain, than HF.

[Mr. Dipity]

So I've gone to one of our songs and on the Bass tracks and Kick tracks and made extremely steep low cuts on these, till I just just barely feel the rumble on my table.

Quite excited , I then put the freq. analyzer on my master bus and played the full band mix, and WTF the stupid low end still shows as hyped up where it was before.

Anything below 40 hz is inaudible. It's not just being created by your bass drum and bass however.

Put a linear phase low-cut eq at that point on your master mix, and you will regain a lot of energy for 'real' bass.

[oobedoob]

Try hi-pass at 80-100 Hz for the stuff that doesn't need a lot of lows. That can clear a lot of room for kik/bass low end.

Are you in a "designed" control room or something more makeshift? Big/small? Maybe some bass treatment is in order to get your 80-150 region more accurate....

[maz]

I don't know about that 40HZ comment.... but I agree that you need to check out all the elements in your mix. Depending on the style of music (sorry if you mentioned that or gave an example, I missed it), guitars can be high passed around 100hz, and so can vocals, and some other instruments.

Kick and Bass usually work best when they have their own space to work with. I usually try to get the low impact out of one or the other, but not both. EIther a really thumpy bass and a more clicky kick or vice versa. But again, that's just an idea that works some of the time. Since you are doing all this testing, see what your low end looks like with kick and bass muted. THen find out where the low is coming from, ya know?

low end is a pain.

[Professor]

The only potential flaws I see in the way you applied the low roll-offs are that you only applied them to your kick and bass tracks, and also that you went very steep.
- On the steepness of the low cut, I think you can be more generous on the instruments that are supposed to give you the lows. Try bringing the frequency up higher and using a smoother slope. For example, a 12dB/octave roll-off set at 80Hz is only going to be 12dB down at 40 and 24dB at 20Hz, while a 6dB/octave could be set all the way up at 120Hz, and won't be down 12dB until 30Hz. So play with those settings if they are available on you EQ plugs and see how the kick and bass respond.
- Also, you should be aware that those sorts of extreme low frequencies most often do not come from the instruments themselves. They come from ventilation noise, traffic outside, foot falls in the studio, wind gusts from movement in the studio, etc. Those sounds can also appear in any microphone. So if you really want to keep the bass frequencies clean, try rolling off every track, especially the ones that just plain don't need anything below 100, 150, maybe even 250Hz.
- Then as a safety net, it wouldn't hurt matter much to throw a medium sort of roll off on the very low stuff across the main mix. I pretty much always drop a low-roll off of 12dB/octave on the main mix and set the frequency between 30-50Hz depending on the material. And even if I want to bump the overall bass on the final mix, I will apply a shelving EQ at between 100-150Hz and bump that, but still will roll off the sub-40Hz stuff because it actually will tighten the bass.

Remember that when you have a lot of rumbling garbage down in the bottom sub-bass range and right on down into the infra-sonic, you are sending all that information to the amps which will have to work substantially harder, draw more power, and sap the energy from the upper frequencies to drive those signals. And when the amp does deliver that signal to speakers that can't reproduce it anyway, the energy is just turned into heat in the voice coils.

-Jeremy

[KennyLusk]

I experienced this same realization a few months ago and began to change the way I mix instruments. You can filter or shelve lows on a final mix (as a whole) but I personally believe it's more effective to do it in the mix phase on individual instrument tracks within the song itself(I could be wrong).

Shelving unwanted lows on individual instruments during the mixing process has given me much cleaner and sharper mixes in the end, and that low-end "bulge" you're talking about disappears.

[vvv]

Me, too.

I have actually set some home-made pre-sets to start working from, per instrument, in my software (CEP2.1 has a very nice FFT.)

I even set them per amp (12" vs. 10", where the 12" combos are 50 watts and up, and the 8" 30 and down), assuming a '57), mic/pre, acoustic guitar, etc., just as starting points to work faster, if necessary.

On the bass guitar, for example, I typically pull off everything below 40 or 50Hz at a very steep slope and also LPF typically starting somewhere between 2.5kHz to 3.5kHz with a more gradual slope.

Similar HPF typically on the kick (usually samples for me, I'm afraid), and yet I still end up HPF on the "2-buss" at the "ghetto-mastering" stage.

Kind of like you have to shave, and wash your face. Or not.

[thereminman]

so, ////are you guys suggesting that......for example:

I'm mixing a track that has guitar, triangle and lead vocal----

That I use my eq when mixing (i have an outboard mixer) and turn the lowest eq wayyy down on all three if I don't need any lowlow info from them?

I mean, currently I would not touch the low eq at ALL on the triangle, figuring it's all in the upper reaches ----I "might" have some low info on the guitar and voice that was un-neccesary....

Do you folks make a habbit of just turning down the low EQ on everything that won't need those frequencies, or do you just not touch them

(i dont have an 'eq bypass' button or anything on my mixer.)

[alanfc]

hey thanks everyone , gott print this

one more question

I just tried alot of stuff with this on a rock mix, 30 tracks- 4 guitars, 10 voices, 1 bass, full drumkit... I found that everything is alot better, and I can hear the Bass alot better without having to crank it.
BUT
I hear this slight =HISSSS= going on, its not a cymbal or anything, I'm almost sure I hear it.

Are deep steep precipitous EQ cuts gong to give me this artifact? I am using Sonar and the Sonitus/Ultrafunk EQ.

Like mentioned above, will shelving be better than big cliffs ?? Is this responsible for my Hiss? I may be going crazy too.

thanks

/edit/
maybe I left the Dither on when I bounced to Stereo!?
I can't check it now, but could this give me an audible , very faint noise?

[KennyLusk]

Alan, in Sonar, I use the FX EQ and typicially just shelve everything below 60Hz to 80Hz depending on the instrument and especially on vocals. On vocals you're typically rolling off at 90Hz anyway right? Maybe that's just me.

Some instruments I don't EQ at all. Again, this is just me.

I haven't heard the hissing you're describing so that may be a side-effect of the Sonitus stuff, although I've heard from friends the Sonitus Ultrafunk plugs are really useable.

Try just shelving and see how that goes.

[alanfc]

OK thanks, maybe I'm abusing the EQ

I mean my high and low cut on bass are practically flat cliffs, you know what I mean, put it on lo-pass or hi-pass and drag that thing over. I can get a pretty good flat shape going there.
This is crazy, I'll try shelves
thanks

[dynomike]

OK thanks, maybe I'm abusing the EQ

I mean my high and low cut on bass are practically flat cliffs, you know what I mean, put it on lo-pass or hi-pass and drag that thing over. I can get a pretty good flat shape going there.
This is crazy, I'll try shelves
thanks

Don't shelve... I'd stick with high pass. I have no idea where your hissing is coming from.. but like Jeremy (Professor) said, can you adjust the Q or slope of yout highpass/lowpass filters? A lot of eq plugins you can... a gentler slope is usually better if you want less artifacts. At least in the analog realm this is the case. Steeper filter=more ripples in the frequency response passed THROUGH the filter, and more phase shift. I dunno about this noise though, as I said.

And to the triangle guy, yeah, roll of everything below (say) 500 hz for your triangle! You don't need it.. the mic might pick up some other noises you don't want there that'll muddy things up. I always high pass percussion like that.

Mike