Remedies for boominess?

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Sculli
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Remedies for boominess?

Post by Sculli » Sun Feb 20, 2011 5:10 am

I have some tracks that sound pretty good at regular listening volumes. But when turned up fairly loud there's a slight boominess overall.3 tracks, Upright bass, Steel guitar and vocals. is a low cut filter in order here? If so,how low should I start at? I know it's a pretty vague question. So thanks for any suggestions you may have.
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Kevin

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Post by fuzz » Sun Feb 20, 2011 5:27 am

Yep, I'd try rolling of everything below 50. If you're ITB you can reverse the plug (using a low pass at the same frequency ) and listen to what you're taking out.

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Post by losthighway » Sun Feb 20, 2011 9:43 am

I gradually became addicted to the High Pass Filter as a mix tool. Not only can it be a boomy reducer, it also gives you more head-room because it cuts out frequencies that take up a lot of energy. Sometimes it seems like you can cut everything all the way up to 100hz unless it's a bass drum, bass guitar, trombone, whale fart etc.

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Post by MoreSpaceEcho » Sun Feb 20, 2011 11:41 am

try compressing the upright. maybe broadband, maybe just one band of a multiband on the low end. it might be just one note in particular that's really boomy, so maybe try a dynamic eq at that frequency.

it could also be your room, have you listened on a variety of systems?

i tend to prefer shelving cuts over hipassing for things like boomy kicks/basses.

Sculli
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Post by Sculli » Sun Feb 20, 2011 4:51 pm

I'll be trying the low cut first. I've listened on quite a few systems MSE and only on some at louder level does this occur. I definitely try some compress if that fails. I try not to compress any thing unless I really need to. The material is 30s and 40s Texas Swing. So I'm trying to be faithful to that sound. Thanks very much for all the input!
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Kevin

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Post by jgimbel » Sun Feb 20, 2011 11:59 pm

losthighway wrote:I gradually became addicted to the High Pass Filter as a mix tool. Not only can it be a boomy reducer, it also gives you more head-room because it cuts out frequencies that take up a lot of energy. Sometimes it seems like you can cut everything all the way up to 100hz unless it's a bass drum, bass guitar, trombone, whale fart etc.
Yes yes yes. Cutting out excess low end, and realizing that much more low end constitutes as excess, is the single biggest improvement to my mixes in the past year. I actually had an extreme bootcamp lesson in this where a guy wanted me to make a heavy rock song we had recorded sound more in line with the radio (not in the sense of being horribly compressed, but just as far as the balance of things). Going back and forth between my setup in here, various systems, and the car, comparing it to the radio, the main thing I realized was how little low end there is in radio. My car stereo is pretty decent and I've been listening in it for years and really gotten to know it well, and it's far from a thin sounding system. Even what's on the radio generally really usually sounds pretty balanced and nice. And to get that, for this song, required taking out ridiculous amounts of low end, up to low mids even. I'm talking taking out most everything below 200hz on distorted guitars, carving some mud with a medium Q out of the 200hz range of the bass, high-passing vocals sometimes up to even around 300hz (!!!!). And it came out sounding amazing, one of the better sounding pieces to come out of my studio. Unbelievable how extreme it ended up going without at all sounding as thin as I assumed it would.
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Post by cenafria » Mon Feb 21, 2011 12:44 am

I would have said to work at frequencies between 100Hz and 300Hz to get rid of boominess. That's where I have to watch out for it. For me, not so much in the sub bass, really.

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decocco
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Post by decocco » Mon Feb 21, 2011 11:30 am

200 Hz (or around there) is the enemy.

But you don't need to kill him to win the battle.

Just keep him at bay with a little EQ and he may even become your friend.

Beware of hi-pass filters. They are like nuclear weapons; often a more extreme solution that the situation demands.
-Chris D.

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JWL
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Post by JWL » Mon Feb 21, 2011 1:22 pm

Were all the tracks recorded in the same room? If so you might be hearing artifacts from the room itself. EQ the peaks out.

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Post by drumsound » Mon Feb 21, 2011 8:05 pm

Get the sub out of the way and "tune" the low mids to taste.

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Post by jnTracks » Tue Feb 22, 2011 3:37 am

losthighway wrote:I gradually became addicted to the High Pass Filter as a mix tool. Not only can it be a boomy reducer, it also gives you more head-room because it cuts out frequencies that take up a lot of energy. Sometimes it seems like you can cut everything all the way up to 100hz unless it's a bass drum, bass guitar, trombone, whale fart etc.
me too i high pass almost everything. even kick drums most of the time (at a very low freq, like 30) just want to control what's happening in every track.
i do quite a bit of low pass too. but that's usually less of a noticeable problem.

hell, i even high pass whale farts. about 40hz, nothing below that is really necessary to get the full impact and emotion in a whale fart.
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Post by MoreSpaceEcho » Tue Feb 22, 2011 7:00 am

decocco wrote:Beware of hi-pass filters. They are like nuclear weapons; often a more extreme solution that the situation demands.

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Post by ott0bot » Tue Feb 22, 2011 12:15 pm

I used to high pass alot, but I've found narrow band eq cuts, de-essing and multi-band compression to be more natural sounding and more effective. HPF still comes in handy here and there...but I don't reach for it right away thats for sure. Panning tracks with like frequences just a few degrees apart can help keep frequency built up minimized.

also...hp filters in the tracking stage are more effetive to me. Cutting lows at the mic or preamp allows you to get more gain on the mids and highs. Plus you can get closer to the source, and the proximity effect won't be so apparent.

beware the ides of filters past.

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Post by dfuruta » Tue Feb 22, 2011 8:33 pm

If the OP says the song sounds good at normal volumes but starts to get boomy when loud, isn't it possible (as MSE suggested) that there's a problem in the acoustics of the listening room? This particularly seems worth considering if this boominess only happens when listening on some systems. I mean, it's great to go slap high-pass filters on everything, but it'd be good to establish first whether there's actually a problem with the track or whether it's just an artifact of the monitoring situation...

Sculli
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Post by Sculli » Thu Feb 24, 2011 4:50 am

Were all the tracks recorded in the same room? If so you might be hearing artifacts from the room itself. EQ the peaks out.
Yea all in the same room. Actually, It sounds pretty good in the room even at higher volumes.

Get the sub out of the way and "tune" the low mids to taste.

It's turning out to be just that.Lotsa sub garbage. Trying to find the cutoff point that doesn't ruin the stand up bass.

Thanks so much to everyone for the great information!
Peace,
Kevin

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