Sep 11, 2009
7 crucial EQ bands to help balance your mix
I was taught these EQ “rules of thumb” when I first started out as a trainee, to help learn the art of mixing - each EQ band influences different qualities of a mix or instrument, and I thought you might find it useful if I shared them.
Later in the post I’ve also embedded another great video by Joe Gilder. Like the one in my using compression post recently, it gives an excellent introduction to the different EQ settings and parameters, plus some great real-world examples of using EQ in Pro Tools, although the ideas are applicable to any DAW.
Before we get to the tweaks, I want to stress that these are just ideas, guidelines and starting points. Always remember the golden rule of EQ:
Balance is everything
You can’t just add a load of 100Hz and expect your bass to sound rich – the key is to get each area balanced with every other, so that all the instruments complement each other, and don’t fight. This may even mean cutting out some frequencies to stop them clashing with other instruments – you can probably loose everything below 5kHz on a hi-hat mic, for example.
Balancing the mids – roughly 200 Hz to 2 kHz – is particularly important, since this is the most sensitive region of the ear, and getting this region right is essential for things to sound warm, natural and real.
Some crucial EQ bands and what they sound like
50-60 Hz
- Thump in a kick drum
- Boom in a bassline
- Essential in dub, dubstep and reggae !
- Too much and you’ll have flapping speakers and a flabby mix
- Too little, and the mix will never have enough weight or depth
100-200 Hz
- This EQ band adds punch in a snare
- Gives richness or “bloom” to almost anything
- Too much makes things boomy or woolly
- Too little sounds thin and cold
200-500 Hz
- Crucial for warmth and weight in guitars, piano and vocals
- Too much makes things sound muddy or congested
- Too little makes them thin and weak
500-1000 Hz
- One of the trickiest areas
- Gives body and tone to many instruments
- Too much sounds hollow, nasal or honky
- Too little sounds thin and harsh
2 kHz
- Gives edge and bite to guitars and vocals
- Adds aggression and clarity
- Too much is painful!
- Too little will sound soft or muted
5-10 kHz
- Adds clarity, open-ness and life
- Important for the top end of drums, especially snare
- Too much sounds gritty or scratchy
- Too little will lack presence and energy
16 kHz
- Can add air, space or sparkle
- Almost too high to hear
- Too much will sound artificial, hyped or fizzy
- Too little will sound dull and stifled
How EQ works – settings and parameters
As promised, here’s Joe’s video introduction.
The only thing I would add to this is to underline what he says about judging final EQ settings in the context of a mix – solo first to get in the right region, then listen with the track to see if it works. And, be cautious when using low cuts in the way that he demonstrates – you risk overdoing it and losing some of the natural sound of the instrument. Finally:
Newton’s 3rd Law (of EQ)
Of course all this is only the tip of the iceberg – every one of these comments has exceptions, caveats and alternatives. Returning to the idea of balance, bear in mind that
For every (EQ) action there is an equal and opposite (EQ) reaction
For example, if you add too much to the 2 kHz EQ band, eventually anything will sound thin and harsh. If you compensate by adding some 100 Hz to warm it up, you’ll end up with “scooped mids” and the sound will be thin and lack body. So you add some 500 and suddenly you’re back where you started, but it all sounds a bit processed and un-natural.
So I’ll finish with a final rule of thumb for you:
Less is more !
- and an outstanding resource, to an interactive frequency chart with even more rules of thumb and suggestions for the best EQ band to use eachinstrument. I don’t agree with all of them, but as Joe said in his video, there are no rules in audio – use your ears !
Do you have any favourite EQ hints and tips ?
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Different frequencies of the human voice give us different information. Lower frequencies carry info about gender, health, size, and the upper s, t and f’s carry verbal meaning.
How many badly EQ’d PAs in public places have you heard – you know the train company employee is male, bored and 45, but you don’t know anything about the trains.
All the different frequency corridors seem to carry with them different emotional or cerebral interpretive tendencies. Big basslines get people dancing, a crooning melody and a lyric with pathos leaves no dry eye in the house, and the angelic voices hitting the long high notes go all the way to God. Right?
Interesting analog to this is in written script. Cover the top half of a random sentence you’ve never seen, and try to read it, just interpreting the bottom of the letters. It’s quite difficult. Then do the reverse, try it with another random line but this time cover the lower half of the text. Most people find ttex easier to interpret.
I remember someone talking about an acoustic modelling plugin designed to make railway tannoys more intelligible by reverse engineering the architecture around them.
Rumour had it you could buy the same thing working in the opposite direction to make your audio sound like it was coming from any British Rail tannoy speaker in London.
:-p
The most single most useful tip I have for EQ is to use it to take away bad rather than add good whenever possible. Some of my other favorites are:
“Sweeping” to find the frequency you are looking for is also great — I like to turn up the gain all the way and just sweep the frequency back and forth until I find the frequency I am looking for. This is especially useful when you can tell two instruments are fighting but can’t really tell where the problem areas are.
“Feathering” your EQs is also very valuable, bringing up a frequency band on one instrument while reducing the same frequency band on other similar sounds to give them more space — I have found that I have a much easier time getting the bass guitar and kick drum to play nicely if I give the kick a boost around 60 Hz and a cut around 100 Hz, then bring up my bass guitar and cut it at 60 Hz and boost it at 100 Hz, for example. (Note: frequencies are estimated, this will be different for every session)
This one only applies to tube EQs (or very well modeled tube EQ plugins). If you want a bit more “punch” out of the low end on a kick drum but don’t want to boost the level too much, just patch two EQs in a row on the channel, the first being a tube EQ. Boost the low end a lot, maybe 12 or 15 dB. This will give you some of that nice, pleasing tube saturation on the low end. Unfortunately, the low end will be WAY too loud, so you simply crank the low end back down on the second EQ, and voila! You retain the nice warm tube compression on your lows, it will really punch through the mix, without artificially raising the volume of the bass frequencies and creating mud.
You touched on it with the hi-hat example, but I cannot overstate the value of hi and lo pass filtering! If you don’t need it, get rid of it! You can’t have every instrument in your mix blasting out from 20-20k, you will just have a huge mess. You probably don’t need anything higher than 10k on a kick drum, or lower than 150 Hz on a guitar. This leads me to my last tip:
ALWAYS listen to the track in the mix. A lot of times a properly EQ’ed track will sound weak soloed. Conversely, you will often find that as soon as you get your kick drum sounding beautiful and full by itself, it sounds awful and oppressive with everything else. You need to take the whole mix into account when you are EQ’ing or you will drive yourself insane. This will keep you from overdoing it. As a side note, I would also like to add that sometimes fairly aggressive EQ’ing is the best option, particularly if you are mixing an improperly recorded track. Just use your ears, and if it sounds good then it is the right thing for that track.
Hi Rob,
Some good tips, thanks ! A few comments:
- I boost and cut in equal proportions – YMMV.
- “Sweeping” is something I do all the time. I’m more cautious about “feathering”, but it can work if instruments are fighting in the arrangement. Better to change what’s being played, though, and then just EQ everything to sound it’s best, in an ideal world.
- Nice idea about the parallel EQ/distortion processing – I have a post planned on this.
- I only hi and low-pass if necessary, but they can be useful strategies.
- Absolutely about listening in context – but solo-ing is also useful ! Balance is everything, as someone once said
Thanks for reading and contributing !
Ian
Thanks very useful