text stringlengths 1 330k |
|---|
First I just wanted to put it out there that this post is not about having a love affair with subtractive EQ because I do boost a lot. I’m just trying to give another alternative to boosting and sweeping. |
Don’t boost and sweep? So everything I have learned about finding problem frequencies is completely wrong? |
Well not exactly. To clarify, since mixing really is personal and everyone has their own quirks and techniques, I can only show you what I found to work much better. |
Not only did this subtractive EQ technique work better for finding problem frequencies, it also helped me learn EQ much, much faster. So if you have been having trouble with finding or hearing frequencies then this article may be able to help. |
Its important for you to be able to analyse (with your ears) a piece of audio and discover if there is any problem frequencies. But not only that, you should be able to recognize where the good frequencies lie. So let’s see if this technique can help you get there a little bit faster. |
Even though I’ve added my own flare to this technique, I first read about it a few years back from Michael Stavrou’s book “Mixing with Your Mind”, which is probably the most useful book I have read on mixing. The book’s main content revolves around mixing psychology instead of technique, which is probably why I like ... |
But for all you technique hunters out there, there are some gems in there for sure. It teaches you to think for yourself and develop techniques based on your personality. Just like like how every individual has a personality, so does every engineer in regards to their mixes. Each engineer hears differently, but more... |
Why You Shouldn’t Boost and Sweep |
As I’ve grown and my ability to hear has improved, I’ve come to a point where I choose not to boost and sweep when looking for problem frequencies. |
Well if you really think about it for a second you can already hear that there is a problem, so why do we need to magnify it? Simply Put, we don’t. |
Mixing is about finding the balance and relationship between all parts in a song while improving (or not destroying) the emotional impact. Nothing takes you further away from that relationship then grabbing an EQ boosting it to the moon and sweeping around. Not only is it magnifying the problem frequencies but it is ... |
Here’s an example, Lets say you have a good vocal recording, but there is a frequency making it sound cloudy, so you grab your EQ, you boost and begin to sweep. Now if that vocal has a fundamental frequency in the area of say 150-200hz, which gives a nice body and fullness to the vocal, but your boosting and sweepin... |
To me, this isn’t the most logical way to approach subtractive EQ so let me give you an alternative. |
Applying Subtractive EQ |
Lets stay on the vocal. So maybe you feel like the vocal is sitting nicely in the mix but just doesn’t feel quite right. You’ve determined that the vocal doesn’t feel right because there is a problem frequency. So take out your EQ and just take a guess as to where you think that problem is, let’s say 500 hz. So set... |
Now while your in the process of applying subtractive EQ and the problem isn’t going away or maybe its getting worse than bring the EQ back to zero. With this technique its all about quick A/Bing, hearing what it sounds like with and without it the subtractive EQ. This A/Bing is what gets you closer to recognizing t... |
Now pick a new frequency, let’s say 150 Hz. Set it up the same way and and start to slowly apply some subtractive EQ. Maybe the vocal is starting to sound thin, but the problem still exists, so set it back to zero and start over. |
This last time lets go for 300 Hz, set up the EQ the same way and start applying subtractive EQ. Hey what do you know, the vocal is starting to come to life and is fitting in much better in the mix. Its clean, its clear still sounds round and full but you were able to cut away the muddiness without any damage. |
End Thoughts |
So hopefully you can see through practise how this subtractive EQ technique could be much more useful in defining your mixes. It will keep your mind focused on the overall mix rather than all those horrible sounds you get from boosting and sweeping. Your ears and your speakers might thank you as well. |
Remember, I’m not saying never boost or don’t make big boosts. That’s further from the truth because sometimes its more than possible for me to make a boost of 10 dB or more. I’m just saying don’t boost and sweep to find your problem frequencies, try use the subtractive EQ technique that I showed you above. |
Like anything else, it takes time and practise to become efficient at anything, so give it an honest try. If you are having trouble hearing the frequencies, don’t give up. You might have to ruin a few sounds before it starts to get easier. |
YouTube Video Source: DON’T BOOST and SWEEP (Subtractive EQ) |
Still Struggling with EQ? |
How to Build an American Car |
Andrew Tingle |
The car is born in the summer, in an old auto town, in a gray factory on a rainy morning in Michigan. The first piece is a hood. Stamped in a press. One flat, shiny piece of aluminum. |
Before it was a hood, it was pure bauxite, twenty feet beneath the ground. A bulldozer worked the earth to get it, a million miles from Michigan, in Brazil or Suriname or Jamaica. The bauxite, which looks like dirt, all brown and lumpy, was shipped in a container to the United States, to a giant Alcoa refinery in Texas... |
The Alcoa Davenport rolling mill in Iowa, right on the banks of the Mississippi River, is more than a mile long. It covers two towns, Bettendorf and Riverdale. In the mill, the aluminum was fed into a furnace and softened by the heat. Then pressed flat by a rolling system — picture a kitchen and two rolling pins, one a... |
The aluminum is trucked to Flint, and Jim Fornash drives more than fifty miles to work with it, to do this job, to inspect one small piece of a car. He has thirty-three years at GM. He has worked on the assembly line, in the trucks, with the robots. He has done almost every job. He was laid off once, during the bankrup... |
Two of the biggest AA presses in the country are creaking, groaning, stamping aluminum, pressing it into its final shape just a few feet from where Fornash stands. The presses are three stories high and could be mistaken for large trailer homes, with a single row of windows along the sides so that plant workers can see... |
Andrew Tingle |
Andrew Tingle |
The andon board at LGR displays information about each workstation. |
A man named Ed Armstrong punches a button that says AUTO CYCLE START. A big green button. The press slowly comes to life. The aluminum goes in as a blank, comes out the other side as a hood. |
Fornash takes it from a conveyer belt, rubs the hood with the scuff pad. When he's finished, he looks at the aluminum beneath a special light. The light makes the hood look ghostly, it's so clean. |
It will become part of the new Cadillac ATS, a car built over four years in paper sketches and on secluded test tracks, constructed under factory lights and in the ether — "in math," on computer software. Its nickname was Alpha, the beginning. |
It is a new American car. |
He goes to the plantwith his old man at the same time every morning, twenty miles to put fenders on the front of a car. He's at his father's cattle farm by 5:30, eighty acres in the middle of nowhere, idling inside his half-ton Silverado under the slight red stain of the Michigan sky. He's never late, because his fathe... |
He's much shorter than his father, with an unkempt head of blond hair and a thin blond beard. His dad has a mustache, with thick chops. They sit in the plant cafeteria and eat leftovers from home and sandwiches at the round tables. His dad keeps an eye on him while he's working. He dodges the sparks and becomes immune ... |
Andrew Tingle |
Andrew Tingle |
An early version of Ray's Rumble. |
When Chris Martin was a senior in high school, he sat through classes inside the same room that were part of the Lansing Area Manufacturing Partnership, half of his schooling in preparation to one day build a car. His father, Mike, has spent ten years with the Lansing Grand River assembly plant, or LGR, sixteen years w... |
Once, vividly, a few years ago, a cousin pulled up at the farm in a foreign car and tried to show it off. He walked up, nearly spit: "I don't care to see it!" His father, too, with boiling blood: "Don't park that here!" |
The car he's building will be the only American luxury compact sport sedan. Ford doesn't have one. Neither does Chrysler. The last Cadillac this size came out more than a quarter century ago, when the brand was still synonymous with luxury and performance. Before, Cadillacs seemed so big. And their drivers seemed so ol... |
Andrew Tingle |
Andrew Tingle |
The Journey team constructing driver composites using Post-it notes. |
The fender in Chris's hands — he never saw what went into it. The stories behind it. How long it took to get there. He doesn't know as he cinches the fender and moves on to the next that the parts were studied over the course of four years, were first literally ripped from the competition in a warehouse in Warren, Mich... |
Outstretched, the end of Rick Kewley's pinkie to the tip of his thumb measures ten inches. He uses this measurement when he's at Lowe's looking for hardware, and he has been aware of that distance ever since his fingers stopped growing. He has a story about his hands. It's short and sweet. When he was a boy, his father... |
Rick loves wheels more than any other part of a car. He was a former amateur race-car driver and an Army brat who had a lot of cars, the first one a '72 Corvette. He has worked for GM since leaving the Army. He studied wheels, sat in a ton of foreign cars, and over time something happened when he touched a car: He bega... |
A steering wheel is one of the most important parts of a car, and when it's right it has to do several things ... like steer. But in the words of the man who designed it, it also has to "afford both a small person and big person a pleasant driving experience." It has to allow the driver to see whatever numbers are on t... |
The chief engineer on the ATS, Dave Masch, coined a question about the wheel: Does it feel good to Rick? That was really the only question that mattered. There were at least two dozen people working on the team designing and building the wheel, just like there was a team for pretty much every other part, and Rick attri... |
The wheel needed to be a driver's wheel. It had to be "fun to drive," the car's guiding slogan. The early prototypes were all wrong, the wheel was too thick. There were several clay versions, and they didn't feel right to Kewley. He would grip the clay and could tell. Then he'd work directly with a designer to change t... |
Andrew Tingle |
Andrew Tingle |
Andrew Tingle |
A recently pressed inner-hood panel in Flint. |
Andrew Tingle |
The vibrating seat was Ray's idea. Massage the ass, prevent a wreck. |
Ray Kiefer is an academic, not a car guy, with a Ph.D. in cognitive process from Wayne State University, in Detroit, and though he works for GM, he cares less about cars and more about studying how people behave inside them. Way too much information inside a car, anyway, and Ray's seat is a response to it — the beeping... |
Ray, in his button-down shirt tucked into blue jeans, describing the idea of the vibrating seat to a conference room full of General Motors suits, made little sense. They had to sit in it so that they could let it wiggle beneath them, let its tiny motors come alive, experience the sensation that would earn his seat the... |
After the suits took turns, "they understood," he says. "It's actually an elegant, discreet way to present the information. And it works." |
The Ray's Rumble motors — some provided by a company that makes massage chairs — buzz whenever the car is drifting out of its lane, either on the left side of the seat or the right. The driver will straighten the car but never know about Ray, that he studied pager motors inside old seats to try to figure out where the ... |
Michelle Killen picked the paint, the first thing anyone sees on a car. Colors divide everyone, of course. Nowhere was this more evident than during meetings to discuss the colors of the ATS. Thirty people in a room, four years ago, arguing paint with Michelle. "I noticed how people reacted to the names of the paint," ... |
Blue was the first ATS color she ever worked on, and it has a real name on the Cadillac Web site: Opulent Blue. Seriously, though, her color: basically, Michelle Killen Blue. That color did not come from one dress or one amazing couch or one picture that she could point to and say that it was the color. She picked out ... |
She was a lighting designer for eight years. She learned a lot about how different lights can change the color of cars, about understanding moods — moods that you can create with different types of lighting. She worked with paint suppliers at PPG, DuPont, BASF, and with chemists in their labs to develop the colors. She... |
The vice-president of global design called her one afternoon. He had seen a preproduction Opulent Blue ATS being tested on Interstate 696, near Warren. "I'm really glad I listened to you," he said. |
Andrew Tingle |
Andrew Tingle |
Installing windshields. |
The robots are listening. The robots are awake. The robots are moving. The robots are turning toward each other and pausing. The robots are big yellow arms at Trim 4 on the assembly line. One arm lifts the glass rear window of the ATS and holds it in the air, even spins it around. The other robot, smaller and to the ri... |
If you face the robots and watch them for a while, it is hard not to get hypnotized by their repetition, by the accuracy of their movement, by the simple mechanization with which they do their job. It is hard not to like them or just kind of be in awe of them. In fact, if you were standing there being handed the back w... |
The yellow robot arms turn very quickly and very precisely. The robots hand the windshield forward on the line. The robots are awakened in the morning, and one imagines them curling up and going to sleep at night. |
The cows wake up, too, on farms across America. The future seats, wrapped over those patented, ass-tickling motors. GM buys its leather from Eagle Ottawa, in Auburn Hills, Michigan, a global supplier of leather for cars. The cowhides come from places without barbed-wire fences, so the cows can't cut rake across the wir... |
Thomas Prevost, a designer for the ATS, heard from a hide supplier that if automobile companies were not using leather to furnish their rides, every year those remaining cowhides would form a stack as high as the Empire State Building . Prevost, a Frenchman, pronounces Cadillac "Kah-dee-yak." He helped design the inter... |
The name of the seat leather is Soleil Keisel. |
In the GM trim shop, there are very powerful sewing machines. One in particular, made by the company Juki, has the ability to produce different types of seams. Parts of the interior of the ATS are sewn with brand-new stitching Prevost nicknamed Converj. The stitches look like a line of V's running up the dash, the door... |
The V's had to be just right. |
Andrew Tingle |
But it's hard to get right. It really is. It'shard to build cars for a certain way for more than a hundred years, big, swaggering cars for older men, cars called "luxo-boats" by Cadillac employees, and then totally change direction and build something smaller. It's hard to sell suppliers on the change — to get them to ... |
There's a secret walled park in Milford, Michigan, a kind of legendary place called the Proving Grounds. On a plot of asphalt called the Black Lake, about the size of sixty football fields put together, birds dive out of the sky onto the ground because they think the road is water. There are rutted obstacle courses ful... |
But there is one part of the Proving Grounds that is tougher than the others: The Ride and Handling loop is a merciless piece of road. It hasn't changed much in a half century. Every new Cadillac must go through the loop. To test how well it handles, how well it behaves, how well it drives under the most ridiculous con... |
The ATS was the first Cadillac in the brand's history that couldn't simply beat the loop with heft. Here was a car that forced the engineers to come up with new technical solutions for the loop. The day the ATS emerged from the loop still intact, still light and nimble, having survived not with brute stockiness but wit... |
The car began as a calculated engineering challenge, but it evolved. It growls. Its seat vibrates. Its shape is angular, aggressive, sharp. It is not distant or quiet. It is warm. American. |
It is born when its parts come together, thousands of parts from here and all over the world. With shocks from Ohio. Electronic components, like radar, from Japan. The interior door panels and instrument panels from Mexico. The Brembo brakes from Italy, assembled in Michigan. The tires from South Carolina. And the hood... |
It's 8:00 A.M. on the assembly line at Lansing Grand River, at a point on the line called Trim 3, after the car is painted and before its wheels are attached. Address post 37-L, beneath high ceilings crosshatched by exposed pipe. A woman named Stacey Styes is standing on a wooden platform called a skillet. The skillet ... |
The plant is moving around her, and standing near the line it is impossible not to feel that movement, impossible not to see and hear the plant breathe. The sounds are visceral. The pieces are moving. The doors are moving by themselves, marching on a door carrier to meet up with the bodies at a later spot down the line... |
Andrew Tingle |
Andrew Tingle |
The ATS in Opulent Blue. It's priced toward first-time luxury-car buyers at $33,990. For more on why the ATS was selected Esquire's 2012 Car of the Year, and to see our annual car awards, turn to page 96. |
One day in late July, the machines stopped at LGR. The noise was gone. The chains were still, the robots were asleep, the tuggers were parked in a corner, car frames hung close together in the background of the plant like toys in the window of a shop. It was the end of the first shift. A car, Crystal Red with an all-bl... |
And then it drove away. |
See the Other Esquire 2012 Cars of the Year >> |
Advertisement - Continue Reading Below |
More From Cars & Gear |
Top Nadia Quotes |
Browse top 216 famous quotes and sayings about Nadia by most favorite authors. |
Favorite Nadia Quotes |
Subsets and Splits
No community queries yet
The top public SQL queries from the community will appear here once available.