FluoSamsara (Oxygen)
IsraTrance Full Member
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Posted : Mar 3, 2006 12:48
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The Human Hearing and EQuing
I´ve been learning a few curiosities and this one I though it would be interesting to post 
The most important thing before learning to properlly equalize is to learn how we actually hear things…
Lets begin by thinking of our years…and about human evolution…this might sound stupid but it actually makes much sense…
Human evolution is a slow process of millions of years, some aspects of evolution are fast (social behaviour etc) others take millons of years to change.
If we go back in time what is the basic need for a pre-human/apes? Survial! To survive the predators that threatened to kill our species.
And before communication through language what was your hearing for? For survival/protection from these possible predators…
This is the main reason why we humans are actually much more sensitive to sounds “coming in” or “appearing” than to sounds “going out” or “desapearing”….
Related to EQuing, for this same reason, this will also apply…our ears and brain are much more sensitive for sounds being boosted than sounds being cut....
Just do a test with closed eyes, try to cut a certain frequency of the sound and figuring what frequencies it was. Now try do do the same exercice but with boosting and you´ll see you´ll be much more sensitive in perceiving what frequencies are being affected this way.
For this reason, EQ should always be done trough boosting first to find your frequency, even if what you want to do is cut it. By not doing so sometimes you cut much more than it was necessary, since we´re not so sensible to sounds going out.
Try to do as follow:
- First listen to the sound you are EQuing carefully and try to concentrate on what frequencies you want to cut or boost.
-Open an EQ, choose a band and put a high Q (I would say 3-5, over that that bring may bring phasing problems around the choosen frequencies). Boost it to the max (without distorting).
-Now sweep the frequencie spectrum until you find those frequencies you where concentrating on.
-One you find them leave that band on that frequency, stop the sound and bring the level back to zero. Listen the original sound again for a few secs (2-3). This will “reset” your ears again…
- Now slowly boost or cut the choosen band until you get to the value you wanted
This may sound a bit obvious but it actually works really well for me, I find I´m doing much more precise EQuing by following this. Many time I was cutting some sounds too much.
Also, EQ is to be used when necessary! Don´t start boosting the main frequencies of all your sounds and cutting the others, like some ppl do. This may make many sounds sound better individually but may will lead to very strange reasults in the mix. Be carefull with EQ, don´t over do it...
EQuing is for sorting out problems, giving a bit more clarity and definition in your sounds etc. If you put an EQ in every channel even before you have the final sound, that’s definetelly not a good way to work imo…
Hope this was interesting for some ppl to read
Boomz
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