Using EQ’s to Save your mix

EQ’s are the most fundamental necessity for mixing and mostly underutilized by many budding mixing and mastering engineers. In this scenario who is to be blamed? The new plugin companies which have developed audio plugins which add “Extra magic” or “The Analog Feel” and make your audio sound more “Fatter” ,or for that instance even cleaner, or the misunderstanding of the audio engineers?


The whole idea of EQ’s is misunderstood. Let me elaborate on that. When you ask anyone what an EQ is you will get answers such as, amplitude device or something on the same lines but that’s quite far away from the truth, though an EQ works with frequencies it by it’s fundamental function is amplification or attenuation of frequencies, making EQ an Amplifier!

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So everytime you want to change the tonality of any audio EQ should be your go to guy rather than a compressor (Usually misused for Tonality). Now we all are guilty of using a compressor rather than an EQ for tonality at some point of time whilst progressing and learning the basics of mixing.


Now coming to the most important question of all how can an EQ save your mix?


Well to begin with if your mix sounds muddy or sounds chaotic that is because you have not defined the fundamental frequencies of each of the instruments and in result they clash and create chaos.


We tend to forget the main part while mixing, the fundamental frequencies of the instruments and we focus more on the overtones that come with the fundamental frequency. When we focus more on the overtones we tend to amplify the same and if we do the same for all the instruments what we are left is nothing but a muddy mix.


A major part of mixing depends on the recording as well. Lets take a look an example of drums, in a good drum recording if you just  add a low cut and remove unnecessary audio it should be done about 60%. If it is not working and you need to do a tonne of other things to make it sound decent you should go back and record again because your mix is going to be just as good as your recording! If you spend major time fixing things then it is guaranteed that the record is nothing but mediocre.


Now lets assume you have a good recording for a track, how do we make it even better using the EQ? The first thing as an engineer you  should focus on is subtractive EQ meaning removing  whatever you do not need. Then when this is done all you have is the good audio without any noise or any unwanted frequencies. At this point you have a clear picture of what you want the audience to notice and where you need to work, without the blur of unwanted things in the audio. You can achieve this by your stock EQ plugin, to be honest I prefer using the stock Protools EQ plugin because I like the transparency of this particular EQ without adding any kind of load on your system.


My suggestion is that you go down to the basics and focus on what you do not need frequencies so that when you have only what you need it will be an easy job to mix the track.

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