Audio Recording

If you are applying EQ in audio mixing, then as a beginner you should know these best practices. Take note that this applies to any genre whether it will be rock, pop, country or even classical. Try these EQ best practices in your mix, it will drastically improve the quality of your mix and make you become a better audio mixing engineer. If you are a beginner, this is a must-read article.

Never cut or boost more than 12dB

While it will not hurt to cut or boost 12dB, one of the best practices is to minimize EQ reduction and boosting as possible. It is because it will:

a.) Introduce more audible artifacts due to some extreme boosting/cutting. This can be phase related issues or errors related to digital summing/calculations made by your DAW or plugin.

Also this will tend to worsen if you are using a combination of bad EQ plug-in, poor quality DAW (digital audio workstation) and bad recorded sound.

b.) Introduce more problems in maintaining a good level. Cutting or boosting can introduce drastic changes in volume level. An EQ boost can increase the volume of the track while an EQ cut can decrease volume. These big changes in volume can take a lot of time to balance in the mix.

c.) Can either make your mix to sound too thin, too much bass or too much mid-range presence; which is usually not good if you want a more balanced mix.

What you will do if you really need to cut and boost more than 12dB?

1.) Listen to the track very carefully. Was it badly recorded? Sometimes a bad recording can introduce serious tonal problems. These are caused by a lot of factors, for example:

a.) Recording or tracking in an environment that does not have flat EQ response. Supposing you want a more mid-range sounding acoustic guitar but you are placing the guitar amplifier cabinet facing towards the corner of the room. Since corners can naturally boost the bass levels, you can hardly get that mid-range sounding guitar in the recording.
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One of the most often asked questions in audio mixing are as follows:

a.) How to mix instruments so that they would sound like they are up-front or back in the mix?
b.) How to put instruments in the center, right, left or mid-right and mid-left in the mix?

These are fundamental questions that are of so much importance in audio mixing. There are no short answers to these questions and it’s imperative that you entirely understand the concepts of front and back audio mixing.

“Front” and “Back” Elements Adds Realism to your Mix

Do you why live concert sounds so full and alive? It’s because the artists/performers are on-stage with live monitors placed on optimal listening locations. The sound combination of these monitors would make up a very nice front and back mix of the band performing on-stage.

On the other hand, even without live monitors, you can still feel the “depth” and “fullness” of the sound. Have you listen to a choir or musical ensemble playing live without microphones? Read the rest of this entry »

Is this possible? After all, you might have read a lot of tutorials and forum advices to use quality plug-ins like Waves, etc. during mixing. And you have learned that plug-ins is important and extensively used to shape the sound of the mix as best as possible.
This post would look at this aspect in detail. The answer is…

Yes, If only it’s recorded well

Let me give you this example to this. Supposing you are recording a band; they play great and the sound was full/well mixed before recording.

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