Quick combined flash cards
What is an equalizer?
Adjusts the volume of your instruments tone, allows you to turn up the good stuff, and turn down the bad stuff
Where is the sub bass on the frequency spectrum?
20-60Hz
What is the bass on the frequency spectrum?
60-200 Hz
Where are the low mids on the frequency spectrum?
200-600Hz
Where are the mids on the frequency spectrum?
600Hz-3KHz
Where are the upper mids on the frequency spectrum?
3-8KHz
Where are the highs on the frequency spectrum?
8-20KHz
What is an analog EQ?
- hardware and actual physical outboard gear that you route your sound through and move actual physical knobs to change the sound
- analog gear is primarily known for giving sounds a certain colour
What is digital EQ?
- Digital EQ’s provide more accuracy than analog EQ but is colourless in the contrast
- won’t affect the tone of the mix with any saturation
What is a parametric EQ?
- you have full control where you put the band
- what frequency you set the band at
- how wide and narrow you set the band at
- how loud the band is set
- (typically a digital EQ)
What is a semi parametric EQ?
- gives you control of the frequency
- does not give you control of the width
( Usually analog EQ’s on a mix board )
What is a graphic EQ?
- gives you no control of the frequency
- gives you no control of the width
- you get lots of frequency bands that you can choose to boost or cut from
- has its own tone different from parametric and semi parametric EQ
- often used by live sound engineers and loved for how well they deal with top end material
What is minimum phase EQ?
- All EQ’s are minimum phase EQ except for linear phase EQ
What is linear phase EQ?
- anytime you use an EQ there is some phase manipulation that happens, as well as boosting and cutting certain frequencies, you are also adding a little bit of warblyness into the sound
- Linear EQ add none of that phase manipulation, they are completely clean as far as phasing goes
- they add a ton of latency to your session and they also add “pre-run going” which is a delay that happens before the sound
What is Mid/side EQ?
- Mid/side means that it’s processing the mono signal and the sides
- mid/side allows you to clean up certain sounds perhaps in the middle with the mono sound like your kick, snare, bass, vocal
- Mid/side is more of an advanced tool
What is a static EQ?
- 99% of EQ’s
- any band that you boost or cut that stays in that position is known as a static EQ
What is a dynamic EQ?
- work similar with compression where you set the threshold and the band will move itself accordingly if frequencies become too loud and move about the threshold
What is a smart EQ?
- based on new technology coming onto the scene just a few years ago
- the way a smart EQ works really depends on which smart EQ you are using
- smart EQ’s are just trying to balance the sound
- you would put a smart EQ plugin on a particular sound and it would analyse it in some way and then would spit out a new EQ curve for it automatically - so essentially AI for EQ rather than manually boosting and then cutting
What is a compressor?
- a smart volume fader
- a tool to control the dynamic range of an instrument
What are the 4 goals of compression?
- balance
- enhance
- glue
- fix
What are macro dynamics:
- the performance of an instrument in one section
- for example, a guitar part from the start to the end of a chorus
What are micro dynamics?
- the range of volume between the loudest moment and the quietest moment in every single note of an instrument
What is an example of the threshold, ratio, attack and release in place with an attack time of 10 milliseconds?
- the way the compressor would work is slowly turn the ratio up over the course of those 10 milliseconds
- so by the time 10 milliseconds has passed, and your volume has breached the threshold, your ratio will reach the full amount you set it, e.g. 4:1
- so at 5 milliseconds you ratio would be 2:1
- the attack time is just a straight line slope to the highest point of the ratio, slowly turning the compressor on
- the exact same process goes with you release as it’s also a slope for easing off compression
How do you turn your ratio into a percentage for clearer understanding?
- e.g. a ratio of 4:1
- flip the numbers and make a fraction 1/4
- 1-1/4 = 3/4 = 75%
- so 75% of the gain that goes above the threshold is getting turned down by the compressor
What are the parameters for making consistency compression?
- has a high threshold
- slow release - set in time with your song
- fast attack to grab the peaks
- slowly turn up the ratio to mix it in
What are the parameters for creating thickness style compression?
- set the threshold to be initially to be catching the peaks since those are the only things we want to turn down
- ensure you have a fast attack to grab peaks as quickly as you can
- ensure you have a fast release
- you want to have a fast attack and release so none of the valleys are being compressed
- by doing thick you would’ve levelled out the waveform as well as using makeup gain to get a huge sound
What are the parameters for creating punchy style compression?
- a slow attack means you will be leaving the peaks unharmed
- a slow release enables you to capture everything after the peaks with gain reduction
- set a low threshold (slower return to 0 than a spike)
- targeting both peaks and valleys
- set the ratio so not too aggressive
- set the make up gain to match the initial loudness (you want the valleys to be the same before and after you compress it)
(Be cautious of adding too much due to head room)
What are the parameters for groove style compression?
- slow attack
- fast release
- low threshold
What styles of compression are used to balance?
- consistency
- depth (father)
- depth (closer)
What styles of compression are used to enhance?
- punchy compression
- thickness compression
- groove compression
What styles of compression are used to glue?
- consistency compression
- depth (farther)
- groove
What styles of compression are used to fix?
- create headroom
- turn down room sound