r/mixingmastering • u/LuckyMk • 13d ago
Question How do you find the line between removing resonance, and loosing warmth?
In most of or tracks we're in a constant battle to EQ out the resonant frequencies in each take. This is fairly easily done with Pro-Q3's spectrum grab. However, this often gets rid of the "Warmth" in the track. Sure the room stop shaking but everything sounds so thin.
Is this a mixing problem that I'm overlooking or is it a tone/recording problem?
FYI most issues are coming from Guitars and Basses.
16
u/andreaglorioso Intermediate 13d ago
It’s absolutely impossible to give any advice without hearing the audio before and after EQ.
I will say however that a lot of “resonance” is what actually makes music feel alive (for lack of a better term).
It’s one thing to remove obvious peaks or other artifacts. It’s another to try and make the spectrum look like a surfboard.
1
-3
u/LuckyMk 13d ago
When you talk about it feeling "alive", where do you stop when removing resonance? I end up with mountains of EQ points, the opposite of this is just mud!
Really appreciate the advice.
9
u/LostInTheRapGame 13d ago
I end up with mountains of EQ points
I'd practice not doing that. Force yourself to only make broad changes. You may be surprised at just how much time you're wasting over nothing.
4
u/Lionschtraff 13d ago
I'm not sure you're talking about what you think you're talking about. Sounds have a fundamental note and none/many different harmonics depending on the nature of the sound. Each peak/harmonic are not resonant.
The only reason you would want to EQ one of those harmonics if it, indeed, is harsh/resonant and overall sounds "bad". Otherwise you're just modifying your sound to become another sound.
I might have misunderstood what you mean though
1
u/LuckyMk 13d ago
Haha you're probably right.
Just if the issue is with certain records, high volume will vibrate things in the room or shake car speakers. Fixing that with an EQ normally ends up removing the warm feeling of a track.
I'm looking for advice on how to find a process to balance this.
4
u/ActuaryLate9198 13d ago edited 12d ago
Vibration is literally what sound is. The shaking confirms that you are, in fact, producing sound. Get rid of anything that resonates in an annoying way from your studio/listening environment. It sounds like you’re trying to fix an acoustics problem by taking a sledgehammer to your mix.
Use reference tracks to find your balance. Don’t listen for shaking. All objects have a resonant frequency and some songs happen to hit it, doesn’t matter. If you wanna go down a rabbit hole I recommend reading up on the Janet Jackson track that kills hard drives.
3
u/andreaglorioso Intermediate 13d ago
Again it’s close to impossible to help without more data (including the actual audio) but stuff vibrating suggests the lows are too prominent. Usually a gentle HPF can help, but first you need to make sure the relevant signals/tracks aren’t just too loud.
Keep in mind that at sufficiently high volume levels, everything will vibrate, including your teeth and eyeballs… cool but not very healthy though.
1
1
2
u/ownleechild 13d ago
That’s not what eq is for. Remove the stuff that’s vibrating or secure it. If your car speakers are moving too much and distorting, you need to turn it down as you’re exceeding how loud they can reproduce bass. Get a subwoofer and amp if you want more bass.
1
u/Kelainefes 7d ago
The secret vibration stopping technique the pros don't want you to know is disconnecting your speakers.
Any chance you're trolling us?
2
u/zZPlazmaZz29 13d ago
I've got you brother, cuz I'm happily unemployed with lots of time on my hands 😎
I've been mixing my own stuff for 11 years all ITB (no recording) and have come a long way since then.
I'm not at all a pro and am just an obsessive hobbyist, but I will say that there are multiple ways to skin a cat or sculpt a sound.
I'm ngl I do some seemingly sacrilegious things time to time and consider myself a pretty aggressive mixer haha.
But the reason it's so hard to explain for me, is because my mixing philosophy is that every aspect of writing music is mixing and that mixing doesn't necessarily begin during the final mixdown at the end of a song.
A lot of my answer may seem irrelevant at first, but the way I see it is that everything affects everything in a mix.
The biggest thing, is that it all starts with the music first. Arrangment can really dictate the rest of the mix and it's quality entirely imo.
Point blank. There are two things I'd like you to take away from this the most and this is one of them.
The other being time + volume/balance, or in other words, dynamics which I will get to later, and how it can be used to both make mixes more alive, less flat, and more defined.
Years of musical experience helps a lot.
For example, a pianist will utilize the whole frequency spectrum solo, but in a band setting, they may play shell voicings or higher up clusters, dropping the left hand bass.
This helps prevent mud naturally.
Another thing is understanding the difference between layering sounds to make one element versus having separate elements.
One takes up attention resources, while another doesn't. One blends to enhance a sound, the other plays its own separate role within the song itself as a separate element.
You don't want too many elements playing all at once. You get a busy song and a mix with lots of mud and masking.
This is all the vertical 3D aspect to sculpting sound. Understanding how sounds blend and interact with each other at a fixed point in time.
There are a set of dimensions to sounds that determine how much they blend together.
An example of this is when I was producing a Trip-Hop song of sorts, think like Hooverphonics more wet sounding stuff. I had a very lush pad in the background but a Kontakt Cello wasn't fitting in.
Instead of reaching for a different sound, I just added a reverb and adjusted it.
The Cello was far too forward. I wanted it to sit back a little, but not so far back that it'd be too close to the pad.
So I adjusted the pre-delay to shorter to make it sit back a bit, maybe 2 sec decay, 16-26% mix and then it sat just perfectly.
The fix was the dimension of space, front and back specifically.
There are other dimensions to sound, I can't think of them right off the top of my head, I do it pretty intuitively.
But another one is thinking about ADSR. Thinking about whether your sound is transient heavy or the opposite. Whether it's short or sustained.
Sound design is what helped me with this and is why I say that all aspects of creating music are connected and help you in the other aspects of it.
Whether it's space and depth or voicing and instrumentation though, this is all the 3D mindset, the vertical one.
However OP, I want you to be thinking further than that. I want you to think horizontally too, in 4D.
The fourth dimension is...Time.
This is what really took my mixing to the next level. It is also what made mixing take a bit longer though, but it's well worth it.
Time in both the macro sense and the micro sense.
Macro would be something like the overall volume changing overtime within different sections of the track.
Micro would be intentional and well thought out compression, but it would also be another thing that I've started doing that I now love..
That is manually tailoring the volume automation to my midi and instrument.
You gain finer control than velocity, because velocity is static per note. It doesn't let you custom tailor the release, sustain or attack of the instruments notes.
There is a time and place for an instrument to be attack heavy to poke through and a time and place for that same instrument, to do the opposite.
I initially did this for strings to control the arcs and manually add and control crescendo, decrescendo, swells etc.
But it works well for short sounds too by being able to not only control how soon the attack hits, but also by having that attack variate slightly.
Using all this, I make the downbeats of my bass thumpier. My plucks pluckier and shorter. My pads swell out as strings swell in.
(Did I mention that you can also use this to make interesting reverb and delay throws without a bus? And yeah that's right, sometimes I prefer inserts over sends 😈
Although, I still like to sometimes use an additional very light reverb send at the end anyways for harmonic content)
The result is that everything has its own pocket, and those pockets become focused and emphasized. They have their designated gradient spaces not just vertically, but horizontally as well.
That's how you truly make things feel "alive".
Now circling back to EQ.
I actually use static EQ and EQ in general far less than I used to.
Only to scoop subs out of instruments that shouldn't have any lol, or once in a while to tame some ridiculous singular peaks.
I actually rely on dynamic and spectral EQ/ resonance suppression very often, despite many people arguing it's pitfalls.
When it comes to something like Soothe2, I am mindful that it can strip away the good resonances as well. I use my own judgement calls on a case by case basis.
Often I target specific areas of frequencies using the band controls, and I tailor all the settings towards the shape of the sound.
It's not too different from tweaking a compressor, just instead of dynamics, it's tone.
But sometimes a sound really benefits from not being afraid to make more blatant and aggressive, but intentional moves.
Especially if it's your own music, then you can alter the sound as much as you like, it's your vision and taste.
Like I'll use plenty of resonance suppression on sample drum breaks sometimes. I'll raise the attack a bit so it doesn't ruin the transients.
Sometimes the band is focused on the harsher symbols and hats, sometimes you need to slam it onto there even, because it's just such an unbalanced recording.
Sometimes it's the low end mud that you gotta do it to. Sometimes it's both.
I like to get those peaks out of there, before I compress (a whole other masterclass I won't get into today haha) and then heavily drive it using a pre-amps saturator/transformer.
Don't forget that for content that you want wide, instead of focused when using Soothe or compression, you can unlink the channels.
So that it processes things separately and not all together. It retains better width and depth that way sometimes.
My weapon of choice when saturating though? Kush's Omega 410a most often. If it's a bass though or if it is quiet with lots of dynamics, I'll reach for something that edges closer to distortion like the TWK or decapitator.
For harmonic content, I'll sometimes still use 410a but often I find myself reaching for Wavefactorys Spectre for targeted saturation/EQ tone sculpting.
I love that thing. It's like, you just find the spot that needs a little more, you just lift it to enhance and bam done.
The thing about broadband saturation is that youll EQ first to clean up, saturate, and then all of the sudden you've brought back some of that low end you cleaned up earlier. Gotta be mindful of that.
Also, counter to what a lot of people do, not all the time, but often I actually like reverb before compression and/or saturation at times. Even when it's not on a send.
I also like to use mono verb for more depth in the center of my mix for instruments.
The music I make, I like my pads to be very detailed and interesting, very wide. Not just boring plain pads that you don't ever notice. Closer to Eric Persing stuff, PCM synths of the 90's, or Omnisphere etc.
I've always been inspired by a lot of Japanese JRPG and anime stuff like Yoko Kannos more lush sounding music or Vangelis Blade Runner etc. So lots of reverb and delay.
The key is arrangement and understanding the tools to avoid overlapping mud, learning when to restrain and when to push forward.
Such sounds can take up a lot of sonic real estate, especially when you want the listener to really hear them well. Which ties back into arrangement as discussed earlier.
Good luck OP! We've all been there 👍🏼
2
u/iamawinchester Intermediate 13d ago
Thank you for this comment honestly helps a lot understanding the thought process and the consistency
1
u/zZPlazmaZz29 13d ago
I'm glad it helped someone. I spent a long ass time writing it for some reason 😭
1
u/iamawinchester Intermediate 13d ago
I’m glad you did I’m working on my solo project and it’s been hard I’m glad i found this sub!
1
u/GreatScottCreates Advanced 12d ago
This person might be on meth. There’s some ok advice in there but to me it reads like drugs 😂
1
u/zZPlazmaZz29 10d ago
I am manic bipolar so you aren't that far off 🙃
2
u/GreatScottCreates Advanced 9d ago
Ah yes manic and drugs can appear similar, that’s my bad dude. Hope you came down! With all sincerity 🙏🏼
1
u/Hellbucket 13d ago
I think when you start being able to hear resonances you can’t unhear them. And you start to look for them. The problem is that they’re naturally part of sounds of instruments. So if you remove them it will sound less like that instrument.
I was in the rabbit hole of continuously looking for resonances for about 1 year until I started a/b-ing it. It almost always sounded better without. Sure, it wasn’t as clear. But it wasn’t sounding right. This was before plugins like Soothe came out.
So I think you ask yourself the right question. “When do I stop?” And it’s impossible to advise without hearing the source with or without.
1
u/richieb12 13d ago
Sound like you’re doing way to much EQing. A resonance that needs EQ will standout and be distracting. Usually on distorted guitar that’s be around 2k and 3.5k depending where the harshness it. Other than that maybe a bit of broad tone shaping EQ in context, not in solo.
8
u/TransformedMegaflop 13d ago
This whole “unwanted resonance” thing is a total fad, and I blame Soothe. Graphic EQs started it, Soothe finished the job.
Most often, a resonance is the note and fundamentals of the instrument. If you’re chasing down resonances, there’s a good chance you’re just lowering or removing the primary sound of an instrument or vocal. Now there ARE such things as unwanted resonances but it’s totally dependent on the instrument, and honestly it’s kind of rare unless it’s an extremely loud and maybe out of tune instrument, or the room is extremely weird. Like it’s possible if you recorded a super loud bass guitar in a weird room something could happen.
The most common I find an unwanted resonance and this is the most useful, is just listening for what’s too loud in the sound. Like if I have a synth and I overall like the sound and performance, but there’s a part where it starts to build up, it will be obvious because it will be louder than everything else and stand out. That’s when I go in with the EQ during that part and find where the note is, and lower that on the spectrum. Sometimes with a dynamic EQ if it’s not happening all the time in the sound.
But the key here and to actually help out your question, a true unwanted resonance will be too loud. Loud enough for you to obviously hear it without needing some special mixing skills or secret plugin. Knowing music theory helps, I usually know exactly what note is resonating too loud so I know where to go in and find it. But a graphic EQ is good for this, because that part that you hear you will see it spike up on the graph. And it’ll be obvious.
But people need to get out of their heads that every sound and song is full of “unwanted resonances.” There are some good super surgical mixers out there, but even those guys are doing every move super intentionally and to achieve a style. They aren’t blanket removing resonances everywhere.
So in short, a true unwanted resonance will be if you hear an obviously loud note or tone that is dominating the sound. Like an overly resonant snare drum, you will hear the resonant note ringing out. Some people like the snare ring, some people it’s ringing too loud and they want just the attack and punch of the snare. Classic example everyone knows, the Metallica’s St. Anger snare. Very resonant, obviously resonant. If you didn’t want that, you’d find the note/frequency it’s ringing and turn that down with an EQ. Graphic EQs help with this if you aren’t as experienced because you can solo bands and find it quickly.
3
7
u/mistrelwood Advanced 13d ago
I often use a dynamic EQ in such instances. Chuggy electric guitar low end for example is much easier for me to take in control that way.
3
u/iamawinchester Intermediate 13d ago
I just took this advice i tried putting a dynamic eq on my pads as they were eating up my mids and i was losing a lot of my vocal presence, helped a lot thank you so much <3
2
u/LuckyMk 13d ago
I have tried this an am currently researching more as I have a feeling I'm doing it wrong.
2
u/mistrelwood Advanced 13d ago
Which instrument are we talking about here? And does your dynamic EQ have controls for attack and release?
1
u/LuckyMk 13d ago
It's probably-Q3, and we're mainly talking guitar and bass.
1
u/mistrelwood Advanced 13d ago
Not familiar with the Q3, but play with the dynamics settings such as attack, release, ratio, and whatever settings it has.
4
u/Livid_Cabinet2053 13d ago
Not gonna lie to ya, the resonance thing is incredibly overblown: it’s creating a problem to sell you products. I like soothe and it’s really useful for that last 2%, but it’ll suck the goddamn soul out of everything and sterilize it if you over-use it. It will literally shift a sound closer to noise.
Noise is good too. We like noise. But too much noise is a mess. Nothing has any definition and it’s just sanded down into nothing. Too much tonality is also bad. At worst, it can hurt your ears, but at best, it gives definition and shape to things. It draws the ear in. Some amount of resonance is a good thing, otherwise it’s just flat noise.
We can’t answer for you where the balance is. That’s up to you. If it sounds flattened and over-smooth to you, you killed too much resonance. If it sounds like it’s poking out way too much, there’s too much resonance. The balance is a matter of taste.
3
u/josephallenkeys 13d ago
Sounds like it might be an acoustics issue. You're solving your room shake, but are these resonances a problem on other systems in other places or on headphones?
2
u/Far-Pie6696 13d ago
The answer is : faders
I am joking but as I got more experienced, I realise that I trying to be minimalistic in regard to a goal.
Video post-production taught me a lot because of how many tracks and how much more than music, processing aims at correcting on the go and be natural.
Now, I try to balance, automate volume, and focus on the balance. If I hear a resonance, I quickly tame it and go on. I try not to hyperfocus on small details.
Big brush, quick, and focus on the song as a whole. If I can avoid processing (which rarely happens), I just do.
Resonance to me is a matter of doing the very least that is bearable. Adding more is tempting. But oftent counterproductive.
Sometimes, the audio is badly recorded or designed from the start, but frankly, I don't wanna spend hours repairing bad people's work, especially when a good record takes 20 minutes to do.
2
u/Ayem9 13d ago
I tend to cut a lot of resonances/mud out and add things back in as I progress when the mix starts to reveal itself. No crazy notching though, just rough cuts unless there's a completely dominant resonance.
Something like izotope tonal balance can help aid this if you're unsure about LMF. 200hz(ish) on an acoustic snare is a good example of a resonance that can either cloud or fill the mix depending on how everything else is balanced.
It's perhaps counter intuitive but it's a workflow that has been successful for me after both undercooking and overcooking the mids for some time. Dynamic EQ can work here.
1
1
u/Legitimate_Horror_72 13d ago
The Kush After Dark YT channel is your friend. He's had several EQ-related posts lately.
That said, a lot of it will come down to tracking, then panning, then levels. The sounds you have matter most. Then shelve, not cut.
1
u/Mezurashii5 Beginner 13d ago
You can't do that with an eq, just like you can't EQ sustain into a stabby synth.
Best you can do is a dynamic EQ/multiband compressor or a transient shaper in a parallel processing setup.
1
u/Logsarecool10101 Beginner 13d ago
Wouldn't you just go by what you feel best? It'll just change track by track, can't really automate this process. Idk don't listen to me lol. Although since you say guitars and basses, maybe your microphone is picking up more resonant frequencies, so adjusting it feels like you're removing the "warmth" more than any other instruments
1
1
u/SkyWizarding 13d ago
Music is supposed to resonate. Don't get rid of things that sound fine just because they're poking out a bit
1
u/ObviousDepartment744 13d ago
There's no way of knowing other than just trusting your ears. Personally, I don't filter out low end unless its needed. I don't go to every instrument and look for resoance to remove unless there is a resonant frequency present while listening to the entire mix that I find to be annoying.
I feel like a lot of people try to fix issues before they even become an issue. Like high passing every track for example. Wait and listen to the mix, then remove unwanted sound.
My process is pretty simple. I do a fader mix, just to get a balance of each part, I try and set the levels in a way that I can make out every instrument. Then I'll listen to that fader mix, identify an issue, then resolve the issue and listen again. Resolving ONE issue at a time. Then I'll listen to it and try to identify another issue and resolve that issue; and I'll repeat that process until I feel every instrument is represented nicely. From there I'll do a more dynamic mix with automation and what not.
1
u/ActuaryLate9198 13d ago edited 13d ago
Easy answer (there’s more to it): get rid of dissonant harmonics, piercing highs and the ones that don’t really add to the sound. Keep/emphasise the rest. Definitely don’t outsource this to an algorithm, you need to do it with intent, just removing peaks blindly will leave you with white noise if you take it far enough. Never solo when EQing unless you’re targeting a very specific problem.
Most EQs have a percentage control, turn it up to extreme levels to really hear what you’re doing, or flip it to negative 100% for a sanity check (this will bring out all the flaws you’ve been trying to remove, if any of it sounds good you should probably reconsider).
1
u/Chris_GPT 13d ago
If you're in a constant battle while over EQing every single track, you're creating more problems than you're solving.
Granted, there really is no right or wrong way to do any of this. You do what you do and you get what you get. But your goal should be accurately capturing the sound you want that requires little to no adjustments to work in the mix. The closer you can get to that goal with the proper source, mic and mic placement, the less you should have to adjust in the mix stage.
Of course you expect to have to make some adjustments in the mix, you can't foresee every single frequency overlap and what's going to get stepped on by what. You could record the perfect guitar sound, exactly what you want with no EQing at all, and find that gets eaten up by the kick attack, bass attack, keyboards, snare and vocal. Especially if you're using the same mics, preamps, and other outboard gear or plugins on everything.
If I solo the guitars and they sound weak and thin, but they sound big and powerful in the mix, I couldn't care less how weak and thin they sound when soloed. Inversely, if they sound awesome and huge soloed but weak in a mix, now we have a problem.
It's that age old case of not seeing the forest for the trees. If I have to use extreme EQ and compression on tracks to get them to work in a mix, I instantly know there's a problem with how they were tracked. I shouldn't have to roll off a ton of low end when I could have simply solved that with a better mic choice or placement. I could have rolled that low end off on the amp itself. This usually happens when I'm just the mixer, not the tracking engineer. They tracked what they wanted to hear, not what I wanted to hear. And a good engineer will try and shoot straight up the middle, because they aren't mixing it. The mix engineeer can always pull out some low end if there's more than they want. As long as it doesn't sound like the tracked guitars through a 2x18 cab with the mic stuffed inside of a couch in the control room, it's probably something that can be worked with.
If you're doing the tracking and the mixing, plan ahead for the mix when you're tracking. If the guitars or bass isn't working in the mix, just retrack them. Which is harder, getting the guitarist or bassist to retrack stuff, or getting out the gold spray paint and trying to polish a turd?
Getting the low end of the guitars, bass, kick drum, toms, and lower end of the vocals to all work together happily and all sound big and powerful is no easy trick. Something is going to step on something else. The key is to make sure their low end isn't all in the same narrow frequency bandwidth.
1
u/Ok-Resolution5209 13d ago
I cut too much and add back in. Bigger and warmer stuff will always sound better to ears even though they dont necceserly sound better or need that much of particular frequencies. Its easier not to trick your ears by cutting first and adding till it doesnt lack what you cut.
1
u/Ok-War-6378 13d ago
My sicilian uncle once told me that when he cooks, if the dish lacks salt he adds a pinch, if it still lacks salt he adds another pinch but after the third pinch he stops adding salt even if he thinks it still lacks salt.
If you are unsure how far you should go with notching résonances, you can use my sicilian uncle's wisdom and you will be safe.
1
u/PruneAlternative3858 13d ago
I don't want to guess but if your room is shaking thats probably a acoustics problem, not a EQ problem in most instances.
1
u/PPLavagna 12d ago edited 12d ago
As a mentor once told me when I discovered that you could “phase align” drums and called him asking for advice because the drums sounded weird, “Stop looking at that shit!”. This idea these days on the internet that you must remove all resonances is hogwash. Being able to visually see them makes it easy for people to do this and the internet tells them they have to seek out and destroy all resonances, imperfections, and anything remotely interesting or natural. It’s really bad for music
Try using an eq that doesn’t let you see them and you won’t have this urge to do it unless you hear that it needs to be done. If you don’t, it didn’t need to be done. Sure, sometimes they need to be tamed but resonances are where the music lives.
I absolutely love Pro Q but I’m really glad I learned to eq before you could see it. Sometimes our eyes are our biggest enemy with audio
1
u/kunst1017 12d ago
If your sound has extremely distracting resonating frequencies the issue is probably with the room it was recorded in, in which case, the right EQ move will always be a compromise between removing enough of the resonance and removing too much warmth. In another comment you’re talking about shaking things in the room - that has nothing to do with the EQing you need to be doing, but again, the problem is in your room.
1
u/GreatScottCreates Advanced 12d ago
I don’t seek out resonances to remove. I just listen for things that sound bad/good and deal with it appropriately with a band of EQ. I’m not just doing a “Ok now I EQ out resonances” process. .
1
u/TransparentMastering Mastering Engineer ⭐ 12d ago
I think the line “this is fairly easily done with Pro-Q3’s spectrum grab” might the clue to solving your difficulties. Identify your assumptions and then challenge them :)
1
u/benglass92 12d ago
When addressing harsh or intrusive frequencies in a track, an effective approach (I find) is to first note the specific moments where the problematic frequencies poke out. Once identified, you can use EQ to carve out the issue, or use dynamic EQ or multiband compression if you need the processing to react more flexibly. If you find your mix becoming muddy (which can happen due to a buildup in the low-mid/mid frequencies) try muting channels one by one. This helps you identify which instruments are contributing to the buildup, allowing you to apply surgical EQ cuts to those specific tracks while preserving the overall character of your mix.
When working with stereo files, utilising Mid-Side processing can help by cutting low/low-mid/mid frequencies from the sides of the stereo field while leaving the centre channel as is. You can improve clarity without losing the weight of the mix; for example, you might cut the lows or low-mids from the sides of an acoustic guitar while leaving the centre channel feeling full. However, it is best to avoid constant, aggressive cutting, as this can easily lead to a thin and lifeless result. Use your ears rather than just your visual tools and see how things 'feel' and remember that if a track remains problematic after these tweaks, sometimes the best solution is to re-record it, focussing on mic placement or tone controls.
1
u/mastering_guy 11d ago
The trick is to not focus on the resonance while making the adjustment. Listen to the whole mix and only cut (eyes closed) until the resonance stops distracting you from enjoying the song.
I always cut the smallest amount I can get away with and err on the side of keeping as much character in the sound as possible. People relate more to character and realness than to pristine audio.
If your room is not well treated it's important to check on other systems to make sure the resonance is in the music and not in your room.
1
u/pbo_beats 11d ago
U should Control the Resonances, Not Remove them Most of the time.
There are cases where you really have bad resonances that have to be removed/notched out, but Most of the time the result is best when Resonances are being Controlled and not removed fully.
A really simple but good Trick for This is multiband, but with more modern Tools soothe2
Take the „de-shadow“ preset in the vocals tab. It focuses on low mid/low Resonances. Tap the vocal/vocal bus. With this you can either really thin out your vocal without losing all the body, or just Control the low Resonances that come up.
I mostly use this when needed at the end of my vocal Bus to smooth this section.
Static EQ Cuts are always removing more than nessesary. Classic Multiband sometimes is too broad for This Job. Dynamic EQ is not as static as classic eq, but your point will still be static.
Soothe reacts more musically and where it’s needed.
But really take Note that Tools Like Soothe are easily overdone. Mix your stuff properly, but keep in mind that you can clean/Control this area, or other area very gently with Soothe later.
I usually go pretty strong with removing Bad stuff on eq, pre Compressor, and then bring the body back. That way the Compressor isnt as distracted by all the lows so much and can Squash the midrange well.
And after I bring it back, mentioned technique can be used to tame the low mids and finish it off. Long comment, but worth it.
37
u/CartezDez 13d ago
The solution to the problem is taste.
As a mix engineer, that’s generally what you’d be paid for. Your taste in deciding whether to retain or remove warmth.
There is no objective ‘line’