Comments on: What does it mean to "eq" a recording?

Question: What does it mean to "eq" a recording?

stupidsexyFlanders — Thu, 11 Dec 2003 12:27:38 -0800

When a musician or sound engineer refers to "eq'ing" a recording, what's he or she talking about?

By: majick

majick — Thu, 11 Dec 2003 12:34:07 -0800

"Equalizing" -- that is, adjusting (through filtering and amplifaction) the various frequency components of the sound.

By: konolia

konolia — Thu, 11 Dec 2003 12:36:00 -0800

And boy is it necessary. Sound engineers are unsung heroes.

By: ajpresto

ajpresto — Thu, 11 Dec 2003 12:38:35 -0800

You can tell when they're not paying attention, I tell you what.

I dabbled for a while, helping out my dad's band. The band was lame, but I was proud in making stuff sound pretty tolerable by monkeying with the board. It's amazing how clean some stuff sounds in headphones while it sounds like mud in the real world. Acoustics are interesting things to play with.

Okay, I'll shut up now.

By: majick

majick — Thu, 11 Dec 2003 12:43:35 -0800

A less technical explanation would be something like "Fiddling with that big row of slidey-up-and-down controls until it sounds less cruddy."

By: stupidsexyFlanders

stupidsexyFlanders — Thu, 11 Dec 2003 12:54:01 -0800

So then what's the difference between that and "mastering?"

By: majick

majick — Thu, 11 Dec 2003 12:59:22 -0800

"Mastering" is the act of creation of the very first Real Live Final Copy of the recording, after mixing, edits, postprocessing, and all the other slidey-up-and-down stuff is done. The end result of the mastering process is, unsurprisingly, a "master copy," from which all others are derived.

By: majick

majick — Thu, 11 Dec 2003 13:01:37 -0800

(Crikey, how do I even know this stuff? I've never worked in the audio or music industries nor have I studied them closely... unless I was a board jockey in a past life, maybe it's best if everyone assumes I'm talking out my ass at this point.)

By: crunchburger

crunchburger — Thu, 11 Dec 2003 13:02:44 -0800

But more eq is done during mastering, I think.

By: edlundart

edlundart — Thu, 11 Dec 2003 13:37:19 -0800

this article might help you understand some of the intricacies and goals of EQing.

By: kindall

kindall — Thu, 11 Dec 2003 13:40:20 -0800

Mastering may include EQ, compression, and other audio processing, usually to make all the songs on an album sound like they are of a piece. But individual songs (and individual tracks within these songs) can also be EQ'd, and usually are, during the recording and mixing process.

The slidey-up-and-down type of equalizer is called a graphic EQ, because the sliders make a "graph" of the frequency boosts and cuts. The more bands, the more precise control you have.

There's another type of equalizer called a parametric EQ. It typically only has a few bands (sometimes as few as one) but the frequency and width of each band is adjustable, rather than being fixed like the bands on a graphic EQ. These are really handy for live sound because every room has different resonant frequencies, which you'll want to cut so they match the rest of the audio spectrum, and you can't do that very precisely with a graphic EQ. (They also can be used to reduce feedback and for fine-tuning sound in the studio.)

By: drezdn

drezdn — Wed, 17 Dec 2003 23:51:54 -0800

Except now, mainly mastering is used to make CD's louder.