High passing cymbals... how high?

Josh Burgess

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Feb 18, 2008
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I've been messing around with some somewhat extreme high passing and trying to get a feel for what I like, but just trying to get a general idea here... Around where do you guys usually highpass your cymbals?
 
450Hz is the lowest I've ever gone I think...usually less than 600Hz does the trick.

~006
 
I usually make sure that the snare retains a lot of it's body, and that's where I'll stop.

(start at the top, around 18KHz and move down).

I'm not entirely sure where that averages out at.. I'd have to get back to you on that!
 
You can even get away with it being up at 1000 or so, but I wouldn't push it that high unless there was some really awful bleed going on that was otherwise absolutely impossible to reduce with a limiter. Actually, I think you'd have to do something pretty weird/wrong with OH placement to have something so bad that you had to hi-pass that high...
 
I end up around 300-400hz on average. I find a bit higher looses some meat from the larger cymbals. Not sure how to explain it, but it really makes big crashes and china loose their bottom end (i know that might not be the best description).
 
am i the onlyone who also cuts alot from the 3/5 khz area so the guitars can breath some more?

I don't think you're the only one :)

However, it depends on how the drummer plays his cymbals. If he is one of those mindless brutes who thinks they sound best when hit so hard so that the cymbals choke themselves, then you might need to do something. This kinda creates weird frequencies from the cymbals, since they don't produce the sound they're supposed to.

But I think 400-600 is a usual mark to high pass. And if I remember, I think I did scoop out a little on my solo project at 3-4 khz to get a little guitar shine through the cymbals.

I also watched the snare's spectrum and saw that the crack dwelled at 2.71 khz area, so I scooped that out from the guitars, and that really made the snare come through the guitars. I compensated this by boosting the guitars just under and above those frequencies a little. Dont know if this is a usual method people use but it worked to bring the snare through the guitar without losing too much of the guitar.
 
Well - it depends!

If it was a good drummer on a good kit and I recorded it great than it could be around 150 Hz or so...
If a lot of soundreplacement is going on it can go up... 300-400 Hz maybe. I can remember situations were I was at about 600-800Hz till it started to sound right.

Going up too high cuts to much from the meat of some bigger crashes... And of course if you after a more 3d sound it cuts to much of the meat of snare/toms.
 
Going up too high cuts to much from the meat of some bigger crashes... And of course if you after a more 3d sound it cuts to much of the meat of snare/toms.

+10000 to this

I think people often underestimate the meat, the body of the cymbals. I LOVE, LOOOOOOOVE it when cymbals have their body retained, and it's often not found so much in metal but I've heard some hardcore type of bands who have sooooo beefy cymbals, makes me fall in love with the sound. I'm not sure but I _think_ Underoath's latest CD has beefy cymbals, but it might be another band and I'm just senile... which is very likely the case.

If it's technical extreme death metal, you very rarely find meat in the cymbals, and those guys play rather small sizes too I think, for the fast attack. But in fatter music, in heavier music where there are sizes of 18" and up, I think one should strive to high pass at the lowest frequency possible because it's just too beautiful to cut away :( It's like cropping a picture of a REALLY hot girl, where you just show her head when she has the most amazingly beautiful boobs ever seen.

Of course I am very biased because I'm a cymbal fanatic, I look at them as pieces of art, not instruments. :)
 
this post looks intresting to me?...how do you hi/low pass other istruments? guitar,bass,vox,kick,snare etc....
i like to hear some basic hi/low pass point what you use on your songs. thats why i asking this becouse i heard that
it good thing to hi/low pass everything
 
this post looks intresting to me?...how do you hi/low pass other istruments? guitar,bass,vox,kick,snare etc....
i like to hear some basic hi/low pass point what you use on your songs. thats why i asking this becouse i heard that
it good thing to hi/low pass everything

Haha, just remembered a funny thing a studio technician told me once when I was like 15 and recording a demo with my band. We were talking about frequencies and he was trying to explain the basics to us newbies, and he said:

"Some people like to have frequencies below and above our hearing range, because it makes the music sound good. I wouldn't know though, since I've never heard them myself...."

And I think he is right. I wouldn't dare letting all pieces of the drumset go without a high pass, same for any instrument really. Even the kick, I high pass. Why? Well, I look at it as frequency control. I want to know what my instruments are doing, and I want to know where they're at in the spectrum. If they're all over the place, I can't build a mix up and focus things to sit in a particular position. High passing stuff will leave room in the lows of the mix, and prevent some serious mud.

The same goes for low passing. If you have a sound that is supposed to be dark, just low pass it so that you don't bring any unnecessary noise to the mix. It's a nice way to clean stuff up.

So basically, I'm just a greenie at this but I think like:

Low Pass - To remove unnecessary highs in a sound, thus less noise in the mix

High Pass - To remove unnecessary lows in a sound, thus less mud in the mix.


And as always, I'm sure there are other good reasons for why you should do pass filters on stuff, besides these.