Highcut on the master bus - second question for today

JoeJackson

JoeJackson

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Oct 9, 2007
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A lot of people seem to low cut everything at 30Hz ....

Do you also apply a high-cut on the master bus or do you leave the high end of your mix totally intact?
 
I've seen a lot of people go with around 30hz and 17khz. Personally though, I find myself boosting some 27k to open up my mix and I usually don't filter off the lows at all.
 
No, I meant 27k. :) One of the guys who did mastering for me for a long time actually told me that he ends up doing that to a lot of my mixes to get the hi-end right. I think he used a Massive Passive though.
 
I didn't think passive eq's could boost, only cut - and more importantly, how would boosting in a supremely inaudible range make the slightest bit of audible difference? Could it only be as a result of some side effect inherent to that unit?
 
It's not really about boosting that specific frequency, just about the overall curve of the song. If you take an analyzer and look at a lot of tracks, sometimes after the usual drop at the end of the spectrum, it'll spike back upwards a little bit. I know a lot of mastering guys who boost beyond 20k though for air, it works better on analog EQ's (MP, Avalon, NTI EQ3 ect.), sometimes digital gets too harsh/phasey on high frequencies.
 
Obviously, it's not really about boosting that frequency at all.. cause we can't hear it. The effect is happening elsewhere if it's audible, so I have to say it seems pretty silly to talk about altering frequencies that we can't hear.

Are their even any speakers that reproduce sound that high? if so.. wtf is the point?
 
Fuck dogs. SRSLY.

Okay, it's true that passive circuits have a hell of a time 'boosting'... they can cut everything but a given range, but that's about it.

As for 'harsh/phasey'... never heard anyone associate those two directly like that, what exactly do you mean?

Jeff
 
Go get a digital EQ and boost past 20k and you'll hear what I mean. Then go to a mastering house and have them do the same with one of their analog EQs. While you're there check out the MP and see what it can/can't do. Then try and describe it the best you can with words. =D

Seriously guys, it's just another flavor to get air in your mix, maybe boosting at 18k with a Q of 0.4 will do the trick who knows. This is just what worked for one guy who used to do mastering for me.
 
highcut1mt7.png



HexTheNet said:
Go get a digital EQ and boost past 20k and you'll hear what I mean.
Click to expand...

We've gone from I-hear-dog-whistles silly to so-silly-the-ninjas-are-editing silly! Someone call JP22!

Yeah, I do see what you mean about air, but... 27K was a little out there. You're not hearing that frequency at all on a 44.1K CD, and unless your preamps and converters were made by Norwegian black-metallers who were trying to make noise so shrill it made ice explode...

Jeff
 
Wow, I didn't know you could get e-mails like that for one. And yeah my computer messed up and I had to edit.

But, yeah, there has been lots written on this subject. Rupert Neve has a good one. Check it out. I'm not trying to convince you of anything though, it's just another flavor. I wonder why all those nice analog eq's have the option though...
 
Just edit your subscription preferences in the User Control Panel and you can tell it what to send and where to send it. That's why I wind up responding to things within minutes if I'm at the computer.

The thing with analog EQs is that they never do *just* what you tell them to do. There's always some little anomaly that makes things a little different. We can call it 'character' or we can call it 'fucked up'... learning to use an individual unit can be as weird as learning to use a whole class of products because there's just so much bizarre in a tiny little box and things never work exactly how they should.

Jeff
 
Well, I guess I'll just call it by what it is for simplicities sake, hard enough to describe sound as it is!


But the point I think you're missing JBroll (or maybe I didn't make it clear enough) is that mostly when this happens in mastering or on the 2bus, the boosts are fairly wide Q or a shelf which affects other areas too (even the 32k boost on the Avalon747 are audible with a wide enough Q!). Like I said earlier, it's not about that frequency, it's about what happens leading up to it. If you read Neve's article he even believes that people can hear about 20k, just not conciously. I don't know if I agree but hey... Try it out for yourself though!
 
There isn't much to explain it on the link I posted, sorry, the story goes that the affect of something happening that high, whether it be distortion or magical cymbal pickup, or whatever, can be heard lower...the effect...not the frequency itself.

When you add noise of that band into you're audio, you will definitely hear it's affect.

Am I using my affect/effect correctly?
 
Benny H said:
If other things in the chain like limiters/compressor further along can 'hear' that high, well...?
Click to expand...

Hmm, that's an interesting point...I can't think of any situation where it would make a difference off hand, but that definitely doesn't mean I'm ruling out the possibility.
 
I see what he is saying about boosting at 27k. If you use a fairly wide Q, you might not hear the actual center frequency being boosted, but you can maybe hear some of the frequencies leading up to it.
 
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