What exactly is boxy?

[Mm1066]

Hear it tossed around quite a lot on this forum and am a bit confused. How exactly an a guitar tone be boxy? Is it full of mids or what? Any examples of what you call boxy? Drums, guitars etc.

 

[FischmungaXTR]

400Hz?

 

[oroinvictus]

400-700Hz or so.

 

[Mm1066]

Thought that was body/warmth?

 

[Lon]

for me boxy is the undefineable thing wrong especially with vocal-recordings if the room is too present, you can do whatever you want the vocals will never glue properly

 

[Loren Littlejohn]

To me boxy sounds like you recorded it in a box, or closet or the like.

It's a shitty sens of space the guitars get put into.

Most ISO cab samples I have listened to nail it.

 

[MindMunch]

 

[ahjteam]

edit: something that has a cardboard box kinda quality to it, usually ~400hz overload

 

[Clockwork]

^^^^Ah I opened the thread knowing that that would have been posted already haha!

I interpret boxy as things sound muffled like if you are listening to an amp being played through an iso cab you can still hear it but its muffled.

 

[Trevoire520]

Boxy is the bane of my existence.
As said already it tends to be used to describe an excess of mid frequencies, normally around the 400hz area.

 

[ahjteam]

It's actually very easy to hear with drums, if you boost the 400hz region of a non-processed kick track for example, depending on the tuning it will start to sound more like hitting a cardboard box or a beach ball

 

[Mm1066]

Clears up a lot. Cheers guys.

 

[Cryo114]

I really like this thread, there have been lots of terms that I wasn't sure of, boxieness was one of them. Turns out I understood it fine according to the descriptions in this thread.

 

[Mm1066]

Yeah I think it's good to have threads reading more into terminology used on this forum, as for newbies like me, coming straight in and seeing terms like this is a bit like walking into a conversation half way and being like

 

[tempe]

Oh I can relate to trying to decipher all the terminology. My advice is get some drum tracks and just fuck around until you start hearing "oh that sounds, boxy / dull / boomy / harsh / muddy / thin etc." Saved me a lot of headache!

 

[ahjteam]

boxy / dull / boomy / harsh / muddy / thin etc

at least these are my definitions for those:

boxy = too much low mids (~250-1k region)
dull = or "dark", not enough treble to taste OR too much low end
boomy = too much low end
harsh = too much presence (~1-10khz region), might be distorted and/or too dry
muddy = something that is masking something, usually too much low mids or reverb or colliding elements
thin etc = or "bright", not enough low end to taste OR too much high end

 

[spencerlogan]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yavx9yxTrsw

edit: something that has a cardboard box kinda quality to it, usually ~400hz overload

4chan queen for life

I consider a mix to be boxy when it all settles on just one frequency, low or high.

 

[Harry Hughes]

at least these are my definitions for those:

boxy = too much low mids (~250-1k region)
dull = or "dark", not enough treble to taste OR too much low end
boomy = too much low end
harsh = too much presence (~1-10khz region), might be distorted and/or too dry
muddy = something that is masking something, usually too much low mids or reverb or colliding elements
thin etc = or "bright", not enough low end to taste OR too much high end

250Hz to 1KHz is probably stretching 'lower mids' a bit much.
1Khz is right up in the 'core mids' territory me thinks