Like, if you take away 4db “from treble”, should that be distributed roughly amongst bass and mid or solely either if you want it to be heavy for that range?
Is it like an equation that benefits from balancing it out?
No. The eq should be the inverse of the room/speaker response; it’s irrelevant if the gains add to zero.
And, most music has way more energy in certain (generally lower) bands, so it’s not like making the numbers sum to zero results in the same total energy.
I think that’s a very important point. If you “balance” the EQ like you describe but you boost a frequency band that our ears are more sensitive to and lower a band that we’re less sensitive to by the same amount of dB… The mix might still sound louder than before.
So don’t worry too much about the numbers and heed the great advice given in this thread.
No, you EQ to bring specific frequencies to the front or top, and to attenuate other less desirable frequencies from the mix. You want to use it with compression and other tools to build your sound space.
Best practice varies based on the specific use case, but generally you don’t want to modify sound any more than you have to. The more you modify, the more it has the potential to distort the sound depending on the quality of the particular amplifier and other components. It can get complicated, especially with hardware/analog EQs because of physical quality of the wiring, connections, and components. So, in general, it’s best to leave most things at 0db and change only the things you want to change. However, there are exceptions. Like if you want to change all but one of the frequencies by -4db, you’re better off changing the main amp by -4db and increasing just the one you didn’t want changing by 4db this the EQ is only modifying a small amount of frequency and the rest is passthrough. And generally the main amp is going to have less distortion than the EQ.
That being said, this is talking about cases where your tolerance for distortion is extremely low or you have a really shitty EQ, in which case it’s probably better to just throw it out and forget the whole thing 🤣. Because most people aren’t going to notice the difference of using the EQ for amplification or the main, even if they aren’t the best quality.
So, if you really are as picky about stuff that doesn’t matter much, but just want things to be as perfect as possible, like me, balance towards 0 as much as possible using both the EQ and the main. Otherwise, do whatever, probably no one will know the difference.
Also, I know the math isn’t exactly right for the -4 and +4, but there are other things you need to know to get it perfect anyway for one inline -4 to equal another inline +4. But it’s close enough…
Nah, that’s part of the point of granular control. Sometimes you want/need a decrease in a given band without an increase in the rest.
Perfect example is the Metallica album St Anger. If you fiddle with the eq in a good player that allows for per-album or per-sing settings, you can dial back the over mixed high hat and partially dampen the tin can snare. You end up with a better sound (particularly in headphones) that doesn’t fatigue the ear as much.
If you took those attenuated bands and upped the others, you’d just have muddy mids and you’d lose the clarity of James’ low end.
That album is so over drummed that it’s hard to listen to without eq tweaks. With them, it’s a much better experience.
Interesting question. I’ve always used my ears because you can’t just plus and minus frequency ranges to get the sound you want since some frequencies may sound louder than others due to a number of factors (environment, hardware, ears, physics, etc).
I like to think of a flat EQ as 0, and you can add or subtract frequency ranges for taste/needs.
You really only want to be concerned about a sort of 0 level if you’re overall volume is clipping/distorting and you can ring it down for some reason.
On my phone, I can’t set the volume high enough for things to be audible via the phone speaker, due to stupid OS limitations.
So, to mitigate that, I’ve pushed all the sliders in the equalizer to the top. It doesn’t sound any different, just louder.
That’s also what happens, if you don’t balance the numbers. It’s just overall slightly more or less loud. And the numbers for volume are completely arbitrary anyways, so no need to worry about it.
