Hey guys, Eric Tarr here for theproaudiofiles.com. In this video I’ll be discussing how to
use an EQ at the mastering stage to balance the frequency spectrum of your mix. So far
I’ve been using the iZotope Ozone 5 plugin to polish up my mix using some basic processing.
Here’s what I’ve got so far.
[song being mastered]
Using an EQ at the mastering stage can be a tricky thing. It might be tempting if you
think there are any spectral problems or spectral issues that you should use an EQ here to try
and fix those problems. However it’s my opinion that if you have these issues, and
you can, go back to the mixing stage and try and fix them on the individual instruments.
Therefor what I’m gonna argue and suggest is that the mastering stage, rather than trying
to fix problems, what we should be doing it trying to enhance your mix before the limiter
in the signal chain. You’re gonna do this by doing very gradual and subtle spectral
shaping. Let me get into the plugin and show you some tricks that you can use.
Go ahead and turn on the module right here. And before I even get into doing any spectral
shaping, what I like to do first is go into the snapshots tab. What I’m gonna do is
capture a snapshot that’s gonna tell me the longterm spectral average of the frequency
content in my mix. This is gonna be a helpful guide and reference for me when I’m trying
to figure out how to balance a frequency spectrum. I’ll start the capture here and press play.
[song being captured by Ozone 5 snapshot]
So let’s have a look at this snapshot. What I notice is that in my opinion this is not
a very well balanced mix across the frequency spectrum. I’ve got a lot of low frequency
energy and then when I get into the midrange it falls off a little bit. And then the high
frequency, it falls off even more.
Now, one thing you need to realize when you’re thinking about mastering a mix and trying
to make your mix sound and be perceived being very loud, you have to understand how the
human ear hears. And one thing to know, is that the human ear is very sensitive to frequencies
around 1k up to 3k. But it’s not very sensitive to frequencies that are down here around 50
Hz. So what you don’t want to do it put a lot of low frequency energy in your mix.
You’d rather maybe concentrate or bring up a little more of the energy in the upper mids
where the ear is gonna be very sensitive to those frequencies. So what I’m gonna try
and do is bring down a little bit of the low end. Bring up a little bit of these upper-mids
and hopefully that will balance out the frequency spectrum a little bit better. So I’ll go
in here, first thing I’ll do, add in a bell shape filter. Bring this down, maybe around
the 2kHz range.
Now I don’t want to do very dramatic spectral shaping, so I’m only gonna go up here by
about 1 dB. And I like to keep a very wide Q here because I don’t want it to be too
sharp of a filter, so I’ll broaden this out a little bit. That’ll be just fine.
Next thing I wanna do is bring down a little bit more of the low end. So I’ll go in here,
use another bell. Looks like maybe what I’ll try and do is bring this down so it’s centered
right around 80 Hz. Sounds great. I’m gonna bring it down by 1 dB. Looks like I can maybe
widen out this Q a little bit more. Alright, that’s at far as it’s gonna go. Now so
far what I’ve done is just tried to balance the mix. I’ve brought up the upper-mids,
brought down the lows, and this is what it sounds like.
[full mix after iZotope Ozone 5 EQ]
Another thing that I’ll suggest, especially if you’re worried about bringing down too
much low end and having the bottom end of your mix fall out. Is one trick that I like
to do that kind of tricks the mind into thinking that there’s more low end is to actually
pull out a little bit more of the low mids. And what that’s gonna do relatively speaking,
is the low-mids are gonna be a little bit quieter compared to the low end, so that it
doesn’t sound as much like there’s — the low end is missing.
Alright, so I’ll bring in another bell-shaped filter here. Bring it up maybe around 400
Hz. This one I’m gonna use a sharper Q, bring it in tighter. Go down another 1 dB.
Alright. Just scoop out a little bit of those low-mids. Get it up closer to 400. Alright,
let’s listen to this.
[song with low-mid EQ cut]
And that’s all there really is to it. Nothing fancy going on here. Very gradual subtle spectral
shaping to balance out the frequency spectrum and enhance my mix such that it’s gonna
be perceived as being loud. Stay tuned for the next video where I’ll discuss a couple
small tricks that you can use with automation to put the last few touches on a mix before
it hits the limiter.