Hey whats up, it's Wick for wickiemedia tutorials
and today i'm gonna talk about equalizers. This is the first of the four -
part tutorial about equalizers that i'm doing here on youtube. So this is just
covering the basics and in the next episode so i'm going to take this a lot further.
An equalizer, or 'EQ', is being used to remove or add frequencies of a signal.
They're being used to create separation between the individual tracks of a mix.
We've got two main reasons for equalizing, and that is
corrective equalizing and enhancive equalizing.
Equalizing may sound very complex but today we're going to learn that it's
really not that complicated.
Let's start off by taking a look at the different equalization curves that we have.
The curve of an equalizer describes how it will apply the boost and cut over a certain
frequency range. There's actually only two types of equalization curves.
We've got a shelving equalizer curve,
and this attenuates or boosts frequencies above or below the set
frequency. We've got a low-shelving and a high shelving.
A low shelving works below the frequencies where we set it and a high shelve
works above the frequency where we set it.
Than we have a bell or a peak/dip equalizer curve. And this boosts or attenuates
a frequency range around a center frequency.
The center frequency gets affected the most and this decreases towards the other frequencies.
Making the EQ curve look like a bell.
Let's take a look at some types of equalizers.
A fixed frequency equalizer can be a shelving- or a bell-type but it only
offers one control : It can boost or cut.
A sweeping equalizer can also be a shelving or a bell type but it offers two controls :
The frequency and a gain parameter. Than we have a parametric equalizer.
And a parametric equalizer is one of the most flexible types of EQ
they offer three controls
the frequency, the gain and the Q-value
So the three functions that we will normally find :
The frequency, which sets the center-frequency of the bell curve and the starting-
frequency of the shelve curve. The Q-value is the bandwidth of the EQ and
by some manufacturers this is called the 'Quality'.
The Q is the center frequency of the curve divided by the bandwidth.
Meaning that a low Q represents a wide bandwidth,
and a high Q-value is a narrow bandwidth. And this can be helpful to know
as some equalizers only show the Q-value as a number.
Other manufacturers use a symbol to indicate a small or a wide bandwidth for the Q-value.
Some other manufacturers can even call the Q-value 'Bandwidth'.
And than we have the 'gain' parameter, or else called the boost/cut as some EQ's call it.
And this is the boost or cut of frequencies. Depending on the
manufacturer and the model of the equalizer, the boost/cut can go up from
-24 dB to +24 dB. Especially with digital
equalizers the boost/cut that you will find is a lot higher than you will find on
analog equalizers.
Let's take a look at my own constructed EQ here and then let's take a look
at the Bell-shaped and at the shelving-type equalizers.
On the horizontal axis you can see that the frequency range is going from 20 Hertz
up to 20 kHz. And on the left I have got this dot that is going to represent
the frequency selection
of my low-shelving EQ which is on band number one. So i'm gonna select
that band and i'm going to go and select the frequency as you can see that it's
going to move this dot basically around on the horizontal axis.
If i'm going to lower my Gain you can see I'm actually cutting away the lower
frequencies.
If i'm boosting my gain, or adding volume, you can see it's now boosting the lower
frequencies.
let's take a listen at it.
So now we've see the low shelving and the high shelving equaliser.
Let's take a listen at the peak/dip
or at the bell-shaped equalizer. I'm using my own voice in this example
and we're gonna be boosting my voice
around 400 Hertz, you can hear it sounds really 'boxy' at that
frequency point.
And we're gonna boost it at around 2 kHz and let's listen to what that does
and you can hear it gets a little bit more open and defined
on that frequency range.
Now let's enlarge the band of frequencies and you can hear dat more
frequencies get effected by this bell- curve.
and now we're going towards a smaller band and you can hear that fewer
frequencies get affected by this EQ.
If we now make a 'sweep' through the frequency-spectrum we can really hear
that it's that narrow band of frequencies that is being affected right now.
We could also do the same while we
cut the frequencies away. We could do that with a narrow band as we have now
and again we could do that with a large band.
You can hear really the difference between the bands and how much more impact it has
on frequencies in the signal.
Let's take a look at a graphic equalizer.
A graphic equalizer offers a series of bell curves EQ's which are fixed in frequency.
They only offer a 'gain' parameter which is normally controlled with a fader-
type controller.
When we set the frequencies you can kind of visualize what the frequency-curve is,
hence the name of graphic EQ.
These frequency bands have been standardized in an ISO-norm,
and you can see these frequency bands right here. So a parametric EQ normally has a lot of knobs.
A graphic EQ normally has these faders. And a lot of software EQ's
actually use these bands which visualize your EQ-curve a lot better than
with hardware...
but i think hardware will let you use your ears a lot more.
So this was the first of the four-part tutorial.
In the next parts i'm really gonna equalize some different instruments to
create some separation between them
and how we can clean up a mix. We're going to be a creating some separation
between a kick drum and a bass-line, and between instruments and the vocal
So there's some interesting stuff coming up in the next tutorials.
I'm going to compare some different equalizers i'm gonna talk about the
difference
between analog and digital equalizers and stuff that we're going to be running into.
So there is going to be plenty of interesting stuff coming up again....
This was Wick for wickiemedia tutorials, I hope
you have learned something today.
Hope to see y'all soon, and thanks for watching, Peace!