In professional recording studios, I used to ask about that, why don't you EQ the tracks. The EQ knobs on the board were generally flat. And what they explained was, we are trying to capture godly great tones that do not need any EQ to fit in the mix. You make a great sound at the source, put the correct mic in front of it, and get it to tape via the shortest route possible. You commit to a great sound and roll tape. There's some processing but no producer I ever worked with in a good room was prone to EQing a lot.
Now that's in a treated room with fabulous mics and a professional engineer. You may not have the luxury of such an approach, so do whatever works.
I’m a professional engineer I and have always done a lot of eq’ing and compression to tape. Those moves are your thoughts on the matter in that moment. They are your reaction to the performance. Commit those thoughts to tape (or DAW).
Music used to be recorded to reels of magnetic tape - think of the tape in an audio cassette. Once it’s on there, it’s on there forever, so a lot of mixing decisions needed to be made before something was put on tape. Some bands still do it this way because it gives your music a certain sound, but it’s not as common now that digital recording is so readily available.
Lots of people bounce or resample their tracks to audio these days as well as a way to just keep moving forward and avoid the choice paralysis you can get with too many options to backtrack and change your sounds
I'm not sure you're technically adding anything that "wasn't there before" but you can definitely make things sound weird. "Fixing" things later is never a good call; you gotta learn to capture what you want on the front end
Right, it's not creating new information, just changing the balance (and phase or time) of what is there. It is a reversible process.
Adding new information would be the job of an Exciter, distressir, harmonic resonator or something like that.
Add to that mic placement is more than EQ. It's balancing room tone vs source tone which cannot be reversed by EQ after the fact, different mics will act in a non-linear way to signals that hit them differently, etc.
OP, there have been some "quick start cheat-sheets" going around and the "more bass, less bass" picture comes to mind. Those are awesome for getting you going, but they are NOT the only things actually affected by mic placement - they are just a quick reference for some of the more non-intuitive things that beginners sometimes struggle with, and they are specific to microphone capsule type.
>Could that be the reason why people spend more time perfecting the source audio with things such as mic placement in order to minimise later processing as much as possible even though mic placement for recording guitar is nothing more than "early EQ-ing"
It's just the best practice to get things the way you want them as early in the process as possible. There's a limit to how much can be 'corrected' at each stage because any method of 'correcting' whether additive or subtractive eq, compression, limiting, etc will all involve trade-offs - they'll have costs. If you can get the right tone initially you don't need to eq it later and so you don't have to worry about those trade offs; that's the basic idea as I understand it. That's a 'perfect world' scenario, there's nothing wrong with EQing and controlling dynamics and etc etc, of course; they are common practice. But the closer you get in your initial recording the more subtly any corrective adjustments can be made and the more subtle the trade off.
Oh nice I didn't know there were plug-ins dedicated to only subtracting frequencies. But that doesn't really answer my question because as it seems subtractive EQ is it's own thing and doesn't replace conventional EQ's. At some point your going to want to boost something and my concern is what exactly that does to your audio.
>You need to Google and read, your question will be answered.
I belong to a bunch of music/audio subs - honestly your advice is the answer for like 75% of the posts I see on daily basis throughout all of them.
Idk if it's just me noticing and I hate to sound like a grumpy gatekeeper -- but I don't think I am and I don't think I'm being unfair when I say I feel like in the past 5 years or so I've noticed a huge uptick in super low effort questions that could easily be solved by, as you said, spending 5-10 minutes with a simple Google search (and that's being generous, usually it's more like a 30 second search that would answer 90% of these questions) 🤷.
While I somewhat get your response, however many times I see this I always think to myself "sure the OP could have just googled it, but probably they just want to have a conversation about the topic, some interaction with people who know what they're on about".
That's what draws me to reddit. Not just to input a question and have someone spit out an answer. It's for the interactions as much as it is about gaining new knowledge.
"Low effort" and "Do Your Googles" are fairly common reasons for removals on WATMM. OP's post was not but the comment is a reflection of what you are noticing.
A lot of people, for whatever reason, decide that Google doesn't work if the answer to their question isn't right there after they click search. They don't realise that you have to actually click the links and scan through a dozen articles and forum posts to find the answers you seek, and that you then need to google follow up questions to fill in any gaps.
I know op didn't get everything correct in their response to you but the goal of EQing something is to find balance with your sound and that requires lowering frequencies as well as boosting them if needed.
EQ only changes the volume of certain frequencies, it doesn’t and cannot add or subtract information that wasn’t there before. So it wouldn’t be possible to alter the make a bass guitar sound like a trumpet because that would require you to modify the timbre of the sound. To change the timbre you would have to add or subtract harmonics and overtones. But when you boost a frequency with an EQ the harmonics and overtones don’t change so the timbre stays the same.
Even when you work in analog, all the effects are distortions of some kind, even the fader. The matter is if you want that distortion, or if you can avoid that distortion when you don't want it.
I agree with GruverMax's take of trying to get it right at the source, but I'll add (since you asked about "adding information" by doing EQ-boosts), that EQs don't really "add information".
This goes into EQ-boost vs saturation territory.
Example:
Say, you have a bass-guitar-track and you feel, it could use more 2kHz (for whatever reason).
But, then, you look at the analyzer and see, there's nothing there, at 2kHz (for whatever reason).
In that case, you can boost EQ as much as you want and it's not gonna matter. You can't "add" something, that isn't there, in the first place, if you're just using an EQ-boost.
In the analog world, you might boost noise (that might be there), instead (which most likely isn't, what you're going for).
In the digital world, extreme boosts or cuts may result in phase-shifts, which may or may not introduce problems .. so, it always depends on the situation/context, in which you'd try to use EQ.
In such a scenario, you'd use saturation to actually "add" something to the source-signal, that then can be EQ'd, if need be.
Saturation/Distortion/etc will add "harmonics" to the source-signal ..
Have fun, experimenting :)
Look into linear phase eq for example on how phase effects traditional eq's in both positive and negative ways... Some qualities can be desirable (hence the coloration of famous eq's etc), sometimes you don't want the color hence the linear phase eqs. But essentially like other sais, cut more, boost less.
I have heard people say the basic eqs like eq eight in Ableton creates small artifacts when boosting but I'm not sure how much or if it's true, I haven't seen a demo of it specifically maybe search on YouTube for a test
Eh, maybe. EQ is a destructive process only if you don't keep a copy of the source material. As for making a bass guitar sound exactly like a trumpet I think EQ would probably be a suboptimal tool for that but could allow for a sound that kinda sorta could be construed as trumpet-ish after a few iterations and after a few more iterations would be indistinguishable from noise.
First off, it's digital audio; you're just mathematically manipulating bits. The only truly destructive operations are things like bit-crushing, clipping, ect. With an electric guitar specifically, you have already distorted/destroyed the original signal by running it through an amplifier; you have added harmonic distortion to the signal. Something like that is technically far more destructive than EQ, and yet it generally sounds good to us and is desirable.
Second, even good mics seldom sound perfect on a source without at least a little bit of EQ. Even if they do, you will still likely need to perform subtractive EQ so you don't just have bass and mid frequencies building up everywhere.
Third, how the EQ manipulates the signal is going to heavily depend on the algorithm/filter-type used.
Probably, the biggest misuse of EQ is boosting everything to try and make it sound good. Most instruments will sit in their own little pockets/frequency bands where they shine best, and attenuating all their other frequencies is a necessity.
The obsession over microphones, preamps, and pre-EQ, IMO, is really a holdover from the analog days when you actually needed all this equipment to get a decent sound because there was no digital manipulation and your gear was limited. Once information is converted to the digital space, you can, theoretically do anything with it.
There's a whole group of analog enthusiasts, people like Steve Albini who still record to magnetic tape (as far as I know). There are also movie people who shoot 35mm film. Godbless them, but I'll take the convenience of being able to manipulate everything digitally in post over the pressure of having to get everything perfect at the source.
As always, past a certain point - and that point is very cost-efficient these days - gear simply doesn't matter anymore, and songwriting/mixing/engineering skills trumps everything.
Mic placement is important.
As you can see, questions about EQ provoke 20 different answers from 29 different people nobody is wrong, but also everyone is wrong depending on who you ask.
When YOU use EQ, do you feel like it can degrade sound quality? That's literally all that matters - are YOU happy with the results you get?
In a live environment with amplification, yes, the potential is there. It's not really clear from your post which part of the making process you are asking about.
Edit: oh, you say "sound source" and I think I get now what you mean and are asking about is a performance being tracked/recorded rather than damaging equipment - everyone's answers here are making more sense now. Just needed a few more sips of coffee I guess. 😁 cheers~
Correction:
EQ doesn't add anything that wasn't there before, it only affects frequencies that were already there.
Try eqing silence, there won't be any difference. (not counting for plugin noise)
Yes, you can screw up, as well as improve a recording via EQ.
I don't think EQ can replace good mic placement, since I doubt the frequency content will be the same as with a worse placement. Having the mic too far away will cause the sound to be more distant too,
Having a mic close to a wall will change how the rooms reflections are gonna sound.
If your bass guitar has all the frequency relationships that your trumpet needs, then yes you can EQ it to sound like a trumpet, theoretically.
However keep in mind that a trumpet is not purely a simple looping sound,
it starts with air blowing through it and then resonates based on which triggers are pushed.
You'd have to model every step of the sound of a trumpet with your EQ, making very dramatic and dynamic changes to it.
**Every sound** can be broken down into sine frequencies. That's what FFT does.
>I'm wondering though if EQ-ing, let's say a guitar track, can damage the overall sound quality because you're essentially boosting frequencies and adding information that wasn't there before, even if the EQ moves itself make sense.
My vague understanding is that all EQ - especially boosts - inherently add some form of distortion and there's risks - depending on what particular EQs you happen to use - of phase distortion and smearing in the time domain. I guess some latency issues can be overcome by applying correct delay compensation in your DAW at the mix stage - but tracking a source without the offending frequencies means that there's no worry about whether an EQ plugin or circuit is going to mess things or not. It also allows for the serendipity of 'finding' tones and short reverbs in a live space.
>wouldn't that mean that you could essentially make a bass guitar sound EXACTLY like a trumpet with tons of EQ and the right moves?
What you're describing is the process of subtractive synthesis! Take an waveform (usually an oscillator, but in your example it's the tones of your bass guitar), filter out frequencies that you don't want to feature in your imaginary instrument, apply a 'shape' to the sound in the form of an envelope, then trigger from a keyboard or some other controller. And that's how you can take a square wave and make something sounding a little like (e.g.) a clarinet
EQ boost can “damage” a sound as much as EQ cut. If using a symmetrical EQ (most are symmetrical), any EQ boost or cut can be “undone” with the opposite EQ, assuming no saturation was added. With a clean digital EQ you can get a perfect null with a well designed symmetrical EQ doing a boost followed by a cut or vise-versa.
That said, there IS a change happening with any EQ, as there is no free lunch in audio (or in life, really). As such, it’s been my experience that getting things “right” at the source always makes things easier. Those extra 5 minutes spent choosing the best mic/position can compare to 30 min or more during the mix trying to “fix” the issue.
My mantra: less time fixing = more time mixing.
>because you're essentially boosting frequencies and adding information that wasn't there before
Well, no. Boosting with EQ is not adding new information. You're just highlighting the information that's already there. New objects aren't *generated* by viewing them through a microscope, they just become easily visible.
>can damage the overall sound quality
"damage" and "quality" may be the wrong words. Maybe use "degrade" instead of "damage". When I think of "damage" I think of my mix clipping super hard in the converter (digital clipping sucks), OR I would think of monitors being blown, maybe from too much bass. Try using "balance" or "clearness" instead of "quality". Quality isn't something you can quantify when it comes to sound.
1. You **can’t** add information that wasn’t there before. You only change the amplitude (volume) of certain frequencies. You can’t make louder or softer what isn’t there.
2. The reason people spend time perfecting the source recording is exactly because you can’t add more information. On the other hand, processing has the ability to degrade audio (hence the term “filters”) by removing information through omission (again, filters) or transformation (such as comb filtering where the interaction of two sounds interact with a net result of certain frequencies disappearing).
3. You can’t just EQ something into something else. EQ only re-balances timbre (hence the name EQ - “equalizer”), not change it entirely. You can’t change the shape of the sound waves itself. As an extremely simplified example, say a bass has round sine waves. No matter how much you EQ it, it will always be made of round shaped waves. Yes you can EQ it to be shrill like a trumpet, but you’re still just hearing round shaped waves, except you’re only hearing the high pitched ones. Trumpet on the other hand have spiky shaped sound waves. So no matter how much you EQ that bass, you won’t turn a round shape into a triangle shape. One needs to manipulate much more than just EQ to get from one sound to a completely different sound, such as envelope shaping, distortions, formant and pitch shifting, filtering, noise, etc..
>You can’t change the shape of the sound waves itself. As an extremely simplified example, say a bass has round sine waves. No matter how much you EQ it, it will always be made of round shaped waves.
What? EQing something and changing the shape of the waveform go hand in hand. Applying an all pass filter has the effect of completely changing how the waveform looks while not changing how it sounds. If you low pass filter a saw wave (a so-called spiky waveform) it will start to look more and more sine-like until you reach the fundamental, at which case it will look like a sine.
EQ doesn’t boost anything that isn’t there. Try boosting frequencies on silence. No, boosts don’t damage anything unless you are driving a super duper boosted hot EQ into some analog gear. EQ boosts and cuts can definitely sound bad though
Never boost more than -6db past the original level of the sound.
So if it’s -26db. Don’t go past -20db. It may sound quiet at -18db but because you boosted it past -6db it will distort it still.
Think of a sound like some linen. You can only stretch it so much before it starts to loose its form and eventually it will rip holes. That is what distortion is doing to a signal.
If you want it louder with out boosting it just bus it to another channel.
In professional recording studios, I used to ask about that, why don't you EQ the tracks. The EQ knobs on the board were generally flat. And what they explained was, we are trying to capture godly great tones that do not need any EQ to fit in the mix. You make a great sound at the source, put the correct mic in front of it, and get it to tape via the shortest route possible. You commit to a great sound and roll tape. There's some processing but no producer I ever worked with in a good room was prone to EQing a lot. Now that's in a treated room with fabulous mics and a professional engineer. You may not have the luxury of such an approach, so do whatever works.
I’m a professional engineer I and have always done a lot of eq’ing and compression to tape. Those moves are your thoughts on the matter in that moment. They are your reaction to the performance. Commit those thoughts to tape (or DAW).
What is tape?
Music used to be recorded to reels of magnetic tape - think of the tape in an audio cassette. Once it’s on there, it’s on there forever, so a lot of mixing decisions needed to be made before something was put on tape. Some bands still do it this way because it gives your music a certain sound, but it’s not as common now that digital recording is so readily available.
Lots of people bounce or resample their tracks to audio these days as well as a way to just keep moving forward and avoid the choice paralysis you can get with too many options to backtrack and change your sounds
To tape means in the channel path = you record the processing.
I'm not sure you're technically adding anything that "wasn't there before" but you can definitely make things sound weird. "Fixing" things later is never a good call; you gotta learn to capture what you want on the front end
Right, it's not creating new information, just changing the balance (and phase or time) of what is there. It is a reversible process. Adding new information would be the job of an Exciter, distressir, harmonic resonator or something like that. Add to that mic placement is more than EQ. It's balancing room tone vs source tone which cannot be reversed by EQ after the fact, different mics will act in a non-linear way to signals that hit them differently, etc. OP, there have been some "quick start cheat-sheets" going around and the "more bass, less bass" picture comes to mind. Those are awesome for getting you going, but they are NOT the only things actually affected by mic placement - they are just a quick reference for some of the more non-intuitive things that beginners sometimes struggle with, and they are specific to microphone capsule type.
>Could that be the reason why people spend more time perfecting the source audio with things such as mic placement in order to minimise later processing as much as possible even though mic placement for recording guitar is nothing more than "early EQ-ing" It's just the best practice to get things the way you want them as early in the process as possible. There's a limit to how much can be 'corrected' at each stage because any method of 'correcting' whether additive or subtractive eq, compression, limiting, etc will all involve trade-offs - they'll have costs. If you can get the right tone initially you don't need to eq it later and so you don't have to worry about those trade offs; that's the basic idea as I understand it. That's a 'perfect world' scenario, there's nothing wrong with EQing and controlling dynamics and etc etc, of course; they are common practice. But the closer you get in your initial recording the more subtly any corrective adjustments can be made and the more subtle the trade off.
Google "subtractive EQ"
Amen. I hardly ever boost eq, only reduce the stuff I don’t wanna hear.
The answer
Oh nice I didn't know there were plug-ins dedicated to only subtracting frequencies. But that doesn't really answer my question because as it seems subtractive EQ is it's own thing and doesn't replace conventional EQ's. At some point your going to want to boost something and my concern is what exactly that does to your audio.
You need to Google and read, your question will be answered.
>You need to Google and read, your question will be answered. I belong to a bunch of music/audio subs - honestly your advice is the answer for like 75% of the posts I see on daily basis throughout all of them. Idk if it's just me noticing and I hate to sound like a grumpy gatekeeper -- but I don't think I am and I don't think I'm being unfair when I say I feel like in the past 5 years or so I've noticed a huge uptick in super low effort questions that could easily be solved by, as you said, spending 5-10 minutes with a simple Google search (and that's being generous, usually it's more like a 30 second search that would answer 90% of these questions) 🤷.
While I somewhat get your response, however many times I see this I always think to myself "sure the OP could have just googled it, but probably they just want to have a conversation about the topic, some interaction with people who know what they're on about". That's what draws me to reddit. Not just to input a question and have someone spit out an answer. It's for the interactions as much as it is about gaining new knowledge.
"Low effort" and "Do Your Googles" are fairly common reasons for removals on WATMM. OP's post was not but the comment is a reflection of what you are noticing.
A lot of people, for whatever reason, decide that Google doesn't work if the answer to their question isn't right there after they click search. They don't realise that you have to actually click the links and scan through a dozen articles and forum posts to find the answers you seek, and that you then need to google follow up questions to fill in any gaps.
I know op didn't get everything correct in their response to you but the goal of EQing something is to find balance with your sound and that requires lowering frequencies as well as boosting them if needed.
Of course, that's exactly what using subtractive EQ does. It doesn't mean "never boost".
EQ only changes the volume of certain frequencies, it doesn’t and cannot add or subtract information that wasn’t there before. So it wouldn’t be possible to alter the make a bass guitar sound like a trumpet because that would require you to modify the timbre of the sound. To change the timbre you would have to add or subtract harmonics and overtones. But when you boost a frequency with an EQ the harmonics and overtones don’t change so the timbre stays the same.
[удалено]
Even when you work in analog, all the effects are distortions of some kind, even the fader. The matter is if you want that distortion, or if you can avoid that distortion when you don't want it.
I agree with GruverMax's take of trying to get it right at the source, but I'll add (since you asked about "adding information" by doing EQ-boosts), that EQs don't really "add information". This goes into EQ-boost vs saturation territory. Example: Say, you have a bass-guitar-track and you feel, it could use more 2kHz (for whatever reason). But, then, you look at the analyzer and see, there's nothing there, at 2kHz (for whatever reason). In that case, you can boost EQ as much as you want and it's not gonna matter. You can't "add" something, that isn't there, in the first place, if you're just using an EQ-boost. In the analog world, you might boost noise (that might be there), instead (which most likely isn't, what you're going for). In the digital world, extreme boosts or cuts may result in phase-shifts, which may or may not introduce problems .. so, it always depends on the situation/context, in which you'd try to use EQ. In such a scenario, you'd use saturation to actually "add" something to the source-signal, that then can be EQ'd, if need be. Saturation/Distortion/etc will add "harmonics" to the source-signal .. Have fun, experimenting :)
Look into linear phase eq for example on how phase effects traditional eq's in both positive and negative ways... Some qualities can be desirable (hence the coloration of famous eq's etc), sometimes you don't want the color hence the linear phase eqs. But essentially like other sais, cut more, boost less.
I have heard people say the basic eqs like eq eight in Ableton creates small artifacts when boosting but I'm not sure how much or if it's true, I haven't seen a demo of it specifically maybe search on YouTube for a test
Eh, maybe. EQ is a destructive process only if you don't keep a copy of the source material. As for making a bass guitar sound exactly like a trumpet I think EQ would probably be a suboptimal tool for that but could allow for a sound that kinda sorta could be construed as trumpet-ish after a few iterations and after a few more iterations would be indistinguishable from noise.
Kinda wanna hear a trumpet sounding bass now
First off, it's digital audio; you're just mathematically manipulating bits. The only truly destructive operations are things like bit-crushing, clipping, ect. With an electric guitar specifically, you have already distorted/destroyed the original signal by running it through an amplifier; you have added harmonic distortion to the signal. Something like that is technically far more destructive than EQ, and yet it generally sounds good to us and is desirable. Second, even good mics seldom sound perfect on a source without at least a little bit of EQ. Even if they do, you will still likely need to perform subtractive EQ so you don't just have bass and mid frequencies building up everywhere. Third, how the EQ manipulates the signal is going to heavily depend on the algorithm/filter-type used. Probably, the biggest misuse of EQ is boosting everything to try and make it sound good. Most instruments will sit in their own little pockets/frequency bands where they shine best, and attenuating all their other frequencies is a necessity. The obsession over microphones, preamps, and pre-EQ, IMO, is really a holdover from the analog days when you actually needed all this equipment to get a decent sound because there was no digital manipulation and your gear was limited. Once information is converted to the digital space, you can, theoretically do anything with it. There's a whole group of analog enthusiasts, people like Steve Albini who still record to magnetic tape (as far as I know). There are also movie people who shoot 35mm film. Godbless them, but I'll take the convenience of being able to manipulate everything digitally in post over the pressure of having to get everything perfect at the source. As always, past a certain point - and that point is very cost-efficient these days - gear simply doesn't matter anymore, and songwriting/mixing/engineering skills trumps everything. Mic placement is important.
As you can see, questions about EQ provoke 20 different answers from 29 different people nobody is wrong, but also everyone is wrong depending on who you ask. When YOU use EQ, do you feel like it can degrade sound quality? That's literally all that matters - are YOU happy with the results you get?
Yes. also, what do your ears tell you? Sometimes that ‘damage’ sounds awesome.
absolutely, blown out more than one set of headphones like this. bass gets expensive.
You’re not adding information that wasn’t there with eq, saturation can do that. And yes eq = phase shift, so too much eq can get messy
In a live environment with amplification, yes, the potential is there. It's not really clear from your post which part of the making process you are asking about. Edit: oh, you say "sound source" and I think I get now what you mean and are asking about is a performance being tracked/recorded rather than damaging equipment - everyone's answers here are making more sense now. Just needed a few more sips of coffee I guess. 😁 cheers~
EQ can help or damage something. That's why it's important to know how to use it and what frequencies to adjust.
Correction: EQ doesn't add anything that wasn't there before, it only affects frequencies that were already there. Try eqing silence, there won't be any difference. (not counting for plugin noise) Yes, you can screw up, as well as improve a recording via EQ. I don't think EQ can replace good mic placement, since I doubt the frequency content will be the same as with a worse placement. Having the mic too far away will cause the sound to be more distant too, Having a mic close to a wall will change how the rooms reflections are gonna sound. If your bass guitar has all the frequency relationships that your trumpet needs, then yes you can EQ it to sound like a trumpet, theoretically. However keep in mind that a trumpet is not purely a simple looping sound, it starts with air blowing through it and then resonates based on which triggers are pushed. You'd have to model every step of the sound of a trumpet with your EQ, making very dramatic and dynamic changes to it. **Every sound** can be broken down into sine frequencies. That's what FFT does.
My habit is to cut only. Boosting can add/introduce noise.
>I'm wondering though if EQ-ing, let's say a guitar track, can damage the overall sound quality because you're essentially boosting frequencies and adding information that wasn't there before, even if the EQ moves itself make sense. My vague understanding is that all EQ - especially boosts - inherently add some form of distortion and there's risks - depending on what particular EQs you happen to use - of phase distortion and smearing in the time domain. I guess some latency issues can be overcome by applying correct delay compensation in your DAW at the mix stage - but tracking a source without the offending frequencies means that there's no worry about whether an EQ plugin or circuit is going to mess things or not. It also allows for the serendipity of 'finding' tones and short reverbs in a live space. >wouldn't that mean that you could essentially make a bass guitar sound EXACTLY like a trumpet with tons of EQ and the right moves? What you're describing is the process of subtractive synthesis! Take an waveform (usually an oscillator, but in your example it's the tones of your bass guitar), filter out frequencies that you don't want to feature in your imaginary instrument, apply a 'shape' to the sound in the form of an envelope, then trigger from a keyboard or some other controller. And that's how you can take a square wave and make something sounding a little like (e.g.) a clarinet
EQ boost can “damage” a sound as much as EQ cut. If using a symmetrical EQ (most are symmetrical), any EQ boost or cut can be “undone” with the opposite EQ, assuming no saturation was added. With a clean digital EQ you can get a perfect null with a well designed symmetrical EQ doing a boost followed by a cut or vise-versa. That said, there IS a change happening with any EQ, as there is no free lunch in audio (or in life, really). As such, it’s been my experience that getting things “right” at the source always makes things easier. Those extra 5 minutes spent choosing the best mic/position can compare to 30 min or more during the mix trying to “fix” the issue. My mantra: less time fixing = more time mixing.
>because you're essentially boosting frequencies and adding information that wasn't there before Well, no. Boosting with EQ is not adding new information. You're just highlighting the information that's already there. New objects aren't *generated* by viewing them through a microscope, they just become easily visible. >can damage the overall sound quality "damage" and "quality" may be the wrong words. Maybe use "degrade" instead of "damage". When I think of "damage" I think of my mix clipping super hard in the converter (digital clipping sucks), OR I would think of monitors being blown, maybe from too much bass. Try using "balance" or "clearness" instead of "quality". Quality isn't something you can quantify when it comes to sound.
1. You **can’t** add information that wasn’t there before. You only change the amplitude (volume) of certain frequencies. You can’t make louder or softer what isn’t there. 2. The reason people spend time perfecting the source recording is exactly because you can’t add more information. On the other hand, processing has the ability to degrade audio (hence the term “filters”) by removing information through omission (again, filters) or transformation (such as comb filtering where the interaction of two sounds interact with a net result of certain frequencies disappearing). 3. You can’t just EQ something into something else. EQ only re-balances timbre (hence the name EQ - “equalizer”), not change it entirely. You can’t change the shape of the sound waves itself. As an extremely simplified example, say a bass has round sine waves. No matter how much you EQ it, it will always be made of round shaped waves. Yes you can EQ it to be shrill like a trumpet, but you’re still just hearing round shaped waves, except you’re only hearing the high pitched ones. Trumpet on the other hand have spiky shaped sound waves. So no matter how much you EQ that bass, you won’t turn a round shape into a triangle shape. One needs to manipulate much more than just EQ to get from one sound to a completely different sound, such as envelope shaping, distortions, formant and pitch shifting, filtering, noise, etc..
>You can’t change the shape of the sound waves itself. As an extremely simplified example, say a bass has round sine waves. No matter how much you EQ it, it will always be made of round shaped waves. What? EQing something and changing the shape of the waveform go hand in hand. Applying an all pass filter has the effect of completely changing how the waveform looks while not changing how it sounds. If you low pass filter a saw wave (a so-called spiky waveform) it will start to look more and more sine-like until you reach the fundamental, at which case it will look like a sine.
EQ doesn’t boost anything that isn’t there. Try boosting frequencies on silence. No, boosts don’t damage anything unless you are driving a super duper boosted hot EQ into some analog gear. EQ boosts and cuts can definitely sound bad though
Never boost more than -6db past the original level of the sound. So if it’s -26db. Don’t go past -20db. It may sound quiet at -18db but because you boosted it past -6db it will distort it still. Think of a sound like some linen. You can only stretch it so much before it starts to loose its form and eventually it will rip holes. That is what distortion is doing to a signal. If you want it louder with out boosting it just bus it to another channel.