Testing Your Fix

Turn the gain of the EQ back down to 0. REST YOUR EARS for at least a number of seconds. Bring the overall gain up back to its normal level. Now audition the track. Naturally, the problem resonance is now etched vividly on your frontal lobes and you’ll have no problem hearing it even with the rest of the signal there. Gently cut the frequency by a couple of dB, see if the offensive flavor goes away. Cut a little more if you need to. The trick is to cut as little as possible to get the offensive resonance into an appropriately subdued relationship with the rest of the signal. I switch in and out of bypass, changing the amount of cut until it feels right to me. I seldom need to cut more than about 4 dB.

	Figure 5. Now we’ve cut the band by 4 dB, which we determined by ear was the right amount of cut to put the resonant band into its proper place in the scheme of things.

	Figure 6. Now we’ve enhance the track, by ear, using a gentle boost of 2 dB centered around 3750 Hz. (rounded to 3748 by Waves) with a Q of 2.1. Note that this interacts with our corrective cut. That’s fine, so long as it all sounds good. You might try bypassing each band individually until you’re sure you’ve got it right.

Some Really important Frequency Ranges

Tom cites two frequency ranges to be especially concerned about checking out. My experience has been that you may find multiple problems in each of these regions.

The first such band from about 2800 to 3300 Hz. is a key part of the spectrum. Many resonant aspects of an instrumental sound can be troubling in this region, and often, such resonances are on the boundary of distortion. Listen for any irritating harshness that seems to emit from the instrumental (or vocal) sound.

The other major trouble band is from about 150 to 225 Hz. Here there will be narrow, difficult-to-hear, “fundamental-frequency” bands that load up a sound with dark resonances that consume energy and fight against clarity and detail of the sound.

Once you get these frequency ranges taken care of remember to check the rest of the spectrum to see if you hear any other serious problem resonances.

As you progress, when you switch bypass in and out you’ll notice the track just gets A LOT cleaner and more transparent, with the kind of luminous clarity you’ve always marveled at in your favorite recordings. Welcome to the club!

What to do Once You’ve Got the Problems Fixed

Once you’ve got the track cleaned up, you’ve got more work to do. Now you can EQ for enhancement. This is best done working in mix context, so build your mix and start EQing your tracks while checking how they fit in the mix.