# Experiment in match-EQing... is this something pros do?



## NoamL (Nov 15, 2015)

So check it out, a few weeks ago *I mocked up a cue from E.T.* All of the instruments were out of the box, going through reverb and a limiter - nothing special.

Recently I discovered Logic's match EQ so I decided to compare the frequency spectrum of my mockup with the _actual recording_.

Here's my mockup:







and here is the real thing:






Now considering that I think I did a pretty good job balancing and placing the instruments, these two should in theory be identical, but there's actually a massive difference.

Here's the 'corrective' EQ:






Initially I thought this EQ was crazy but... when I applied it, it really did sound more like the real thing.

You be the judge, *here is a folder with both mockups: the original mix and then with corrective EQ.*

A/B them... which do you think sounds more real?

There are some obvious mistakes in my initial mix (like I forgot to cut the low end) but I wonder where this huge EQ differential comes from. Is it inherent to sample libraries, or perhaps it comes from the fact that I mixed that mockup on headphones?


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## tokatila (Nov 15, 2015)

It seems that you have quite of a smiley curve there. Instead of boosting bass and treble have you tried subtracting the mids?

OutOfTheBox sounds quite horrible because of too much midrange information especially in loud moments. But; it isn't as bad in the quieter moments so this might be more fixable by multiband compression than brute force EQ all over the piece.

EQMatched sounds much better, but there is still too much harshness to my taste.


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## Noam Guterman (Nov 15, 2015)

OutOfTheBox sounds more natural to me. Those extreme EQing indeed sound extreme. For example listen to the brass section, in EQMatched it sounds lifeless and thin. I'd go with OutOfTheBox any day. I'd also look into EQing techniques and applying them to an orchestral mix. Cheers


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## KEnK (Nov 15, 2015)

NoamL said:


> Now considering that I think I did a pretty good job balancing and placing the instruments, these two should in theory be identical, but there's actually a massive difference.


NoamL-

Although I've not seen a survey, I doubt that a match eq is a tool very many pros ever use.
Generally, extreme eq curves and steep slopes are to be avoided, especially on a final mix or mix bus.
Whenever I find I'm needing to add more than 3dB of a frequency, I look elsewhere for the solution.
With cuts, one has more leeway.

And if you think about the fact that every library out there, be it strings, solo woods, brass sections, etc
has it's own unique sound, there is absolutely no reason for you to think your mockup should sound identical.
Even if you knew you had the exact same sample set as your original, you would still not get it to sound identical
because of differences in processing. It just doesn't work that way.

For example, often string ensembles have low end frequencies below the fundamental.
It is generally accepted practice to cut this unwanted low end from all but the low end tracks.

You'll be much better off learning solid audio principles and applying them,
rather than assuming there's a gizmo that does the work for you.

When trying to go for a specific sound, even a "soundalike",
you just need to aim for it in a general way using all the tools at your disposal
and at each stage in the mix.

hope that's helpful

k

p.s. I'm answering w/ general principles here,
because I couldn't listen to your examples. My browsers don't like Google Drive .


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## NoamL (Nov 15, 2015)

I do understand that narrow cuts are better than large boosts. And that there's no 1-quick-trick that simplifies mixing. 

I did 2 experiments this afternoon to try to explore what's behind that smiley face EQ.

First, I bounced the ET mockup without any of the reverb sends and compared _that_ to the recording. Was the reverb adding the midrange mud? The result was pretty much the same:






I don't think the reverb is the problem, my mix is just bad. I'll probably use a multipressor to fix it.

Step 2: I looked online for some good soundalike mockups. Here are two that use the EW Hollywood series:





Not flawless, but pretty good to my ear. 

I compared the Harry Potter mockup to the soundtrack itself. The result was the same, the match EQ wanted to draw a 






But the one for the Imperial March just looked like rolling off the lows:


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## Noam Guterman (Nov 15, 2015)

NoamL said:


> I do understand that narrow cuts are better than large boosts


You shouldn't limit yourself to that statement. Narrow / wide boosts and narrow / wide cuts all have their respectful place in mixing. E.g. Narrow cuts for reducing resonating / problematic frequencies, wide cuts for timber shaping, wide boosts for timber shaping, and even narrow boosts which is less common but still has a place for sound design, sweep fx and such. You can even boost frequencies that you previously cut, or cut frequencies that you boosted! Then you have MS processing, dynamic EQing, saturation, the list goes on and on...



NoamL said:


> my mix is just bad. I'll probably use a multipressor to fix it.


It is extremely recommended that you fix your problems within the mix instead. It will sound x1000 better. Mastering is meant for making a great mix sound as perfect as it can, or a good mix to sound great... But not for making a bad mix sound good.



NoamL said:


> I compared the Harry Potter mockup to the soundtrack itself. The result was the same, the match EQ wanted to draw a


Lastly, you shouldn't worry too much about EQ matching and smiley curves. Instead learn mixing techniques and apply them to achieve a result that sounds on par or even better than your references. There's tons and tons and tons of YouTube tutorials and Gearslutz threads for you to learn from, but most importantly you must train your ears and keep improving your mixing. What that means is to just mix, mix, and then mix some more and always compare yourself to your best sounding references. In the end of the day, mixing is a craft like all other crafts. There's a lot to it, and you'll become better at it from practicing it over time.
If you still feel like you want a "quick fix" or don't want to spend a lot of time practicing mixing, then sending it over to a pro mixing engineer will be a good solution (I don't mean no harm by it! And it's not un-common as well!)

Happy mixing


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## NoamL (Nov 15, 2015)

Yep mixing has never been my strong suit compared to composition but I'm trying to get better.

I broke the ET mix out to stems and hunted for the mud (in between working on other projects) and I'm a little stumped. Now that I can hear how midrangey the sum is, it seems like there's too much midrange in every single stem!! Originally I thought it might just be in the low brass or low strings and I could carve it out, but nope.

Very frustrating since I originally wrote this mockup as a template-balancing exercise...

The original stems are here if anyone else wants to play around with them: *https://drive.google.com/folderview?id=0B5geUzFqSGHCRTA0SXBaQ2U1ZVE&usp=sharing (LINK)*


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## RiffWraith (Nov 15, 2015)

tokatila said:


> OutOfTheBox sounds quite horrible





Noam Guterman said:


> OutOfTheBox sounds more natural to me.



HA!


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## RiffWraith (Nov 15, 2015)

KEnK said:


> I doubt that a match eq is a tool very many pros ever use.



It's really not a tool that pros use. I am not going to say it never happens, but a pro will have the experience and the ears to listen to a ref track, and know within seconds what the track he is working on lacks or has too much of, comparatively speaking. If he wishes to make any adjustments, he can - again, based on what he hears. He won't need the readout of some matching EQ to tell him what the difference is. The matching EQ idea is really a _quick fix for the inexperienced_ more than a practical, real world tool that gets used in the professional world. That's not an indictment of the inexperienced, BTW.


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## RiffWraith (Nov 15, 2015)

Noam Guterman said:


> You shouldn't limit yourself to that statement. Narrow / wide boosts and narrow / wide cuts all have their respectful place in mixing.



How true.

Noam (the other one  ) - if there's too much midrange in every single stem, then cut a little from each stem. Maybe a db, or two to start. See how that goes. Maybe some stems will need a few db more. Maybe different freqs, too. Take time and experiment. The more you experiment, the more you learn, and the better you get.

Cheers.


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## tokatila (Nov 15, 2015)

Here's a great opportunity to test MannyM's TripleD plugin.






I drove the OutOfTheBox through the DeBoxy and DeHarsher. 

Here's the result, note that this is a 1-2 dB quieter than the OutOfTheBox.

https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B3Y7DJkj7lzeTjlJb0w0UEdRdG8/view?usp=sharing

It's not perfect in anyway, but I think it really helps to get you out of that telephone booth without boosting the lows/highs too much.


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## AlexanderSchiborr (Nov 16, 2015)

Hello,

Thank you for your williams rendition track. To be brutal honest. I don´t like either the 1st nor the 2nd version but not because of any equalization missmanagment at all. Before going into heavily eq discussion or even try to match a desired sound with a tool I would go and work on the real basics: For instance the overall placement of the instruments in the room and the balance between them. Your mockup lacks of some very basics in my opinion. Just to mention the Flutes at around 6 seconds, they sound like "in front of" everything else.
Also the sequencing could be more "well executed". There is just one tempo overall and no micro tempochanges are there, but they are also crucial to bring life into the overall performance. Also here and there are sustained / legato lines which sound very static. Also the sound is too roomy - at least for my taste. A wide room, but with bite and presence of directness (that in your face Thing). That is how I like it. Maybe you should focus on some of the points I mentioned before going into something like equalization. And by the way: I rather recommend equalizing only when really really neccessary. Often the sound lacks of quality because of the less time you spent on working out your velocity curves, riding the modwheel an balancing your mockup. Another point is creating an undelightful, sometimes a problematic orchestration. Overall EQ can help to notch our problematic frequencies, that is my opinon. I rather avoid using an eq for boosting frequencies extremely. So eq is NOT a tool to create your desired sound at all. A lot of things happen before the eq.

Hope it helps,

Alex


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## KEnK (Nov 16, 2015)

NoamL

I did a remix of your stems
See my pm to you.

to Alex- I just want you to know that I mixed Noam's stems alongside the Williams version.
Noam's tempo is spot on- the 2 tracks play perfectly in sync all the way through.

k


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## NoamL (Nov 16, 2015)

AlexanderSchiborr said:


> There is just one tempo overall and no micro tempochanges are there, but they are also crucial to bring life into the overall performance.





> working out your velocity curves, riding the modwheel an balancing your mockup.



Thank you for your advice, but if you listen again you may hear that I have already taken it. 








> Another point is creating an undelightful, sometimes a problematic orchestration.



Will pass that along if I ever meet JW...





@KEnK - thanks so much, I'm doing my own mix now too and it will be very useful to A/B against what you created! And yes, regarding tempo, I "conducted" along with the real performance and then created a click track from my tapping. I didn't want to be influenced by the fixed-length staccatos and marcatos in HW Brass.


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## NoamL (Nov 18, 2015)

Thanks to everyone for your tips and demo remixes.... They were tremendously helpful as I did my mix. Listening to the old version, I can't believe how much mud there was in my original mockup! Here is what I did with it:

*NEW VERSION*

There was some really terrible mud in the harp, timpani, and tuba. After that I just tried to give the hi strings, lo strings, brass and winds different places to live in the EQ. And I cut a lot of low mids out of the reverb. One thing I struggled with was how to EQ the horns to get them out of the way of the lower strings without losing the sense of "body"/"fullness"/"warmth" in the sound.


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## KEnK (Nov 18, 2015)

NoamL
Much better! Excellent work. The track has a lot of energy and clarity now.


NoamL said:


> One thing I struggled with was how to EQ the horns to get them out of the way of the lower strings without losing the sense of "body"/"fullness"/"warmth" in the sound.


It's always a challenge to get different instruments to share the low end, or any frequency really.
Sometimes you just have to decide who's going to "win".
When I go to a real world concert, brass beats everything except the triangle and the Gran Casa.
That's why they're in the back.
But there are things we can try.
A dynamic eq, or as we talked about mid/side precessing can help.
In pop we often side chain the kick and bass-
Specifically this is where you put a compressor on the bass, but it listens to the kick.
The effect is that the bass gets lowered for that small amount of time that the kick actually plays.
These days I prefer to route a dynamic eq for this purpose-
so that only the lows are affected as opposed to the whole spectrum.
But w/ the long notes you get in orchestral music, this is probably not as good.
I actually haven't done that myself, but it might work.

Good work though Noam
I think you achieved your goals

k


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## germancomponist (Nov 18, 2015)

The sound of a track is the result of any instruments what were used, how they sounded for themselves and were mixed e.t.c. . These plugs are a fairy tale.


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## NoamL (Nov 18, 2015)

I'm curious about M-S processing. I use LA Scoring Strings and Hollywood Brass which have built in stage panning. Then I send each instrument family to a different true stereo IR. Where in this process would you plug a mid-side EQ, on the master? And if I understand correctly you'd be using it to get rid of lows in the side channel but not the center channel?


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## germancomponist (Nov 18, 2015)

exactly!


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## brett (Nov 18, 2015)

Great Job NoamL. Fabulous learning experience. Doing a mockup of a JW cue has been on my list for a long while. Keep us posted


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## NoamL (Nov 18, 2015)

I tried the M-S processing (shelved the Side at 160 Hz) and I don't think it improved the mix. Worth the experiment though! It made the mix clearer, but only by trading off a loss in image clarity. As instruments moved around inside the bass clef staff, they would appear to move towards and away from the center. And the whole string image became squashed towards the left.

I gotta move on to other projects now but this was definitely a learning experience. And, I've got all of my EQs saved onto the subgroup busses so now this can hopefully be a starting point for future mixes with this orchestra!


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## KEnK (Nov 18, 2015)

NoamL said:


> I tried the M-S processing (shelved the Side at 160 Hz) and I don't think it improved the mix. Worth the experiment though! It made the mix clearer, but only by trading off a loss in image clarity. As instruments moved around inside the bass clef staff, they would appear to move towards and away from the center. And the whole string image became squashed towards the left.


Well- Sorry if I led you astray there Noam 
Actually everything you described about what it did to the mix makes perfect sense.
I did do some m/s eqing on practically every stem in my remix of your mock up.
Maybe at some point you might give that a listen again and see if you notice any similar problems.
Nice talking to you- and thanks again for making your stems available.
Fun to mix that

k


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