EQ/Gain structure philosophy?

[John O'Brien]

Howdy folks, it's been quite a long while since I have posted. Been doing the lurker bit here and there. But I do have a question about EQ/tuning philosophy.

I have a weekend contract gig, at a church, that has been my part time job for over the last 3 years. I left the road due to some family things, and I've been able to keep this part-time as an outlet to keep mixing and satisfy that side of my personality. With that, though, it means that I haven't been around as many engineers and system techs as I used and I feel that that I need ask a couple questions to help solidify some thing thoughts I have in my head.

My question is two fold.

1) If you find yourself taking a lot of the same frequencies out of say, vocals, and other sources that are harsh, is it best to approach this through a tweak to the system EQ? Or leave that alone and just deal with taking it out per channel. My instinct tells me to lean towards the former, but it's been so long since I've had the chance to bounce this off of someone that I want to know if I'm too far off.

2) Going along with 1, the more you EQ, the more you're messing with gain structure.. right? We run Aviom boxes off of our console, and for most inputs any change I make out front translates to the ears as well.


My currently philosophy is this: I have a mild parametric EQ on the main buss taking out some dips in problem areas of the system, and then some milder things that are specific to the source that I take care of the channel side itself. If I find myself taking out TOO much EQ on the channel side I try to sit back and evaluate if a mic change, placement change, technique change etc could get me what I want before I go reaching for EQ. Among other things that I do as well.. M7CL btw, with some no name cabinets up top and Bag End subs for the low. Part of the reason I was hired was to bring a consistent experience weekend to weekend, and from what my boss tells me, that's been the case for as long as I can remember.

This all started from having someone who no longer mixes at the church, but hung out to observe today(normally sings at another campus) and ended up getting the band to stay late and suggesting a ton of changes to system EQ, channels, etc. I rolled with it as he's a friend, but he ripped off the system EQ and started doing all of these crazy EQ's to every channel, and of course a lot of that is subjective, but it was still a bit frustrating because I've spent years developing my processes, and he didn't really want to hear them but rather argue them.

Sorry for the rant, but it was a challenge that I haven't had in a while, and I couldn't decide whether to defend myself or just shut up and stay silent like I didn't know what I was talking about.

Can any of you guys offer some clarity? I've missed having some road friends I could ping stuff like this off of. At least ones that were sitting right next me. So this is the next best thing.

-John

 

[Phillip Pietruschka]

Re: EQ/Gain structure philosophy?

1) If you find yourself taking a lot of the same frequencies out of say, vocals, and other sources that are harsh, is it best to approach this through a tweak to the system EQ? Or leave that alone and just deal with taking it out per channel. My instinct tells me to lean towards the former, but it's been so long since I've had the chance to bounce this off of someone that I want to know if I'm too far off.

2) Going along with 1, the more you EQ, the more you're messing with gain structure.. right? We run Aviom boxes off of our console, and for most inputs any change I make out front translates to the ears as well.


My currently philosophy is this: I have a mild parametric EQ on the main buss taking out some dips in problem areas of the system, and then some milder things that are specific to the source that I take care of the channel side itself. If I find myself taking out TOO much EQ on the channel side I try to sit back and evaluate if a mic change, placement change, technique change etc could get me what I want before I go reaching for EQ. Among other things that I do as well.. M7CL btw, with some no name cabinets up top and Bag End subs for the low. Part of the reason I was hired was to bring a consistent experience weekend to weekend, and from what my boss tells me, that's been the case for as long as I can remember.

Hi,

First of all if you've got a way of doing things and it works alright, then don't sweat it too much. It's good to try new things and see what you learn from it, but don't let your confidence get rattled to the point where you start to worry that everything you know or do is wrong. I have colleagues whom I hold in high regard who do many things during the mixing (and system tuning) different to me. We both get good, though not identical results. Many times the differences show both how we learned to do things, and where we have learned to do things; as someone with a long background mixing theatre, I don't really ever tune a system by making growling dog noises into a sm58. Though if I was micing up some growling dogs with SM58s perhaps I would...

1) In general yes. However, sometimes it can be more or equally sensible to group like signals together and eq the group. In short if what you are EQing is a characteristic of the sound system (speakers/room) then doing so on the system is ideal. If it is a characteristic of the source (including performer / instrument / microphone / mic placement) then channel strip or group eq can be appropriate. The few sources I routinely need to EQ for adequate gain before feedback I often do on a group rather than across the entire system so I don't butcher everything else in the mix, these sources are things like hanging microphones for vocal pickup on stage, and not sources typically found in a band input list. Another way to check, easily, is to play some well mastered music through the system and see if the same system EQ choices improve the total quality of the playback.

If your EQ choices are translating well to aviom then that would kinda suggest that perhaps they are characteristics of the source, or its just not a big deal, yes?

2) Well I guess, but it's rarely a problem in practise. How dramatic are you EQing? Some eq stages in digital boards, have a gain control as part of them, such as Yamaha. If you are routinely doing very large cuts and boosts, and the system is ok, perhaps you need to go and interrogate the source. Perhaps a change in microphone choice or placement will help. Most of which it sounds like you already do; it sounds like you are basically on the right track.

Best of luck with it.

Phillip

 

[Jason Lavoie]

Re: EQ/Gain structure philosophy?

If you're being hired for consistency, and they've kept you on for 3 years, then I would stay the course.
If anything I'd make notes of the changes he suggested and try them one at a time while the place is full and decide if it is better of worse.

Changing too much at once when you have stable results that people are happy with doesn't sound like a good idea. There's always room for improvement but you have the perfect base work on it incrementally

Jason

 

[John O'Brien]

Re: EQ/Gain structure philosophy?

Gentlemen, thank you for the replies.

I'm going to stay the course, but I've taken this as a good exercise in finding new approaches and then finding ways to implement them. He and I had lunch the very next day and it ended up bringing a lot of clarity to the table and general feelings of hey, let's learn some stuff together.

I've missed being challenged in the audio world, so I think I just reacted negatively to that after not feeling it for the first time in a long time.