TurtleTone wrote on Sun, 16 October 2005 01:03 |
The biggest problem I find is bottom up or top down eq'ing. Basically monitoring on nearfield's and eq'ing from the bottom, say 30 or 40hz, boosting it until you hear a difference. Also the top end, setting the eq at 20k and cranking it until you hear it. I call it treble bass syndrome.
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Good one. I'm glad a lot of my "Genelec fan" mixers are converting from their 1031s to 8040s or if necessary 8050s. I'm getting less of that issue nowadays and mixes that translate here with less and less (little or no) mastering EQ!
To alter the topic (change the subject heading if you respond)
Another question: Have you noticed that bright loudspeakers don't always make you mix "dull". 25 years ago I had to work with a pair of 4311's for a mixdown and the first thing I did was play a recording I made and knew well.... and they were screeching at me so I put in an equalizer to try to tame that. I ended up with a very strident mixdown!
Sometimes it pays just to leave loudspeakers speaking as they are because the designer probably voiced them to be the best they could be, and any changes you try to make to them will be worse. To this day I don't know if it was phase response of the eq I added, or that I overcompensated, but that was a lesson that I retain to this day: "Be very careful when you try to equalize a loudspeaker!"
Same working with the Big Reds (the Audiotechniques ones based on the 604s). Those speakers also had a very strong presence peak and were also quite honky. Yet, despite that I mixed, for example, alto saxaphones with too much presence. I still can't understand why, as in theory you would mix to the inverse response of a loudspeaker. I theorize that the lower resolution and cabinet resonances/diffraction of the loudspeaker were leading me to pre-equalize the saxaphone to give it more presence that it did not need when reproduced on better loudspeakers.