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Old 10-13-2015, 06:48 PM   #13
insub
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Join Date: Mar 2014
Location: Louisville, KY, USA
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I think the advice in the video is solid. While I'm no pro, I have read several books on mixing techniques written by accomplished and respected engineers, and the tips in the video resonate with all the books I've read.

You need to pay close attention to what he says. He says many times throughout that he is not against HPF all tracks.

Most of the phase issues he is concerned with is explicitly mentioned at the beginning, and several more times, that multi-mic'ed tracks will suffer greatly from disregarding the phase shifts caused by non-linear EQing. But, even the linear-phase EQ has a side effect... pre-ringing. Even with my amateur ear I've been able to notice the pre-ringing on multi-mic'ed drums where I was trying to do too drastic EQ sculpting on the snare with a linear-phase EQ.

I think he made a fantastic point about the multiplying effect of the cut-off frequency boost when using the same cut-frequency on multiple tracks. This is something I had not thought about before. So, if you said "Most speaker systems produce nothing usable under 45Hz, so I'll HPF all my tracks there." Then you could end up with some 45-50Hz garbage accumulated.

But, I rarely have the same HPF setting on more than one track. I adjust each instance for the specific track. I rarely ever have multi-mic recordings. We only usually track drums multi-mic in our home studio. Sometimes we will for acoustic guitars. I only ever use a linear-phase EQ to adjust a single track from a multi-mic recording, and when I do I try to use only cuts and as minimally as possible to avoid audible pre-ringing.

Recently, I've been trying to move to low shelving instead, but old habits have me grabbing the HPF a lot anyway. Using a HPF can and will clear up a muddy sounding project, but can just as easily leave the whole song sounding very thin and weak. I've noticed this in my own projects where I got too heavy handed with the HPF. Nowadays, I adjust the HPF frequency to where I can't tell it's there and then back it off a little more. Then If I find the track is still sounding too thin I'll replace the HPF with a low shelf.
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