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Subject:EQ Band music
Posted by: joejon
Date:3/31/2004 6:41:51 PM

I've been reading a bit about EQ and trying to play with the settings. I have a project I'm doing for the school Band Directors, so I don't have a lot of time to experiment right now. Has anyone worked with processing Band music? If you have, do you have any suggestions on where to start trying things as far as EQ and compression go? This is the first time I'm using these features in a project, so as much information you could give me would be appreciated. Thanks

Subject:RE: EQ Band music
Reply by: Rednroll
Date:4/1/2004 5:43:50 AM

The thing about EQ is that you shouldn't use it unless it needs it. We can't tell you if it needs it, unless we hear it. If you're not sure what frequencies to cut or boost by listening to the band, you need to start by using an 8 or 12 band graphic EQ plugin, and play around by over boosting and over cutting freuencies, until you get familiar with hearing what each does to the audio signal.

Another thing you can do is use the spectral analyzer in Sound Forge. Go buy a CD that has similar band music on it, and extract it into sound forge. Play thay Cd track and run the spectral analyzer to take a snapshot of the spectral curve. Now leave that snapshot on the screen and run your band recording through the spectralyzer. See how that compares in frequency response to the cd and make note of any major peaks and dips, then apply EQ at those frequencies to make the curve more similar to the cd.

You could also use a plugin by Steinberg called Free Filter (or "EQ for dummies" as I like to call it), which basically does exactly what I described for you above.

Subject:RE: EQ Band music
Reply by: joejon
Date:4/6/2004 12:13:03 PM

Thanks for the input. Unfortunately, it looks like the Free Filter plugin is no longer availabe. The 3 places I checked have discontinued it. I did buy some band music at Best Buy, but the quality of the CD's I got were not very good, so that wasn't much help. So I started experimenting with the graphic EQ, which looks like the easiest to me to use. I did notice a big difference in the sound when playing with the controls. I did arrive at a good setting for now. I'm sure the more I experiment, the more I'll learn. It just takes so much time. Thanks again for your suggestions.

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