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Forum users opinions sought: LOW CUT & HIGH PASS filters


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Continuing with my 'Explorations In Equalisation' studies I have become interested of late in the human hearing frequency range spectrum and how to address my mixes in light of this. I work in isolation and, as a result, rely on heavily layered multi-track recording techniques to realise my full song productions. Up until very recently I'd never considered using LOW & HIGH filters meaning all my previous 'finished' (or so I thought!) recordings to date must feature whole rafts of 'stacked' accumulative extraneous noise! So, continuing my studies into this, my question to you today folks is:

 

WHAT instrument(s) do you filter in your mixes and WHERE (what frequency) do you tend to filter them?

 

To get the ball rolling, here's some seemingly useful opinions on this particular topic which I have stumbled across so far to date. That said, I'd be VERY interested to hear more thoughts & comments about this (especially particular to working in Logic):

 

HIGH PASS FILTERS

A male vocal isn’t going to have much below 80hz so cut off everything below 80hz with a High-Pass Filter helps ensure that no additional content unrelated to the mix makes its way into the mix.

Most often High Pass Filters are set to around 40Hz. We ‘feel’ these low frequencies more than we hear them. Most instruments and vocals have nothing besides mud below 50Hz. Use a low-cut filter on almost every instrument you use in your mixes, even for the bass. There isn´t much going on below frequencies of 80-100Hz, there’s nothing the human ear can hear way down there. All there is, is a sound mud which prevents your mixes to sound "clear" and makes all sound kinda muddy.

Conversely, human frequency hearing range is 20 to 20000 hz therefore you should be careful not to over use filters!

LOW PASS FILTERS

Like-wise Low-Pass Filters can be used to restrict and reduce high frequency content. Use Low Pass filters on instruments that aren’t contributing significantly to the high frequencies of a mix. A 12” guitar speaker doesn’t produce much useable content above 8K.

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I filter pretty much everything on the low end.

 

below 80-100 hz there are two octaves of bass guitar and fundamentals of first two octaves of piano...

 

I often leave guitars open up to 14k, although I dip them in the area of 7-11k... the 14k buzzing gives it a different sound, more sterile, contemporary, less creamy. also greatly widens dubber guitars.

 

I rarely cut in the upper range, mostly if there is noise present. There is a lot of space up there and our ears are better.

 

Low end.. depends. Guitars everything from 70-130, depending on what I'm doing with bass. If i have a lot of distortion going on on bass, I cut guitars higher, if not, lower.

 

Also greatly depends on what kind of low end it is...

 

No rules here actually, but if you don't hear a difference in the mix after a cut then theres probably nothing vital you are cutting.

 

You need have good monitoring for the low end... else its going to f*%@ your brains up. You can't hear boomy bass on crappy monitors.

 

My Focals Solo 6 go low, but no way do they identify a boom bass....

 

Sometimes I cheat and help myself with SPAN to set the filter. f*%@ it, im only human

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