Psychoacoustic Secrets For Mixing Music: Learn How To Hear What's Really There!

if you've ever struggled to get all of the elements of your mix to fit well together you're going to find this video very helpful listen to this example of a guitar Melody track [Music] now listen to what happens when I unmute the rhythm guitar track [Music] thank you [Music] the melody guitar seems to disappear within the context of the mix even though it sounded fine when we listened to it on solo this is at least partly due to a concept called masking by the way throughout this video I'll be using graphs and audio clips from a presentation by Professor Dr Bernhard saber if you want a more in-depth explanation of this topic check out those links in the description below to watch his full lecture series on YouTube as you heard in the previous example the sound of one instrument can mask the sound of another instrument and because the sound of even a single instrument is made up of many frequencies it's possible that those frequencies can mask one another in essence the instrument masking itself the principles that I'm about to share with you will help you understand why and when this happens and you can use that information to make better decisions with EQ compression and other effects while mixing first I want to show you this graph that describes the threshold of hearing across the frequency spectrum it's important that we understand what this graph is trying to tell us on the x-axis we see the range of human hearing in hertz it ranges from 20 Hertz to 20 kilohertz the y-axis shows sound pressure level from 0 DB to 140 DB SPL the line that is plotted on this graph represents the threshold of hearing or the quietest sound pressure level that can be heard at each frequency it's measured by playing a tone for a listener at various levels and asking The Listener to press a button when they can just detect that tone notice here that a very low frequency or very high frequency is required to be much greater in level in order to be heard when compared to a mid-range frequency in addition to measuring the threshold of hearing in a quiet environment we can also measure the threshold of hearing for a tone in the presence of noise a simple experiment might be to play a tone and white noise simultaneously instructing The Listener to report when they hear the tone by varying the intensity of the tone in relation to the noise we'll find out the point where the listener can no longer hear the tone within the noise and the level where the tone is just detectable by The Listener the results of this experiment will look like this a graph that's similar to the threshold of hearing graph from before this time the graph shows the minimum audible level for each frequency with white noise as a masker white noise is a type of noise where the energy is evenly distributed throughout the frequency spectrum with equal energy density per frequency this line represents the results when the level of the white noise is -10 DB and these additional lines indicate that each time we increase the level of the Noise by 10 DB the tone is required to be increased by 10 DB as well in order to remain audible you can see that this holds true for tones at all frequencies across the Spectrum here's an audio demonstration of the experiments you can hear it for yourself you'll hear the tone and the noise then the level of the tone will be decreased incrementally until you can no longer hear it as it becomes fully masked by the noise then the noise will be muted and you'll hear that the tone is still present even though you couldn't hear it within the context of the noise this illustrates one of the big reasons that it's so important to manage hiss and room noise in our recordings if we don't keep noise to a minimum it may become difficult to hear the quietest details within our recordings luckily most modern preamps and digital audio equipment have extremely low noise specifications compared to the recording and Playback systems of the past so as long as you use reasonably good gain structure it shouldn't be a big problem the energy in White Noise is evenly distributed across the Spectrum so it masks a very wide band of frequencies however if we filter the noise into narrow band noise that only contains a specific range of frequencies we see different masking Behavior here we see that narrowband noise will primarily mask the frequencies that are contained within the noise and the frequencies just above and below that range Shifting the center frequency of the noise we see that the masking shifts too this time we'll hear narrow band noise centered at 1.2 kilohertz then we'll hear a series of tones that incrementally increase in frequency we'll hear the first few tones as they're below the range of the noise then the tones in the middle of the range will disappear within that noise finally we'll again be able to hear the frequencies as they go higher and higher and come out the other side of the narrow band noise this helps explain why you might sometimes have difficulty getting a kick drum and bass signal to work together if both the kick and bass occupy the same range of frequencies they'll mask one another the next time this happens to you try using an EQ to shape each signal so that the two signals don't compete for the same frequency band [Music] you may have seen some of my videos where I talk about ear training for audio Engineers using the vowel method for identifying frequencies but if not be sure to download my free guide at audiouniversityonline.com ear training guide oh by the way you may be asking what is that plugin that shows the masking that's occurring within the mix this is The Equalizer within the izotope neutron plug-in bundle I'll leave a link to that bundle in the description below this video in addition to studying the masking effects of white noise and narrow band noise we can also look at the masking behavior of a pure tone here's a graph showing the masking curve of a one kilohertz tone again we see that the masking is most effective at one kilohertz and just like with the narrow band noise the masking from a one kilohertz tone also somewhat extends above and below the frequency of the tone itself however look at how the results vary as the level of the tone is increased the one kilohertz tone seems to more effectively mask high frequencies compared to low frequencies as its level increases this is referred to as the upward spread of masking and here we find one of the most helpful tips for mixing especially when it comes to using EQ the low frequency components of one instrument May mask the higher frequency components of other instruments in the mix so when carving out space for each instrument in the mix consider that the masking will primarily spread upward in the Spectrum this is why cleaning up the mud and the low mids often has an automatic clarifying effect for the mids and high mids but there's another lesson that we can learn from this remember earlier when I mentioned that the instrument can mask itself well this is what I was referring to sometimes an instrument may sound dull as if it's lacking energy in the high frequencies and while we may be tempted to address this problem by boosting the high frequencies with an EQ this masking principle suggests that there might be another solution perhaps the signal already has enough high frequency energy but the lower frequencies are masking those higher frequencies instead of boosting the highs maybe we can cut the lower frequencies reducing the masking that's occurring [Music] by cutting the lows and low mids with me Q we can effectively brighten the sound of the guitar by revealing the high frequencies that were once being masked by the lower frequencies most instruments in the arrangement as a whole are complex signals meaning they're made up of several different frequencies as we just saw this means we should be aware of the various components that make up each instrument and it's important to recognize the masking effect that those components have on one another as well as the effect that the components of one signal may have on the components of another signal this graph shows an identical set of tones at different levels notice that the 20 DB increase per tone results in a greater amount of masking in the frequencies between each tone remember the masking potential of each tone extends upward in the frequency spectrum as the level of each tone increases and that fills in these spaces between the tones as the signal gets louder keep this in mind when mixing specifically when you're choosing your monitoring level there may seem to be more clarity and space in your mix at lower levels compared to higher levels and it's important to consider what your mix will sound like when it's inevitably enjoyed at various Levels by consumers be sure to check out Professor Dr saber's series on psychoacoustics if you're interested in learning more he goes into much more detail than I did here and he explains even more Concepts that will help you better understand the way we hear sound don't forget to download the ear training guide at audiouniversityonline.com ear training guide trust me you won't want to miss this video that's on your screen right now that will get you started using that ear Training Method I'll see you over there

Channel: Audio University

Views: 136,421

Keywords: music production, mixing, audio engineering, masking, audio masking, auditory masking, muddy mix, how to mix, mixing tips, how to mix music, mixing and mastering, better mixes, mixing tutorial, how to clean up a mix, how to mix *, mixing music, eq tutorial, prof. dr. bernhard seeber, masking audiology, masking audiology explained, izotope neutron, masking sound meaning, upward spread of masking, upward masking, mastering tutorial, mixing vocals, mixing guitar

Id: x1fYPKGrKBs

Length: 11min 13sec (673 seconds)

Published: Thu Dec 15 2022