You Are Ruining Your Audio! - How to EQ voice properly

hey Julian cross here and I want to talk about something that has been grinding my gears for way too long now and it's this abomination of an EQ curve in more and more tutorials on how to cue your voice this v-shaped curve keeps coming up in one form or another and apparently it magically transforms all your vocal recordings into sweet sounding awesomeness but that's total nonsense and this EQ curve might even make things worse think about it every voice is different every microphone is different and every recording situation is different to think that a single EQ curve exists that always gives you the best vocal sound doesn't make any sense so what does this curve do and why is it so famous anyways well if we have a look at the EQ curve you can see a rise in the lower frequencies and a rise in the higher frequencies which essentially leaves the mid-range slightly scooped I mean I understand what people are trying to do here usually cool movie announcer voices have a lot of bass and this is usually accentuated by using the proximity effect of the microphone which means that the bass gets stronger if you place the microphone closer to your mouth so that's what the bass boost does it gives your voice more or um for the lack of a better word but do not get too bass heavy and keep some of the crispiness of the voice this then usually goes hand in hand with a boost in the higher frequencies this also makes the sound appear more detailed which might trick some people into experiencing this as a more high-end recording but this is heavily generalized and as I mentioned between different microphones the sound can be very different and then the use of a v-shaped curve is Highly Questionable quick example so far you could hear me with a seam c641 microphone which has a super flat frequency response and it captures my voice in a pretty Natural Way in contrast this is the sm7b and it has a lot more bass and the highs are a bit muffled let's put it that way so the sound of my voice with this microphone already changed considerably leaning heavily towards a Bassy sound in this case boosting the bass even further makes hardly any sense one more example here I use a Sennheiser me64 which has quite a bit of a travel boost on its own and is generally a much brighter sounding microphone if I were just to slap on the best vocally EQ curve then this would boost the highs even further and this would then result in a very simple on sound in fact many microphones these days already have a slight elevated treble so you should always ask yourself the question do you really need an additional high frequency boost does it really improve the audio or are you just doing it because somebody on the internet said so and it's funny because time and time again I see some people recommending an EQ cuff with a high frequency boost but then they complain about this sibilant sound and then they slap on a de-esser to try to compensate that again why so there's no one-size-fits all in terms of EQ curves that said here are some general guides which will see you in the right direction with EQ let's talk about what the different frequency ranges of your voice contribute to the overall sound and for that let's have a look at an fft of my voice which essentially shows you in which frequency area my voice is producing sound the human vocal range spends quite a broad range of frequencies starting at about 80 Hertz going up to nearly 20 kilohertz which is also the upper limit of human hearing and this brings me to my first point every voice has something called a fundamental frequency which is the lowest part of our voice this frequency can vary quite a bit depending on if you have a higher or deeper voice for me this hovers around 100 to 150 Hertz below that you can see that there's hardly anything going on and in fact below the fundamental the human voice produces hardly any signal in this low frequency area from 0 to about 80 Hertz there can oftentimes be some Rumble from for example an air conditioner nearby but because there's not much useful vocal information down there you can simply use a high pass filter also called a low cut to cut out the rumble without affecting the sound of your voice 80 Hertz is often used as a standard setting but be careful more gradual filters usually start their roll off quite a bit higher and then even the 80 Hertz setting can already start to cut into your voice and that's why I often prefer 60 hertz for the iPass going upwards in frequency you will usually find that EQ in the fundamental frequency region of a voice can change whether it is perceived as boomy or thin sounding let me demonstrate if I boost the sound around 120 hertz this can make the voice much more bass heavy and if you go too far it will sound really boomy conversely if I lower the amplitude you can hear that my voice gets much more tinny and then it lacks the oomph that I was mentioning in the beginning of the video so you can use EQ in the base area to lower the sometimes over overwhelming base you can get due to the proximity effect or you can give your teeny sounding mic a bit of a boost to make your voice more full sounding one thing you also notice is that the fundamental frequencies are not always the same but they change from word to word that's why it's usually a good idea to cut or boost with a slightly wider filter otherwise for some words you might increase a specific frequency but this might not affect the next word and then this can sound really odd but narrower filters have their benefits too especially when surgically cutting specific frequencies for example 50 or 60 hertz Mains frequency hum or an annoying room resonance in these cases a narrow filter can Target the specific disturbance without affecting the rest of your voice too much around the 300 to 500 Hertz region you will find that when you amplify these frequencies that the voice sounds quite boxy so you can hear that when I give it a boost it really sounds like I'm sitting inside of a small box especially if you're recording in a small vocal booth this frequency range can get quite bloated and then an EQ in this area can help to reduce the boxiness of your voice increasing the frequency even further you will notice that around one to two kilohertz there is a region which contributes to a nasal sound when boosting at these frequencies it can sound a bit like you have a cold so I've not found too many scenarios where I would need to boost that but if you are of course recording a very nasally voice it might improve the sound if you place a wider cut in this range around 5 to 10K we are in the sibilant region of the human voice if I say she sells seashells on the seashore you can see that there's quite a lot going on in this range boosting in this area generally makes a recording sound brighter and it can also help to increase intelligibility which can be especially useful if you're working with more muffled recordings of course this can also be used the other way around if you have a particularly sibilant voice you can reduce this frequency range to make the recording sound a bit smoother on the top end and less piercing above 10K there's actually not too much going on in the human voice although there is some amount of information up there especially if you record with condenser microphones increasing the amplitude in this range can sound like the mic has a bit more detail and can give your voice a bit more Sparkle but don't overdo it because it can also quickly sound metallic and cheap these are just some very rough guides and again recommending anything much more precise than that doesn't make any sense if someone tells you to always cut 4269 Hertz then that's garbage advice every voice every mic every recording situation is way too different for this kind of advice to translate well for your audio still cutting certain frequencies can be very handy if done correctly but I would only do it if there's really a particular frequency that sticks out and then it is more often helpful at lower frequencies because at very high frequencies narrow Notch filters aren't actually Audible don't trust me for the last two sentences I've placed at these six notches on my voice and they are aggressive minus 20 DB Cuts did you notice any difference I don't think so so if you see people doing this then it's really just Overkill and the change in sound they hear is oftentimes just Placebo that brings me to my next point if you use very wide filters then they are quite a bit more Audible and you should be a bit more careful while it might be okay to have a narrow filter in the two digit DB range with broader filters even a change of 2db can have a very audible impact lastly I want to mention that EQ can also be used in a purely corrective manner let's say you put a furry wind protector on your microphone this will undoubtedly reduce the high frequency pickup of the mic with EQ you can counter that and pretty much restore the mics a sound without the fur cover as with many things less is oftentimes more and this also goes for EQ if you don't have a specific reason to EQ something then don't and chances are things might sound worse if you just randomly set your EQ without knowing what you're trying to accomplish this should not discourage you from playing around with EQ quite the contrary trying out different EQ settings and hearing what kind of an audible impact the filters have is invaluable using an EQ is a skill that you do not learn overnight to close out this video don't get me wrong there is nothing inherently wrong with this particular curve if that's what you need to get your voice to sound great then that's absolutely fine but don't just mindlessly slap on this EQ curve because you have seen it being used by somebody else use EQ to make deliberate changes there is no one-size-fits-all EQ curve period alright rant over give this video a thumbs up if you enjoyed it subscribe for more tips tricks tutorials and reviews and we'll see you all in the next one foreign [Music]

Channel: Julian Krause

Views: 133,895

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Id: QwxWRkFGE_k

Length: 9min 51sec (591 seconds)

Published: Sat Feb 11 2023