[Rwp] How does eq works - cutting frequencies off guitar amp tracks.

Sun Mar 6 20:00:38 EST 2016

For the curious,

I learned about EQ when I got a guitar stomp box. The boss MetalZone.
Worst petal ever these days IMO, but it does have a cue and sweep
filter. Of course after that I got a real standAlone EQ and started
messing around. I was impressed at the time that EQ could make or
break your sound so quickly.
Then, digital FX units made it to the metal cave. It was fun and I
could pick different types of EQ among other things. I knew low did
bass things, high did high things. I didn't properly get competent
with EQ until the days of digital audio editing. I knew what a 1000hz
sign tone sounded like, and worked from that central point and just
played around until I got the band and cue range right.

Fast forward...now we have tons of EQ stuff in reaper, among tons of
... well, other stuff. Funsky. :P

Alex

On 3/6/16, Alex H. <linuxx64.bashsh at gmail.com> wrote:
> Hi Hadi,
>
> If you wanna simply knock off typical excess guitar  amp frequencies,
> take JS 12-band EQ and do HPF at 100hz, and LPF at anywhere from 7000
> to 8000hz. That'll depend on your specific track, but that's a general
> idea.
>
> ***drifting thoughts***
> The thing that's annoying about the 12-band EQ is it doesn't have cue
> settings. It's not the best EQ to learn on because of that. The good
> thing about any JS plug though is that you can, with a bit of
> patience, modify your plugins to suit your needs. For example: I have
> a 12-band bass plug and a 12-band guitar plug. Hardly needed, but I've
> changed cue settings and frequencies, and increased the range of
> volume per EQ band. It's really fun, and you can do some subtle to
> massive tone shaping. That's usually for bassists; they always require
> a ton of work to sound good :)
>
> There's already a load of good info on this thread, so I won't repeat
> it. The bottom line is to experiment with a lot of plugins, sit and
> mess with parameters and hear how they effect the frequencies you
> hear.
>
> Best of luck,
>
> On 3/5/16, Hadi <hadirezaei at gmx.com> wrote:
>> God damn, @TheOreoMonster that was one of the most helpful guides I've
>> ever received; It was simple enough to follow while it contained lots of
>> things that I always was wondering about. Now I know what engineers are
>> actually talking about when saying "cut it narrow" or "boost it wide" or
>> shape that like that or apply a whatever filter/pass. I am really
>> thankful for this post, I think you've saved me hours and hours of
>> googling and listening to Youtube videos.
>> P.S what are graphical eqs? I suppose they just turn all this info to a
>> graphical thing so engineers can see and shape it as they desire.
>> I'll be on hunt for  the values that mesa boogie amps apply for their
>> 5-band eq, specially  since they sound awesome in progressive metal
>> tracks. I'm pretty sure people show their graphical-shaped eqs around,
>> but I gotta find the value. now that I know about this, I can do it very
>> easily than before!
>> thanks a lot!
>> Cheers
>> Hadi
>>
>>
>> On 3/5/2016 4:35 AM, theoreomonster at reaperaccess.com wrote:
>>> The audible hearing range generally speaking goes from 20 hertz (20hz)
>>> to
>>> 20 kilohertz  (20khz)  which is also 20,000 hertz. 20hz is the extreme
>>> low
>>> end and 20khz is the extreme high end . Unless you have bionic hearing
>>> you
>>> probably won’t be able to hear much that low or high  but atlas on the
>>> low
>>> side you will feel it if you have speakers that can output that much low
>>> end. And Eq in its basic of terms is a volume control for any given
>>> frequency. An  Eq like ReaEQ which ships with Reaper is a Parametric EQ.
>>> This means that it allows you to set the exact frequency value,
>>> (anywhere
>>> from 20hz to 20khz ) set the Gain (how much you want to boost or cut
>>> that
>>> frequency - positive values boost the frequency and negative values cut
>>> it) and the Q which sets how wide the boost  or cut is. Wide as in how
>>> the
>>> frequencies around are affected. So lets say you  set the frequency to
>>> 100
>>> hz, and pull down the gain to -3db you will be cutting  that frequency
>>> by
>>> 3db. Now where you set the q will dictate if you are only affecting
>>> 100hz
>>> (which will be a narrow q with an extremely low value) or if you start
>>> to
>>> affect the frequencies around it to some extent  like say 98hz or 102 hz
>>> .
>>>  The wider the q The more frequencies on either side  of  the preset
>>> gain
>>> value that gets affected to some extend.  However this affect isn’t
>>> linear. Say you cut 100hz by 3db you may only be cutting other
>>> frequencies
>>> by 1 or 2db  the further out they are the less they are affected.  To
>>> generalize this further, 20hz to 200hz give or take is considered the
>>> low
>>> end. 200hz to about 2khz (or 2000hz) is considered the mid range area
>>> and
>>> 2khz (2000hz)  to 20khz (20,000hz) is considered the high end.  Things
>>> like guitar amps that have EQ on them usually have a low, mid and high
>>> controls. In this case the amp designer preset the frequency , and q for
>>> the eq and the knob you as a user is provided with is just the gain knob
>>> to cut or boost those frequencies. Consult your favorite amps manual to
>>> learn where  they set the frequency and q as this will vary from amp to
>>> amp. The other interesting  thing about guitars is your typical guitar
>>> speaker doesn’t reproduce much above 5khz (5000hz) so this is why amp
>>> modeler can sound unnatural at times since they don’t always have the
>>> same
>>> steep drop off after 5khz like a guitar speaker. So This is where using
>>> a
>>> full parametric EQ like ReaEQ after the amp plug in can help shape the
>>> tone. A high cut and low cut filter is  also useful in the case of
>>> shaping
>>> a guitar amp modelers tone ’s well. a Low cut  or high pass as they are
>>> also known (and different EQ’s use one or the other title for them) do
>>> just that cut the lows or allow only the highs to pass through.  So
>>> unlike
>>> a regular parametric eq band, if you set a low cut or high pass filter
>>> to
>>> 100hz and cut it by 3db this  pulls down 100 hz and everything below
>>> 100hz
>>>  as well. This means only the frequencies above 100hz is allowed to pass
>>> through for the most part.  This is useful for say a guitar amp since
>>> not
>>> a lot of info resides in the low end for a guitar and turning down some
>>> of
>>> that stuff below 100hz allows for the frequencies  above 100hz to be
>>> heard
>>> better but allows for more space for the bass and kick drums to be
>>> heard.
>>> The opposite of these filters are the high cut or low pass which cuts
>>> the
>>> highs or only allows the lows to pass through. Given what we understand
>>> of
>>> how guitar amps work in the real world  you can set a high cut or low
>>> pass
>>> somewhere above 5khz and cut it to help your amp modeler sound more
>>> natural.   In both the case of the low cut/high pass and high cut/low
>>> pass
>>> you will want to pull the gain down  and then sweep around the
>>> frequencies
>>> to find where they sound best to set them. Another thing the term
>>> scooped
>>> usually means that you scoop out or cut the mids out of a signal. While
>>> this may work for rhythm tones, you may actually want to boost the Mids
>>> on
>>> a solo or lead part to make it more  audible in the mix.  Hope this
>>> wasn’t
>>> too long and confusing and helps a bit. Also if i goofed anywhere and
>>> need
>>> to make any corrections let me know.
>>>> On Mar 4, 2016, at 1:34 PM, Hadi <hadirezaei at gmx.com> wrote:
>>>>
>>>> Hi there
>>>> Thank you guys for  explaining EQ and  how it works. I've read  the
>>>> awesome post of Chris bell, I'm actually going to reread it several
>>>> times
>>>> to grasp the idea
>>>> P.S, Regarding hardware EQ that scot mentioned, I really have to get a
>>>> guitar amp that  has some EQ settings on it, because I am extremely
>>>> unfamiliar with it. I know what tone i'm aiming for though, so that's
>>>> always good. I want my solo  guitar tracks to be chreemy and a bit of
>>>> scooped, while having a  huge wall of  smooth sound for my rhythm
>>>> guitar.
>>>> II've been told  lots of times that  guitar amp vsts have lots of high
>>>> frequencies in them, compared to real amps. Does that mean that I
>>>> should
>>>> go after 7 to 10k hz frequencies?
>>>>
>>>> On 3/3/2016 11:45 PM, Scott Chesworth wrote:
>>>>> I started out EQ-ing on hardware mixers, and as a consequence never
>>>>> had a clue about numbers. When I switched over to DAWs, I thought I'd
>>>>> learn the numbers on the go by finding presets I liked, then examining
>>>>> the parameters of those presets to see what was happening under the
>>>>> hood. In actuallity, all I was doing was building up a collection of
>>>>> presets I liked spread across a bunch of different EQ plugins, so
>>>>> unless you have more resolve than me, don't try learning that way lol.
>>>>> I think Chris is spot on with the suggestion to take a sound you're
>>>>> very familiar with, insert an EQ plugin on that, boost the gain and
>>>>> then sweep up and down the frequency spectrum to figure out what stuff
>>>>> sounds like. Start with broad strokes, for example, if you can tell
>>>>> the difference between a 3K and 5K boost, give yourself a pat on the
>>>>> back. Soon enough you'll narrow it down to being able to tell the
>>>>> difference between 3K and 4K, and so on and so forth. ReaEQ is a
>>>>> decent plugin IMO, and is very usable via the parameters dialog you'll
>>>>> get by hitting Shift+P.
>>>>>
>>>>> Also, if you've got anything that runs iOS, once you become vaguely
>>>>> familiar with what the frequency spectrum sounds like, there's an app
>>>>> called QuizTones that's a fun way to practice identifying cuts and
>>>>> boosts applied to songs taken from your music library.
>>>>>
>>>>> And that's about it. Practice practice practice.
>>>>>
>>>>> Hth a bit
>>>>>
>>>>> Scott
>>>>>
>>>>> On 3/3/16, Chris Smart <csmart8 at cogeco.ca> wrote:
>>>>>>> How did the rest of you learn to use an equalizer, and eventually,
>>>>>>> learn to recognize various parts of the audible spectrum? Am I way
>>>>>>> off with my suggestions? I realize we all learn this stuff
>>>>>>> differently.
>>>>>>
>>>>>>
>>>>>> ---
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