EQing a sound multiple times?

Electronic Music Production // Dark Arts
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dubdub
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EQing a sound multiple times?

Post by dubdub »

Recently I've been doing more EQ work on my sounds and it's got to the point where sometimes I have like five different stages of EQ on a sound. Say Satson filters for shaving off some lows/highs, then some Tonelux tilt for general tone shaping, maybe some EQ inside SDRR, some bell shaping inside something like Slick EQ and then maybe Eqing out 1-2 resonances with Ableton's EQ. Is that overkill or rather, are there any obvious (mangled sound?) or less obvious (phase problems?) downsides to working this way? Keep in mind only the satson and resonance EQ are really corrective, the rest is more or less sound shaping. Still, that's like 10+ EQ bands in total maybe and I would never do that much if I just had a single EQ. But somehow it feels less wrong if you spread it out over 5 different EQs :lol:

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Lost to the Void
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Re: EQing a sound multiple times?

Post by Lost to the Void »

Just be aware that every effect you add, is essentially distorting the sound in some way. Lots of eq, especially multiples of different types, are all going to add their own foibles. Phase problems etc. It could lead to sounds feeling unnatural or brittle and sharp.
I generally use 1 eq at the end of every chain. Occasionally I might shape before a distortion or something.
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SFBM
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Re: EQing a sound multiple times?

Post by SFBM »

Lost to the Void wrote:Just be aware that every effect you add, is essentially distorting the sound in some way. Lots of eq, especially multiples of different types, are all going to add their own foibles. Phase problems etc. It could lead to sounds feeling unnatural or brittle and sharp.
I generally use 1 eq at the end of every chain. Occasionally I might shape before a distortion or something.
Great advice, EQ will change character each time used and will change what's running into each FX input if you use it multiple times, I was going to chime in about the EQ before distortion/saturation thing, also, as I've seen it mentioned in multiple threads here when people are discussing how to get distortion sound of artist x or y. Something I definitely need to read into more, I think, as I haven't thought out much about phase differences or character or what have you. I usually just use Fab Filter Pro Q on the end of my chains and leave it at that, sometimes I'll use M/S EQing but that's been very rare.

dubdub
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Re: EQing a sound multiple times?

Post by dubdub »

Lost to the Void wrote:Just be aware that every effect you add, is essentially distorting the sound in some way. Lots of eq, especially multiples of different types, are all going to add their own foibles. Phase problems etc. It could lead to sounds feeling unnatural or brittle and sharp.
I generally use 1 eq at the end of every chain. Occasionally I might shape before a distortion or something.
Thanks, it's kind of what I suspecting. I usually don't EQ that much, I've just been experimenting a bit recently.


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