The first thing you will want to do is install the SWS extensions. These are community-based add-ons to Reaper which extend the functionality significantly. They can be downloaded from the official SWS Extensions site.

Coloured waveforms using spectral peaks

Spectral peaks are a way to add colour to your waveforms – something which is more than an aesthetic choice. By colour-coding your frequencies, you can edit much better. This does come with a bit of a learning curve, but the different colours represent different sounds that are made with the mouth. For example, a high-frequency blue area of the audio is likely to be a hissing sound, perhaps an “sss” or “sh”.

You can also identify problem pops and bumps by looking for low-frequency (red) spikes in the audio which may indicate the microphone has been bumped.

These colour-coded waveforms make editing and finding problems a lot easier. To get the feature, you can open up the actions menu and toggle the Peaks: Toggle spectral peaks action. To edit the colours and view, you can select the action View: Show peaks display settings.

Split and ripple delete – Rapid actions to help you

When editing a podcast, you are likely to need to split and chop audio rapidly. There will be plenty of unwanted pauses, coughs, and other irrelevant content that can be chopped down to reduce the playtime and tidy the audio up.

While this can be done manually with the mouse and keyboard shortcuts, you can further refine the workflow to massively increase the speed of editing, thus, saving time.

The two custom actions I want to show you are refined ripple delete actions. Ripple deleting is a useful editing technique where you split the audio around an unwanted part, then delete it, shifting everything after it back to close the gap.

If you are unfamiliar with Reaper’s Custom Actions, I highly recommend you read this more in-depth guide.

In the instance of a cough, you would make a cut before and after the cough, delete it, then the audio that follows it would snap backwards and connect as if the cough was never there.

The first custom action requires you to split the audio manually (I use keyboard shortcut S to split at the cursor). IT is a custom action with two actions chained together:

Custom: Ripple Delete

• Script: X-Raym_Delete selected items and ripple edit adjacent items.lua
• Item Navigation: Move cursor left to edge of item.

This simple custom item will delete the unwanted audio, snap the next bit of audio back to join the gap, then move the cursor to the edit point.

The second edit is even more streamlined. It allows you to skip the audio splitting by dragging the mouse and making a selection over the audio you want rid of, then following the same action. It has these component actions:

Custom: Ripple Delete at time selection

• Item: Split items at selection
• Custom: Ripple delete [where this action is the one outlined above]
• Time Selection: Remove time selection and loop points

This example is a good one to demonstrate Reaper’s ability to add custom actions within other custom actions as part of a larger chain. You could add additional actions within it depending on where you want the cursor to go too, as outlined below.

Auto-remove silence

Another really useful custom action is to automatically remove silence. This is a great one if you have long pauses that you need rid of. The way it works is it tells Reaper to select any parts quieter than a defined threshold and delete them. This can be tweaked to allow brief pauses – something natural in conversation – and only remove silences longer than a defined time.

Custom: Remove silence and snap together

• Item: Auto Trim/Split items (remove silence)
• Script: mpl_Snap selected items to each other.lua

When you run this action, it will bring up a menu that allows you to define the volume, below which is silence. It will also ask you what length of silence to ignore. I tend to set it to ignore silences shorter than 5000ms (5 seconds).

Save chain FX

When you have finished editing and mixing an episode, it is very likely that the next episode will have the same presenter using the same microphone. There is no point going to all the trouble to set up you mixing FX and sound adjustments from scratch each time, so you can save your FX chains for later use.

Once you have made an FX chain you like, you can save it via File > Save FX Chain. By bringing up the FX menu and selecting File > Add FX Chain, you can bring up previous FX chains that you have saved.

The post How to speed up podcast editing in Reaper appeared first on Audio Ordeal.

There are many people searching for the “best DAW for podcast editing” and while pretty much any audio editing software will do, REAPER has several advantages.

For starters, it is ultra-customisable, meaning you can essentially configure it however you like. Compare that to a DAW such as Ableton Live, where you have a simple (but very efficient) single workflow available, REAPER gives users a lot to work with.

This video shows a really simple way to set up a podcast editing template that bypasses a lot of Reaper’s more complex menus. It is a good starting point for editors who only need basic changes and don’t want to fiddle.

One of the key things that this video shows is the simplified setup you can achieve, because let’s face it, podcast editors aren’t normally music producers.

SEE ALSO: The Ultimate Guide to ReaEQ – Reaper’s Stock EQ Plugin

Since REAPER is so fit for all purposes, it has a huge amount of features that the average podcast editor doesn’t need so following the steps in this video will give you a template to work with that doesn’t bog you down in all the surplus features.

The post How to make a super easy podcast editing template in REAPER appeared first on Audio Ordeal.

Today we are going to look at one of the reasons why Reaper excels at sample production and auto-naming files. The “wildcards” feature is one that solves file management issues and automates a lot of work that you’d otherwise have to do manually.

Wildcards are placeholders for data, so when you are exporting lots of files, you don’t have to type out the data individually.

SEE ALSO: How To Start Mixing a Track in Reaper
SEE ALSO: How to EQ with ReaEQ – Reaper’s Stock EQ plugin

Let’s say you have tracks named bass, guitar, vocals, drums, and synth, and you want to export the individual stems from Reaper, you can simply select the source to render all tracks, then add the wildcard $track in the File name section.

This will automatically save each stem with the track name.

THE WILDCARDS
$project : replaces with project name
$author : replaces with project author (from Settings)
$track : replaces with track name
$tracknumber : 1 for the first track, 2 for the second… $parenttrack : replaces with parent track name
$recpass : replaces with recording pass
$year : replaces with year
$year2 : replaces with last 2 digits of the year
$month : replaces with month number
$monthname : replaces with month name
$day : replaces with day of the month
$hour : replaces with hour of the day in 24-hour format
$hour12 : replaces with hour of the day in 12-hour format
$ampm : replaces with AM or PM depending on time
$minute : replaces with minute of the hour
$second : replaces with second of the minute
$user : replaces with user name
$computer : replaces with computer name

That’s pretty simple, and other DAWs can do that too, but where they start to struggle is when you need lots of different files exported and all custom named.

Probably the main use of wildcards for me is generating lots of sample files.

If I have 100 different samples in a project (lets complicate things and say this project has different tempos throughout too), and they are all for different tracks and styles, I can use wildcards to do it.

I can name a file in the following format:

[tempo] – [instrument] – [take]

This is possible by adding wildcards. To add them, just select them from the wildcards menu and add any text (such as “bpm”) that remains constant regardless of the sample.

$tempo bpm – $track – $filenumber

We could get even more out of this if we start planning ahead too. Knowing that we can use wildcards when exporting, we may also want to group samples by their key signature.

You could either have all the tracks for a certain key signature grouped under a parent track (with the key signature as the name), or you could group them into regions (with the key signature as the name).

$tempo bpm – $parenttrack – $track – $filenumber
or
$tempo bpm – $region – $track – $filenumber

See below for a brief video overview of Reaper’s main render preset options:

The post How to automatically name file exports in Reaper using Wildcards – a great feature! appeared first on Audio Ordeal.

Many producers work on the move and freeing yourself from your PC is a must. That is why I want to talk to you about REAPER’s portable install feature, and why it makes it one of the most useful DAWs on the planet.

Picture this situation. You are working on a project and want to take it to your friend’s house, but you don’t have a laptop.

Because REAPER is portable, you can load it onto a USB stick and take your whole studio with you – without even needing a laptop.

The way this works is in how REAPER has been designed. Most software requires installation on the computer and is linked with various folders, registries, and configuration files on the hard drive.

REAPER on the other hand is made so it leaves a very clean footprint – clean enough to be able to run from its files on a USB drive. This was a bit of an over-simplification, but let’s move on.

• READ MORE: How to EQ with ReaEQ – Reaper’s Stock EQ plugin
• READ MORE: Is it OK to use Reaper DAW without ever paying?
• READ MORE: Autosaving in REAPER – The FIRST thing to do when installing

In addition to this, you can add all your VSTs (provided they are .DLL files) onto the USB stick and keep all of your main plugins together as well.

SIDE NOTE: Some VSTs with Digital Rights Management (DRM) may not work with this type of install to prevent piracy. Generally, any VST that uses DRM like iLok or has large libraries attached will probably not work.

How to install Portable REAPER on a USB stick?

Installation is simple and only requires PC users to download the normal installer. When prompted, select Portable Install and install it on your USB stick of choice.

Mac users face additional steps, but it is relatively similar. Drag it into the USB stick of choice and save a blank plain text file into that folder. Rename it ‘Reaper.INI’.

For people who already have REAPER set up on their computer and are looking to copy all their custom configuration onto the portable version, it is just as easy.

Under Preferences, select General and Export Configuration. Then load that into the portable version of REAPER using the same tab, where it says Import Configuration.

The ultimate production USB stick

As you can imagine, this feature of REAPER is extremely useful for people who may jump between many computers. In this case, it might be worth creating a production USB stick.

This stick will have all of your samples, VSTs, and REAPER itself so you can pretty much show up at any computer and get producing.

For this, I recommend a larger USB capacity and USB 3.0 or faster will be best for responsiveness and speed.

Also make sure to have regular backups in the cloud because you don’t want to lose everything by misplacing such a small piece of kit.

The post This feature makes REAPER one of the most useful DAWs in existence appeared first on Audio Ordeal.

Before you get the wrong impression here, Ableton is my joint-main DAW alongside Reaper. I love it to bits and it is an essential tool in my workflow … but does that make it perfect? No.

I thought I’d dive into a few of the things which drive me mad about it, in the hope that they are resolved or people offer solutions.

It is worth stating that all of these gripes I have should not put you off buying Ableton.

Pretty much all of the issues listed below are presumably the result of the developers making Ableton accessible and easy to use out of the box without need for customisation. But sometimes the KISS rule and choice to make things accessible to the lowest common denominator means that more advanced options are ruled out … here’s what I mean.

Lack of customisation

Coming from a DAW where I was spoilt for choice (I adopted Ableton Live after years of experience with Reaper), the complete lack of customisation was a bit of a shock to me.

Reaper is very much a DAW where you can go (really should go) deep into the customisation of its interface and settings. This is true to the point that you can code your own additional features in Reaper and go deeper than any of my skills allow.

In Ableton Live, you have your keyboard shortcuts set for you and that’s it, no way to adapt it to your workflow, you get what you are given. There is no way to make custom actions (or macros if you can handle the multiple meanings) like you can in Reaper.

READ MORE: How to use Reaper’s Custom Actions

This is why I never fully moved from Reaper to Ableton, and I still use Reaper for editing jobs which require lots of routine edits. Ableton suits me fine for making music, but if I’m editing a podcast or speech package, I really don’t want to be repeating the same five keyboard shortcuts for each change – that can easily be something chained to a single button shortcut.

To put into perspective how powerful this is, I have created a one button action in Reaper that splits a podcast of any length into slices at pauses, deletes silences over a certain length, and brings it all together.

To see some of the potential this could bring to Ableton, check out these useful actions that I miss when using Ableton.

Volume Automation is a nightmare

In Ableton Live, I really hate automating volumes. It is the worst DAW that I have ever worked with for this task and here’s why.

If you automate the normal volume fader and have it set (let’s say with Vocal Track verses 5dB quieter than in the chorus) then want to bring the whole track up by a few dB but keep the automation proportional, it ruins everything.

To get around this, you need to add a Utility plugin and automate that volume instead.

This is stupid and a waste of time. Sure it’s a small workflow change compared to other DAWs, but it is really jarring to the process.

Why is spacebar not the pause button?

Seriously? In every other piece of software I use, from DAWs, to video editors, to YouTube, hitting spacebar stops playback at the playhead, then hitting it again continues from where you have left off.

In Ableton, it takes you right back to the start. To unpause and play from where you left off, you hit Shift+Space.

This would not be an issue for Ableton if it has customisable shortcuts but it doesn’t.

For people used to using Ableton and Ableton only, it’s perhaps not a big gripe, but considering most people in the industry use various creative content editing software (as well as YouTube and other video players), you’d think they’d stick to the trend.

The only place this design choice makes sense is in triggering clips for live performances. If you are in session view then I can accept it. But arrangement mode is just not the place for a de-streamlined shortcut scheme.

Frozen tracks are frozen and you can’t do anything about it

This is a gripe that I’ve not had to worry about since getting a PC that can handle projects without freezing tracks – but for many, freezing a track is essential.

It renders the audio and effects so it doesn’t have to process all the plugins in real time, and saves CPU resources.

Problem is, you can’t add any effects to the frozen track unless you flatten it or unfreeze it.

This is a problem because you might want to make a small tweak to a frozen track but are limited to system resources. If you flatten it, you can’t go back and edit MIDI notes or other previous effect settings.

Why can’t Ableton allow you to add an effect on a frozen track, and should you wish to unfreeze it, simply add that effect on the end of the chain?

You can’t customise waveforms

In many DAWs, there are ways to set the waveforms to show frequencies with colour.

This is one of the most essential tricks for fast editing. I use it extensively in Reaper when editing audio to the point where I can find problems without even listening to the audio.

If the waveform is coloured based on its most prominent frequencies, you can rapidly identify kick drums or hi-hats, find nasty mic pops in vocals, and have a better idea of where you want your edit to be just by looking.

This feature is not a replacement for listening to the track but it is a significant convenience that should be afforded to the users of the software.

Conclusion

I really love Ableton, and making music in Ableton is much faster and streamlined than making it in Reaper and other DAWs I’ve worked with. The interface is shallower than a lot of others which, for better or for worse, makes the process a lot more simple for everyday users.

It doesn’t stop me from thinking Ableton is the best DAW for electronic music, but when you work on more than just in-computer music such as live bands/artists or podcasts, it has these really annoying quirks that mean it has never become my exclusive DAW of choice.

Let me know what your biggest gripes are, and more importantly, if you know of any solutions to my melodramatic complaints, I’d love to hear them!

The post Five things I HATE about Ableton Live appeared first on Audio Ordeal.

THERE is a grey area when it comes to software piracy. Sure, a crack of the Waves Gold bundle is hard to dispute – it’s an expensive product and getting it for free is pirating. But what about software such as Reaper?

For those that don’t know, Reaper is a great DAW. It is very cheap (and many people claim it is free). It is somewhat unique because it has an “unlimited” trial license.

When I say this, I don’t mean that Cockos, the developers, say you can use it indefinitely for free, I mean, there is nothing stopping you from doing so.

Cockos don’t add in hardcore anti-piracy features and there is very little to stop someone “pirating” a copy.

You just download it from the website and once the trial period is over, you are simply expected to pay up. If you don’t, the only real consequence is the 5-second nag when you open up the software.

This has led to a large debate among users as to whether the DAW can be called free.

I have seen many people say it is and get shot down in Reaper Facebook groups and discussions.

There are two types of licence for Reaper. The first is for businesses and is more expensive. The second – which most people will fall under – is a personal licence.

The website says:

You may use the discounted license if:

• You are an individual, and REAPER is only for your personal use, or
• You are an individual or business using REAPER commercially, and yearly gross revenue does not exceed USD $20,000, or
• You are an educational or non-profit organization.

People with multiple computers have a lot of flexibility too, as the website says: “If you own multiple computers, you may install the same license key on all of them, as long as you only use REAPER on one computer at a time.”

The straightforward answer is, of course, that you must buy Reaper after the 60 days are up, even though they don’t enforce it.

The reason being that it is the terms of using the software and also to support the developers in the creation of a phenomenal DAW.

The barrier of needing a good income to support the cost of the software … when you need the software to generate income, is something which is a big driver of piracy

It does get a bit murky for some though, especially comparing using a copy of Reaper past its evaluation licence for free and using a cracked software alternative.

For me personally, learning music production and editing was a key part of my childhood hobbies and I didn’t have the spare cash to really spend on software.

For around three years, I used Reaper on its evaluation license without paying until I had left my parent’s home and got a job.

And this is where my personal opinion will be voiced. Pirating software, or using it beyond its evaluation period, is OK provided you go on to buy it.

I am a big advocate of long trial periods for software, particularly in the creative world where people can use it to get into hobbies and then careers.

If you are at school or working, you might not have the endless hours to rigorously evaluate a software before the trial is up. This is why I applaud Reaper’s long 60-day trial period.

But for other software, particularly those that cost hundreds of pounds, the investment is pretty big, and not one to take lightly.

Another instance where I downloaded a cracked software was Native Instruments Massive, which I wanted to play about with in a non-professional hobby capacity. I used it for a few months before I decided to spend hundreds of pounds on the Native Instruments Komplete bundle.

I have been using that suite of plugins for years now and they are worth every penny, but I wouldn’t have made the leap had I not been able to give a spare hour once or twice a week to messing about with Massive.

Much of the music industry is built from people who, as teenagers, used cracked software. The fact is, no amount of anti-piracy measures will rid the industry of it and I stand firmly behind Reaper’s blind-eye approach.

With Reaper not enforcing it, it means that the DAW gets a lot more people trying it out, then inevitably, loving it so much that they spend the small cost it is to use it officially.

So what do I ask of all of you? It’s simple. If you are making any professional money from your use of software, buy it. Your reputation is on the line and many producers at the top have been called out and shamed because they have used cracked versions of software.

If you have been using pirated software (or running the Reaper evaluation for years) then it is probably time to pay up. A film will cost you a few pounds and you get maybe two hours of fun from that. I guarantee you, the price of Reaper, on a cost per hour basis of your enjoyment, is better value than that of films.

Without money, the developers of software cannot fix bugs and roll out updates. If you ever want to complain about issues, you lose the right to if you haven’t paid the fee.

There are alternatives to paying the full price too. Serum, one of my favourite synths, is available on a pay monthly schedule where you have access to it as long as you pay that month’s price. Over the course of many months, you contribute to the full price and once it is paid off, you have it for good.

I like this method and it is by far the best for people like students and people in school. I really hope more software makers use this method in the future because it would allow the monolithic prices of some software options to become available to those who can’t front the cost.

The barrier of needing a good income to support the cost of the software … when you need the software to generate income, is something which is a big driver of piracy. Without accessible options, people who can’t afford it will either look elsewhere or look for a crack.

It is always worth contributing to the industry that you hope will support you into making a profitable career as a musician. If you spread the attitude that products have value, you help maintain that value for the music you go on to produce.

The post Is it OK to use Reaper DAW without ever paying? appeared first on Audio Ordeal.

This is a very important topic to cover, as far too many a time, your DAW will crash. Reaper is arguably one of the better DAWs for stability, but this doesn’t mean people don’t lose work because it has crashed before they hit save. 

Of course, nothing beats standard good computer practice saving as you go, but as a producer, you will find yourself suddenly immersed and often saving the project will be at the back of your mind. 

Before you read any further, if the following is news to you, I highly recommend you spend half an hour looking through each tab in Reaper’s project settings. There are so many features which you could find helpful, that you probably didn’t even know were there. 

Autosaving in Reaper

While Reaper has many great features enabled from startup, strangely, it’s not a default setting. So, I am going to show you all how to activate it.

First of all select options, and scroll down to preferences.

If you go to project, you get the page below. This allows you to select autosave features. MAKE SURE TO CLICK APPLY AND THEN OK. I set the autosave time to every 5 minutes however you can set it to however long or short you like. I also set it to only save when not recording – I would hate to be recording and have it interrupted somehow by a save. The rest is up to you on how you save it and to where. 

If you set it to autosave very regularly, bear in mind that it is creating a new save each time (e.g every minute), this will take up your storage space on the computer.

I have my autosaves set to save onto my external 4tb hard drive, which means I can clean out all the old autosaves much more infrequently without it taking up needed space. 

A final thing to remember: this autosave feature requires one thing. It requires the project to have an initial save name and location.

Basically, Reaper can allow you to start a new project without saving it anywhere. If you decide to do this, there is nowhere for it to autosave to and so your project will be lost. If you are in the habit of opening new projects without a title and save location, don’t worry, you can set it up to prompt you at each project start. 

The post Autosaving in REAPER – The FIRST thing to do when installing appeared first on Audio Ordeal.

I’m going to cover the most important plugin of all, EQ. If you don’t run Reaper, then don’t worry, this plugin is available FREE with the ReaPlugs download off the Reaper website. Many sound engineers agree that ReaEQ, in particular, is one of the best EQ plugins out there. Let’s, first of all, look how to open it:

Each track has a green (or grey if no other effects are activated) FX button that allows you to add any FX to the track (this is also the button to hit to select VST instruments). Select the FX button on the track you want to equalise.

This will open the selection of plugins and effects you can use. If you can’t find ReaEQ, type it into the search and ensure All Plugins is selected. The view will be different for each person depending on what plugins they have downloaded.

You will now have ReaEQ up. Let’s take a look at the features and how to EQ. The first view is a black background with the frequencies along the bottom. If you play your music with the EQ enabled, you will see a yellow line running along the visual part of the plugin. The height of the line represents the volume of that particular frequency.

Let’s make some adjustments. If you look at the picture above, there are four circles, each numbered. These are Bands. They are just the points with which we can make adjustments. Band 1 and Band 4 are ‘Shelf’ filters.

These can be used at each end, cutting off any frequency beyond the far ends of the frequency spectrum. Imagine book-stops, there are no books on the outside, all are enclosed between the book-stops. This is a good technique to practice with all your mixes.

The human ear hears between 20-20,000 Hz so anything out with those frequencies is just wasted sound and therefore wasted energy in the mix. A point to bear in mind is what notes are needed if you are EQing a guitar, look for the lowest note of the guitar (usually E 82.41 Hz) and anything below that is un-needed noise so just set your shelf to roll off at 82.41Hz.

It works differently for the high frequencies as instruments have harmonics so be careful if you want to preserve them, also, higher frequency notes hold less energy so take up less headroom anyway.

We can look at bands 2 and 3 now. These, if you look at ‘Type‘  are ‘Band’ Bands (sorry if that’s confusing). If you click and drag around these points, they will boost and cut the frequencies. The blue line represents how much each frequency is boosted. This can also be controlled by the Frequency and Gain faders on screen.

The last point is helpful if you want to boost a broad spectrum of frequencies but what if there is just one specific frequency you want to cut? This is where the bandwidth comes in handy. It controls how wide the boost or cut is.

The numerical value is measured in octaves so if you want a narrow band cut out, it’s probably going to be a number below 1.

If you are looking for a rogue frequency or one you hate/want to boost, my advice (as well as peoples’ who are good at this stuff) is to get a very narrow bandwidth and boost the band, then sweep it across every frequency (which boosts every frequency) until you identify the one you want to adjust. From here you just make vertical adjustments to taste.

You are not limited to four bands. At the bottom is an ‘Add Band’ selection where you can add as many as you like. Each can be a different type of band and each can be a different bandwidth.

The above picture shows multiple bands boosting the bass and the highs while cutting a lot of the mids. This is perhaps a low-frequency instrument with the mids cut to make room for the vocals or another mid-range instrument.

There are also tonnes of presets which I recommend if you can’t get a start on it. Try out all the presets you want and see how it changes the sound. See what frequency does what, edit the presets accordingly to your own particular sound, they are there to be used as templates to get you started.

My main advice is that since EQ adjusts the volume, you don’t want to do too much boosting as this may take the sound into the red if it is already too loud. The best thing to do is cut the bad frequencies and then adjust the volume up if necessary.

Compressors are a big consideration with EQ, try compressing both before and after the EQ and see what the difference is, different people recommend different things but I have never settled for one right way, simply put, the right way is the way that sounds best.

The post How to EQ with ReaEQ – Reaper’s Stock EQ plugin appeared first on Audio Ordeal.

EQ is perhaps the most important effect available. It allows you to make small or large fixes to the frequencies in music and can be an essential tool in cleaning up a mix. For this reason, it is important to have a good grasp of what can go right and wrong, and a few of the more advanced tricks. This guide offers some really cool tips and tricks for you to try immediately to improve your EQ technique.

Always start with a high-pass

It sounds extra picky, and yes, people do keep saying it, but it is true. If you have a bunch of sounds and instrument recording, you can free up a lot of headroom from the low end. 

Try a little experiment. Download a free mixing practice song (this site has hundreds of great options) and check the meter before you start mixing. 

Take note of the loudest peak value. Now add an EQ to every track and high-pass at 20Hz. Below this frequency is sounds we can’t hear.

You may find that when referencing the meters after adding all the high-passes, that there are a good few dB of headroom extra to play with. 

Take note of the options, you have shelf and low-cut options and can determine the steepness in many EQ plugins. Some work better than others. Test for each instrument and you might find that different sounds have different needs.

Start low, work high

Following on from the previous point, this can be a great trick for extensive tidying of a sound. If you are looking for a quick fix of a single frequency, then feel free to skip this step. 

Because the lower frequencies have more weight to them and can take up more headroom, you should tidy them up first. Once you have cut all the extreme lows out, it is a good idea to deal with the mix-killing mud. 

Muddy frequencies are normally around 200-250Hz, but can be lower depending on the particular instrument. 

These frequencies really add up across multiple instruments and clog up the mix with a low-frequency sludge. 

Once you have these fixed, you will have a much cleaner sound. A lot of beginners will hear a muddy take and try and fix it by boosting the highs. If they just narrowed down on the exact problem frequencies, they can have a much more precise fix that doesn’t take up more headroom.

Remember the context

What’s your process with EQing? I bet you select the track, solo it to isolate the sound, then try and fix what is wrong. 

It turns out you might need a workflow fix yourself! One mistake I always made (and often keep making) is to forget the context of a track in the song. 

What I mean by this is that you are mixing a small ingredient of a song to the other ingredients. 

If you solo a track, yes, it is easier to hear the problems. You must realise that you are missing the interactions with the other sounds. Making a track sound perfect when solo’ed is dangerous – some tracks aren’t mean to sound perfect by themselves. 

Think about a rhythm guitar in a track with lots of instruments. You might want to cut a lot of the muddy frequencies out, add a lot of bite for it to cut through, and scoop out some of the mids to make room for the vocalist.

This might actually sound pretty rubbish in isolation, but along with the other elements, it sounds right. 

Don't ignore the power of M/S

Mid-Side (M/S) processing is a really cool feature available on many pro EQ plugins. What it does is divide the sound up into two channels, one which has the middle sounds (in the stereo field) and one with the side frequencies.

It works by looking at what sounds are present in both left and right channels and what sounds are distinct in each channel and instead of processing on an L/R basis, it converts it to M/S. 

The reason we like M/S processing is that it can really enhance the spread of sounds. 

You can have the weight of a sound punching down the middle while the shimmery highs are boosted on the side frequencies. 

It is also a great way to tweak a mixed track. Let’s say you have a nice vocal in the centre and backing vocals panned left and right, you might want to touch up the backing vocals a little bit, or add a bit of warmth to the main vocal. 

Mid/Side processing can allow you to do this (though not perfectly). 

 

Chain position

EQ or Compressor first? Distortion before or after EQ? These are important questions and yes, it does make a difference. 

The easiest way to think about it is that EQ is generally a “fixing” plugin, while effects like reverb or distortion add new characteristics.

There is good reason to have an EQ before an effect: you want the sound to enter that process sounding good, because fixing it afterwards can be difficult. 

Distortions are especially vulnerable to too many low frequencies and so an EQ beforehand can really clean the sound up. 

That said, however, EQs can also be important after the fact. You might want to bring out a character of the distortion or remove some resonances that are highlighted by a reverb effect. 

In this case, you might want to add an EQ after the effect. 

Of course, in some cases, you might simply need to have an EQ before and after the effects chain, but don’t go overboard and place an EQ every other effect as this will just make mixing too complicated.

Automate your EQ

If you want an easy riser in dance music, or want a subtle way to raise the energy, why not automate your EQ. 

Try adding a small boost in the mids, and as the energy rises, automate it to sweep up the frequency range, leading up to the chorus or the drop. 

Perhaps you want to remove the lows to thin out the sounds before a bass heavy drop, just automate it. 

You may even find that at one point your singer gets too close to the mic and the proximity effect kicks in too much. Just automate the fix to that specific section. 

 

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