RedSGShredder

Equalization, or EQ, is a tool that helps you shape the sound of your instruments. It is like adjusting the treble, bass, and midrange knobs on an amplifier. However, most DAWs have equalizers that are more advanced than knobs on an amplifier. Equalization is the tool that lets you increase or decrease the gain of individual frequencies of the whole track. It is similar to increasing or decreasing volume, except that you can control which frequencies are affected. When you change the volume of an input, you are essentially changing the volume of all frequencies of that input equally. With equalization, you can increase (or decrease) just your selected frequencies.

I like to think of equalization kind of like the way colors work. If you look at a rainbow, or through a prism, you will see light broken up into it’s colors. If you have ever played around with the color adjustment on a television, you can increase or decrease individual colors. For recording, equalization lets you increase or decrease individual frequencies of an input.

General Tips

1. Equalization can’t fix a bad sound. You can adjust equalization all you want, but if you start off with a terrible sounding guitar tone, drum instrument, or whatever else, no amount of equalization will fix that.
2. Your ears will get fatigued. This is a general recording tip, not specific to equalization. After comparing a lot of different equalization settings, your ears can get tired and fatigued. That will make decisions very hard. So be sure to take breaks and save off your drafts so you can compare them side by side later on, after letting your ears rest a bit.
3. It is hard to describe sound with words. Many people describe sound with adjectives like “fizzy” or “boomy”. These words can mean different things to different people. So no matter what, you need to use your ears to make decisions.
4. It is also hard to describe sound with numbers. Along the same lines as above, a lot of times people give advice like “cut at this frequency, boost this frequency” and so on. This is good general advice, but once again, try it out and use your ears to decide.

Equalizer Parameters:

1. Frequency is the frequency affected.
2. Gain is the amount that a frequency is increased or decreased.
3. Bandwidth or Q is the width of the frequencies affected.

Frequency, gain, and Q are shown at the bottom of this image. In this example, we are boosting a wide range of treble frequencies (on the right) and cutting a smaller range of midrange frequencies (in the middle). This is sometimes called a "scooped" or "smiley face" EQ shape.

Sometimes, you will want to affect a large range of frequencies. You can achieve this using a band-pass filter. For example, you can use a hi-pass filter to let only treble frequencies through and to cut out low, bass frequencies.

Hi-Pass filter.