Toggle back and forth between your mix and the professional mix, and listen for differences.
It’s a great idea to do this referencing in your project while you’re mixing.īring an audio file of the reference track into your DAW on a new audio track.
Note how the mix engineer is making space elsewhere in the track so the vocal can sit nicely. Actively listen to the frequency balance in the vocal. You could perfectly understand the theory of EQing vocals, but this still isn’t enough if you don’t know how a well-balanced vocal sounds.Ĭonstantly referencing professional tracks is the best way to do this. Loud and overloaded highs can result in a “brittle” or “harsh” sound which can become quite sharp to the ear.Īchieving a good balance here is key, and the easiest way to do this is to examine how the professionals do it. Not having these important frequencies can reduce this clarity, causing a vocal to sound “muffled” or “dull”. These frequencies pop out in a mix, allowing the vocal to cut through other instruments that are simultaneously playing with it. Not enough level here can make the vocal sound “hollow”, and detract from its impact and presence in a mix.Ī large part of a vocal’s clarity depends on frequency content in the highs, from around 5 kHz to the top of the frequency spectrum. The human ear is naturally more attentive to this range, as it accounts for much of the sound energy in the human voice.Īs a result, this range being too loud can be annoying, making the vocal sound “boxy”. Some of the most important frequency content in a vocal occurs from 400 Hz to around 5 kHz. Overloading this frequency range can cause a vocal to sound “muddy” and unbalanced, while not having enough of this range can cause the vocal to sound “weak” and unsupported. This range provides much of the “body” and “weight” of the vocal. Female vocals naturally tend to start higher than male vocals, but treat each vocal uniquely.
The lowest frequencies of a vocal tend to be between 100 Hz and 400 Hz, depending on the vocalist. Words above the center line (0 dB on Pro-Q 2) indicate that content here is too loud, and words under the line indicate content is too quiet. The following diagram shows some of these audio terms and their approximate ranges. Use these terms to find the neighborhood of the problem, and pinpoint it from there. If someone says that something in your track sounds too “bright”, for example, you can check the highs for an issue, usually above 5 kHz. Instead, they serve as hints pointing to where there might be an issue. None of these terms really have a universally agreed-upon meaning, which can make dealing with them a bit confusing for early producers and mix engineers. Most of the words you’ll hear describe the frequency content of a sound, and whether there’s too much or too little going on in certain ranges of the frequency spectrum.