H13
Inspired
All I can do is laugh.
Or I'll cry.
So I'm a typical metalhead guitar player. I like big-ass distorted "I'M ANGRY AT MY DAD" chugs. They make me happy even if I am angry at my Dad which is rare because he's pretty fucking cool.
My chugs in my recordings have always been harsh and spikey in the top end to my ears. I've always done some pretty brutal EQ surgery around 1750hz in order to not make things stab me in the face.
(Hint: You should be smirking right about now)
I've been doing an audio course in a recording studio to make my mixes not shit. We got to play my mix on their setup and my jaw hit the floor. NOTHING sounded like it did in my room. I don't mean things were a bit different, I mean if you asked if that was me playing the guitar I wouldn't have been certain.
So I went home in a huff and with all my newfound knowledge I was gonna "Fix" my mix. Except that when I got home and hit "Play", everything sounded...fine? All the issues I could hear in the studio, I could NOT hear in my room.
Well fuck.
So the instructor leant me his headphones (AKG K702s). I went home, plugged them in and suddenly I could hear what I heard in the studio.
Namely, I could hear that 1750hz is pretty much where all of the upper mids of your guitar tone sit. That big-ass -8db cut is probably a bit extreme isn't it?
Long story short, it turns out that my room has an acoustic black hole at around 2000-ish hz. Either a whole heap of frequencies are disappearing, OR all the top end is bouncing around and clashing at around 1750-2k. Either way, what I thought was a problem actually wasn't a problem and instead I was creating a problem in order to try to fix a problem that didn't actually exist.
I've since found a wealth of other problems.
So treat your room. Or fix it. It's shit. It's making you think you sound amazing when you actually probably sound shit.
Or I'll cry.
So I'm a typical metalhead guitar player. I like big-ass distorted "I'M ANGRY AT MY DAD" chugs. They make me happy even if I am angry at my Dad which is rare because he's pretty fucking cool.
My chugs in my recordings have always been harsh and spikey in the top end to my ears. I've always done some pretty brutal EQ surgery around 1750hz in order to not make things stab me in the face.
(Hint: You should be smirking right about now)
I've been doing an audio course in a recording studio to make my mixes not shit. We got to play my mix on their setup and my jaw hit the floor. NOTHING sounded like it did in my room. I don't mean things were a bit different, I mean if you asked if that was me playing the guitar I wouldn't have been certain.
So I went home in a huff and with all my newfound knowledge I was gonna "Fix" my mix. Except that when I got home and hit "Play", everything sounded...fine? All the issues I could hear in the studio, I could NOT hear in my room.
Well fuck.
So the instructor leant me his headphones (AKG K702s). I went home, plugged them in and suddenly I could hear what I heard in the studio.
Namely, I could hear that 1750hz is pretty much where all of the upper mids of your guitar tone sit. That big-ass -8db cut is probably a bit extreme isn't it?
Long story short, it turns out that my room has an acoustic black hole at around 2000-ish hz. Either a whole heap of frequencies are disappearing, OR all the top end is bouncing around and clashing at around 1750-2k. Either way, what I thought was a problem actually wasn't a problem and instead I was creating a problem in order to try to fix a problem that didn't actually exist.
I've since found a wealth of other problems.
So treat your room. Or fix it. It's shit. It's making you think you sound amazing when you actually probably sound shit.