this post was submitted on 09 Mar 2026
132 points (94.0% liked)

Science Memes

19432 readers
1193 users here now

Welcome to c/science_memes @ Mander.xyz!

A place for majestic STEMLORD peacocking, as well as memes about the realities of working in a lab.



Rules

  1. Don't throw mud. Behave like an intellectual and remember the human.
  2. Keep it rooted (on topic).
  3. No spam.
  4. Infographics welcome, get schooled.

This is a science community. We use the Dawkins definition of meme.



Research Committee

Other Mander Communities

Science and Research

Biology and Life Sciences

Physical Sciences

Humanities and Social Sciences

Practical and Applied Sciences

Memes

Miscellaneous

founded 3 years ago
MODERATORS
 
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] mic_check_one_two@lemmy.dbzer0.com 13 points 13 hours ago (1 children)

Depends on what I’m doing with it.

If it’s a vocal input, I’m probably boosting the 2k-5k a little, because that’s where lots of the vocal clarity and intelligibility comes from. A small boost somewhere in that range (exactly where varies slightly from one vocalist to the next) usually keeps the audience from straining to hear. Unless it’s a true bass singer, they’re getting a high pass filter, probably around 160Hz-180Hz. Anything below that will just be mud for anyone except a bass. Lastly, most people sound a little less harsh with a small shelf cut around the 8-10k range. Not a lot, you just want to take some of the harsh squeakiness out of things. Maybe a de-esser too, but that’s a different topic.

And if it’s an instrument, I’ll probably consider cutting a little bit out of that same 2k-5k range if it’s stepping on the vocals. Too much noise in that same range will make the vocals sound muddy, because they’re getting steamrolled by the instruments.

Basically everything on the drums (except the kick, and maybe the floor tom) gets some sort of high pass filter. Especially the cymbals. I don’t need to hear kick drum in my ride cymbals. And inversely, basically everything over ~2k gets rolled off of the kick, because I don’t need to hear the cymbals sizzling in my kick mic.

A stringed instrument like a violin or cello will EQ very similarly to a singer in the same range. In terms of instrument voicing, instruments played with a bow sound the most like a human voice, so I guess it makes sense that they would EQ the same. But it also means that strings will tend to overwhelm vocals if they’re in the same range. For example, a bari-bass singer will compete with the cello for the same auditory space. So you’ll want to be careful that you don’t accidentally make both of them sound too much alike. Otherwise you’ll run into the same trap of having them both occupy the same auditory space, and they’ll make each other sound muddy.