EQing question

OK so I understand EQing and subtractive EQing but now starting toi venture into mid-side EQ.

How much mid/side should I give when EQing a sub?

Cheers!

I do not think you should be putting mid/side EQ on a sub.

It should probably be mono and right down the middle. No stereo effects.

Maybe someone can explain better.

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Agree with MKS. Short answer is keep your sub bass all mono.

If it has some mid frequencies in the sub track and you do want some room verb or delay or something on it you can either keep those fx mono too, OR, I would make a separate duplicate track, cut out the subs on the second one and just leave the mids, and then add reverb or delay etc. to that. Don’t using anything which changes the stereo field on the original sub track, including mid-side eq.

If you have no other option on an already-stereo sub track, you could do a hi-pass on the side information up to about 100-125hz. It will work but isnt necessarily as clean as just avoiding having your sub track stereo in the first place. Better to add stereo in separately like I described above than have to cut it out later

Mid-side EQ is very useful in the right situation but I dont find I really ever need to use it on subs or kicks or anything like that. Generally only elements that are really stereo to begin with

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I thought as much. Thanks dudes

Usually on my master channel I put a mid-side EQ with everything below about 150hz cut from the sides, that way I know everything below 150hz will be mono.

I alway make my sub and kicks mono anyway but that’s just as a final fail-safe in case anything else apart from the sub and kicks has some stereo fuckery going on below 150hz

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same.

Yeh this is a good point. It’s not the primary way of addressing it but a good fail safe incase something slips thru

Is that necessary? Don’t you just check the EQ on every new element as you add it, and scoop out the low end?

1 BigUp

I mean it will be fine if you don’t do it, I just use it as a safety net. I do EQ every element but sometimes fx sends do weird shit or something might slip though the cracks.

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Ah I see - yeah makes sense now seeing as I always go back into my EQ’s after adding reverbs just to make sure nothing has dipped into the zone

1 BigUp

Yeah, its good to eq your reverb output on the reverb track itself for this reason, not to mention it can change the tone a lot to play with eqing in and/or out of a reverb unit, if it isn’t one that has eq built in just add one before or after.

Another thing on that topic (low sides cut on your whole mix) is with foldover frequencies from distortion/saturation without sufficient oversampling, sometimes it can add new frequencies in the sub bass range which may be mono or stereo depending on what element they came from. You might not really anticipate where it comes from but you’ve suddenly got stuff going on somewhere you never intentionally put it. So cutting the sides below 120-150ish just helps make sure none of the above mentioned fuckery gets thru

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