THIS is Eating Up All Your Headroom in Your Production | PreSonus
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- Опубліковано 16 лис 2023
- What is "headroom"? Simply put, headroom refers to the amount of space you have between your audio and the clipping point. If you're not careful when mixing and mastering your music, you can find yourself running out of headroom quickly, and thus experiencing clipping and other unwanted issues in your audio.
In this brief tutorial, Joe Gilder talks about a common culprit of this issue and demonstrates how you can alleviate the problem to get back some of your headroom.
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This is Eating Up All Your Headroom in Your Production | PreSonus
#presonus #studioone #musicproduction #audioproduction #mixing #mastering #headroom - Наука та технологія
Careful because sometimes you’ll actually lose headroom from doing this because a hp filter will change the phase relationship of your low end to your upper frequencies. (Linear phase has issues too especially at low freq) So be careful with this! It’s often not necessary at all. Just do all your high passing at the mixing stage if you can. I recommend you try to avoid doing it (unless the track audibly benefits)
EXAAACTLY. Not enough talk about this. Often times a hp filter can rob you of up to roughly 2db of headroom!
In the last time, I learn to mastering my productions while produced and mixing, so easy to modify any issue in the instruments, VST or voices. Next export stems, make a new mix with all corrected, only touch minimal details and apply the master chain, and really, now all sounds perfect! Thank you.
This is one of those tutorials that you need but didn’t know you needed like who woulda thought 😅. Thank you so much. Very detailed and straightforward.
I JUST BECAME A PLUS MEMBER. THIS VIDEO JUST OPENED UP A NEW WORLD FOR ME. THANKS JOE!!!
It is important to cut sub bass to some extent. I avoid full roll-offs because they can inadvertently effect the character of sounds that have breath in them like live woodwinds and singing. This is because the full spectrum breath sound has some effect on the phase of the mid-range and above. So cutting the sub bass of these things effects the initial attack of the note where the breath is hitting before the pitch is present. It is non-musical but essential information for a natural reproduction of the sound.
Some people may think I'm crazy and that probably means your mid-range tracks had the sub bass pre-cut so you never heard it in the first place. So it is important to tame those lower frequencies, but only by 6-12db so the information is still there, just not as loud.
Smaller changes are better for live recordings, in my opinion as far as roll-offs go. Add it on, but then use the percentage to dial it back.
Well explained and demonstrated. Thanks again Joe.
Well, from my perspective as a musician recording and mixing my own tracks (NOT a professional engineer), I think that the important takeaway from this is to just be aware that there are objective cause and effect relationships at play. As many have pointed out, there can be any number of musical/artistic reasons to want more or less low frequency information, all of which are valid, there's no right and wrong in that respect. But you do need to be aware of what is objectively happening with your mix if you choose to work that way, and one objective fact is that low frequency information DOES produce a lot of energy, and it will eat up headroom. So then you can make your decisions based on what you want musically and artistically. One possibility is that you decide you don't need that low end and cut some of it out (which can then have it's own other objective consequences).
Thank you! Immediately useful.
Great video, very clear in explaining basic stuff we beginners don't care about. Thank you.
Take that 50-80hz advice with a grain of salt. For some genres it makes total sense. But it depends really on the type of music that you are producing and its intented playback environment. If you are producing electronic dance music, even as low as 20-30 Hz can have usefull sub expension, given you have a well engineered sub bass that isn't just random rumble.
He said 50hz was important. He also mentioned below 40hz could be useful in certain genres.
I tend to boost 30hz all the time on master to bring back thickness
Every video is helpful! Thank you very much!
Also not attenuating or rolling off that low end around 30/40 Hz is the number one culprit for your song sounding like whale farts once you get it to the car, or a bloated mess that never seemingly gets as perceptibally loud as other club tracks... bc of ultra low end sonic garbage.
Infact, I use EQ to sanitize every sound I use and attenuate or roll off all unwanted or unused frequencies, and that gives you even more headroom. That high hat has low end sonic garbage too that you wont need, all the sounds do. 🍻
It's definitely not necessary to Low Cut every sound. If the low information is like -100dB it really doesn't make any difference and you might get yourself in phase trouble because of all the highpassing 😉
@@jacksolleguitar for sure. When in doubt put a scope on it. 🥳
The point about hi hats was 💯 But ya, I completely agree with this post. An often overlooked, and an important part of certain styles of mixing. I see so many guys that don't bother rolling out the unwanted lows and sub lows, and then wonder why the low sound funky. But admittedly, there's an odd limit to this. I've pointed out this whole 'roll off lows on almost all elements' thingy to some guys, and then 4 months later they're delivering mixes where everything except kick and bass sounds like a telephone. It extremely helpful, but as with most hacks, you gotta handle with care 😉 Cheers 🙌🏻
Sounds good on paper, but IRL sounds the excat same, n actually u r prolly causing some serious phase problems that are the culprit of bad mixes in your car now!
Also just slapping the the phase the opposite direction w a one click plug in doesn't fix phase problems like one cld mistake it to. Like if I'm aiming a gun too far to the right to hit the target and just flip sides, now I'm just aiming way left of the target and still not hitting ish!
I'm going to make an effort to check this part of the spectrum more closely. Your explanation was easy to follow and understand. Thank you!
Thank you for the class!
Great info. Thank you for this.
Great points to take onboard, thanks. When you cranked up the isolated low end I could hear it on my phone.
Awesome information, gracias mi Amigo! 🙏🏼
Excellent video!
Very nicely explained.
Joe Gilder, the voice of sanity!
what an excellent video. I have never done any mastering, so this was super informative.
Very useful thank you Joe
Great Tutorial Joe (I see you've got a new job) thank you for the great info. You have always had a great way of explaining to us lesser Mixers / Pro's
Thanks Joe
Great video! I use a multi-band compressor like the CL1B, bring all the bands gain down, and then starting with the midrange band, bring them up until they sound about right, not even looking at the meters. It's amazing how this helps balance the energy of a track. You can also do it with a linear phase EQ.
At last a great insight into low end..that I cannunderstand thanks
👍Cool. I actually understood all this. Hopefully I can remember it, and therefore apply it.
its been 7 days. do you still remember it?
or have you forgotten already?
Huh? What you talking about? Forgotten what? Who are you? Do I know you? Why am I here? :p @@iggswanna1248
Very helpful! This guy is brilliant!
excellent explanation
I agree, but as a hip hop heavy beat maker, eh….40 “can” be a bit high up. But that’s because between 30hz to ~50hz is where that “feeling” is, and I mean in its most direct essence. It’s not what can be addressed via going up a harmonic or two and add saturation or distortion. So if I can get away with it, I roll off at 29-32 with as shallow a roll off as possible. And while I know i shouldn’t, I do it both at the beginning with ProQ3 natural phase of my signal chain with as shallow a roll off HPF as low as needed along with the same but steeper treatment up near 16khz, along with surgical cuts to remove any problematic spots, theninto tape, ANOTHER ProQ with more musical cuts where my voice would sit, bax highs, and maybe - MAYBE - another HPF in case whatever I did with tape was a bit too much in the lows that the internal filter missed.
Then to something like slate VMR where the first insert is Earth where I do it AGAIN, but with a slight bump somewhere around 32hz and like 18 db/Oct, blah blah SSL eq insert with its shallow roll off->FG Stress ~~> Neve eq insert with its roll off, then a buss compression array VBR (got a red, a glue, Opto all paralleled out, yadda yadda, then another ProQ3 if for nothing else but to sweep the lows to see if that’s sitting right. I might add some dynamic EQ here to help with punchiness and take some harmonics. Then Ozone with some saved starting point or the analyzer. This is to help sculpt the final tone as a sort of redundancy catch all, but I don’t use the maximizer. From this, I can adjust output to have it never crack a certain DB level of…I dunno, -5 peak? If the rms or LUFS is too big, I messed up somewhere and should adjust likely my kick or bass ratio at the instrument level (if possible, or via an insert in Ozone). Final is Slate FG-X 2. I want it at that point to not have to do much of anything! And I prefer it to Ozone Maximizer.
Here’s the thing: if it can sound right like that, then I go back and turn on oversampling where possible to avoid the phase issue, and set the second MUSICAL EQ insert to linear as well as the insert prior to ozone.
If it DOESNT work out? Then yes. I need to roll off higher, but not on all of them, just the last ProQ. Maybe adjust the ozone exciter at the low mid or mid band. Maybe tweak multiband compression too. I don’t like ozone’s dynamic eq.)
And still, some compositions - just go up to 40hz. Sure. 🤷🏽♂️ But nine times out of ten, with hip hop sub genres, that’s too high, and we gotta get Grunman/Bob Power level creative with different forms of saturation and surgical frequency cuts. Slate also had a linear eq that can be used in mid side - FG AirEQ or something - which would somehow REALLY open up the mix in a very musical unique way.
Great video thank you!
Good stuff. Thank you 🙏
Incredible video
very good info, sometimes my mixes are muddy though I try to take care of that low end
Very good information
I love the green waveform how can i set it up on
Great Advice
Great video
Great video . Really makes me think I need to triple check my mixes
I've just realised that the sub bass freqs are so fluffy because they're literally too long to react in time. It's the Heisenberg uncertainty principle for sound basically - the lower frequency you get the less defined it's position.
100% this is huge. Me, personally, I micromanage my signal chains and bus tracks / etc so MOST of this big useless noise down blow is sorted before this stage...however, it's not always that easy and managing this signal wonk is a must (i find a lot of home studios and 'enthusiast' folks are unaware of this).
very helpful
Thank you.
Thanks!
is the same true for the 20k+ frequencies also? what plug-ins or multi-band should I use? I have Cakewalk and Reaper right now .
can you pan those frequencies away from center also?
Is this more about full recorded bands or home recordings? Or i dont get it, or it doesnt apply to me specific. Thanks 👍
What I do is usually put a high pass on most tracks at 40 Hz. On its own doing it to a track won't make much of a difference, but when you have that 40 Hz in so many tracks, it builds up and becomes a problem.
Keep this ones comming
Always interesting Joe. I would certainly roll that off to elim that deep rumble though not I am not sure how that sound, annoying as it was, really had much impact on the noise floor and headroom since it was barely audible?
The only way in which it is "barely audible" is that the equipment can't reproduce it. Limiters and compressors typically look at the whole frequency range, and therefore the loudest part affects the whole.
@@jcnash02 So are you saying that, even though it is barely audible, the data required to capture it is needlessly eating up bits and therefore raising the noise floor? That's what I had been thinking but wasn't sure it made sense.
Beyond certain technical requirements (ie - hitting a certain LUFS or LRA level), I find there is very little utility in “graph looks wrong therefore do a thing.” Using visuals to check is a good workflow (at least for me) but to use visual to make a decision and my ears to confirm is… a bit backwards
But surely that was the point Joe made about this specific example? You probably won't hear the sub 40 issue, certainly sub 30, yet the graph and metering clearly shows the issue of large amounts eating up your limiting headroom. In this very specific example and with a view to final mastering I'd say the visual indicator is very relevant and following feedback from the mastering service I use, this is the very last thing I do on a mix.... Use the visual on a spectrum analyser to check for sub 30 level and see how it's impacting a final limiter. I've regularly freed up 2dB or more for mastering by going back to individual tracks and cutting sub 30 to stop it accumulating at the end of the final mix bus chain of a mix. And my ears and monitors alone would never have 'told me' there was an issue.
This only helps if there is a significant amount of content below 40Hz and the cut is made at least an octave above the content. Applying a non-linear phase EQ right on the energy will cause it’s phase to shift, become asymmetrical and actually peak louder than doing nothing at all. 6db/octave cut at or below 40Hz is all that is needed. Linear phase is even better but check for pre-ringing.
When I'm mastering I use my eyes a lot. You can miss certain sub frequencies or even ultrasonic stuff. I just use a lo and hi pass filter to round them off gently (certainly a gentle slope below 40 and above 16khz)
Would it depend where the mix is going to be used, I accept that if it's for the internet or similar, then yeah, sub 40 herz is a bit pointless, but if it's in a theater or large autitorium, wouldn't you want to keep that low sub bass or would you still EQ it down like you've shown ?
I recommend getting a subwoofer if you can afford it. After adding a sub to my system it revealed some low end issues that weren’t apparent before. It’s kind of like watching a show made in standard definition on a high definition tv. You can see all the flaws that the producers thought wouldn’t be seen. Same concept here. Just because you can’t hear it on your system doesn’t mean nobody can . 😃
I like to use the full frequency range. its just that i keep the ultra lows much lower in the mix so that it doesnt compete much for the dynamics. but i still highpass a lot of shit ofc. don't want any DC offset to occur. and above 15khz i try to keep things less busy so there is some air there but not so that it will cause aliasing problems. I like that my music works on smaller speakers but also gets that bit extra on high end speakers. With that said. It's just easier to not work with the full range when getting loud ofc.
Hi and Lo pass filters are a pwerful thing , snd sre needed in pretty much any mix.
I totally agree and so would my best friend Bob Tudor ( posthumously)!!!
Aren't you still going to get phase issues regardless of the type of low cut you use?
My practice
For each track, roll off all unwanted frequencies .......................................................
To roll off below 38Hz, place a brick wall EQ (Fab Q3) in the master bus as first
I have a problem. The program takes a long time to open and cannot be closed after finishing work. To do this, I have to turn off the computer Start/Shut down the computer. How to solve it?
I would have liked to see the effect the reduction had on the mastering of a particular song.
Try it yourself!
When I first started I saw videos on UA-cam telling me to cut everything below 50. As I got better I realised that my tracks sounded thin. I'm now much more selective where I cut To my ears every sound, even high stuff needs, low frequency. Even if you cannot hear it
Why that is I do not have a clue All that I can deduce is sound is not just heard
It is felt
What i find interesting, is if you drag any popular EDM track into your program just to analyze it in an EQ, there's still signal way below 20hz.
100% this is whats up
It’s interesting to see discussions about 40 hz and below as being “non-musical” when the lowest note on a standard 88 key piano is 27.5 hz.
Yes, the fundamental tone is below 40Hz, but you are not hearing the fundamental only. In fact, it's harmonics that make it work and sound beautiful. And it's the point.
@@misstress1928 Sure, that’s true for every note on every instrument, you hear the fundamental and you hear the harmonics that give each instrument their unique character. And many modern pop songs are not afraid to use that subharmonic fundamental all the way down to 27.5 hz in their bass lines even though many systems without a subwoofer can’t reproduce that range of frequencies.
And that 'A' isn't played on over 90% of music on piano. It certainly isn't audible for most people alive at this moment... 😉
Agreed, but the lowest notes are rarely played, And an acoustic piano mix will differ from many of the viewers rock, pop and club mixes needing this high pass treatment.
@@johnmcvicker6728 Agreed, muddiness in 40 hz and below from conflicting frequencies is a bad thing. But if you listen to a lot of modern pop mixes with a good subwoofer the trend in the last few years has been to let the fundamental of those bass parts get down to those lower semitones near 27.5 hz. Automatically saying we should suppress 40 hz and below would not be the methodology being followed in these modern mixes.
is the multiband Dynamic only available with Studio One+?
No.
@LucianoSilvamusic thank you, unfortunately I cant locate when I search for it in Studio one 6.
@@wretched06Which Studio One 6 version do you have?
My thing is 9/10 times u go to the master and add a eq like that w a roll off @40-50hz @ say -24db, then pull that meter back up and see it looks about the same as it did b4, hahaha maybe its -1db below 40hz, like if u do the math a rolloff lioe that aint doin what it looks like on the screen!
I dunno maybe Im just slow or deaf, I just try and get a real good mix in the mids and will even mix sometimes (mixing rap/pop) with almost a brickwall at 100-200hz, I know it sounds weird at first (call it the ghetto ns-10z, but try it and then once u get what sounds good to u, turn that brickwall into -12db or -24db and slide it dowm to 30-40hz. Then come thank me for taking care of your low end problems.......
Most club systems have a lowcut set to 30-40 hz to save speakers from blowing up 😂 so u can cut it in your mix anyway. Not cutting it excessive but tasteful so it doesn’t bloat your mix as shown in this video!!!
Wouldn't a low shelf be better?
Mix FOR vinyl
So the question then becomes high pass or attenuate. David at MixBusTV thinks the latter sounds better and is less damaging to the remaining audible mix. In other words, set a cut at 20Hz and gradually increase the width of the Q with -15dB gain (or something along those lines).
Or just use a shelving filter and set the frequency where you want it. Personally I use high pass on most tracks and low shelf on the master if needed.
hmmmm. always astonished about the informations we get out there ....if everything is REALLY well tuned and well balanced 30 and even 20 cycles are very cruical frequencies. They dramtically impact the music and are not just some "club - subwoofer-triggers. It´s really funny to say...below 40 cycles is just nothing important...
truth 😂
Well yes. This is why we highpass all mic and pickup signals. To get rid of the inausdible rumble that eats up heasroom.
1:58 Are you sure about that? I mean just the ability to hear - not in a musical way or anything. Just the physical ability to hear.
Because infra-sound is a thing and when i use a test tone generator, i can hear to around 15-16 Hertz - a pure sine wave. If you use other waves, it goes much lower (to be fair a Saw is just clicks, so then high frequencies again, i guess?).
Because in an actual song it's probably not going to be a pure, almost not noticable pure sine wave.
Sure, musically not really useful, but the fact that you CAN hear it, like at all, might be interesting / important. For example for Stuff that i make: (dark) ambient / soundscape music. And there those super low frequencies can be really important for texture.
The reason i'm saying this: When i started, some tutorials said stuff like "Cut everything below 30 Hz" - and that's obviosly whrog as a blanket statment. CAN be, on a case to case basis, the right call. But isn't universally true.
The human ear can dot *distiquish between different, specific notes / pitches* below 30 Hz, but that doesn't man people *can't hear it at all*.
Again: don't get me wrong, i understand that this is about headroom and practical usability for "normal" music. This is more about technicalities.
Tweaky my is cool bro, we’re here for it. “Beedee-beedee-bedee” (hopefully some get the joke).
Well you are off by about 10Hz IMHO. If you said 30Hz has not much musical stuff happening below it I'd agree, in fact a lot of people would agree. Regarding what is not audible well duh, you are using 6 inch monitors there a limits on what they can reproduce, but not every studio is limited to small woofers with no sub, and definitely many people have listening rooms going even below 20Hz. D#1 is 38.89Hz, D1 is 36.71 and some musicians actually do use these notes and these frequencies are recognizable as musical notes, if the speakers are decent and able to reproduce low end well.
Consumer audio gear would be considered "full range" if at least down to 30Hz is reproducible , and subs in clubs and events usually go down to 30, not 40.
Should be addressed when mixing the drums and the bass 😇
Careful, beween 56 and 30 hz is where all he fun is at, in a lot of electronic genres, the genre you speciffically are working with might not need it, but plenty do, always check first. And if you work with clipping and distortion for loudness, USE LINEAR PHASE or your headroom will poof out of existance and everything needs to be clipped again.
I always highpass 40 and below
True. Unless you're Jah Wobble.
I see this tip from people all the time but its always super weird to me because I have never seen it give you head room. It often peaks higher despite what you would expect even using linear phase. imo sounds worse too
I’m listening on iphone speakers and I can hear 40hz 😳. How is that possible ??
You're hearing the harmonics of it. But iPhone speakers (& Apple device speakers in general) do have really impressive sound reproduction.
Its ok, but the question is that Music is not a technical target, and if the idea they want for the feel of the song is to have that extra lowend, why not..is art and expression and not all have to be in certain ways...is like if you would ask a top mixer in the 80s for a mix of how it sounds today.. probably would say is getting brighter and brighter by the day, vocals have no body, all over compressed, too much saturation and harshness etc etc .... so music changes and as long as it is within reason ....we do not have to follow hard guidelines
Bro made a 7 minute video out of 1 minute worth of content. This is why so many people hate UA-cam
Attention spans are continually shrinking.
Most folks are not hearing 20 Hz because very few speaker systems in very few rooms are able to reproduce that part of the spectrum. If your sound system was capable you would certainly be hearing (feeling) it!
Sir. You have no clue.
Yeah he said most/many people would not hear it but that the DAW would pick it up and compensate hence reduction in overall headroom. Thanks though.
"with me, gregor"
How can someone not already know this? It's pretty much a no-brainer, isn't it? It's recording 101, first day of class.
And it doesn't just compete for headroom or make your amps and speakers do gyrations that compromise things. it muddies the sound, in everyone's ears. The S/N in 24-bit is -144 dB, but not if you are the one adding the noise, and subharmonic mud ain't music-it's nothing more than noise.
This also goes back to the basic principle of when two tones, even pure tones, are expressed in the same medium, it creates 4 tones: those two tones and the tone that is the product of adding them together, and the tone that is the product of subtracting them from each other. if the lowest note you play on an instrument is a C3, that's 132 Hz. So there should not be anything appearing in the spectrum analyzer below 132, right? Simple math.
Except, if you play the C3 and the E3 (165 Hz) at the same time, as part of a C chord, it creates a harmonic at 297 Hz and a subharmonic at 33 Hz. Add all the instruments together, and allow for the timbre, and even if the lowest note played is 132 Hz, there will still exponentially be plenty of mud below 132 Hz to contend with. If anyone was wondering why that mud magically appears, that is exactly why.
I find the lowest note every instrument plays in a song and roll it off at 48 dB per, on every track and every bus. Unless you are combining mics in the same room, phase smear is not really an issue in EQ. Do that, and the bulk of that mud magically disappears.
I also roll everything off below 30 for kick and bass, and everything above 15k. It's not a matter so much if it might be 'musical' or not, or whether we can even hear that (most adult males can't hear above 12-17k), it's a matter of what happens if you leave it in. Consumers are going to hear a processed version, and likely a lossy compression version. Most processes, the first thing they do is roll that off, anyway. And if it were left in, it stresses the encoding algorithm and devalues the sound quality, so the best thing to do is remove it at every opportunity. In tracking, mixing, and mastering. Leaving it in buys you absolutely nothing, other than trouble.
So, you're wrong. It's not eating up MY headroom at all. Maybe yours, but not mine.
40hz is great just make sure its not louder than 50hz
The needle skipping is tantamount to the speakers struggling to play the lows.
Cutting at 40hz is insane.
All of the low end feeling is 25-50Hz
Keyword Feeling as opposed to audible. All very musical
It also very much depends on the steepness (dB/Octave) at which you're cutting at 40hz. -GBY
I've seen so many videos blindly giving this advice. The way you treat the low end is very genre specific. Using high pass filters on the low end tends to smear out the transients, making the higher bass frequencies less well defined. The Sub, doesn't take away much headroom if it's mixed properly and shaped correctly. I'm guessing that the assumption in this video is that no one is producing music that has a very low end, and that any very low frequencies are just "Rumble". Again, if you're mixing any of the hundreds of Electronic Genres out there, this is very seldom the case, as most of the sounds are sampled or synthesized, and mostly have very low frequencies if that's the intention. As for hearing the low end on small speakers, there are many ways to bring out the kick and bass (that's a video in itself). To be honest, you'll never hear Sub-Bass on small speakers. So, if you're working in those genres, you at least need some good headphones that let you hear those low frequencies. Getting rid of the very low end will do nothing to make the bass frequencies pop out on small speakers. Adding a tiny bit of 3rd harmonic saturation to the bass or kick can make a big difference though - Note: there are some great free plugins which do this really well. Either way, try looking for videos on the genre you're producing, and check out a few of them, so you get a better idea of how to mix in that genre.
Taking care of this unnecessary low end will allow you to achieve an overall louder master of your mix. 🎧
Joe, telling people that everything below 50 Hz is useless is flat out malicious. People aren't going to realize that what goes there needs to count, they're going to think everything should be high-passed and they'll be publishing recordings with no sub-bass at all. To say there is **no melodic/musical content** down there is ridiculous.
...but I'm Gregor! :) -GBY
Hmm... The "Dog Whistle" of mixing.... Have a good weekend everyone.
Oh Joe, you were good for a while with your videos titles but now you're back with clickbait. Have you ever thought about the SEO implications? How to find a video to a specific topic when every title is something with "this". Even worse is the fact that this is the official Presonus channel which should help me understand the functionality of their software and be a resource for finding answers and tips to questions I have.
It's a pitty. I know you can do better.
I often wonder about the accuracy of those frequency analyzer displays at those low frequencies? 🤔
Is it possible to upgrade from studio 5 artist to s1 6 artist?
All I see on the website is the option for artist to professional.
Quit overthinking shit. Close your eyes and mix with your ears and your heart.