Doing it like the pros – EQ analyzing and making…

Hi guys it’s Andre.

We’re always looking to get our sound as close as possible to the big artists played in the radio. How do they get that full sound with such a clear singing voice and how come it doesn’t go down in the instrumental?

So we took some popular songs through all genres and analyzed them with the screenshots feature of Izotope’s Ozone, one alternative to Logic’s Match EQ (by the way: thanks for all the great ideas and suggestions for alternatives, you send me after the last post).

The result was pretty simple: all instrumental Pop songs are lowered when it comes to frequencies in higher ranges.  In the screenshot on top (click for full view), you can see the analyzed spectrum of some pop songs shown in purple, yellow and white. They all look pretty similar and they all are lowered in the higher range from 2kHz to 10kHz to leave room for the voice. After matching the EQ to one of the pop songs Ozone’s EQ is showing me a cut starting around 2kHz which is going down more around 5kHz and even more around 10kHz.

After seeing this, we tried to apply this technique to our work parts. Lowering the range from 2kHz to 10kHz in the mastering EQ, really helped. Now, imaging directors can use our Loops and Musicbeds without extra EQ-ing to make them fit the VO.

One industry secret is solved, dozens more to come.

Cheers and have a great weekend.