Frequency

Frequency

Frequency range problems constantly crop up throughout every stage of sound creation, so I always try and visualise what is going on behind the speakers...
The main area of concern is the frequency range of the speakers of headphones use as if their frequency response is poor /severely restricted this will not give a true idea of what is being recorded. Many producers use a variety of speakers or devices to test their recording to ensure they have a solid idea of what it will sound like nomatter what device is used for playback.



So what areas do frequency ralated problems arise and what kind of problems are they?

• Initial recordings of sound elements. (example kick drum)

- What kind of microphones or devices were used & what was their frequency response? How does this colour the sound we hear?

• initial mixing stage (example kick and bass guitar)

- What are the fundamental frequencies of the sounds being used? Are some sounds masking others because they share similar frequency range?

- What is the frequency range of your playback speakers/headphones? How much of the sound are you actually hearing? How will this differ on another playback device/system?

• Production/rendering stage (example DAW song rendered)

- How will things like HAS Effect, Dither, and harmonic related effects affect the final rendered audio & how will this then sound on playback (differing from the realtime playback),

- How will playback differ from device to device(with regards to componant response & range)?

• Sound Synthesis (example emulating a tone/sound)

- When recreating a specific sound it could be useful to consider things like the frequency range of the particular sound. Also the type of filter used by the synth.

- Waveforms used?

The basics:

The range of human hearing is around 20Hz and 20,000Hz, however ther frequencies outside that range are still very important. What we record is not entirely what was initially created.

Frequencies below the 20Hz range can be felt in a club situation by contrast if we imagine the same song played back on a £20 cd player (with speakers) the difference is clear. ...however if the recording had been mixed in a way so that the bass was not as heavy in the club senario and then that mix was played back on the £20 cd player difference would be dramatic. - So its good to pay attention to the lower frequencies in the mix and have a good idea of how a little tweek to the low end eq can have a drastic effect on the track as a whole.

Where EQ is concerned it is sometimes a good idea to look up what the funamental frequency is for each of the pots (rotary/slide/controls/etc) this way when you turn your high EQ knob, for example, you know what frequencies will begin to be effected.

System noise frequency range will very depending on what you are using but if you can identify the specific area where noise occurs, you can specifically turn those frequencies down to help clean up samples, mixes or whatever is being recorded.