Professional Pop Music Engineers Equalization Philosophy : An investigation into the audio equalizer’s role in mixing techniques and pop music production philosophies

Sammanfattning

Equalizing is a fundamental processing in pop music mixing and the EQ techniques are greatly affected by the music production philosophy of the people involved. The purpose of this study is to investigate professional pop music mixer’s philosophy and techniques when it comes to the use of Equalization. The method used in this qualitative study was semi structured interviews. Six professional pop music mixers participated in the study, ages from 23 to 67 and experience ranging from 3 to 45 years professionally. The main findings of the study were that all respondents agree that there is no correct way to EQ and it can vary widely depending on the material. There was not enough data gathered to draw any major conclusions about mixing philosophies. Although there were shared practices of the respondents for example the use of HP-filters in a digital corrective (subtractive) equalizer often using a clean digital equalizer such as the Pro Q when equalizing vocals removing puff and low-end rumble as the first step in the mixing process. All the respondents also use corrective equalizing before compressors and additive equalizing. The results also highlight the equalizer’s role in the technical problem-solving and ascetically enhancing of the tone component in the mixing process. The Pultec trick emerge as a popular equalizing technique in this study, mainly used on drums. Most respondents also use compressors as tone shaping tool that function similarly to an equalizer.