There’s a lot of pseudo-scientific cobblers spouted in the audio engineering world. Here are just some of the most pervasive mixing-related nonsenses you’re likely to encounter in your musical journey.
You Must High-Pass Everything!
Let’s get the current most prevalent of all mixing falsehoods out of the way first: the notion that every sound in a mix that doesn’t have the word ‘bass’, ‘kick’ or ‘sub’ in its name must be high-pass filtered, doing away with everything below its lowest audible frequency in order to prevent the build-up of rumble and unnecessary consumption of headroom. It makes sense in theory, but the reality is that there can be more going on in the lower frequencies than you think, and those ‘unheard’ signals can contribute, even if only at a semi-conscious level, to the overall sound and energy of the track – room ambience and warmth, for example. Plus, the less corrective plugin processing applied to a track, the better, right?
That’s not to say that the ‘high-pass everything’ rule is total bunk – it does very often make sense to filter out mic rumble in vocals, mains hum in guitars, excessive sub bass in synths, etc. Just don’t do it for the sake of it. If in doubt, use a spectral analyser to see what might be going on down there that your speakers or ears aren’t revealing in full, and perhaps use a dynamic EQ to scale the amount of filtering applied to the level of the signal.
When Dialling In EQ, Always Cut, Never Boost
This is perhaps the most controversial myth of all, with many engineers resolutely insisting that heavy EQ boosts always come with an element of risk, since they can introduce unnatural resonances and general weirdness, and thus should be avoided whenever possible; and others decrying such a position as overly fussy and technically spurious. Ultimately, whatever works best for the sound or mix in question is the right approach, so we would suggest not being shy about making big boosts if that’s what’s called for to get the desired result, but opting for a counterbalancing cut in the clashing part whenever possible. That just seems sensible.
You Can’t Mix Dance Music Without A Subwoofer
With sub bass playing such a major role in house, drum ’n’ bass, techno, hip-hop, pop and other electronic genres, it surely stands to reason that you can’t hope to mix any of them successfully if you don’t have a subwoofer in the corner. Well, while it is self-evidently true that most home studio monitors, extending no further downwards than around 40Hz or so, can’t give you the full sub picture, there are ways to compensate for that when EQing basses and kick drums. For starters, many professional headphones roll all the way down to 20Hz, enabling accurate level setting in the sub range (albeit without the palpable movement of air, natch), so use those for reference as required. Failing (or as well as) that, any spectrum analyser plugin can be employed to at least see what’s going on in the nether frequencies, and for the experienced engineer, this can be sufficiently informative to facilitate moderately accurate EQ shaping.
Obviously, we’re not suggesting that having a subwoofer in place isn’t greatly preferable to not having a subwoofer in place when it comes to monitoring the bottom end, but if your circumstances simply preclude that for whatever reason (space, money, neighbours…), just know that it doesn’t have to be a show-stopping issue. As long as you can check your your mix in full on a sub-equipped system at some point – your car, a local club’s PA system, a friend’s studio, etc – then take it back to the studio for tweaking if necessary, you should be able to get away with it.
Stock Plugins Aren’t As Good As Third-Party Alternatives
A common assumption in general life is that anything ‘free’ must be inferior to an equivalent thing that’s ‘not free’, and with the plugin effects bundled into every DAW effectively qualifying as the former, it’s not entirely unreasonable to presume that they can’t possible be as good as their commercial third-party rivals. While this can certainly be the case, depending on the age of the DAW-bound plugin in question and how high a priority its development has been given in the broader context of the whole package, these days the majority of stock plugins can easily hold their own against external counterparts, and come with the added benefit of being optimised specifically for the host. Sure, the stock compressors, EQs, reverbs and delays in Logic, Studio One, Cubase, Reaper et al might not be as sonically characterful or feature-packed as those by FabFilter, Waves, Brainworx and all the rest of them, but when you just need to carry out the sorts of fundamental operations that make up the meat of your mixing workflow, they’re more than good enough to get the job done. And in the virtual instrument arena, the likes of Logic’s Sampler and Alchemy, Studio One’s Mai Tai and Pro Tools’ Xpand!2 are up there with third-party examples of their types.
In summary, if you’ve never fully explored the plugins built into your DAW because you’ve been led to believe that they’re in any way second class citizens, you really should, because they probably aren’t.
Egg Trays Make For Workable Acoustic Treatment At A Pinch
A timeless classic among home studio myths: If you can’t afford to acoustically treat your mixing space with pricey panelling and bass traps, pinning a load of egg trays to the walls works fine as an alternative. Er… hell no.
Without getting into the science of it, which is utterly conclusive and straightforward, we’ll just say that egg trays are absolutely hopeless for soaking up the vast majority of the frequency spectrum, so you might as well spare yourself the resulting interior design eyesore and not bother. If you really can’t get the funds together to sort your room out properly, there are other, effective options available to you that won’t break the bank.
And no, it doesn’t make any difference if the displaced eggs were free range.
What’s your most irksome mixing or engineering myth? Get it off your chest In the comments.
Egg Tray photo by Alvina Suhardjo on Unsplash