In Summary

The DAW revolution has taught a generation of engineers to use their eyes along with their ears. Analyzers can show us lots but what can they actually tell us about making the mix better? Here we look at when an extra window on the mix can help.

Going Deeper

Before computers started to sneak into the control room, the kind of rich visual feedback that engineers now enjoy was more likely to be seen aboard a spaceship than in the average control room. With just the meter bridge and the odd sprinkling of meters and lights in the rack, engineers had to hear into the mix using mainly judgement and experience. While that’s no less true today, the DAW affords an incredible amount of insight into what is happening which engineers can use to weaponise their decision-making. With sound as the ultimate currency, what can visual analysers actually tell us about the mix? Here we look at what analysers can and can’t bring to the party.

What Analyzers Do

Spectrum Analysers

For the uninitiated, the spectrum analyser is a visual tool that lets the engineer see all of a signal’s frequencies in real time as the audio progresses. The level of each is shown vertically, with frequency shown from left to right starting with the lowest frequencies. The number of frequencies shown is referred to as the Resolution.

Higher resolutions use more computer resources for improved accuracy in the frequency domain. The higher this accuracy, the slower (more latent) the read out will be. Because of this, a lower resolution readout might be more useful than one that’s telling you what happened in the recent past…

Sonograms

A related tool that lets engineers see what they’re hearing is the sonogram. This time the readout scrolls upwards to represent time, like a scrolling DAW timeline on its side. Frequency is also shown from left to right starting with the lowest. The sonogram uses colour or shading to represent level. This means that different colours can be used to superimpose different signals on top of one another if needed.

Other Readouts

These may include spectrograph, loudness metering, goniometer (or its friendlier Stereograph equivalent), or oscilloscope to help relate frequency to pitch.

What Analysers Can Do For Engineers

It’s often said that people can hear from 20Hz up to 20kHz, but this only applies to a fraction of listeners; even those who are young enough or genetically blessed enough to hear at both ends will have loads more acuity in the middle. Analysers let all engineers see what they might not be able to hear.

Subsonic clutter can creep in on any recording, especially those made in noisy or built-up environments. Be it distant traffic or aircraft through the filter of a building, or even aircon or machinery, low frequency bumps that live under the music can be easily seen with an analyser. This means that the problem can be filtered out or otherwise dealt with to claw back precious clarity and headroom.

At the other end of things, high frequency (HF) nasties arising from RF interference or fault conditions can often be clearly seen as spikes at the offending frequency. While it’s best to stop the source (such as that DC power supply or appliance), a well-placed notch EQ will cut the problem back down.

In true spectrum analyser territory, this kind of fault-finding can be quicker and more accurate than doing it by ear.

What Analysers Can’t Do For Engineers

The first thing to bear in mind is that no analyser can tell the engineer what to do. Analysers exist only to confirm that what we’re doing is accurate, or to show us if we’re missing something. Although intuition may see the engineer trying to chase an even distribution of level throughout the frequency range, what looks flat will not sound flat. This is to do with perception and also how frequencies are distributed across the spectrum. An un-weighted analyser will appear to show a tilted readout with louder lows and quieter highs; trying to level it off with mix moves will give results that are thinner and over-bright.

In short, there’s only one thing to do when the engineer needs to know how the mix sounds, and that’s to listen - something no analyser can currently do.

Art Or Science? - Tackling Overlap

Some claim that analysers can inform more subjective factors such as musical balance, mix ‘quality’, or the even distribution of frequencies. Others maintain that only way to establish these is to just listen and act. Whichever camp you’re in, there’s no doubt that being able to see things such as overlaps between individual instruments using something like Melda Production’s MMultiAnalyzer Collisions tab could be a really helpful neutral ear for those times when the next ear break seems a long way off. Billed as a “multi track analyser”, multiple instances of MMultiAnalyzer can talk to each other to populate a one-dimensional sonogram in Collisions view, as demonstrated at 2:03:

MMultiAnalyzer also offers standard spectrum analysis, Sonogram view which plots multiple tracks by colour, as well as a Loudness & Wave view containing EBU R128 and ITU-R BS 1770-3 compliant loudness meters and waveform display for each track. MMultiAnalyzer’s Stereo view displays stereo percentage distribution. An Oscilloscope view is also provided. These features expand on Melda Production’s free MAnalyzer.

The Best Analyser?

Mixing continues to be a combination of art and science. For the latter, analysers show engineers what they cannot hear, including spectra that even the most gifted human listener might miss including environmental subsonic clutter, right up to the bat-bothering HF that can show up things like interference or even equaliser deficiencies.

Engineers with older memories will remember the optimistically named Spectrum Analysers that could be found on hi-fi (and not-so-hi-fi) graphic equalisers with dusty red LEDs and sticky sliders! While listeners never had the ability to see sounds, modern DAW tools now give the engineer genuine visual insights into what the audio is doing. For now however, when it comes to listening, there’s only one place that can happen and that’s at the chair.

A Word About This Article

As the Experts team considered how we could better help the community we thought that some of you are time poor and don’t have the time to read a long article or a watch a long video. In 2023 we are going to be trying out articles that have the fast takeaway right at the start and then an opportunity to go deeper if you wish. Let us know if you like this idea in the comments.