How Far To Push The Treble?

I may boost some treble on a vocal a bit and I may look for a little string noise on a electric bass guitar with a treble boost.

I would have to say that I never use any additive EQ on my master bus... not that I have any *rule* about it... it just doesn't happen the way I do things.

I'd say a 10dB boost of anything, anywhere, indicates that you are missing some opportunities to get what you want at some earlier stage in the process.

For example; I start my EQ approach with the choice of microphone and preamp I select and go from there.

You've asked a good question... so you are 51% towards a good solution.

Good Luck!

best regards,
mike

So much of what you have to EQ is based on your mic choices.

If it takes +12 to get the cymbals to sparkle the way you want...so be it.  But I agree with Mike that these problems are usually best dealt with at a track level instead of an EQ on the master bus.

It's all about mic choices while you're tracking....in my opinion.  The right mic for the right sound source will put an end to the endless EQ battle.  Once you find yourself subtracting more than you are adding, you'll start to feel like you're getting somewhere!

One place to look at in tracking and mixing is the bass and specifically rolling out some of it.  For most acoustic stuff there isn't much useful information below 100 Hz or even higher - just noise, rumble etc that can eat up headroom.  Although counterintuitive, getting rid of that stuff means you can mix the remaining high end louder during mixing stage.  That might be where some of the missing air comes in.  Worth a try, anyway and general good practise.

But pumping the high end up by 10 db during mastering means there is a problem earlier in the chain, as stated above.  Try the mixing stuff but new recordings could probably be helped w/ the above suggestions, esp. mic choice.

@

I do sometimes try and use a high quality EQ on the master bus to push the top end up by about 3dB, but I wouldn't dare use more additive EQ than that. As others have said, usually the best thing to do is instead to reduce the rest of the mix which then gives you more headroom to push everything up, which will achieve a similar result with fewer artifacts.

The EQing I tend to do is a lot of high pass filtering on instruments to remove inaudible frequencies on bass or unwanted frequencies on vocals/guitars/drums/cymbals/synths, and then a bit of multi-band compression to ensure the mids don't push out above the rest of the frequency range. That usually gives you enough headroom for the mix to sparkle.

Another approach is to use an exciter, which I've used from time to time, and generally that's not been too bad. Or you can add a bit of saturation to your instruments which will tend to increase their high-frequency output ever so slightly.

The first thing that popped in my mind is: How's your monitoring? + 10 dB sounds like a very big boost.

If you import a commercial track into SONAR, one that you know has a sound you like, does it soound fine through your monitor speakers? And does your own recording sound dull compared to it.

The need to boost treble can also be a sign of listening fatigue.

Have you checked your mixes in various environments and systems?

I hardly ever boosted much EQ on the master bus until I picked up the UAD massive passive. Now I'm not so sure. It seems like it does more than just tweak the EQ curve. I can be very nice though.