I was told its a good idea to remove all frequencies below 50hz in the final mix to remove muddiness and get rid of the frequencies we cannot hear. I've looked at alot of the built in EQ's and havent been able to figure out how to simply remove everything below a certain frequency. If anybody can point me in the right direction, that would be great :)

Just dont start cutting because it says it in a book, Listen to your music and see how it translates on different systems (Car, Home stereo,Work Radio) You can use the sonitus eq for it. I dont know what EQ's you have, but if you have S6PE, you have the sonitus. But yes, its a good idea to gradually cut below 40KHz or around there. Every song is different.
Cj

Aside from what Clay said (ie., statements like "cut below 50HZ" are meant to be guidlines, not absolutes), you can use any EQ (Sonitus does fine) with a High Pass Filter setting to accomplish this.

ORIGINAL: dtboos

I was told its a good idea to remove all frequencies below 50hz in the final mix to remove muddiness and get rid of the frequencies we cannot hear. I've looked at alot of the built in EQ's and havent been able to figure out how to simply remove everything below a certain frequency. If anybody can point me in the right direction, that would be great :)

I would cut everything below 20Hz but not 50Hz. There's a lot going on from 20 to 50. Most consumer systems won't produce anything below 20 (if THAT low).

Wow, this is so wrong I don't know where to begin.

First, "mud" is in the 150-350 range and a little dipping in this range is not a bad idea to get your tracks cleaned up. However, some voices and instruments need this range so it's highly dependent on the sound you are trying to create.

A high pass from 20-30Hz is not a bad idea to take out rumble but, above this point, you are going to take power out of the bass or kick drum, possibly a low tom. So, once again, depending on your intent, you can play with a high pass in this range but you risk taking the umph out of a pop or rock mix in doing so. Mastering engineers do make a high pass on the final mix but its generally not as high as 50Hz.

The first rule of mixing is not to NOT do the same thing everytime. Otherwise your tracks will always sound the same. Better to know why, when and where you should make an EQ adjustment vs following these type of blanket rules.

The only problem with this is, a lot of hobbiest tend to use monitors (if they even use studio monitors at all), that are around the 4" range, and start to drop / tapper off at the 80 / 90 hz range. So, one would have no idea what is there in the first place, much less if droping it out would help or hurt.

but, above this point, you are going to take power out of the bass or kick drum, possibly a low tom.

I absolutely agree...
Low drums can lose a lot if you hack off everything with a highpass at 50Hz.
BTW, the slope of the HP filter is also an important consideration!!

I am not so much in favor of brute-force hipass in the final mix; for mastering, it's likely better to let the ME do his/her thing with the benefit of serious ears/monitors/room.

HOWEVER. It is extremely important to cut out low rumble on any tracks where there is no useful information down there - guitars, piano, voice, horns, many synths, drum overheads (assuming you're getting everything you want on the kick from the kick channel)... This will open up those frequencies for instruments that are actually doing something useful with them, and often enormous improvements can be made to the punch and clarity of the low end of a mix without actually doing anything directly to it - simply by eliminating sub-audible rumble in other tracks.

I think mastering engineers are a luxury that few of us ever get to encounter. My experiences have been limited to vinyl releases a while back. In those cases high passing at 30-50 hz is fairly common because of the physical limitations of a vinyl record. Also with the budget stuff we were doing, you can get more audio on a side if you restrict the bass (less bass means narrower grooves = more grooves! groovy)
As far as cutting bass to get rid of mud.... there are lots of kinds of mud. There is IMd and cabinet resonances from cruddy monitors which causes you to cut where you dont need to. There is the wall of poo which most entry level preamps give you. There is the transformer resonance in most dynamic mics. For some its in a very audible range like 250hz. Some mixers do this also.
There is no magic frequency to cut or boost that saves a mix.
Years ago when I first found out about the fletcher munson loudnes curve I thought it meant you should boost at 3-4k because that is where the ear was most sensitive. Ouch. bad idea. Now I cut in that area to smooth out my mixes. I usually cut the low mid someplace between 120-600. and I almost always cut the bottom off of everything in the mix except the kick and maybe one other thing, like the bass or the snare.

Yea, I mean Geeze Louise I paid good money for this here sub woofer thang that goes all the way down ta like 35 hz or somethin and now yor tellin me to just lop that off? No way, Jose! (sorry ifn yor name ain't Jose).