bapu

Leadfoot
But then I'm a moron.

Me 2.

I guess I'm in good company then. :)

Just been checking out some vids on MAGIC AB and it looks absolutely AWESOME and ticks a lot of boxes for what I want to try to achieve in a simple way - being able to load up lots of different reference tracks and group presets based on genre etc
 
For £25 this looks like an awesome investment to provide a simple way to reference tracks
 
Thanks for the heads up on this Jerry!

{tongueInCheek}
I'm not sure I buy into the whole reference track idea.
 
I mean, after enough listens Louie Louie sounds as good to my ears as does Bohemian Rhapsody.
{/tongueInCheek}
 

Ozone can take the EQ of one song and apply it to another.
 
 

silvercn
I wonder - is there not a program / plug in that can copy or simulate either the spectrum or EQ of a reference track - and then "paste" the settings into your project?

I believe the free program AAMS should do that.  I've downloaded it but haven't tried it yet.

I bought and use the SampleMagic AB plugin. I believe it is worth the $$.
 
I've also used "spectrum cut-n-paste" tools like Melda Productions' MAutoEqualizer  which is pretty cool, mostly because it helps you understand how to apply the boost/cut bands to shape the tonality. After I while I found that trusting my ears was just as productive as trying to match the eq from another track.

I always set up a Sub master or "2bus" before the Master fader. All the Master track effects are on the sub master/2bus. This allows you to route a reference track to the Master while bypassing the 2bus, which is effecting the rest of the mix. It also comes in handy in cases where you have dialog separate from your music tracks.

As far as matching EQ curves, Ozone is a great program that can do that...as John mentioned.

Izotope Ozone will do EQ matching, as will Voxengo Curve EQ.
 
Others have chimed in here on the Magic AB.  I have found it worthwhile and time saving.  You can "level match" easily between your track and the mastered reference track.  It has been educational in learning where I am consistently making poor EQ decisions.

There are legitimate applications for EQ-matching, but correcting your master bus to "match" a commercial reference isn't one of them. It just doesn't work. Analyzing well-made records is great for educational purposes, but trying to improve your own mixes by matching their spectra band-for-band is an exercise in futility.
 
Don't believe it? Create a project and import a handful of reference songs. Put SPAN on each of them, turn down the sound and play them all at once so you can observe their spectra side-by-side. Note that although there are broad similarities, they are all quite different in the details. If you still need further convincing, use EQ-matching to match one of them to another and see if you've actually made any improvement over the original engineers' decisions. 
 
If you have Ozone, tell it to display the generic -6dB/octave reference line. That will serve as a broad guideline and be just as useful as trying to match your favorite records.
 
 

So that being said - what really are the key parameters and quality features of a reference track that can be examined and used successfully to improve a project..