Careful Post Production - EQ, Compression, and Reverb

EQ, Compression, and Reverb

Here is an excellent example of what can happen with just a little bit of EQ, Compression, and Reverb. My friend had recorded a track a while back, and he wanted to make it sound a little bit more punchy. His computer was broke, so we didn't have access to the master tracks, only the final stereo mixdown.

Using Adobe Audition 1.5, I opened up three idential copies of the song. Track One was going to be my reference, so I could check the changes I was doing.

I was able to remove the center channel from Track 2, and then the opposite for Track 3, meaning I kept the center channel and removed the sides. This gave me a bit of flexibility when it came to mastering.

Here is how the tracks were on Audition

Track 1 - Original Song - No changes would ever be made to this file, used as a reference.
Track 2 - The center channel, vocals and Fuzz Guitar Overdubs along with drums and bass
Track 3 - The side channels, guitars and reverb.

One thing I noticed right away was that the vocal track was way too low, so I eq'd that a bit to bring it up just a tad, not too overwhelming. I also noticed that the reverb was not so pronounced, so I did a 60/40 mix, 60% original, 40% reverb. This gave it a more balanced reverb compared to the original, where the reverb was in just the left channel. Anyone who has heard the Cure knows how the drums have a lot of reverb, especially on the album Disintegration.

A big problem for the center channel was that the bass and kick drum were at the wrong levels, the bass was muffled because the kick drum overpowered the song. I compressed the bass track to -16db, because that kept the kick drum from getting too loud, now the song had a bass presence it never did before.

For the two side channels, I noticed the guitars could be brought out a bit, so I eq'd those just to make them audible more. Not a lot of work here. In fact, I lowered the final mix level because it was still a bit loud.

When you compare the two recordings, they sound really different after the changes.