A question about equalizers and mastering

[Music in my mind 13]

Hello, I am getting started on recording my own songs, and after finishing the instrumental for one of them I'm on the vocal recording stage. Once I finish the vocals I have to master them and equalize to make them sound better. The problem is that I can't see and equalizers as well as other signal processing methods are inaccesible for people with visual impairments and I'm really worried because pros say I can't skip this part as it gives your sound more clarity. As you can see, eq systems are graphic into daws, and I'm not really sure about physical equalizers... Could someone help me get a workaround for this problem? I honestly don't know what to do and it's concerning. Anyone have tips for accesibility on software equalizers? Or do I have to get a physical one? If I do, what recommendations would you have for something of good quality and low cost? Thank you so much your answers would be really appreciated.

[Bob Bickerton]

Well it's only necessary to equalise a master, or individual tracks for that matter, if there's something you need to correct. I work hard to get the recording right at source through mic selection, placement, and by having a reasonable room acoustic.

If you're recording just yourself and you're having difficulty getting the sound you want, perhaps you could either review your recording methodology or invest in a front end that gives you EQ options, though of course it is easier to EQ within the DAW so you don't have to commit.

Bob

[CS70]

Hello, I am getting started on recording my own songs, and after finishing the instrumental for one of them I'm on the vocal recording stage. Once I finish the vocals I have to master them and equalize to make them sound better. The problem is that I can't see and equalizers as well as other signal processing methods are inaccesible for people with visual impairments and I'm really worried because pros say I can't skip this part as it gives your sound more clarity. As you can see, eq systems are graphic into daws, and I'm not really sure about physical equalizers... Could someone help me get a workaround for this problem? I honestly don't know what to do and it's concerning. Anyone have tips for accesibility on software equalizers? Or do I have to get a physical one? If I do, what recommendations would you have for something of good quality and low cost? Thank you so much your answers would be really appreciated.

I take you use "mastering" in the modern sense, not as tape or vinyl mastering. Bob's already taken the bit about whether or not it's necessary to equalize. Most definitely, pros do not say you cannot skip that part. You can and ideally you should, any time you can.

Also the idea about mastering is that you have to be able to hear very well what's going on - namely better than you do at your mixing station in your mixing room. Therefore a lot of mastering is about the room and the monitoring system rather than the effect gear. If you EQ your mix it in the same acoustic conditions as with the same monitoring chain that you use when mixing, you're not really mastering but simply altering the overall sound of the mix (albeit seeing it as a whole rather than track by track, which can be useful).
For example, say you have a frequency in your room that you can't hear well - you still would have it when you are EQing your entire mix, so you won't be able to hear it or correct it.

That said, it's certainly possible to change the sound of the whole mix in one go and by itself that can be useful.

Not being able to see, obviously you need some physical fixed-layout controls, where you learn what each knob/button do and you can use them without looking - that's actually what most people do with hardware, sight or not. You have a few choices.

The first thing that comes to mind is Softube's Console. It binds its own EQ plugin with a control surface. I've never used it in anger, and surely there's some level of software configurability (which in your case ain't good), but I guess that if you simply ignore that and leave to the default, it should physically behave the same every time you boot up your DAW. That piece of kit allows you to control 3 band parametric EQ plugin and a compressor plugin, and the amount of physical controls is small enough that given time you can learn it properly. While not cheap, it doesn't cost a crazy amount of money and you can probably find it second hand.

Of course other control surfaces are an option, but the little experience I have with them is that they may be a bit tough to setup or even worse, periodically lose the setup and need reconfiguration which in your situation would be annoying. The Console 1 on the other side seems more like "what you see is what you get".

You can then go the hardware EQ outboard way. Full racks are good if your interface has available stereo line ins/outs, but there's a very nice 500 rack with included USB interface (from Radial, I think) that makes connection to the PC a breeze and you can then use some nice parametric EQs, usually three bands, and achieve the same as above, but without being bound at all to software. More expensive, but still doable. You could also get a couple modules so to have more band options - at the cost or a little degraded signal (every EQ introduces a little distortion so having many in line as opposite to a single EQ with many bands may impact the signal).

Finally, there's true mastering EQs: they usually have more than three bands, because you may want more precise control on what exactly it is doing and they usually are a sequence of identical parametric modules plus some common control knob, so easy to learn.. but they are seriously expensive. The things are usually huge beasts, with top of range components and design and thus cost a ton. Given that you're not gonna be able to master in your room anyways, but simply color your mixes in a certain way you like, they're likely overkill. A console or one or two regular parametric EQs would get you there anyway.

Good luck!

[Drew Stephenson]

I've just had a quick look at various control surfaces and I couldn't see any quick solutions there. The more expensive units tend to be touchscreen or menu based with a single set of controls handling multiple functions. At the cheaper end there are things like the Akai MIDImix USB DAW Controller or Behringer BCR2000 that have a selection of physical controls that could be mapped to a consistent set of controls. I've done this with the BCR2000 so that I have a consistent EQ and compressor with physical controls on each channel, but I won't kid you, it was a lot of work to get it programmed and it will probably depend on what DAW you're using as well. Even taking this approach I'm not sure how you'd set it up so that you could quickly identify which track you were controlling.

[sixtysixmix]

I also immediately thought of the Console 1.

I don't have it (yet) but one point I picked up from all the demos is that once you start touching the knobs it starts to affect the sound. Straight away. So it could be very intuitive once an initial learning curve is overcome.

I also note that some people have customized the knob colours etc so it would certainly be possible to add some braile stickers to the knobs (or beside them) to mark what knob does what.

Another good thing about the Console 1 is that it does not have many multi-function buttons/knobs at all ... so the mid range Q knob is always the mid range Q knob and does not suddenly become some other control. That could help in keeping the workflow simple and effective.

You also get what seems to be a cracking analog console simulation

It's also reasonably cheap to try it out, unlike a hardware eq for example.

Best of luck!

[Matt Houghton]

If you want to work with a DAW, then a control surface of some sort would probably be the way to go. But if visual feedback is problematic, I could imagine many control surfaces being unworkable, because they all tend to use some graphic representation of the current parameters (eg an LED adjacent to a continuous rotary encoder; a graphical representation of the EQ curve). The obvious exceptions are motorised-fader controllers, as you should be able to tell the current settings from the position of the faders. I don't know how workable it is for the rest of your needs, or how much help you'd need setting things up, but Cubase includes a powerful means of reconfiguring control surfaces to do what you want — I wrote a tutorial on it a while back, which you can find at: http://www.soundonsound.com/techniques/hardware-controlled-channel-strip-cubase

This said... I wonder whether you might find it easier to work in a more old-fashioned way, with DAW acting as a glorified tape recorder, and an analogue mixer with dedicated controls per function, and an identical setup on each and every channel.

[James Perrett]

You possibly have a bit of an advantage over sighted people in that your hearing is possibly more acute as you need to rely on it more in everyday life. For most people, all the visuals associated with software is a distraction and often gets in the way of creating a good sound. Sighted people assume that a sound spectrum should look a certain way or that you need a certain amount of gain reduction on a compressor without listening properly to the result. You don't have those distractions so can concentrate on making something sound good rather than look right.

You are probably aware more than I am of additional software like screen readers that can be used to control computer systems but personally I would think that Matt's suggestion of working in a more old fashioned way using hardware might work here. Used mixers aren't too expensive although you need to check them over thoroughly as noisy controls and bad insert points can be a problem.

There used to be a couple of blind recording engineers on the rec.audio.pro newsgroup but I can't find their details at the moment.

[Folderol]

Might be worth investing in a really good pair of headphones.
Just my 2d

[Terrible.dee]

That doesn't make any sense,

You don't need your eyes to EQ you need your ears

Get a stereohardware EQ and get tweaking

If you want to use software, it would be simple t have someone make you an add-on app that gives you sound cues for what you've touched on the screen,

4 band eq, each band point rings a different tone louder as your mouse gets close to it, once you grab the point the tone stops

kids can design those kinds of apps these days, would probably take then an hour