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Spectrum

Mastering type questions.

1. How do you find the general spectrum for your genre of music(so you can know where to start)-in case you dont wanna feel like doing it by ear?

2. Which weighting type is more commonly used for trance? A-weighting or ir468

Any helpful would be appreciated thank you!

General spectrum?

General weighting?

Mate, this isn't baking a cake where you have to have a certain amount of ingredients in the same proportion every time. There is no general anything.

What I did to establish an overall frequency ballpark for my style was this:

I listened to heaps and heaps of tracks until I'd found 10 which, to my ears, had an excellent frequency distribution - they basically sounded excellently produced, and sounded generally the way I'd like my own music to sound.

I ran around 15-30 seconds of the tracks (where they're at their peak, so I have a consistent referene point) through a frequency analyser (in my case I'm using Wavelab). This allows you to export the analysis as a text file (the Wavelab one splits the spectrum into 1024 frequency points, from memory)

Then I loaded these 10 analysis files into a spreadsheet and turned the 1024 frequency points into 44 points (averaging around the middle of the points to get the average loudness).

I set up formulas to derive the average of the ten tracks, as well as the upper and lower boundaries (bringing the boundaries in 10% from the upper and lower limits). So that gave me an overall sonic ballpark.

Then I wrote some code so that when I run an analysis file of one of my own tracks, I can just click a button in the spreadsheet and it'll load in the analysis file and create a whole bunch of graphs and analysis data and show me what's going on. The main graph I use is a pure frequency comparison, regardless of level. It means I don't have to drive the volume to the limit to be able to compare the frequency distribution at a one-to-one level.

The sonic character of my tracks will always be determined by the sounds in it, you can't try and shoehorn every track into a predetermined mold. But if I run a track through and I can see, at 323 Hz my track is way outside the boundary for that particular frequency range, then I have to be comfortable with what's happening there.

It has been a good learning tool, it has improved my mixes. These days my frequency balance is much better before even running the analysis on my tracks, I'll probably need to use it less and less as time goes on. At this stage it's still a handy quick check once I've got the main loop up. A quick run through, see if the frequency balance is around the ballpark, thumbs up, keep working!

Thanks-

The point is mastering engineers don't randomly tweak linear phase eq at the mastering stage and all of a sudden move on to the next stage. Lets stay outta the kitchen on this one if we can

Gotta start somewhere(might try a generally accepted spectrum for your genre, and then adjust from there).

You went about it interestingly derail. - I have certain guidelines that i use as well.

See y it can be helpful(less time consuming)to have a general idea

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