Boosting above 0db using digital EQs i.e. EQ8 in Live

[timothyallan]

Timothy Allan said it in his Groove3 videos and so did Olav Basoski in his MacProVideo videos.

I read it somewhere else too, something about 'phase shift'.

Noooope I think you may have misunderstood.

I do remember saying pretty much what Khazul explained above. It doesn't matter if your track is peaking at -108db or flatlining at 0, I still prefer cutting with EQ and then raising the volume compared to just boosting with a digital EQ. Unless it's my UAD Massive Passive and then I boost the crap out of that thing

I think I also did an example where I showed Lives EQ8 causing ringing with extreme Q settings and boosting, did I not? I seriously can't remember if I included it in that series or not.

[GillyDJ]

Thanks Tim

I read Khazul's post again and it makes more sense this time except for the second para which I don't fully understand. But thanks Khazul.

[patrick.olson86]

I'm not an EQ expert yet, but from what I understand, cutting frequencies should be your first thought (unless you know exactly what you want to do). Reason for this is that if you want to boost frequencies across the board they will all compete for headroom and it will sound like a muddy mess. Cutting allows you to maintain this headroom. You boost for frequency emphasis after the cuts, or for some creative frequency expression! Because you'd primarily cut frequencies due to what I explained above, you would go back and raise the volume to compensate for the cuts.

Does that make sense? I think I just confused myself..

[Khazul]

Thanks Tim

I read Khazul's post again and it makes more sense this time except for the second para which I don't fully understand. But thanks Khazul.

Create a rack with two chains on a audio track with some audio in it.
Chain 1 - stick a utility and enable phase inverts.
Chain 2 - empty.

You will hear nothing - because the phase invert changes the signal value such that -ve become +ve and visa versa - add N to -N and the result is zero. That is the basis of subtraction of one signal from another inside a DAW and its really useful for some interesting signal processing.

Now stick an EQ8 in chain 1, disable all the Eqs apart from 1, set that to a notch, and do a cut. - you have made yourself a very transparent and potentially very steep band isolator.

The band above and below the notch are the same as the audio in the otehr chain, so they cancel out. Whats removed in the notch in only partially cancelling - depending on deoth/width of the notch - leaving you with the isolated band. If you were to stick compressor in the isolated band chain, tune it for vocal esses you will ave made yourself a very transparent and highly selective de-esser. With the compresor in place, tune it down to out of control sub-bass, and you can now compress it in isolation without effecting other frequencies etc - basically lots of cool shit you can do with phase inversion to setup subtraction in racks with an EQ8 in normal mode.

Because filters cause a phase inversion, then you may or may need the utility dong the phase inversion- for eg - one stage of low cut or high cut (in EQ8) needs it, but two stages doesnt (as they reverse the phase twice).



You can take this further - making your own transparent cross over stages etc, or simpler things like making you own stereo->mid side decoders and encoders - really handy for mid/side mic recording.

Caveat - Not running live at the mo - so this is from memory of EQ8 - might be the other way around on the phase inversions

[Khazul]

I think I also did an example where I showed Lives EQ8 causing ringing with extreme Q settings and boosting, did I not? I seriously can't remember if I included it in that series or not.

Anything above Q = 0.5 will add resonance.

For reference - google for 'damped filter' or perhaps 'Q factor'.

[ikeaboy]

Some general EQ advice I read or heard once that has stuck with me:
Cut to sound better, boost to sound different.

OoH! Yoink!

[Samaritan Sound]

There's no good reason for your track to be that loud. While Live's floating point math may allow for internal signals above 0, some of your plugins may not sound as good being fed a signal that hot. Somebody posted an article on here somewhere about mixing inside the box, and why some folks think DAWs sound like garbage. It discussed using proper gain staging vs. Running everything super hot.