Very interesting and clever! I've never done it this way before.Thank You so much!

Brilliantly thought out. Congratulations! At last, the correct application of pink noise and the key 'Eureka' knowledge that all other KZfaq posts on this subject are missing! Your final freq profile is now in the realm of the typical 'smile' graph so often used in mastering. Its important to understand that pink noise is used in speaker design and manufacture as well as in professional mastering. That is why its entirely relevant and should be part of our workflow, otherwise our mixes won't translate to other playback systems. Your video is greatly appreciated, thank you! Subscribed.

HOLY SHIT... this is AMAZING!!!!!! I've tried mixing to the pink noise... it's alright; but this, THIS helps SOO much with the problem of having a muddy mix that I seem to be plagued with no matter what I try

This technique is really good for getting started. I am pretty new to mixing and mastering so I am not entirely sure what to look for. Not having the best headphones makes this even harder. I just installed YSFX and the free spectrum matcher and applied this to an orchestral track I made. Even for my ears I could instantly tell that it made a huge differens and cleared up alot of the mud, especially during times where the entire orchestra is playing. It felt like a great quality improvement. especially when consindering the little amount of time it took.

And you'll also find that this technique will cause tracks to sound great in a lot of systems. A lot of newer car systems are tuned to either a pink noise curve or a 6db curve, which is very similar. You can use the above technique in mixing as an "umbrella" over your 2bus, and you can then make decisions about treatments of instrument tracks with that equalization in place. I agree with Trey here - from lots of experience, I've found that about 30% is the most you'll ever want to go. Of course, that would vary from track to track. If your track is off more than that, you have bigger problems.

Thanks helpful bro,you know other music producers take it for granted,but for the case of mixing and mastering engineers especially those who are at the early stages of their game,is very intuitive to try to use this pink noise Technics,is very helpful,my self I discovered this Technics after three years of my coming up,but all in all it helps me a lot to identify weak spots on my mixes,thank bro,greetings from East Africa Tanzania🇹🇿

Izotope’s eq match allows you to ignore applying EQ at the high and low end - which is where the problem areas tend to be when matching to pink noise.

This makes a LOT of sense. Thank you!

great explanation and also thats precisely a preset in ozone match eq 🙌🏻

Definitely helped here. Thanks, never thought of using it this way

I never used pink noise in any way, but I'm sort of thinking now maybe this technique would be decent to use as a reference. Or even to compare with your own choices and draw some information. I personally wouldn't use this technique in the final mix or master. But I would consider using it as a reference to make choices. The problem is that the spectrum will detect your most common notes and overtones and turn them down, then take all the rare notes and overtones and turn them up. You could end up with a weird disbalance over time. Therefore I'd look at the general pattern, like "it's getting rid of a lot of mud here, it's boosting some presence here" and then go ahead and apply that myself using a traditional EQ. No mixing or mastering engineer in their right mind would introduce such complex EQ adjustments to a whole mix, you're literally kinda ignoring all your previous decisions that you made based on feel.

thx for this tip, very helpful ! support from Malaysia

I have used this method while mastering when I don't trust my ears. You can have it ignore the highs and lows. I have used the Izotope Match EQ to do this as well.

Killer move. Nice work, good sir!

This is absolutely genius!

Really nice technique 😍

Interesting will have to try this 👍🏾🔥

Brilliant Idea mate

super nice tip, thanks

Great video!

I made a pink noise curve for Baby Audio Smooth Op. Works pretty good.

It's a neat way to use match EQ. I had tried that too but it was mostly useless for me. The reasons are: One, in the time it took you to do that, I already knew what EQ changes had to be made to get it more balanced towards pink slope. It's IMO much faster just to memorize the slope you want and watch the spectrum analyzer in real time, making general adjustments accordingly. Second, that huge spike the match EQ gave you at the top and bottom of the spectrum is worse than useless. If you could bypass just the high and low shelf or adjust them separately, what you'd have left might be somewhat useful. Third, it's always better to adjust individual instruments to balance sound than to EQ the mains. I would have gone straight to the violin with some EQ (probably active) down round 4k, then looked to how to boost the treble of the mix in general. IMO, EQ on the mains should be a last resort and for VERY minor changes. As for mixing to the pink slope. In general I've been leveling with a slope similar to what you showed and getting very predictably acceptable balance in sound. Granted I don't do it by ear. I do it by eye on the graph because it's much more predictable. It's not the be all end all though. Because of how the ear perceived loudness depending on spectrum saturation and harmonics, blindly mixing to the slope isn't a good idea. Similar to what you said though, it seems to be a good starting reference point for leveling. I find I usually have to make moderate exceptions most places. So for me the slope is a guide to stay roughly around but not a hard rule.

Thanks for this interesting information.

thanks for the vid! good stuff!

Dope stuff my man!

So well described Made me wanna subscribe 😆 💯

Except most music is oriented on target noise with a slope of -4.5db per octave, pink noise has one of -3db... Also the variation of those targets are highly genre dependent. A very big help for mixing to targets is ayaics ceilings of sound Equalizer. I recommend everyone who is interested in this topic to try it out, it's a little confusing at first, but a time-saver once you realize how it works.

Hey just use SPAN and have all frequencies at the same level with the appropriate amount of slope (usually 4.5; pink noise has slope of 3, which is very bright. Techno is usually mixed at about 6).

Thank you!

I've been doing this with Izotope, I thought I was the only one,lol. I can turn off matching eq on just my low end band also.

Perfection

I've never tried it, but I've wondered if Match EQ could be used for separation by applying it negatively. That is: you copy the curve from track A to track B and then set it to minus-whatever-percent, and that should in theory make B have a complementary curve to A.

Great tutorial Trey! Question for you: I've just upgraded (finally) to Fabfilter Pro Q 3 and it has an EQ matching feature. I've not been able to figure out how to do it in the same way as you have with your EQ but what I have done is to insert a pink noise loop as a track, whack an EQ on that and analyse and then store the learnt spectrum as a reference. I've then added an EQ at the end of my master bus and loaded up the saved reference to EQ match. I can see and hear that it appears to be doing something along the lines of what you've got here but if I apply any more than 5% of the reference EQ parameters it starts to sound bad. This got me thinking that the db level of the pink noise (which is set to zero on the track) could be affecting the result. Do you have any tips on what level I should set the pink noise to before I save the reference, or am I over thinking it and, given the proportionate signal content of pink noise, even if I've captured the reference running fairly hot (but not clipping), it would just be a case of applying a smaller % of the EQ match on the master? Thanks in advance man!

That's great. THX :-)

Thank you, Trey! The first time I saw the video and saw this idea, couldn't wait to test it with the tracks I've been working on and have to send to another producer because I don't know how to mix very well yet. Game changer!!! Just a question, does it also works if I apply to each individual track of my mix or only when applied to the master?

Hi Trey - good video. I don't use Logic so maybe I am wrong? ... Your mixed track has low end rolloff - spectrum analyzer shows this - so yes, the Match EQ is going to bump up low end to compensate. Can't see the high end spectrum but upward compensation indicates the high end was rolled off too. That said, isn't this the kind of scenario where you use the 'Fade Extremes' check box, so Match EQ can compensate w/o such an obvious over-the-top mistmatch?

Made differences in sound. Thanks a lot !

ey its very interesting... did u know whatplugin can do that the eq match? for free or at least for low price casue i have ozone elements x_x

Hey do you think we should Volume match ( lower) the Output of the EQ Match to the input level?

ayeee my name is Trey too!

Yeah, but you still have to mix the track before

I use it as my start point

🔥

That's an interesting approach. Pink noise is used by speaker manufacturers & in the final analysis by mastering engineers. Of course, there is a corresponding reason. It follows then that there are many reasons for paying attention to the importance of p/n in mixing to get a balanced profile. What you don't want is a carbon copy of the standard p/n profile! The method being shown in amateur KZfaq 'miss down' videos is wrong. You do not apply p/n by bringing up each track then tucking it under the p/n. This has the effect of killing all the dynamics like a brick wall 'tilt' limiter on steroids. The correct way is to bring the tracks above the profile so that the dynamics are not limited to the p/n ceiling. By doing the opposite the track will sound weak, lifeless, unnatural & choked out. The objective is to find the general profile trend (!) - not a sonic haircut like a pot on somone's head & cutting around it! Lol! Your approach works similarly as described because its aliowing the p/n trend without pinning the frequencies down in a sonic stranglehold. You can insert a VU meter & set a 3 dB peak value to keep an eye on exessive peaks, or add a mastering compressor/limiter & subtly adjust to taste.

Nice. I like your approach, but got terribly lost during the demonstration. You should create some subs that say "off/on".

Do you not use the "Fade Extremes" option?

Hey I can’t find the match EQ plug-in.....where can I find that?

Great work bro... By the way What is the daw name.... In video....?

wow

Which vst to use in FL Stusio????

Were can à get pink noise?

zzzzi tought i was the only one to do this :(

1:10 he started rapping

maybe this its what glussfos does

Hey man! Thanks for the effort put into these series! You make great videos on advise and headsup for all soundguys. But stop fooling young dudes into believin music is easy and cost nothing to master. This is an art that cant be shortcuted, the learning curve is steep and long for ALL. Ive been gigglin pots until defining my own sound, my own characteristic sound. This cant be done with pink snake oil and lotions from india, its an art and i strongly suggest you and all masters stop givin dumb advise for clickbait views. Thanks again for the effort and please, remember there once where people in white coats with BIG glasses handling tape for orchestral arangements. Kinda mad, but with spirit. (Would like to see a video about mastering dynamics and metadata) salute bro

😂🤣😂😂

This makes me suspicious. Probably some of those „intelligent“ new AI EQs just work this way. I mean if you analyze „million of songs“ and layer them you will might get something like this.

CONVERSIAL? PEOPLE USE THIS TECHNIQUE FOR DECADES BEFORE DIGITAL MIXING

This is neat, from a geek perspective, but it makes zero sense to add anything below 40hz or above 16khz if your program material never had it in the first place - just so you can feel extra geeky about doing something engineery (which is all this really is). Your original mix was fine, light years ahead of what the Rolling Stones or Led Zeppelin or The Beatles had when they sent any of their mixes off to be mastered. This constant procrastination thing that uses technical gimmickry in order to avoid being productive is kinda driving me mad lately. It's worse than the loudness war, it's a kind of self hatred, it is masochism.

Isn´t there an inherent musical problem with this though? The song is in a key... wouldn´t you be boosting frequencies (essentially note fundamentals) that aren´t in your key? I´m not sure how useful the "traditional" pink noise mixing really is, but there you are not "artificially" boosting frequencies, rather just controlling the individual levels of tracks. This method is more like "pink noise mastering"? This method creates the same problem as EQ matching to a reference song. There are just so many factors that can lead to "artificial" sounding results. We´ve even done REALLY close cover versions of tracks and tried EQ matching with the original (just as a final layer in the master) and it´s produced really weird effects. We´ll have to give it a try and see the results. Cubase doesn´t have EQ match by de-facto, but I think IK, Izotope and FabFilter do.

pink nose has too much high end

You are not mixing anything here. You're just EQing your rendered master.