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  4. What is the best EQ Settings for orchestral instruments: Strings, Brass and Percussion?

  • What is the best EQ Settings for orchestral instruments: Strings, Brass and Percussion?

    S
    S
    I use the Izotope plugins, in especial Izotope Alloy 2 for graphic EQ. I'm trying to get a better sound, but I do not understand. Please! Thanks!
  • J
    J

    It really depends on what kind of sound you are trying to achieve.  Are you going for a romantic setting with bright shinny strings, minimal brass, and distant floating woodwinds or are you scoring something like Friday the 13th part PI π.  Where a much darker sound is more appropriate.  Perhaps a war drama with a lot of rolling snares deep base drums and pronounced brass and fife.  It just depends and a lot of it is based on personal taste.

    Of course no matter what I'm doing I always start with subtractive EQ which basically means EQ out the bass frequencies for non base instruments.  From there, it's just a matter of where you want to take it. 
  • J
    J

    One other thing I forgot, I notice you mentioned izotope.  Isn't that for mastering?  When it comes to mastering, The first thing I do is put a low pass filter at about 30 Hz this tends to cut out a lot of the low frequency mud or "muffle" you often hear with unmastered tracks when multiband compressors and/or limiters are used.  After that, as I said before, it depends on what you want to do. 
  • Cyril BlancC
    Cyril BlancC

    It was said on the Forum that  if you use MIR PRO you dont need to EQ
  • T
    T

    I've found EQ to be the most challenging aspect of implementing VSL.  I listen to Spitfire Mural or Albion strings, for instance, and think, why don't VSL strings sound like this out of the box?  What am I doing wrong, or not doing?  Why can't I get this kind of sound after spending thousands of dollars for these samples?

    I've found that I have to use EQ (even though I use MIR) to darken the Dimension Strings.  They sound way too bright and thin to me.

    If anyone out there has any hints as to the best settings or effects for warming and thickening the string sounds of VSL out of the box, I'd love to hear them.
  • C
    C

    The presets in the Vienna suite and MIR presets are really good.  VSL is recorded so dry on purpose because it's much easier to filter out frequencies you don't like than to add frequencies that aren't there.  Personally I use MIR presets and I blend with many libraries and use VSL specifically for its detail so I wouldn't really be much help here regarding specifics, but that's OK because most of the other people on this forum are way smarter than I am anyway!