EQ Is Made Of DELAY | How This SECRET Could RUIN Your Mix!

Linear Phase EQ is a tool which can help combat the phase discrepancies caused by regular EQ, but at the cost of more processing power and with the introduction of pre-ringing, does it cause more problems than it solves?

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[tonynekrews]

This is the clearest and most straightforward explanation on EQs I have ever come across. I thought Dan Worrall had nailed it, but you pipped him. Congrats

[tbaier]

"If your music sucks, nobody's going to listen to it anyway." - the most important information in this video.

[alexisondrums_]

Bro, after 8 years of learning to mix in a DIY fashion, this has been the most clear explanation of what eq actually is that I've come across so far. Thank you.

[lucassmusicofficial]

I'm gonna be honest with you, I self researched this, and literally no one has explained it like you have. Not the FFT, not the delay that causes the phase shift across frequencies which is why people say the phase shift is the timbre of an EQ was explained as clearly as this, and I am so thrilled to see my hours of research were correct. This made my year, honestly. Thank you.

[mathyoooo]

7:10 bell and shelf eq shapes are typically very safe choices when used in those parallel signal flows. Unless you go for extreme settings their phase shift is rather minor and won't cause issues when combined with the other mic sources. You have to be a lot more careful with other eq shapes though, in those cases linear phase can indeed make a lot of sense.

[PeterKluge]

perfect mixture between sophisticated audio-nerding and Cat-Interludes! Well played!

[timothyforry]

This gave me the information I needed to 90% understand what eq to grab . Thank you .

[tommyottobisdee]

A few weeks ago I was nearing the end of a big mixdown job and I started hearing this squeaking sound in the higher frequency range tearing through my studio monitors - it sounded a bit like the high pitched noise you get from an old 45" vinyl record near the start from the needle squeaking on the opening grooves. Anyway, I started subtracting the mix elements on my DAW controller one-by-one - and yet this squeaking just wouldn't go away - it was still there even as I neared the very basic percussion layers?! Finally I realised what had happened, and it was a big lesson learned from my point of view! Off all things, it was the snare drum which had a multi-band dynamics plug-in applied early on in the chain to brighten it up and flatten the spectrum a bit - the explanation was that because I used a "linear phase" multi-band plug-in, the cross-over over points of the band-splits were simply too steep - resulting in otherwise unnoticeable pre-ringing. Bearing in mind that I hadn't done any EQqing on the snare drum yet, I was quite astonished by this - so the squeaking was actually there in the mix stem very early on but I simply hadn't been able to hear it yet until I put the snare through an 1176 compressor - which then boosted the lower noise floor so hard that this insanely unexpected noise suddenly spoiled my mix completely. The solution? Well, I did it the no-nonsense way and just bounced a few snares as flat WAV files, and then I manually chopped off the pre-ringing sections - problem solved - but I guess my point is, if you can't get a problem solved with anything else, then by all means go the linear-phase route, but remember that pre-ringing also happens in multi-band (and probably spectral-band) compressors and limiters too - if the cross-over slope is set to anything over 24 db/Oct then you should be very suspicious indeed! P.s. I would highly recommend NEVER using the High, Very High, or Maximum settings on Pro-Q3 Linear Phase - the Low and Medium settings run at much much gentler Q values, but the higher settings are almost never worth risking IMO. Peace : )

[almightytreegod]

I’ve known this, and yet I still got something out of this as a refresher. Thanks! I think Ethan Winer also has an article about phase and EQ on his website.
There are also stock linear and min phase EQs in Logic, and they sound great.
One project I was using to test I had noticed that I could both literally tell no difference in lin/min phase EQs on individual tracks, and for some reason the full mix sounded way better with linear. No idea why or if my ears were just lying that day.
I’ve got a few questions but I think I’ll drop them in the discord. For now I gotta go buy/not buy flopcat or something. I’m compelled but not sure why.

[peterbrandt]

Your sponsor will be happy!
Being a sponsor for such a fine video, can only be considered as a win.
Seriously, very nicely done and well explained. It should be noticed, that using linear phase eq's as a plugin consumes a little bit more CPU power, at least on my system (PC) and I haven't tried PRO Q.

[UncleBenjs]

You need to drop an affiliate link to your barber in the video description, hairline is on point

[simonbuchner]

Very nice video! It's always nice to find a goog and thorough explanation to a question in one video :)

[seansley]

Good. Flopcat is the best YT sponsor yet.

[LongshanMusic]

Thanks for such a greast deep-dive into EQ, guys!

You can tell this new Flopcat sponsorship is a lucrative one, cuz James has a new hoodie.

[caprimaniac]

Thanks a bundle for this informative video. Learning more from you guys than by studying books.
Cheers mate.

[Adsol]

Hands down the best / all in one technical video about EQ. Simple and understandable.

[furiobisotti]

Very well explained. I was able to hear big difference on ringing, but not on kick example. Anyway, knowing the thing is better than ignoring.

[KacyDennis]

This explains why if you parallel process a channel and want to use EQ on it, you should put the EQ on the source channel rather than on the parallel channel. Otherwise you will get some phase cancellation when the two channels are combined with each other since the parallel channel will be out of phase with the source channel. If you have a lot of paralleled tracks with this problem your mix can start sounding like it's kind of falling apart somewhat. You may notice that things aren't sounding quite right and then you might intuitively fumble around the mix trying to do corrective EQ for these problems that you created.

[TheRealXira]

Best sponsor on YouTube.

Awesome video also! Really informative.
Love these videos you put out.

[natelivingston]

🤯 mind blown! And that’s just from Flop Cat.