This is a simple way to determine what’s required to tame unwanted coloration in a recording. Let’s say you have a pretty good mix, but there’s a certain honkiness to the overall sound that you’d like to minimize, if not eliminate altogether. You could sit at your console and try to find settings on your EQ that do the job, but there’s actually an easier, faster way of honing in on the offending frequencies and that’s by initially making them worse. Using our example of “honkiness” (not a term you’ll find in our Word of the Day glossary), you’ll almost certainly find it easy to tweak the EQ at your disposal to make the sound even more pronounced – our ears hear boost better than cut, so cranking up the EQ and sweeping the frequency to find the rough spot is a simple way to dial in the right region.
Say you boost the gain on your EQ and sweep the frequency up; when you hit 800Hz, the problem really jumps out at you. At that point, you know you can cut the gain at that frequency to pull back on the problem area. Some further fine tuning will generally go a long way toward correcting the problem.