Do you love salt on your french fries? Shake on! Do you love garlic in your home-made spaghetti sauce? Add all you want! You want more clarity in your male vocal? Don't start by boosting more of the frequencies you want.
A rule of thumb for audio production goes like this; "cut before boosting." Why, in a world obsessed with getting more of what you want, do you not want to boost first? In the above examples, you are enhancing something. The fries have already been cooked. In the case of audio production, you are working on the quality of the potato.
Pushing the potatoes aside, look at what properties you might have in a specific male vocalist:
1. Tenor (fundamental frequencies in the 130 Hz to 525 Hz range with harmonics much higher)
2. A bit on the nasally sound
3. And their clarity could use some work.
There are two things you want to do to their voice; clean it up and boost what you need. But before doing either, let's look deeper at the idea of "cut first." The reason for cutting before boosting is two-fold;
Before the cook would even consider seasoning the fries, he'd first wash off the dirt.
1. You want the best overall quality of sound and that can only happen when you start by cleaning out the bad frequencies.
2. Cutting the bad out first can reduce what needs to be emphasized. As a side note, cutting some standard frequency areas can naturally improve the clarity of the sound such as cutting in the 100 Hz – 350 Hz for vocals.
A note regarding problem frequencies, the rule is cut narrow and boost wide. When removing problem frequencies, you want to remove only those that are bad. As it relates to boosts, it's best to boost a wide range of close frequencies so the listener doesn't hear a noticeable spike in frequency changes.
Digital or Analog?
Working with a digital mixer and a graphic EQ, you can boost and cut all over the place. Cutting first and then boosting is completely acceptable. Working in the analog world with a handful of shelving and peaking EQ's, you are very limited in what you can do. My response to people working on analog mixers is to cut first and then boost if you can because it's better to have eliminated the bad frequencies than to have boosted them along with the good ones.
Back to the Tenor
Our example tenor has a bit of a nasally sound. By sweeping an EQ cut of at least 3 dB, through the 400 Hz – 1,100 Hz range, you find the offending frequency area and knock down much of that nasally sound. Next, move to clarity.
The high pass filter is your friend when it comes to cutting low frequencies on vocals. Depending on the mixer, the high pass filter will either have a fixed frequency point, such as 100 Hz, or it's selectable. I start mine around 120 Hz and go from there. You won't find much of anything helping below this point when mixing vocals with a band. Also, try a narrow cut in the 100 Hz to 350 Hz range.
At this point, you have to listen to their overall sound and make cuts where necessary, such as in the 1,500 Hz to 7,000 Hz range for sibilance. Start on the high side and sweep down to find your sibilance. I usually find it in the upper range.
Once you've cut out all of the bad frequencies, listen to your new voice. You have made your vocalist sound better because you have decreased the negative aspects of their voice.
You might not have to boost anything at this point. Analog people, did you catch that? Now you can finesse the sound through boosting.
One final note regarding the idea of cutting before boosting: Keep it in mind, but don't let it blind you to the idea of boosting. There is a lot of good educational information available on mixing audio and a lot of it mentions boosting. Keep in mind the author is assuming you have first cleaned up the sound (cut out the bad) and to that, their boost suggestions should be applied.
At the end of the day, know that the french fries on your plate were once potatoes growing in the dirt. Before the cook would even consider seasoning the fries, he'd first wash off the dirt. As so it is with cutting first, be it with vocals or instruments.
