I got another one of these:
-“How about using EQ Match to rip an commercial awesome master and apply it on my own track?”
My answer:
-“ I t d o e s n o t w o r k t h a t w a y ! ! ! ”
There’s only one reason why it might sound better, the spectrum of the commercially mastered track is more even and by applying that spectrum to your track it will even out your spectrum too. But it will also apply boost i.e. those frequencies in that awesome guitar solo from the commercial track (which might be in another key than your track = different frequencies).
That said, it is a fantastic tool and you can surely benefit from it and easily make your tracks sound better if you use it correctly.
Here’s my 2 tips for bedroom productions:
1. Use pink noise instead of your favorite commercial track as your source
Pink noise fall of at 3dB/octave which is about what a lot (but far from all) great sounding masters do. By using Pink noise as your source the spectrum of your track will even out in a similar way that mastering engineers work their EQ.
Use the most intense part of your track. Don’t match it to 100%, that’ll sound weird and destroy your track. Start at 0% match and drag until it sounds good, this is program depended and some material will sound better at 5%, 15% or even maybe as far as 50% (not likely though)… If you want more to go on, push the match until the highest change is about 2-3 dB.
Izotopes Ozone 6 has Pink noise and something they call “6 dB guide” built in (6dB fall of per octave, better for some music. Use your ears).
Here’s a 6dB slope noise if you don’t have Ozone:
https://www.saintpid.se/6dB_slope_noise.wav
2. The other use is to make an album or EP sit tight together. Use the best sounding track and match the rest by 1-4% (or so) against that track. Again, a mastering engineer will do this manually since processes like this don’t take the program material into account and you risk to destroy all your hard work, but for a bedroom producer this method can save you both time and headaches.
Oh, I almost forgot: HAPPY CHRISTMAS!!!
(if you don’t celebrate Christmas I wish you HAPPY HAPPY!!! instead)
This article was highly interesting to me, being that I have an obsession about spectrum matching and how it can relate to the mixing and mastering process. You dispelled the ‘match your song to sound exactly like anyone else’s’ myth for me once and for all, so I realize that it’s actually a rabbit-hole, more or less. Spectrum matching will probably never replace good judgment and creative mixing/mastering decisions, but it can be an amazing tool for the bedroom producer. Yours is the best explanation I’ve come across so far on the internet concerning this topic and I thank you for it. Lots of great information and tips contained in such a brief post! :)
Thanks for your kind words and I’m glad you found it helpful. Since I wrote this post a couple of companies have made AI based plugins that can help you with EQ in a similar way as matching EQ techniques. As with matching EQ’s they’re not the final answer to spectral balance, you’d still need to tweak the result but they’re good enough to have made it into my mastering toolbox (which means a lot).
First of, the first metering plugin that focus on a balanced spectrum:
Izotope Ozone 8 – Tonal Balance Control
Sonible – SmartEQ 2 – A bit like matching against pink noise but intelligent and program depended
Soundtheory – Gullfoss – A tool to catch and adjust resonances dynamically, about 100 times a second
Zynaptiq – Unfilter – This has been around for a while, removes resonances and even out the spectrum…