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How to Improve Vocals With an Equalizer

A vocal equalizer is a common digital recording tool used by professional and amateur musicians alike to improve the quality of their voices on song recordings. Equalizers help a person's voice fit in more naturally with the musical accompaniment and can be used to correct problems like a voice sounding too nasally or the "p" and "t" sounds popping off the audio track. While an equalizer can't turn a person without tone or pitch into a professional, it can be used to clean up an already good recording.

Things You'll Need

  • Shelf equalizer
  • Digital vocal recorded track
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Instructions

    • 1

      Avoid overdoing your edits and adjustments to recorded vocal tracks. Understand that human ears can detect when a voice has been altered unnaturally, which defeats the purpose of improving vocals with an equalizer in the first place.

    • 2

      Enhance a vocal track with a narrow cut to a low frequency and a wide boost to the bandwidth values of the track. Set the Q (bandwidth) value of a low frequency figure such as 30 or 50hz to a high figure, like 24. Set the gain to negative 13 to create a narrow cut. Set higher frequencies like 370 or 7000hz to a low Q value like 2, and a positive gain to produce a wide boost. Understand that narrow cuts remove ringing overtones and boomy resonance, enhancing the sound without altering it too much. Wide boosts work in the same manner, providing subtle improvements to vocal tracks.

    • 3

      Add a full, rich sound to vocals by increasing the Q value by 0.7 or 1.4 at mid-range frequencies like 200hz. Add presence and pitch to low vocals by decreasing the Q value by the same amount.

    • 4

      Add a high pass filter to frequencies below 80hz to remove low sounds that interfere with clear vocals and reduce their clarity. Press the "HPF" or "high pass filter" button on your equalizer and set the frequency to 80 to clarify the vocal track.

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