EQ matching with version 0.97.013
Hooray! With the new version of faIRmageddon, EQ matching is available for the first time. This feature was requested by you many times!
EQ Matching allows you to match the sound of your current mix to a reference sound, e.g. from a recording guitar recording you like.
For the EQ match you’ll need the following:
- a wave file containing your target sound (preferably without interfering
sound sources like other instruments) - a temporary recording of your current sound with a length of about 10-20
seconds, which you can recording with the Plug-in
Step 1: Get a target sound sample
For my EQ matching example I’ve chosen the guitar sound of “American Idiot” from Green Day. It’s a simple, straight forward song with a punchy sound. Fortunately, the guitar stems for this song are available online making sampling the sound very easy. American Idiot Guitar Stem
A sample of about 10 – 20 seconds is more than enough. So I’ve downloaded the guitar master track and cut only the first chorus out of it.
A 21 seconds snippet (guitar stem only) from Green Days song “American Idiot”.
After we’ve done that I’ve loaded this 20 seconds sample into faIRmageddon. You can do this by dragging the file directly into the EQ Match section (while EQ Match is active) or by choosing it in the output file browser.
Choosing the 21 seconds guitar stem from the chorus of American Idiot in the output file browser.
Dragging of the EQ Reference wave file into the EQ match section of the plug-in.
Step 2: Try to match the sound with your IRs first
I’ve also downloaded the guitar backing track and recorded my own guitar track for this song. Let’s match the sound of my recording to the original.
From the documents available online, I know that for the recording of this song a Marshall 1960B was used. Fortunately, I have our Marshall 1960 A IR pack here and the faIR – Modern Rock pack also has an IR named “GreenBasketCase”. With all of these options I’ve tried to get as close as possible with the X/Y pad.
Something that immediately gets clear: The guitar stem is, of course, taken out of a final mix with quite a fair amount of EQ and other effects, there as our track is a raw recording.
Step 3: Recording your own guitar recording the plug-in
In this step we are recording our own track into the plug-in. I’m setting the song position marker directly before the chorus begins, start playback and hit the recording button in the plug-in. It will take about 10-20 seconds to record.
Recording my own guitar track within the plug-in
After the recording is finished we can apply the match.
Step 4: Match
The plug-in tells me the EQ match is ready. Now I use the “Amount” parameter to shape the current output to our target sound. The output frequency display changes accordingly.
Changing the amount of EQ matching to match the original.
Sucess
With the help of the EQ match I was able to change the sound significantly closer to the original. That was fun!