What is a "boxy" snare sound, anyway?

I said this yesterday, in the context of addressing potential timidity about making bold changes, EQ and otherwise:

I have a couple of mentees to whom I frequently send the same note multiple times as we’re working through their mixes.

The snare, for example, might be boxy. So I will say: “The snare is boxy; try cutting around 400 Hz.”

And I will get the next mix, and the snare will still be boxy, albeit slightly less so. So I will say again: “The snare is boxy; try cutting around 400 Hz.”

And our dear friend Brian had this to say in reply … which is fair!

I think it’s possible that this phenomenon is due to not realizing what an “unboxy” snare drum should actually sound like. Then add to that the misleading “common knowledge” that you shouldn’t make big eq moves, especially if it was “recorded well” at the source.

I think in my career I’ve gotten one or two sets of well recorded drum files back from good drummers that didn’t need significant EQ. FabFilter Pro-Q 3 has a range of + or - 30dB for a reason! 

And, you know … same here! Even well-recorded drums generally need some carving out — I think because it’s a decision usually best left to mixing.

I know that, for example, when I’m engineering a full-band session in a bigger studio, I will certainly make gestures with the EQ — push things in a certain direction — but I won’t always necessarily fully EQ the drums during tracking. Particularly if it’s a low-budget project and we’re working fast.

I’ve learned from painful experience that it’s possible for the balances and EQs to change enough during mixing that the choices that sounded so good during tracking can sometimes tie my hands if I’ve printed them to tape (aka disk).

So, even if the drums that you’re working with were well recorded — even if they’re exceptionally good “drummer in the box” drums, like EZ Drummer etc — they’re pretty definitely going to need EQing to get to where they need to be.

So, with that as context and preamble … what’s a “boxy” drum, anyway?

It’s simply a drum with too much midrange in the 300-600 Hz area! You know when you were little and you would drum with wooden spoons on cardboard boxes? That frequency range. Hence the term.

Snares are big culprits, but toms and kicks can suffer from boxiness too.

(If you want to hear what “not boxy” snare drums sound like, simply listen to any major-label rock or singer-songwriter recording from the last twenty years. I’m not saying that your drums have to sound exactly like those drums — the point is more that professionally-made recordings generally have that “cardboard box” sound EQed out of the drums (unless they’re doing a purposeful “lo-fi” special effect). By A-Bing professionally-made work with your work, you can start to get a sense of where you might need to focus your EQing powers!)

Arguably the single safest EQ move you can make is doing a cut as follows, on any drum in the kit. Nine times out of ten it will improve things: 400 Hz, -6 dB, Q=1.5. Just take a big old chunk right out of the middle.

Because if you carve out the middle, what are you left with? The low end — aka the impact — and the high end — aka the definition/snap/sizzle/crack/stick/etc. I.e., the parts of drums that you want to actually hear.

Happy hunting — jamie