Where's the air? part I

An effect that can be lovely on a voice, depending on the song, is to have a nice sheen about it. “Air,” it’s sometimes called. That glossy, shiny sound.

So, where’s that frequency? It’s lower than you might think.

Try boosting at 10000Hz, with a Q of 1.5.

Does that seem low to you? I know from talking with a lot of diy recordists that, in their mind, vocal air lives at like 15000Hz. I blame the way EQ is represented visually in plugins. There’s all that empty space at the right side of the EQ graph; surely that’s where the air lives, right? In the very highest possible place?

But no! Give 10k a shot. As unintuitive as it might seem.

Bonus: if you do this boost pre-compression, it will both add air and impart some de-essing qualities — because compressors are most sensitive to frequencies that are pushed into them. This isn’t always the right answer, but it’s worth trying.

So how much gain are we talking about adding at 10k, anyway? Potentially a lot! Don’t be afraid to add +6dB, +10dB — hell, try +15dB. If they didn’t want you to add +20dB at 10000Hz, they wouldn’t have made the knob go to +20. Use your ears and stop when it feels good.

And if the 10000 Hz boost sounds too harsh, try doing twice as big a boost at 15000Hz — still pairing it of course with that 13000 Hz LPF. This way the boost will be in the more gentle left-hand slope of the EQ curve, as opposed to square in the center; this is a lovely sound that I also use a lot.

Flying high — jamie