HOW TO DO THE RIGHT EQ ON YOUR KEYBOARD

[♔Chello]

HOW TO DO THE RIGHT EQ ON YOUR KEYBOARD

Imagine that you have a CD, where you want to correct bass and treble.
Then you have a problem, because each song is collected in its own track.
Let's say the current track consists of drums, bass, piano and guitar.
You will only regulate treble EQ for drums, and bass EQ for bass - piano and guitar should not be regulated.

This is physically impossible, because ALL instruments will be affected by your EQ, and thus the piano and guitar will be infused with unwanted EQ and lose their credibility.

A keyboard is quite different, because each song (style) is split into 7 tracks, where you have the opportunity to add separate EQ for each track, and thus the individual tracks EQ are not affected by each other.


In other words, you have the same opportunity for correct editing of EQ as professional recording studios have when creating a CD - you can adjust each track individually, which is the only correct thing to do.

All keyboards have something called Master EQ, and this form of EQ should NEVER be used, because it touches ALL tracks - an upward adjustment of eq for eg bass range affects ALL tracks, giving too much bass to all other instruments.


The correct way to do EQ is to add the desired EQ for each track, and keyboards that are a little more advanced have this ability.

So what to adjust - what is needed?

* It is desirable to be able to regulate the center frequency freely from 20Hz to 20kHz
* It is desirable to be able to regulate the Q-value freely from 0.5 to 10.0
* It is desirable to be able to regulate the filter sharpness from 6dB/octave to 24dB/octave
* It is desirable to be able to regulate the center frequency steplessly for the filter's selected octave


Even the most advanced models only have the possibility of partially making the desired adjustments.

Korg Pa5X has all these capabilities, while everyone else relies on DAW (eg Cubase).

It is also important to be aware of what dB is - 3dB corresponds to a doubling of the loudness, while 10dB corresponds to a tenfold increase, as dB is logarithmically based.

This means that EQ must be done with the utmost care to avoid abnormal amplification.

A good example is what happens if you upscale the EQ with a higher value than 3dB for all instruments, as I once did with Pa3X - the sound becomes terrible.
This is because even a minimal increase of 1 dB is highly audible when undertaken over the entire frequency range.

Finally:
Always make sure that Master EQ is disabled before starting this work.