Keep it musical

With such powerful EQ at our fingertips, it’s easy to overlook the fact that much of the audio we’re modifying contains musically-related frequency content, and adjusting a given frequency range might not target those harmonics particularly accurately. What’s more, the frequency scaling on the vast majority of EQs is displayed in Hz rather than musical notes, and this could also be considered a bit unhelpful.

Newfangled Audio’s EQuivocate Auditory Paragraphic EQ is not only a powerful match EQ, but its default setting also uses the Mel – or ‘melody’ – Scale to define 26 bands of linear phase filters. Mel is based on empirical research into how we perceive the intervals between different notes, and each increment in the scale is judged by listeners to be an equal distance apart. The unit (mel) is referenced to Hertz at a particular frequency (usually 1kHz = 1000 Mel), and as with any scale, multiples and subdivisions can be important. A significant aspect of the scale is that above about 500Hz, increasingly large intervals are judged to represent equal pitch increments, so the scale drifts away from the Hertz scale. For example, 2000 mel equates to roughly 3kHz rather than 2kHz.