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3. Stereo mode

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Carve EQ loads in M/S mode, so switch this to left/right stereo mode by selecting Left/Right from the dropdown icon on the left. Also click through the three icons to see how it affects what you can edit. Now load something with obvious stereo aspects – we’re using the tutorial file Drum Kit Overhead (download from the Tutorials section at filesilo.co.uk). 4

Next try M/S mode. Select this from the stereo options on the left hand side. Click through the three icons above and you’ll see you can edit mid and sides together (top icon) or just mid (blue) or sides (orange). Again these colours are matched by the analyser.

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We can do one further stereo trick in M/S mode and in this case there’s a ready made preset to use – Stereo Imager. Load this up and, once again, we’re using the Full Drum Mix tutorial file. The preset only changes the sides audio, cutting the lows and boosting the highs. Use the Mix knob to modify the effect. 2

We’ve set the spectrum analyser to Exact mode and the falloff to Slow. Hit play and you’ll see the two analyser colours (green and pink) indicating the left and right channels. We can hear and see that the high frequencies are louder in the left (green) channel. 5

We can use this mode to focus our EQ on either the mono or stereo aspects of a sound. This time we’re using the Full Drum Kit tutorial file. First select the mid channel (blue) and the Sculpt tool. Going in at 50Hz and 200Hz draw in a 6 to 9dB boost for each.

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Now select the Sculpt tool and increase the Size setting to about 5. We can use the tool to apply a different tilt to this curve, and by reintroducing more of the low mids and adding a broad peak in high mids the sound comes alive. Once again, the Mix control can reduce the overall setting if required. 3

Select the left channel to edit and grab the pencil tool. Working from 6kHz upwards we can draw in a shelf to cut high frequencies. This reaches a max cut of about 5dB. Looking again at the analyser you’ll see the solid post processing line is now closer to the pink line and we’ve successfully EQ’d just one channel. 6

Next, select the sides channel (orange) and, again, with the Sculpt tool draw in a few dB boost from about 4kHz upwards. We now have a punchier, fuller kit sound that’s slightly broader sounding, and if we need to back off the boosts collectively the Mix knob offers a quick solution.