In this week’s podcast, Julian is joined by Dom Morley and William Wittman (and William’s cat Watson, who can be heard in places, very insistently wanting to join us from the other side of a closed door) to discuss EQ strategies when mixing, specifically the increasingly mainstream “EQ Carving technique”. Is it useful or is it somehow missing the point?

Dom Morley

Dom Morley is a Grammy Award winning engineer and producer. Over a twenty year career (and counting!) he has worked with many of the music industry's biggest names, from artists including Adele, Sting and Amy Winehouse, to producers including Phil Spector, Mark Ronson and Tony Visconti.

William Wittman

William Wittman is a Grammy Award-winning Producer/Engineer/Musician/Songwriter based in New York whose credits include the multi-platinum debuts from Cyndi Lauper, Joan Osborne, the Hooters, and The Outfield.

Talking Points

• The inspiration behind this podcast was a simple question - to carve or not to carve. So can we start with a quick explanation of the phrase and your thoughts on this approach to mixing

• What about high pass filtering?

• Carving is something which to my knowledge seems to have only been referred to as “carving” relatively recently. We now have tools like iZotope Neutron and FabFilter’s Pro-Q 3 which have the ability to communicate between instantiations of the plugin so a build up of energy in one track can be addressed by a cut in other tracks. Does this dynamic approach appeal to you?

• Does this in any way overlap or interweave with panning or stereo placement “style’? Are you an ‘LCR’ vs in-between panner?

• This is all about balance, do you have any advice for mixers who are struggling to find a good balance?

Find Of The Week

• William - Soundflow Scheps Melodyne Helpers package

• Dom - Rosson Audio Design RAD-0 headphones

• Julian - Genelec 8331A SAM Studio Monitor