I have to admit, i’m usually one of the first to complain about mids and highs at a concert or on a recording. Dont know exactly, anywhere from about 2k to 10k, it can really hurt to listen to. As a reference point, most sounds from other keyboards present 1/2 to 1/3 as much pain in my ears. I can imagine its the nature of analog synth sounds to have unlimited high end on some sounds.
I’ve encountered screeching mids/highs with a great number of the Tones, and I need to figure out a way to tame the mids/highs without diminishing the sound quality too much.
I did the obvious, took a Brass patch that I liked (Meissa) but that was too screechy from about E4 (above middle C) on. I applied, one at a time, two different eq’s trying to cut as little as possible. Whether I used 2 EQs or 1, what was listenable to me drastically altered the sound quality, it was 60% as dramatic and dynamic the sound had been. This was to be expected to some extent, but I didn’t think it would be that drastic. But at least it no longer hurt my ears...
Then I started again with the original patch and tried moderating the Cutoff (LPF), going from 3:00 to around 1:00. Once again, trying to diminish the screech without destroying the sound. Then i applied moderate EQ. This had about the same result as the above paragraph, it wasn’t completely the same sound, didn’t like it as much.
Then I went thru all the filters, sweeping each, looking to see if any of them had a sweet spot where most of the clarity came thru but wasn’t so punishing on my ears. Was surprised / disappointed that it made almost no difference, could barely hear a difference from one filter to the next, the M came the closest, but the difference was pretty subtle. I kept resonance at a neutral 9:00.
I’m more familiar with workstation keyboards and stage pianos, don’t have a lot of background with VA sounds, so further tips on adjusting the synth or fx to address this problem would be appreciated!
Randy
