Avoiding Spectral Logjams

Randy Thom Guest Author

Avoiding Spectral Logjams

Having designed, edited, and mixed the sound for hundreds of action sequences, I can testify that the biggest problem to overcome is usually having too much sound.

The “too much sound” comes in several forms. The most basic one is simply having too many simultaneous, individual sounds competing for attention. We sound designers tend to be afraid of having produced too few sounds for a given sequence, and in trying to allay that fear, we produce too many.

The classic mistake is to throw several mediocre sounds at a given moment in the hope that when they play together some kind of magic will happen to turn the moment into something better than mediocre. It rarely does, and you wind up with a bunch of average sounds masking each other into noise. The solution is to have fewer sounds and better sounds. That’s where creativity is necessary, as opposed to throwing a ton of gunk at the canvas and praying the mixer will somehow make it beautiful. Yep. I’ve been guilty too.

"Too much sound" is something more specific than too many sounds...

But another form of “too much sound” is something more specific than too many sounds, it’s too much sound in a given spectrum. In my experience, the part of the audio spectrum between about 200Hz and 800Hz is usually not the problem. The two problem areas tend to be below 200Hz and above 1K, especially above 3K.

For some reason we often conclude that low frequencies and high frequencies are where most of the drama is in sound effects, that those parts of the spectrum are the ones that get people’s attention. So, we pile it on in those areas in action sequences: constant booming bass that feels like low-passed pink noise and constant highs that basically feel like unrelenting, uncorrelated white noise. It’s not dramatic, dynamic, or even coherent. It’s just damn loud.

My recommendation for how to avoid this common, nasty situation that doesn’t sound good and will usually get you into trouble with Directors (or whoever is creatively in charge) is to not only reduce the number of simultaneous sounds, and to come up with individual sounds that have more natural intrinsic drama, but also to listen carefully for unnecessary sonic competition in particular frequency ranges.

Certain sounds will have something stellar going on in the highest frequency bands. Showcase that sound by filtering or eq’ing down the high frequencies in any other simultaneous sound that could mask the star of the moment. Same for the low end. The subwoofer can shine, but not if you neutralize it by sending three, six, eight sounds to it simultaneously.

​Lots of this happens in the mix, of course, but my advice is to save the mixer some time by preparing sounds so that when all the faders are initially put up; the mixer isn’t confronted with a wall of blasting meaninglessness.

Good Luck!
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