Tracing the EQ Path
‘Three Hundred Hertz!’ was all I could hear over comms, people were shouting it from every station, ‘Three Hundred Hertz!’ I was spread-eagled across every suspect fader on the mixing desk, whilst feverishly poking at the 31-band graphic equaliser trying to backtrack the mysterious hum that had just trodden all over my mix. Nothing worked, and the hum just got louder.
It was a big gig for me at the time. A Fortune 500 corporate breakfast with a fully stocked crew, and a show director who was now glaring at me, wearing the I’m-upset-and-you’ll-never-work-again face.
Having run out of ideas, I stood up, walked over to the nearest loudspeaker, and stuck my head in front. There was no hum. So I followed the sound through a doorway that led to the council offices, where I discovered the janitor hard at work with a big noisy vacuum cleaner on his back. It was 8:30am. But wait, there’s more. At exactly the same time, a street-sweeping truck was working its way up the rear lane behind the town hall. ‘Wooooo’ went the sound of its rotary brush and vacuum, increasing in volume as it drew closer. I lumbered back to my post and spent the next five minutes restoring all the settings I messed up during the scare.
The moral of the story; EQ is so well-known, people will shout frequencies at you even when the things that go ‘Wooooo’ have nothing to do with you. But how much do we really know about what’s
