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Boominess in the female voice range?

orangejello

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I have a hard time accepting the specificity of your problem:

”Problem: There is a specific frequency within the female voice range which is extremely position dependent. In my listenting spot the 'n' letters in a song are so extremely boomy that my eardrum hurt at even moderate SPL.”

So if you quit listening to female vocals the problem disappears? Or if you only listen to melismatic female vocals consisting of vowels then there is no problem? Makes no sense to me especially when you throw in “even at moderate SPL”. You may have a problem but it is more likely with a specific track(s) which makes it recording dependent and you can’t do anything (reasonable) about that.

I would suggest not listening to this track that you have focused on. Stop trying to analyze what you are hearing for awhile. Relax. This hobby can really bring out the OCD in many of us
 

fieldcar

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"He doesn't even know it's wrong" sounds boomy and resonant to me, but it's the recording. I checked with my JBL 306Pmkii's and some Thieaudio Legacy 4's. Welcome to the realization that most recording engineers/producers could care less about this. Some of my favorite recordings have whopping -30dB noise floors or crushed+distorted+compressed cymbals, but I've learned to live with it... Kind of...:(
 

dasdoing

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It's hard to eq, cause it has a very long ringing. if you boost 222Hz with a big Q you can hear it ring for several seconds. to eq this out you have to kill the whole frequency range of the mode and it will make the vocal thinner.
 

Hipper

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I have a set up that works for all the music I play until I came accross a version of a song that, whilst sounding good on my headphones, was somehow a bit shrill on my speakers. Clearly there was something wrong with either my speakers, gear or room but as it was only part of this song that I otherwise loved I used Nero Wave Editor to knock off a few dB from the problem area. Result, I can play this song enjoyably. That's good enough for me!
 

tecnogadget

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Here you can see that I have large variation around the 350Hz mark. This could very well be the problem... There are many more of course :)View attachment 155035
Here is my interpretation of your graph: that little peak At 329Hz is unlikely to be the culprit of your issue, if we take the range from 200Hz to 350Hz, that elevation may be audible. But I find more of an issue the depression from 200Hz to 60Hz, the null centered at 60Hz and the big peak at 40Hz. Thats the kind of peak that really stands out. If you check Waterfall plot and configure it as 450ms im sure that peak will still remain without decaying 40dB-50dB, hence there is ringing or “one bass note”. Try to expand the timing to 60ms or 1000ms to see where that peak disappears, ideally it should fall by 450ms or below.
 

DS23MAN

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Did listen to this song on my laptop speakers, what the hell is going on in the low midrange section. Overly boosted, if I would listen to this in my listening room ( 5,5x5,5m) it will sound terrible...
 

dasdoing

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as you can hear, even EQing it it continues to be resonant. that's why room treatment is necessary even when using room eq. I suspect the vocal was recorded in a vocal booth
 

dasdoing

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on a sidenote. the resonance gets excited on other notes, too. much less, but if you put that boost I mentioned the frequency will anoy during the whole song
 
OP
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Marth

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If it is 250Hz that might be what is going on here where you have a lump ranging from say 240Hz to 329Hz. Can you somehow lower that by 5dB and listen.

There are two approaches - alter the room by DSP/EQ or speaker/listening position - or alter this specific track. If everything else sounds good and it is only this track that is the problem I'd alter the track. Forget any 'as the musician intended' thoughts - it must work for you. Just keep the original somewhere for another day.

If the track has only certain regions where this boominess occurs you could use Nero Wave Editor, a free download, to home in on the regions and lower the volume. You can target quite small regions.

https://www.nero.com/eng/downloads/?currency=gbp&vlang=gb&country=gb&

Scroll down to find it.

There may be software that can alter frequencies on tracks but I have no experience of them.
The 250Hz peak is 3 dB higher but right at my listening spot it is +7dB. When I compare the frequency response from the listening spot and the spot where it sounds normal it is clear. In my listening spot there is a peak followed by a null. All this happening right in the female voice range.

I never had such an audible distortion by an intermediate bump in the frequency response...

Well she just hit that nightmare pitch perfectly. :)
 
OP
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Marth

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on a sidenote. the resonance gets excited on other notes, too. much less, but if you put that boost I mentioned the frequency will anoy during the whole song
Ok so it is bassically an audio engineering mistake in combination with a +7dB peak in my listenting spot frequency response which causes this. Can't hear that song at normal loudness levels at all... so annoying.

I checked and the response is minimal phase over that peak. I could try to mute it via EQ in Roon.

Thank you guys for the response. This made me crazy but realizing that it is part the recording makes it less annoying :)
 
OP
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Marth

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If it is 250Hz that might be what is going on here where you have a lump ranging from say 240Hz to 329Hz. Can you somehow lower that by 5dB and listen.

There are two approaches - alter the room by DSP/EQ or speaker/listening position - or alter this specific track. If everything else sounds good and it is only this track that is the problem I'd alter the track. Forget any 'as the musician intended' thoughts - it must work for you. Just keep the original somewhere for another day.

If the track has only certain regions where this boominess occurs you could use Nero Wave Editor, a free download, to home in on the regions and lower the volume. You can target quite small regions.

https://www.nero.com/eng/downloads/?currency=gbp&vlang=gb&country=gb&

Scroll down to find it.

There may be software that can alter frequencies on tracks but I have no experience of them.
I switched to a positon where this peak around 250Hz is 6dB less and flat and it sounds perfect.
 
OP
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Marth

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Forgive me but isn't that hump more like 250Hz?
Yeah it is! I didn't check and took him by his word after a quick look at the log chart... Ty for pointing this out. Makes much more sense with respect to my frequency plot.
 
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