Home Recording Articles, Tips, Tricks and Advice

What is rolling off?

I know, these phrases banded about by everybody ‘in the know’ are confusing.

Put simply rolling off is a curve.

See the pictures below,

These pictures are designed to show what a curve will look like when applied.

They’re only represenations but it’s a good way to understand what an EQ curve looks like.

This kind of curve is usually referred to a ‘high pass’

A ‘low pass’ looks like this,

A curve as you can see ‘curves’ off the frequency in a gentle ‘slope’ .

The severity or amount of  ‘curve ‘ is created by the amount of ‘Q/Bandwidth’ + ‘Gain’

A ‘High Pass’ removes low frequencies

A ‘Low Pass’ removes high frequencies.

To try and remove a little confusion keep shelves and passes seperate.

Learn what a  ‘High Pass’ and a ‘Low Pass’ do first – then try a ‘Band Pass’

A band-pass filter is a ‘high-pass filter’ and a ‘low-pass filter’ combined to allow only a band of frequencies to pass through.

A ‘low shelf’ will affect low frequencies up to a certain point and then above that point will have little effect.

A ‘high shelf’ affects the level of high frequencies, while below a certain point, the low frequencies are unaffected.

One Response to “EQ – Jargon – What is rolling off? – Recording Tips”