Chapter 22 Quiz

Closed book first pass — answer everything before opening any <details> block. EQ is a chapter where half-remembered rules do real damage (the 100 Hz lemming march is made of people who half-remembered this material), so treat your misses as a map of what to re-read. Scoring guidance is at the end.

Section 1 — Multiple Choice (15 questions, 1 point each)

1. The professional mental model of EQ presented in this chapter is: - A) making every track sound as good as possible on its own - B) deciding which instrument gets featured ownership of each frequency zone - C) matching every track's spectrum to a reference curve - D) removing all energy below 100 Hz

2. A high-pass filter: - A) removes everything above its cutoff - B) boosts everything below its corner by a fixed amount - C) removes everything below its cutoff and passes what's above - D) is the same thing as a low shelf

3. Higher Q means: - A) a wider bell - B) a narrower bell - C) more gain - D) a steeper high-pass slope

4. The chapter's three reasons for subtractive-first are: - A) phase, latency, CPU - B) masking, headroom, the boost-bias trap - C) mud, boxiness, harshness - D) Q, slope, gain

5. The "100 Hz lemming" warning says: - A) never high-pass anything - B) always high-pass at exactly 100 Hz - C) high-pass discipline is good, but each cutoff must be set by ear in context, not by a number copied from a tutorial - D) high-pass filters cause pre-ringing

6. Mud at 200–400 Hz is called a "committee decision" because: - A) one track is always responsible and must be found - B) nearly every track deposits a modest, reasonable amount there, and the problem only exists in the sum - C) it only happens when a band records together - D) analyzers can't display that region

7. The 60-second mud fix is: - A) one -9 dB narrow cut on the bass - B) a high-pass at 400 Hz on everything - C) small wide cuts (2–3 dB, Q ≈ 1–1.4) on the two or three biggest contributors, centers slid by ear - D) boosting the vocal until it clears the blanket

8. In the kick/808 complementary carve, each instrument: - A) is boosted where it's strongest - B) cuts where the other instrument reigns, donating the zone it doesn't define itself by - C) is high-passed at 100 Hz - D) gets the same EQ curve for consistency

9. The sweep-and-destroy warning exists because: - A) sweeping damages speakers - B) everything sounds ugly boosted 10 dB, so the sweep only nominates candidates — only a matched-loudness A/B convicts - C) the technique only works on vocals - D) cuts found by sweeping are always too narrow

10. The 2–6 kHz band is a "tightrope" because: - A) no instruments produce energy there - B) the ear is least sensitive there, so big boosts are needed - C) the ear is most sensitive there, so the same small moves read as presence or as harshness - D) it's where room modes live

11. An air shelf on a noisy budget capture will most likely: - A) create new harmonics that weren't recorded - B) magnify hiss, spit, and brittle capsule edge — amplifying the absence of real air - C) fix sibilance - D) reduce headroom by exactly 3 dB

12. The Matched-Loudness A/B Law's third verdict — "different but not better" — means: - A) keep the move, since variety helps - B) bypass wins by default, because an active band must earn its cost - C) ask a friend to decide - D) split the difference at half the gain

13. A high-pass filter usually goes before a compressor because: - A) compressors add low end - B) the compressor's detector is dominated by big low-frequency energy, so un-filtered rumble makes it duck the whole track - C) plugins must be alphabetized - D) it saves CPU

14. Dynamic EQ (previewed this chapter, delivered in Chapter 28) is best described as: - A) any EQ used while the song plays - B) an EQ band that only engages when its frequency misbehaves — a bell with a tiny compressor inside - C) an EQ that changes with the song's tempo - D) another name for linear-phase EQ

15. "Always cut 200–400 Hz on every mix" fails as a rule because: - A) mud only exists below 200 Hz - B) in some genres — rock guitar walls, warm soul and folk — low-mid energy is the contract, and the move is carving small holes, not demolishing - C) EQ can't cut that low - D) the law forbids cuts

Section 2 — True/False + Justify (5 questions, 2 points each: 1 for the verdict, 1 for the mechanism)

16. True or false: A track that sounds thin and lopsided when solo'd is necessarily EQ'd wrong.

17. True or false: Cutting 3 dB at 300 Hz on a pad can make the lead vocal clearer even though the vocal's EQ was never touched.

18. True or false: Linear-phase EQ is the objectively cleaner mode and should be your mixing default.

19. True or false: Because boosts are louder and louder sounds better, an unmatched A/B systematically favors keeping boosts and rejecting cuts.

20. True or false: If your chorus stays congested no matter how you EQ, the correct next tool is a steeper, deeper set of cuts.

Section 3 — Short Answer (4 questions, 3 points each)

21. Write out the four steps of the matched-loudness ritual in order, and state what "matched" means operationally (what you adjust, and what the bypass toggle should feel like when you've got it).

22. Explain why the mud committee cannot be found with the solo button but can be found with the mute button. One mechanism per button.

23. Your vocal needs to feel brighter. Give the chapter's three-step order of operations before and including any boost, with the reason for each step.

24. State what high-pass discipline buys a 30-track session (two distinct benefits), and the by-ear procedure that sets each cutoff.

Section 4 — Applied Scenario (6 points)

25. A friend sends you a rough mix and this note: "Help. It's a singer-songwriter thing — voice, acoustic guitar, piano, bass, light drums. Everything sounds warm but like it's under a duvet, and when I turn it up, the voice gets painful and spitty on the loud lines. Last week I tried fixing the duvet by high-passing literally everything at 150 Hz — it got clean but sounded like a demo from a shoebox, so I undid it. I've EQ'd every track in solo until each one sounded amazing. Why is it worse?"

Diagnose and prescribe. Your answer should: name each symptom in band vocabulary and give its likely mechanism; explain why the solo-EQ workflow and the 150 Hz blanket-HP both backfired; give a concrete, ordered fix plan (with approximate frequencies, gains, and the verification discipline); and flag the one symptom in the note that static EQ is the wrong tool for, naming the right one and its chapter.

Scoring

For T/F items, award the second point only if the justification names the mechanism (masking context, detector behavior, bias asymmetry, pre-ringing, arrangement-in-disguise), not merely the verdict.