(The Question Every Volunteer Eventually Asks)
By Dawie Nolte · Nolte Productions
There is no magic EQ setting that works every time — every microphone, instrument, room, PA system and voice is different. But there are starting points that will get you very close, every time. Here’s where to begin.
If I had a rand for every time a volunteer has pulled me aside during a sound check and asked “where and how should I set the EQ?”, I could probably retire early. It’s one of the most common questions I get, and I understand why — the EQ section looks intimidating, and it’s tempting to think there’s a single correct answer hiding in there somewhere.
There isn’t. Every microphone and instrument behaves differently, every room has its own character, every PA system sounds different, and every voice sits in the spectrum a little differently. What I can give you, though, are starting points that will get you very close on almost any system, in almost any venue. Think of these as a launch pad, not a final destination — your ears should always have the final say.
Before You Touch the EQ
This is the part everyone skips, and it’s usually where the real problem is hiding. Most “bad EQ” complaints I get called out for aren’t EQ problems at all — they’re basic setup issues that no amount of knob-turning will fix.
Before you reach for the EQ, walk through this list:
- Is the microphone being held correctly?
- Is the person speaking directly into the microphone?
- Is the microphone gain (its input level, set before the volume fader) turned up correctly?
- Are the speakers pointing away from the microphones?
- Is the loudspeaker system properly balanced?
If any of these are wrong, fix them first. EQ can shape a sound, but it can’t rescue a mic that’s being held upside down or a gain stage that’s clipping (turned up so high that the signal distorts).
What Each Control Actually Does
Before jumping into settings, it helps to know what you’re actually adjusting.
Two quick terms you’ll see throughout this guide: frequencies are measured in Hertz (Hz) — low numbers like 80 Hz are deep, bassy tones, and high numbers like 10,000 Hz (written 10 kHz) are bright, high-pitched ones. The amount you boost or cut is measured in decibels (dB) — small moves, usually 1–3 dB, are normally all you need to hear a real difference.
High (Treble) — typically 10–12 kHz
This controls brightness, sparkle and clarity. Push it too far and things get harsh, sharp or hissy. Too little and the sound goes dull and lifeless, with no clarity at all.
Mid
This is where most voices live, so small moves here make a big difference. Boosting the mids brings a voice forward in the mix; cutting them removes boxiness or harshness.
Low (Bass) — typically 80–100 Hz
This controls warmth and fullness. Too much and you get boominess, mud and rumble. Too little and the sound turns thin and weak, with no body behind it.
The Low-Cut (High-Pass) Switch
Alongside the High, Mid and Low knobs, a lot of mixers — analogue and digital alike — also have a low-cut switch, sometimes just labelled HPF, or sometimes just labelled with a frequency, e.g. 80 Hz. It isn’t one of the three main tone controls; instead, it quietly removes everything below a certain frequency, taking out handling noise, breath pops and stage rumble before any of it reaches the PA.
On simple analogue mixers, it’s often a single switch with a fixed frequency — commonly somewhere around 75–100 Hz. It’s one of the safest, easiest wins on the whole desk: switch it in on speech and vocal channels, and leave it out on channels like keyboard or bass guitar where you actually want that low-end information coming through. We’ll give you more precise starting points for it a little further on.
Starting Point 1 — Simple 3-Band Analogue Mixers
If your mixer only gives you High, Mid and Low — with no adjustable mid frequency — keep your moves small. These settings will get a clear, natural result on most systems:
| Source | High | Mid | Low |
| Speech | +1 to +2 dB | Flat or –1 dB | –2 dB |
| Singing Voice | +2 dB | Flat | Flat or –1 dB |
| Acoustic Guitar | +2 dB | –2 dB | –2 dB |
| Keyboard | Flat | Flat | Cut only if muddy |
| Piano | +1 dB | Flat | Flat |
A good piano usually needs very little help — resist the urge to “fix” it. And for guitar and singing, avoid the temptation to boost everything; that’s how you end up with a harsh, tiring mix.
Starting Point 2 — Mixers with Sweepable (Parametric) Mid EQ
Once you’ve got a High Mid and Low Mid you can sweep (two knobs working together — one to select the frequency and one to adjust the boost or cut) to a chosen frequency, you have real control. This is probably the most common EQ setup on analogue mixers:
| Source | High | High Mid | Low Mid | Low |
| Speech | +2 dB | +2 dB @ 3–4 kHz | –3 dB @ 250–350 Hz | –2 dB |
| Singing Voice | +2 dB | +1 dB @ 4 kHz | –2 dB @ 300 Hz | Flat |
| Acoustic Guitar | +2 dB | +1 dB @ 5 kHz | –3 dB @ 250 Hz | –2 dB |
| Keyboard | Flat | Flat | –2 dB @ 300 Hz if needed | Flat |
| Piano | +1 dB | Flat | –1 dB @ 250 Hz if muddy | Flat |
Starting Point 3 — Digital Mixers (Parametric EQ)
Most digital desks give you a high-pass filter (a control that quietly removes everything below a chosen frequency, useful for stripping out rumble, wind pops and handling noise) plus fully parametric bands — EQ points where you choose your own frequency to work on, rather than a fixed one. They also let you adjust the bandwidth, or Q, which controls how wide or narrow the slice of frequencies you’re cutting or boosting is. If you’re new to parametric EQ, keep it simple: use a wide Q, avoid boosts bigger than 3 dB, and always cut before you boost.
| Source | High-Pass Filter | Low-Mid Cut | Presence Boost | Air |
| Speech | 100 Hz (M) / 120 Hz (F) | –3 dB @ 250–350 Hz | +2 dB @ 3–4 kHz | +1 dB @ 10 kHz |
| Singing Voice | 80–100 Hz | –2 dB @ 250 Hz | +2 dB @ 4–5 kHz | +1 dB @ 10–12 kHz |
| Acoustic Guitar | 80 Hz | –3 dB @ 250 Hz | +2 dB @ 5 kHz | — |
| Keyboard | 60 Hz | Mostly flat | — | — |
| Piano | 50 Hz | Small cut if muddy | — | — |
The jargon in that table matters less than the effect: “presence” is the boost that helps a voice cut through and sound close, and “air” is the gentle sparkle right at the top of what most people can hear. Together, these two bring clarity and intelligibility to the sound.
Use the high-pass filter generously on speech microphones — it’s one of the cheapest, easiest wins in the whole signal chain, removing handling noise, speech pops and stage rumble before they ever become a problem.
Common Problems and Quick Fixes
When something sounds “off” but you can’t quite name it, this is the cheat sheet I fall back on:
| If it sounds… | Try this |
| Muddy or muffled | Reduce 200–350 Hz |
| Boxy | Reduce 400–700 Hz |
| Nasal (telephone sound) | Reduce 800 Hz–1.5 kHz |
| Harsh | Reduce 2.5–4 kHz |
| Lacking clarity | Boost 3–5 kHz |
| Too much sibilance (sharp “s” and “sh” sounds) | Reduce 6–8 kHz |
| Too boomy | Reduce 80–150 Hz |
| Thin | Add a little 120–200 Hz |
Understanding Feedback (and When EQ Can Actually Help)
Feedback is the one sound every operator dreads — that rising screech or howl that seems to come from nowhere and grows louder by the second, right in the middle of a service, class or event. It’s also one of the most misunderstood problems on a sound desk.
What It Actually Is
At its simplest, feedback is a loop. A microphone picks up sound from a nearby speaker or monitor, that speaker plays the sound back out again — now slightly louder — and the microphone picks it up again. Round and round it goes, getting louder each pass, until you hear that unmistakable ring or howl. It’s not a fault in your gear; it’s physics doing exactly what physics does when a loop is left unchecked.
What Causes It
- A microphone placed too close to, or facing, a speaker or monitor
- Gain set too high for the distance between mic and source
- Reflective surfaces (glass, hard walls, low ceilings) bouncing sound back into the mic
- Monitor wedges aimed into the mic instead of away from it
- Room resonances — certain frequencies naturally build up more in some rooms than others
The first frequency to feed back is always the one that needs the least energy to get going — usually because the mic, the speaker and the room happen to be reinforcing that one frequency more than any other.
Fix the Physical Stuff First
Just like general EQ problems, feedback is usually a placement problem before it’s an EQ problem. Before reaching for the EQ, check:
- Are the mic and the monitor or speaker facing away from each other?
- Is the gain set no higher than it needs to be?
- Can the mic be moved further from the speaker?
- Are there hard, reflective surfaces close to the mic that could be treated or avoided?
If any of these can be changed, change them first. Moving a monitor by half a metre, or angling a mic slightly differently, will usually solve a feedback problem far more effectively — and leave you with a far more natural-sounding system — than any amount of EQ ever will.
When Placement Can’t Be Changed: Using EQ to Tame Feedback
Sometimes, though, you’re stuck with the room and the setup you’ve got. A fixed lectern or podium mic has to stay where it is. A monitor can only go in one spot. That’s when EQ becomes a legitimate tool — not to fix the room, but to quieten the one or two frequencies causing the trouble. This process is often called “ringing out” a system:
1. With the mic and monitor in their normal working positions, slowly bring the gain (or the fader) up.
2. Listen for the point where a note starts to ring or howl — that pitch is your feedback frequency.
3. Back off before it fully takes off, and note roughly where that pitch sits.
4. Find that frequency on your EQ and apply a narrow cut — often called a notch. On a graphic EQ (a row of sliders, each controlling a fixed frequency band), pull down the closest one. On a parametric EQ, narrow the Q and cut around 3–6 dB.
5. Bring the gain back up slowly. If another frequency rings, repeat the process on that one too.
A few things worth knowing:
- Cut only what you need to. Every notch changes the tone of the mic slightly, so stop once the ringing is gone — don’t keep cutting for good measure.
- The character of the ring is a good clue to where it’s hiding: a low “hoot” or “howl” usually sits around 250–500 Hz, a “singing” tone is often close to 1 kHz, and a sharp whistle or screech usually points above 2 kHz. Feedback is genuinely rare below 80 Hz or above 8 kHz, so that’s a sensible range to search within.
- Do this ahead of time, during setup, rather than in the middle of an event. A few minutes of deliberately pushing a system to the edge of feedback before anyone arrives saves you the panic of chasing it live.
- Keep this separate in your head from your tonal EQ. The starting points earlier in this guide shape how something sounds; a feedback notch simply removes the one or two frequencies threatening to howl. Don’t blend the two purposes into one setting.
- Many simple setups don’t have a separate graphic or parametric EQ set aside just for the room. If that’s you, the channel EQ can do double duty for feedback control — just take extra care with it. Every cut you make there also shapes the tone of that mic, so keep it as narrow and as small as possible, and don’t stack so many feedback cuts on top of your tonal settings that you start to colour the sound more than you mean to.
Feedback control is a skill, not a formula — but understanding what’s actually happening in that loop makes it far less mysterious, and far quicker to fix when it does happen.
Golden Rules
✔ Make small adjustments.
✔ Cut before boosting.
✔ Never boost every EQ control at once.
✔ Use the high-pass filter whenever possible on speech microphones.
✔ Remember: every room is different.
✔ Remember: every microphone and instrument is different.
✔ Remember: every voice is different.
✔ Remember: every PA system is different.
Your ears are still the most important tool on the desk. No preset, chart or article — including this one — replaces careful listening.
What I’d Recommend
Start with the settings above. They’ll get you close on most systems, in almost any room. From there, listen carefully and make small adjustments until the sound feels natural rather than processed.
Over time you’ll find yourself relying less on preset numbers and more on confident listening — which is really the whole point. Good EQ isn’t about making something sound impressive; it’s about making the message easy to understand.
In live sound, clarity always wins over loudness.
Need a hand sorting this out?
If you’re struggling to get a clean, natural sound out of your system, dealing with persistent feedback, or just want a second opinion on your EQ settings, we’d be happy to help. Get in touch with Nolte Productions.
— Dawie Nolte