frequency problem

[TheGuitarHero]

Im an Fl studio user and no matter how hard I try I cant get high frequencies in my song. when I finnish my song and load it into winamp I never see the higher frequency bars move. I even try to use the parometric equalizer and strengthen the higher frequencies but it doesnt work. why does this happen?

[Moseph]

Frequencies don't necessarily have to be evenly represented in a song -- usually the bass is slightly more prominent and the high frequencies start tapering off somewhere around 5 or 6 khz (IIRC). Also, even well-mixed music can look screwy on WinAmp's spectrum analyzer, and I would advise against trying to use it to evaluate your mix -- get a VST that does spectrum analysis (for example, Inspector (http://www.rogernicholsdigital.com/inspector.htm)) and use that instead.

[dannthr]

I'm not sure how WinAmp's spectral analyzer works, but you have to remember that frequencies scale logarithmically, so the top half of the aural spectrum is one octave. It's an octave that is rarely used by musical instruments save for bizarre overtones or detail noises like with cymbals or guitar picking, etc.

Those frequencies are often times the first to go when encoding/compressing for distribution over the internet.

I remember beta testing a music player software prog for DataPlay (now defunct) and telling the supervisor that the spectral analyzer should be logarithmically distributed to more accurately represent how it sounds--I don't think he listened to me.

[Moseph]

Have you seen the "analyzer" on the MySpace music player? It has bars that just randomly bounce up and down.

[dannthr]

I know, that one bugged the HELL out of me once when I was trying to listen to a track that hadn't loaded properly and I noticed their little analyzer gif going crazy and I was like--shit, is there something wrong with my sound???

That was the first time I noticed how goofy that thing was. :D