Purity is defined as freedom from adulteration or contamination. In other words, pure is free from anything other than itself.
Pure water, pure air, pure sound.
So what happens when we use impure methods such as EQ to achieve sonic purity? Should we be branded as heretics?
I recently ran into this dilemma while remastering some older mixes for Octave Records. The acoustic bass track had pretty serious bleed issues from low-frequency room garbage that made it sound thudy.
One purist’s approach would be to leave it as is. Pure in its imperfection.
Yet another purist’s approach would be to use EQ and other tricks to reduce or eliminate the unwanted bleed frequencies.
When you compare the final mixes: one left as is, the other modified to be problem free, I suspect you would choose the latter as a purer approach.
The bass sounds pure and correct.
In the same way we need to go through some ugly and intrusive processes to attain pure water, air, and sound, it is the output we’re concerned with, not how we got there.
Purity is the end product.
