ONE OF HAR BALS CREATORS/ME....AFFORDABLE PRO MASTERING

http://www.blip.tv/file/3249251/
 
JUST FORWARD TO 12:30 OF VID

Neither, just thought i give the har bal user a lil insight on one of the creators and sum pretty good/affordable pro mastering imo. : )

Earle Will do 45 seconds free:

http://www.hdqtrz.com/

This also points to a problem that's becoming more and more pervasive in the professional audio community.  The "if I say I'm a mastering engineer then I am one" and "if I say this is a mastering facility it is" syndromes.  I agree with Bit.  I mean just look at the place!  Would you have your stuff "mastered" there?  Would you let that guy do it?  Or would you...apparently not...even care? 

I hadn't heard of this harbal before.  It does seem like it could be a nice check if you don't have that great of a setup.

Though hopefully when I get my IK ARC setup over the weekend it should help anyway !


As it relates to him in particular, agreed that didn't look like a professional studio.  It looked more like mine (except I think it had tile floors, lol).

I know if I had all that supposed success, I would have a real studio not just a converted office.

bitflipper


I was joking. Your thread title could be mis-read as "one of Har-Bal's creators: me".

I found the video interesting, because one of the arguments often heard to support the legitimacy of Har-Bal is that a respected mastering engineer was involved in its creation.

I'd previously had no idea who this Earle Holder fellow was, so I've always taken that argument at face value. Thanks to your link, however, I now know that Mr. Holder is in fact a wannabe ME with a somewhat limited technical understanding of mastering. (He's discussed here on gearslutz)

The first clue is the video itself. The audio sounds really bad. Of course, it's because they just used the built-in microphone on the camera, but it also reveals that it was not recorded in a real mastering studio, which would not have been so reverberant. I wouldn't even want to mix in that room, much less master.

Second clue: look at the room they're in. He specifically calls it a "mastering room", but it's too small and cluttered, there are no visible acoustical treatments, the speakers are inexpensive nearfields (Dynaudio BM5-A's), and no real ME would have a video monitor that big in front of him.

Third clue: he uses the Intuit-Q feature of Har-Bal. While Har-Bal is useful as an educational tool for beginners, and I have recommended it many times as such, no real ME would ever dream of actually using its automated correction tool to master with. Never. The value of Har-Bal is as an aid to home recordists who have lousy acoustics and cheap speakers (and I raise my hand as one of them!) so they can get an objective visual representation of what's in the music, uncolored by their deficient monitoring environment. Mr. Holder's room qualifies as such.

There are a lot of frauds, scams and incompetent amateurs posing as mastering engineers these days. You send them a file and they "master" it and send it back to you. It will often sound better because it will be louder, but all they're doing is throwing on a limiter and an equalizer. What you pay a real ME for is his experienced ears, his acoustically refined room, and his expensive gear.

I'd pass on Mr. Holder's fifteen dollars a minute bargain offer and spend more for a higher-end service. But if your budget is constrained, there are lots of services that are priced the same or less. Most of them will master 30-seconds of your song for free to entice you into becoming a regular customer.

Wow BitFlipper you sound like my biggest fan. I have to say, I have never felt so much love from someone who has never met me. I felt compelled to respond after one of my customers sent me this link, so I registered just to respond. He seemed awfully angry.
When I read this thread I couldn't understand for the life if me why you were attacking me, yet we have never met.

You actually referred to as a "wannabe ME". Ouch, that hurt. No one has ever called me that before. That is downright insulting.

Sir I have to tell you, mastering is without a doubt my only real passion and I make a great living doing it. I have no shortage of customers worldwide. Most of my customers are considered Indie. I receive hundreds of emails weekly from folks just getting started in search of advice concerning mastering, mixing and the music industry as a whole.

I am not in this business to compete with anyone. My only competitor is myself and that is my determination to strive to become the best I can be. I learn from others I do not attack them. You can learn something new from anyone. Funny enough, I actually learn from my customers because of their demands. Any real mastering engineer out there would understand exactly what I am talking about. We are especially hard on ourselves because we naturally want perfection and we are always looking for new tools, techniques, etc. I have mastered albums and the client was ecstatic and then later when I acquired a newer piece of equipment or learned a new trick I have wanted to re-master the clients album again. We are never satisfied, hence the name "gearslutz" :) We are obsessed and money is no object.

The nearfield monitors you saw are actually the Mackie 824's and I am also using the Mackie HR120 sub-woofers on the floor which you probably could not see. I have had them ever since they were released and absolutely love their sound and know them well. You referred to clutter, yet there is nothing in that room that isn't supposed to be there. I also like my 72" big screen. It makes editing a breeze, especially for my old eyes.

I am also using Auralex padding which you obviously couldn't see because it wasn't up. I like to experiment. On the back wall as you leave the room I had customer theater curtains attached to a wide circular rod. The whole idea was to be able to take any room and be able to adjust the soundproofing as you flatten the room using a spectrum analyzer by rolling it out across the side walls. I also have bass traps in 8 corners as well as two diffusors on the ceiling.

I have quite a bit of nice hardware. If you go to  www.chandlerlimited.com/products/zener_limiter.php you will see that Wade from Chandler Limited posted my statement directly under their description of the unit. That hardware Limiter is a beast and I love it and use it daily. Another great piece that can perform miracles is the hardware version of the Manley Mastering EQ. Even when EQ'ing isn't necessary you just have to push your sound through it and digititus becomes a thing of the past.

If you happen to be in the Atlanta area I may show you some excellent tricks using these units to really glue a track together, though I am sure you probably wouldn't be interested.

My customers obviously love the sound. I have not had a complaint yet.

My Avalon 747SP is also a great unit, you just have to know when to use it. It can be tricky, but you have to know what you are doing. I have plenty of other nice analog pieces, but I am not here to brag.

My demonstration of Har-Bal in that video was just to show new folks a quick way to use the app. We have never ever stated or advertised that Har-Bal is a one button mastering tool nor have we advertised that it should be used for spectrum matching. As a matter of fact we have always discouraged folks from using it in this manner. Wait until you see Har-Bal 3.0. There will probably be no need to ever use a multiband compressor again and you can quote me on that. Har-Bal is now in distribution in 166 countries. We have been approached by two companies who are interested in us creating a DSP (Digital Signal Processor) chip for their boards.

Har-Bal has been around since 2003 and is still doing quite well. We have found that those folks who use it extensively initially don't need to use it as much as time passes, though they will use it to check their songs. This is because it is mostly a learning tool and ultimately teaches you how to listen and identify those problem areas easily.

My partner Paavo who actually developed Har-Bal resides in Australia. He is absolutely brilliant. Years ago when he attempted to engage in intelligent discourse in the forums there was so much flaming going on we decided we would no longer engage in discussions in this manner. We would just let word of mouth take over the advertising. I have to say from the amount of customers we have worldwide Har-Bal is widely used and loved.

We are all in the same profession so why is there a need to always argue with each other. It really doesn't help you improve your craft and just leaves you frustrated. We have put a product out there that took us quite awhile to develop. We did it because we were trying to truly help folks. This is our craft and we love it. There is nothing better than the look on a client's face when you have mastered their project properly and it sounds perfect. This is what keeps me in this game. My idols is this field are Bob Katz, Bobby Owinski, Brian Big Bass Gardner and anyone else who believes in pushing the envelope and taking our craft to another level.

I enjoy the emails as well as meeting with the young engineers who have questions about our so called black art. We should be sharing our knowledge with the next generation so they too can apply newer innovations to this craft.

The great thing about this craft is that we get to hear all the great music out there before it has been released. I have had the pleasure numerous times to simply make a phone call to one of my industry friends when music has come past my desk that I consider exceptional and give that artist a boost.

For me it is more than simply mastering a project. I want to know who that artist is. I want to know the feeling they are trying to convey through their music. You basically have to develop a relationship with the artist. So far this has worked for me and I believe my customers appreciate it. Sure, 15.00 per song minute may not seem like a high price to charge, but I am blessed in the numbers of customers I have and find no need to overcharge them.

Good luck with your business.

Anyway.....back to work.

Cheers

Earle Holder
Chief Mastering Engineer
Hdqtrz Mastering Studios
www.hdqtrz.com

Kroneborge


Question, is this doing anything different than I can already do with EQ matching in Ozone?

Also, I tried EQ matching, and to be honest, I really wasn't that impressed with it so far.  Or is this something different.

The logic behind our EQ'ing method is as follows:


When you perform EQ on a typical equalizer or mixing desk you cannot make an impartial judgment about whether a particular EQ setting is good or not because it is generally not loudness compensated. By that we mean for an A/B test of with and without EQ to be unbiased, the perceived loudness of each case must be the same! If you boost the mid-range on your EQ you will have boosted the overall loudness so any in/out test will be biased toward your boosted case simply because it is louder. The only way you can do this on a mixing desk is to cut the output level on the EQ'd case but by how much will you cut it?

Unlike mixing and EQ'ing on a console, Har-Bal is loudness compensated to maintain the same perceived loudness between filter in and filter out. What you hear in an A/B comparison with Har-Bal is truly due to EQ alone and not a bias introduced by the fact that the perceived loudness is higher in one.

Without compensating for loudness it is very easy to make EQ mistakes. With the approach Har-Bal takes it is much less likely.


Regarding spectrum matching if you are working on single instruments it can be much harder to hear differences in EQ in and out cases. The reason is because the spectrum is sparsely filled so your ears can much more easily pick out all the parts in the spectrum without being restricted by masking effects. As the spectrum fills up, masking effects become more prevalent so you hear EQ changes more readily.

Spectrum matching is rarely a good idea, though you can be lucky and get good results, but it is very much hit and miss. You are far better off respecting the original recording intent and spending some time to try and figure out which parts of the spectrum present problems. This is particularly true of sparse mixes. 

We basically don't use the intuitMatch tool at all, but instead use manual editing, principally on the average power spectrum trace, to make the 1/3 octave view of the spectrum look smooth yet still basically retain the general trend of the original spectrum. That way, we generally end up with a track that honors the intent of the recording but improves on the clarity and cohesiveness. IntuitQ attempts to do this, though we can do much better manually, and that is what we generally do.

Of course, if the recording is severely tainted by the bad acoustics of the environment where it was recorded and mixed, then severe adjustment is likely necessary and in such cases you need to take an "educated guess" as to what the original intent of the artist was. Generally speaking, if the modified spectrum over/underlays the original in an average sense then it is a fair bet you are honoring the original intent and compensating for bad acoustics.

Cheers


Earle Holder
Chief Mastering Engineer
Hdqtrz Mastering Studios
www.hdqtrz.com

I have been reading Bit flippers post here at the CW forums and have always found him to be knowledgeable and one of the more astute posters on the audio related forums that I frequent .  Unfortunately I can see from post #4  and #6 that he has placed quite allot of stock in what some of the folks at the Gear Sluts forum  have to say about Harbal and Earle.


I basically gave up on the mastering forum over at G.S. because I couldn't get used to some of the very closed minded posters and found them to have quite a bit of Vitriol for what they obviously felt threatened by .
The sad thing is that I feel that any time one can afford to , one should use the services of a real M.E.
There is no replacement for experience ( but of course you also might get someone who is too set in thier ways !) and  the objectivity brought by a fresh set of ears .
But if I has the budget , I wouldn't give a cent to some of the attitude cases over there , no matter  thier resume!

As i mentioned , I have found some success with the Harbal software , and I expect it is because I went the extra mile and really learned how to use the tool properly instead of trying to slip-shot it with a one button approach ( and the ever prevalent never RTFM approach !)
I guess if that makes me a "fan boy " then I'm guilty ... But I  have been pretty mortified at some of the attacks the developers have been subjected to  , and , at the same time , the attackers gleefully admit they have never so much as demoed the product !!   If that's not biased than what is ???


Earle , you have been a gentlemen in the face of allot of dastardly criticism and I applaud your fortitude , but please forgive the bit flipper , as I believe he was just a victim of taking some bad counsel in this instance , and ; I believe you two would  get on swimmingly  in a different environment other than these infernally bad places for human communications as these forums !!  He is very passionate about audio as are you .  
  

Earle, thanks for stopping by. I hope you'll come back again to read my reply.

First, let me say that my comments were in no way meant to be a personal attack. Maybe if we were next-door neighbors and you kept borrowing my hedge trimmer and not returning it, that might be a basis for a personal attack, but in that case I wouldn't bring it up here.

I'll retract the "wannabe" adjective and apologize for it. Regardless of my personal opinion, I should not have used a pejorative that I could not objectively substantiate. Consider it stricken.

You needn't defend Har-Bal. I bought it, I use it, I have recommended it to others. I am looking forward to version 3. But when you advertise it by associating it with a "top mastering engineer" (you), the implication is that "top mastering engineers" would use this tool. I maintain that none do.

We'll leave aside the question as to whether or not "top legendary award winning mastering engineer" is hyperbole or not.

yeah, me too.  I use Harbal all the time. I make backing tracks for myself, the instrumentation is always about the same, and the loudness matching and keeping the EQ consistant over about 75 tracks works great.  I admittedly fly right thru what I need to do in a matter of seconds to make quality adjustments.  And I don't get the sound guy giving me flack for the tracks jumping all over the place, like  Roland keyboard patches.  Roland needs a copy of Harbal!!   How pro is that?