The normal sequence is: 1) Har-bal, 2) multiband compression, 3) limiter.
See more at http://www.har-bal.com/faq.htm#q4

strange that a multiband would come after Har-bal, because mutibands can also act as eqs. I guess you have to keep the gains leveled in this case.

Eric

For what it's worth (and from my very amateur position, it may not be worth much at all), HarBal is just great. The program is intuitive and fun to use, the results are immediately noticable, and the guys who work there are just about the most professional, friendly people I've had the pleasure of "talking" to in a forum. I use Harbal and T-RackS, and I've just been stunned at how much better my final mixes sound.

ORIGINAL: drjee

I agree with halljams, the voxengo stuff is great. You can't go wromng with it. Howevere, I like ozone's integrated workflow/gui. I also think that is loundness maximizer and it's multiband comp are quite good. also the eq is nice. for sound-coloring, however, voxengo is unbeatable. I use a combination of CurveEQ/Soniformer/Transmodder for coloring and Ozone for the rest. Expect from loundness compensation CurveEQ can do all that har-bal can do (plus it gives do beautifil sound-coloring options).

I get good results witch T-Racks, which also adds some warmth to my mixes.

ORIGINAL: danhazer

I wanted to let you all know that I purchased HAR-BAL. I have to say, as reluctant as I am to make statements like this, HAR-BAL is the closest thing I have found to a magic bullet for correcting harmonic anomalies in mixes. Will it make a terrible mix sound good? No. But it will improve it considerably. Will it make a well mixed song sound better? Yes. Absolutely - it will. I tried it out on a new mix that I'm working on and it went from something that sounded good to pure unadulterated ear-candy after being HAR-BAL'd.

Will it replace mastering engineers? No. But will it help people like me? Oh yeah it will! Great product. I HIGHLY recommend it.

Thanks,

In my entire engineering life I have never encountered such fervent and on-going enthusiasm for one single product as I have for Har-bal.

My full registration came through yesterday which means I've had it for one month... and I'm more enthusiastic about it now than I was when I got it. I simply can't imagine life without it.
And yes, my mixes are much better for having it. It costs $95. I would gladly pay $1000 or more. It's a product which actually works to improve you as an engineer, not simply makes life easier.
Rave, rave, rave ...

Hey dude - I'm Maple Grove. Small world.

Any chance you could post some MP3's of before and after? All of the raving here is making me rethink about buying it.

I frikin' love Maple Grove. I love that outdoor shopping center they have there. My friend Brian works at the Waner Stellian there...

Anyway, I can proabably put some before and after if you'd like. It can't happen until tomorrow though.

If you'd like to stop by my place in Coon Rapids and see how easy it is to use this product, you are more than welcome. Me email is in my user profile.

EDIT: actually I lied. My email is not in my profie. either just get back to me here or just hold up until I get the samples done. Might be a few days.

Thanks,

ORIGINAL: Spinedoc

I agree Har Bal is great. I am just beginning to utilize it. The only thing I wish it had is a "automatic" EQ to a reference file. I like to EQ my stuff to its "rock" reference curve and I get tired of having to drag the eq curve around for 5 minutes every time I want to EQ a new version of a song. I think I am going to try getting a "fingerprint" of a song that I've "har bal"ed to their rock refernece curve with Voxenego's Curve EQ. Then I may be able to get that specific EQ with a preset in Curve EQ as a plug in on the master. I hope it works.

Spine. If I understand your issue correctly, why don't you save your settings(File/Filter/Save As) to a directory and load it back in again with the next version of your mix?

so why don't you use just curveEQ then? Do you want to say that you cannot get a result with curveeq alone which is as good as with using harbal first?

OK - I am going to jump in as the first Har-Bal detractor. Well, not exactly a detractor, but maybe a dose of reality...

I just bought Har-Bal (too many people saying too much good stuff). I pulled up a live (one take) recording that I had previously mixed and mastered using those wonderous tools known as "ears".

Amazingly, the mix (according to Har-Bal) had no major holes or bumps and maybe a slight boost to the lower half of the spectrum. It looked much better in Har-Bal than the tutorial source in the help file.

I decided to try flattening any anomolies: result - a horrible sounding thing. I started over and made very small adjustments to a few anomolies: result - a fully listenable mix, but debateable whether it was an improvement.

So bottom line - I like the fact that Har-Bal confirmed a decent harmonic balance, but the normal Sonar tools + a set of ears had already given me the ability to do it right in the first place. I do recall spending about a half day or so mixing and mastering this tune, so Har-Bal may have saved time. However, I rarely EQ the whole mix, rather I use appropriate intruments with minor EQ to fill the mix.

Its probably worth $100 bucks for the confirmation that the song will transfer to other playback devices. I am torn between being happy that my ears work to being sad that I couldn't make big improvements. Of course, maybe I just got lucky on this one song :)

Eric

It also looks like Craig Anderton also endorses Har-Bal:

http://www.maulbeerbaum.de/?article=121

ORIGINAL: pdarg

ORIGINAL: danhazer

I wanted to let you all know that I purchased HAR-BAL. . . I tried it out on a new mix that I'm working on and it went from something that sounded good to pure unadulterated ear-candy after being HAR-BAL'd.

Hey dude - I'm Maple Grove. Small world.

Any chance you could post some MP3's of before and after? All of the raving here is making me rethink about buying it.

Hey, I'm in Prior Lake...work in MPLS right now...

For what it's worth, HarBal is usually the absolute last thing I do.

I've been mastering for bands for many years, HarBal won't replace me, but it SURE makes me work faster and make more money!

God Bless HarBal

Until the end of the year I am on 9th and Marquette in the AT&T tower. My cube pretty much looks right at the word "Foshay"

Oh, and I just responded to you at the HarBal forum...

Until the end of the year I am on 9th and Marquette in the AT&T tower. My cube pretty much looks right at the word "Foshay"

Howdy neighbor. I'm in the AEFA Headquarters building @ 3rd & 7th. You're about 3 minutes walking (skyway) distance from me. Cool huh?

Let's do lunch some day and sing the praises of Har-Bal

I'm all for it.

Talk to you soon,

The purpose of Har-Bal is NOT to visually flatten and/or smooth out your mix. In fact, somewhere in their documentation, they tell you that your mix will sound flatter than flat if you use the tool to flatten out every bump. And this only makes sense, I'd say.

The prime purpose of Har-Bal, IMHO, is to confirm that your "good" mix will sound good on most or all sound systems (and to fix visually obvious problems that you may not hear in your room). For example, if you feel that your mix sounds great, but Har-Bal is showing an EQ hole at around 200 Hz, this might very well be due to resonances in your mixing room that are masking that problem. You could pull up the 200 Hz band area (while using your ears of course), and you might find that it makes not a whole lot of difference, or it may just give it some warmth that was missing.

BTW, you might be one of "those people" with a great set of ears, and able to achieve a mix that many others only dream of, seriously. So if you nail it, you nail it. But many others do not have the resources to get a great listening room. This tool is perfect for them.

When I bought Har-Bal, I loaded up some of my mixes. The ones I feel were good, showed themselves to be good (and benefitted from a little tweaking anyway). But there was one mix in particular that I just didn't feel good about, and I just wasn't having much luck with it. I tweaked it using Har-Bal, and I felt there was a big improvement. Before it was brittle sounding, especially the voice, and after, it had the warmth that eluded me.

Actually, as a new Har-Bal user, I'm finding it very educational to load up real tracks of commercially released music, and have a look at the spectrum. Then I begin making changes to it, as if it were my own mix. Sometimes, it sounds better, sometimes it doesn't, and that's where the education is.

Sorry, I guess this post was more like $0.03 than $0.02, but I find that Har-Bal is really educating me about mix quality.

Can someone clarify something for me? Does Har-Bal actually have over 8,000 "bands" of EQ?

I assume then that the parametric nudging cursor is a simplified way of dealing with such resolution??

Also, why is there nothing showing over 10k? Is that just the demo, and the real version goes above that?