I remain skeptical about Har-Bal's claim to proper EQ nirvana via a handful of magic reference curves and a visual display.

It doesn't make that claim. They urge the judicious use of this tool.


Har-Bal good.

Plus, its not very expensive even if you think of it only as a linear EQ with no other magic

Eric

One thing it may be wise to keep in mind with this stuff is that ultimately you should not be leaving the mastering process the task of "fixing" your mix.

If you have arrant frequencies or dynamics they have a source and it is best to tame them at the source.
EQ sounds with the whole mix playing.
Decide which sounds get to have which frequency ranges.
Subgroup sounds in similar ranges and compress/EQ the subgroup before it goes to the master bus, this will make getting the tune louder in mastering much easier and more transparent.

Try to mix so that to the farthest point possible, your mix needs NO mastering.
And that doesn't mean strapping compression across the master bus while mixing. That's bad imo mmmkayyy. The same thing can be achieved with multiple bus compression/limiting

A step further and in fact more advanced is to track so your mix needs as little mixing as possible. meaning use the right mic placement, guitars, amp settings etc.
Record sounds that fit well together to start with and be militant about getting it right. Spend 3 hours finding the right guitar sound if you have to.

Then, at the end you can listen to your beautiful mix and compare it to a mix of what you think it should be sort of like and use your own ears and decide if you should add the extra annoying hi mids and squsih the **** out of it or keep the wonderful sound you worked so hard achieve because you don't have to bow to no ****head record co executive twits.

Aim for making mixes that sound pleasing and are nice to listen to for long periods of time, it's unfair to the music and it's creators to dump their art into the trashy claustraphobic cannister we hear tunes dumped into in mainstream radio. Please don't subscribe to that soon to be dead horse.

ORIGINAL: danhazer

Try to mix so that to the farthest point possible, your mix needs NO mastering.

We should try to do that, I agree. But there isn't a CD on the shelf that hasn't been mastered in some way, shape or form.

I'm not suggesting you skip the step, i'm saying you will get superior results with a a mindset of....

Bump:

Okay, I set up another round for a go. I have found all of your comments valuable - keep 'em coming.

Two samples, one Har-Bal, the other EQ'ed with a different plug - which sounds better?

http://www.edusim.net/music/hor1.mp3 and
http://www.edusim.net/music/hor2.mp3

ORIGINAL: pdarg
Okay, I set up another round for a go. I have found all of your comments valuable - keep 'em coming.
Two samples, one Har-Bal, the other EQ'ed with a different plug - which sounds better?

The first one is a touch louder, brighter (actually, a little too much on the treble) and has more bass (perhaps slightly exaggerated as well, but certainly not bad).

Har-Bal....

Got mine today....

Deliverance!

Mixes just go from one song to another, one system to another,
all speakers great and small... just like the BIG BOYS.

No more or at least a whole lot less trips to and from my car in the
garage and a lot less waste in CDs.

This is a killer app like autotune.

:LSB

ORIGINAL: drjee

Hi,

I used your two examples to do some further processing with voxengo tools (transmooder > soniformer > curveeq > warmifier > elephant)

I am not sure if I am really satisfyed with the result and also recoding it again to mp3 did probably not improve the sound but, anyway, here is the result:

http://www.power-xs.net/download/voxsample-d1.mp3

http://www.power-xs.net/download/voxhor1.mp3

These actually sound pretty good, but I am getting some clipping on both waves here.

If the first one was Harbalized, then I'd be interested in a post of the filter file too. Don't forget, no matter how "visual" they say the product is, it always comes down to the ears. And in your examples, there was bottom end richness missing in the first one. That doesn't mean Har-Bal failed you. It means you may have simply not used Har-Bal to put in sufficient richness. Just as with any plugin, you can use it to make an awful sound too if you wish.

I'm not a crusader for Har-Bal, but I can tell you that I have loaded mixes that I slaved over for many hours trying to tweak, and instantly saw the problem when I loaded them in Har-Bal. And for me, any product that can help remove the need for multiple listening environments is *gold*, because it saves time.

I've noticed that if you are already listening to your mixes in a nice room, with good speakers, you may be getting close before using Har-Bal anyway. If your room is excellent, then it is of course possible that *any* EQ will improve your mix in the way you've done. What Har-Bal does is let you *see* it for sure.

I'm wondering, where exactly in the mixing/mastering chain did you use Har-Bal?

Hi Dave,

Har-Bal is not the only tool offering a spectrum/frequency analyzer. you can get free ones:

voxengo span or elemantal audio inspector

also voxengo curveeq has a spectrum analyser included

but if you ask me:

I prefer mastering in a dedicated wave editor. I use audition, and it has a live spectrum analyser, phase analyser and db meter. you can also analyse the wave and get all sorts of statistical data (and see it in an histogram). you even have a spectrum wave view if you need it. so there is much more visualized information available than in har-bal.

I still don't get what is so unique with it and the examples posted show that the result is not necessarily better than using other tools. maybe even the other way round.

best, drjee

voxengo span or elemantal audio inspector

I have span - no replacement for Har-Bal. Nowhere close.

I still don't get what is so unique with it and the examples posted show that the result is not necessarily better than using other tools. maybe even the other way round.

The other way round? Yes, if you are a know nothing who abuses the tool. That's true of any processing tool available.

I don't abuse the tool.

I didn't mean to imply that. Sorry if you took it that way.

Har-Bal is much easier to use than a spectral analizer like span because it shows an average of what your song looks like over it's span at a glance.

I'm looking at har-bal. Does it not seem like wishful thinking that one spectrum shape can properly be applied to an entire song? Extreme example, what if the break in your heavy metal tune is to an a cappella verse followed by a flugelhorn solo?

What do I know?

a.

ORIGINAL: Anderton
suppose there's a wicked room resonance at 300 Hz.

Craig, you sure seem to get a lot of material that has room resonanaces! Everytime you discuss Har-Bal you mention this particular issue. Just sweeping a regular EQ would reveal/fix this problem very quickly.

(I'm no Har-Bal expert but...]

The aim is *not* to just smooth everything off. In fact, that could destroy your mix, making it sound flat with no impact whatsoever.

One aim is to use Har-Bal to visually notice dips and peaks that are not part of the "genre", but are probably anomolies in your room or speakers, and get rid of them.

As far as using Har-Bal with different genres, one of the best ways to do this (for example, in hip-hop) is to load a few tracks from CDs that you know are well mixed and mastered, and which closely emulate the kind of music you are trying to mix. Look at the spectrum in Har-bal, and get a feel for the *look* of the spectrum. If your music is very close in sound (same kinds of instruments, same kind of singer, etc.), then you can even load a well-mastered track as a reference, and actually pull your own spectrum up/down to overlay it (although I would not try to do this precisely, because it could take some life out of your mix - just do it approximately).

There's a tutorial on Har-Bal's web site that does a better job of explaining this than I can! Go to this link.