Har-Bal

[Relic]

Not in the sense that its set up like a mixer. ie: heres your kik drum track...your snare...hh,,,etc...
It will not fix a crappy mix.My experienece has been that it adjusts the EQ and and makes the track in its entirety louder.
With the reference files you can get different sounds according to what your looking for.
I know some of those questions can be answered at their website.
My advice mix it to the best of your ability in whatever software your using then up load it in Har-Bal.

 

[N.U.G.]

^^^

whattup Relic, do u have any songs or beats that have been put through the Har Bal process so we can hear how they thump. I'm seriously thinking of getting this as it seems to make thing sreal easy (which is what I want)

peace

 

[Relic]

SURE MATE!!
Second sig line "Rap with a Grumble".
Actually everything on the page as of this writing has seen some mastering but that song I did all by my lonesome with Har-Bal.
Tell me what you think, I may need to go back and bounce it without harbaling and post that temporarily so you can tell thedifference but I gotta go to work . Blah!!

 

[Burna]

SURE MATE!!
Second sig line "Rap with a Grumble".
Actually everything on the page as of this writing has seen some mastering but that song I did all by my lonesome with Har-Bal.
Tell me what you think, I may need to go back and bounce it without and post that temporarily so you can tell thedifference but I gotta go to work . Blah!!

Lets not forget WHO produced the beat for StepChild.

 

[Relic]

^Says it on the song on soundclick dun, you know that!!!
I'm saying that I mixed it in protools along with added vocals then Har-Bal 'd the whole thing.
I think Money could tell the difference, right dun?

 

[sYgMa]

Could you put a before/after Har-Bal processing?

 

[Relic]

For those who care or have this software I just got this email update:

Available July 22 2006



New and improved IntuitQ and two very special additions. "intuitMatch" and a Harmonic Cursor which shows you the fundamental frequency along with the corresponding 9 harmonic frequencies.. This version is off the hook!!



There's only one intuitQ button, but now there are two extra cursor tools. The intuitQ and intuitMatch tool allows you click and drag over a frequency range you want processed and a harmonic tool which is a data inspection tool



The intuitM button allows you to match your track to any reference you load with just a push of a button. There are a number of things this is useful for. Especially when you have a nice kick drum that you want to match or even a vocal that was done in a difference studio by the same vocalist or any instrument for the matter. You can match part of the track or the entire spectrum of the track to your favorite commercial track. This addition was added by popular worldwide demand.





The previous implementation simply used frequency domain convolution (filtering) to smooth the spectrum and come up with the desired shape, then took the difference between actual and desired and smoothed that to get the har-bal filter frequency response. The problem with that approach is that simple smoothing comes up with a reference shape that can be markedly different to the original such that the original doesn't overlay it (hence it is biased).



The new approach is built on the same process of building a smoothed reference from the original spectrum but in this case it is realised using a cubic spline of limited resolution (ie. few node points used to cover the spectrum) that is fitted to the original by minimising the mean square error between it and the original. That in itself provides some smoothing but it doesn't get rid of the wide valleys or broad hills that should be reduced to reduce masking.

The way that is handled is by adding a curvature penalty to the least square fit. What that basically means is that it finds the best fit cubic spline with least bends in it. That is what fills in the holes and shaves the tops of the mountains. Because it is a least squares fit you'll almost always find that when you look at the frequency response it realises the boosting and cutting is evenly spread across the entire frequency range. By that we mean that the frequency response across the spectrum hangs around 0dB. That is what makes it sound tonally neutral with regard to production intent.



The other respect that this version differs from the original is the smoothing applied to the difference. In the original we used smoothing based on a 2 octave band coverage (ie. low Q or roughly equivalent to a 5 band graphic EQ) whereas this version uses 1 octave band resolution (ie. higher Q or roughly equivalent to a 10 band graphic EQ). It seems counter intuitive going on what Pro mastering engineers say (ie. only use low Q parametric filter changes) but the higher Q 1 octave band resolution sounds superior to the lower Q case in the testing we've done.





A lot tighter and truer to the original. It seems the whole problem with higher Q is not that it is bad but that it is very difficult for people to set the correct parameters thorough listening.



We've prototyped the intuit Match feature and the algorithm worked as expected! In fact it works exceptionally well.



Cheers



Earle and Paavo

 

[Relic]

Lets not forget WHO produced the beat for StepChild.

Oh and by the way we have NO idea who produced the beat, it prolly wasnt Burna though...

 

[stanman]

how well does this program work compared to the mastering suite in reason 3.0?... I ask cause thats what I currently use.

 

[Relic]

Well I do not use that software but I love har-bal.
Basically it analyses your waveform of your song and eq's it REALLY well. It boosts or decreases the overall level of the track and you can make your reference files for mastering off of cd,s you have purchased already.
Like the way Kanyes stuff is mastered?
Make a wave file of a song and let harbal analyse it save the ref file and apply it to your song.
You can adjust the peaks and valleys as well. I dont because I am not one of these incredibly smart eggheads that get into "Sound" itself and how to make it better for you. That shit is DEEP as hell and I like to make music I cant go there with you by picking it apart that deeply.
I do NOT claim to be a master of this software but I use it frquently and short of sending it to an actual mastering engineer I dont think it gets much better than this for home mastering software.
I think I will post an before and after example up in soundclick REAL soon.

 

[Relic]

OK here is an example of before and after.
This is somthin I recorded as a favour for a friend.
The before is just straight protools mix the after is harbaled then back into protools for the final touches.
The bass isnt really there because for some reason I think the cd player the beat came off of has a short or somthing thattook out either the right or left channel but the signal ran mono.
Thats what I get for runnin out of a headphone jack. So its not the harbal that actually in fact tries to fix it!! LOL
http://www.soundclick.com/relicofrip

check it out and post your thoughts. Not on the track but the quality diff.

http://www.hdqtrz.com/Files/Har-Bal_Mastering_Process.pdf[/url]
This tells you how to use it....

 

[DJ Increment]

..hey thanx man 4 sharing this. exactly what i was waiting on..yeaah

 

[buffalony]

Very handy tool.

Been using harbal for a min. I to use it on individual samples like a spectrum analyzer to let me know where the samples gonna sit in a mix. Thankx for that link relic i havent read that yet.

 

[BeatAssassin]

I'm going to check this software out. I'm always looking for better way of mastering. I use the Nomad Factory Blue TUbe Bundle and it great but I'm always looking for new things. Thanks man.

 

[wavez]

Hey!
Relic, u using multiband compressor on mastering? Harbal is nice, but i cant use multband after that, or before. Cant get good results with it. But i was thinkin, if somebody could convince me that its better than oneband, then i'd change my mastering comp to multiband. I was wondering if u could master one track of mine? (Or i could master your track with my setup). So i could compare which version sounds better. How it sounds?

 

[Relic]

sounds fine, too bad it took me 7 months to read this...
You can still use a multiband thing with it , in fact after harbalin it recommends using LnMb, with multiadaptive elctromastering...

 

[2GooD Productions]

Hey!
Relic, u using multiband compressor on mastering? Harbal is nice, but i cant use multband after that, or before. Cant get good results with it. But i was thinkin, if somebody could convince me that its better than oneband, then i'd change my mastering comp to multiband. I was wondering if u could master one track of mine? (Or i could master your track with my setup). So i could compare which version sounds better. How it sounds?

Ive just recently gone from using a compressor to compress the whole track to using multiband compression, multiband gives more control over the final result. I found using a single compressor made the snare drop out when the kick was too high and drums would just start to disappear in the mix. Multiband compression helped me out here.

 

[Relic]

wavez, pm me...

 

[StressWon]

http://www.hdqtrz.com/Files/Har-Bal_Mastering_Process.pdf
This tells you how to use it....

good looks, i was wondering how to use this,,i'll reinstall now..lol