Har Bal Version 2

[bduffy]

May I come with a dump question too, What is "AAMS", and what does it have to do with Firium, Firium is a nice program, but Harbal sounds better in my opinion.

AAMS = Auto Audio Mastering System. It compares your track to a reference file, and creats a 50-point EQ curve to get your mix to more closely match the professionally mastered material. It exports this EQ file in the Firium EQ format, so you open your mastering program (Wavelab, etc) and load up the new EQ curve in Firium, plus apply the multiband compression and limiting values it suggests.

Sounds crazy, but it gets decent results, IMHO.

[bduffy]

I think Harbal is an excellent tool and my mixes have improved immensely because of it. I can't wait to see what the next version brings.

I don't understand all the negative comments here. It seems like those commenting may not have even tried Harbal. I have seen nothing else that works like it and leads to such great results.

I certainly don't "sit there for an hour dragging lines around"! I can spot the main problems quickly and shape to a guide reference in under a minute in most cases.

I always use Harbal as the last step before limiting and dithering my productions. I've found that for each new song I mix I am requiring less tweaks with Harbal. Obviously, Harbal is helping me train my ears!

Sorry it took so long to get back to this, that's what I get for posting and going to bed!

I don't mean to be too negative. I did try HarBal, and it's a great app, but I did find the premise and the EQ handling a little strange (green? Yellow? When?), but I'm used to the AAMS process, which deals with the attenuation of the frequencies on its own.

When a deadline is approaching, I appreciate that AAMS takes mastering considerations mostly out of my hands - cos I can't master my own stuff; it's just not going to happen, my ears get worked out 8 hrs+ a day composing and editing.

I'm sure you get way fast at changing that EQ in Har-Bal. Just seemed a little tedious to me, IMHO.

[Lagrange]

HAHAHAAA

jokes

[kylen]

bduffy - which multiband do you use?

[Lagrange]

So as I understand everyone that uses either AAMS or Har Bal is using them on the entire mix? I have had considerable problems getting a tight mix this way as frequency manipulation tends to make tracks bleed over.

C

[Lagrange]

Also can someone let me know if this DUY is comparable for my TDM enviroment?

http://www.duystore.com/com/img/meqbig.jpg

C

[Lunch Money]

cdunk-- you don't WANT your tracks to sound part of a collective whole? Easy! band-pass and notch-filter the hell out of them and use distinctly different reverb spaces for each.

On a serious note, though, part of mixing and mastering is keeping elements distinct, but you also want them to sound like one unified track!

Any time there are overlapping tracks, they will be sharing frequency bands, period. Using an EQ over the whole mix will not change this fact, all it will do is attenuate or boost frequency ranges. It might be a psychosematic reaction, feeling like using a 'mix-encompassing' effect is somehow 'binding' everything together, but in terms of EQ (can't speak to stereo image!) they're only bound together as much or as little as the mix itself lets them.

If you're getting too much 'bleed' or 'mud', or whatever you want to call it, you need to sort your mix out first before even applying a mastering EQ. So you're right-- you WILL have a tough time getting a tight mix, because what's being discussed is a post-mix operation, and if your mix isn't tight enough by this stage, it requires more work first.

Greg

[Lagrange]

THX Greg that really clears that up for me..

[Paulie Phonick]

Maybe I just have no idea what a well done mix should sound like, but when I match the eq curve for my track with the reference, all I get is a flat and ugly sounding mix... Can you give a short explaination how a good result should be achieved in Har-Bal (demo)?

And the AAMS (demo) just gave me a message about missing libraries (.ocx) after installing. I have copied them to its dir (they were there with the installer) and it started, but clicking on the Load Source button causes no reaction...

Am I cursed never to get a good sounding mix?

[Lagrange]

Paulie..

I have found that after "flatening" the curve the mix does sound kinda flatish. You might want to use a plugin to reup some punch like waves transX. I've noticed that this plugin does not actually eq the track at all just gives specified frequencies more "life"...

c

[randygo]

when I match the eq curve for my track with the reference, all I get is a flat and ugly sounding mix

This is why exact curve matching is always a bad idea. There is some good info in the Harbal docs about this.

You are always going to have natural peaks and valleys in your spectrum that correspond to natural resonances and harmonics in your instrumentation and arrangement. You do not usually want to destroy these beyond recognition by blind curve fitting.

Use the reference spectra as guides to help guide the flow and balance of frequencies from low to high, dont go tweaking every point on the line so it traces it perfectly!

Randy

[bduffy]

Maybe I just have no idea what a well done mix should sound like, but when I match the eq curve for my track with the reference, all I get is a flat and ugly sounding mix... Can you give a short explaination how a good result should be achieved in Har-Bal (demo)?

And the AAMS (demo) just gave me a message about missing libraries (.ocx) after installing. I have copied them to its dir (they were there with the installer) and it started, but clicking on the Load Source button causes no reaction...

Am I cursed never to get a good sounding mix?

Unfortunately, AAMS has a pretty gimpy installer. I had some bad install issues when I first tried it too. Try downloading the special package from the "Download" section of www.curioza.com and .

If that works, then you have to hit "Import Audio and Load As Source" to get your mix analyzed and imported. Then hit "Load Source" and choose the most appropriate reference material. You can reference against any wave file you want; it just has to be analyzed and saved as a reference file first.

Oh: and it can only anazlyse 44k, 16-bit right now - make sure you trying to import at that format.

[Lunch Money]

cdunk-- I'm not sure if you were being sarcastic.

Paulie-- you're not cursed! I'm not a mixing genious at all, but I'm aware of the improvements I'm making and I'm confident I'll get there. You should, too.

A good mix, in my opinion, has its foundation in good use of panning and 'depth' (combination of reverbs, delays, and levels) in order to achieve separation. Once you have that sorted out, individual instruments need to be EQ'd and then re-tweaked for levels (depending on what the EQ attenuation does to it). If you have too many instruments of the same range, period, you're going to have a tough time.

Say, for example, your song has 3 guitars-- 2 distorted rhythms and 1 acoustic. The distorted rhythm guitars 'should' be panned differently to separate them, and then each 'should' usually have its own sort of 'dominant' frequencies. ("should" because heck, each song is different and there's no rule!) Sometimes this is as simple as using a treble-heavy guitar like a Telecaster through a Twin for one track, and a 'thicker' sounding guitar like a Les Paul through a crunchy Marshall for the other. Then, if your acoustic is still getting lost, in the end it MAY end up sounding completely artificial and crappy on its own because you scoop out the mid-range and attenuate the bass (leaving mostly trebly shrilly annoying-sounding acoustic guitar) but it'll sound right at home in the mix.

That's just an example, and doesn't hold true for every song, of course.

--


Regarding curve-matching, I'm no expert at all. I haven't even TRIED HarBal. I found Elevayta's FreEQ boy to be useful for such things, so I haven't really looked elsewhere. But, in my humble amateur bedroom-studio-hobbyist opinion, there are a few important considerations:

1. Are the two songs at least similar in terms of sonic space, genre, and instruments used? If the predominant "mid-range instrument" on one track is a guitar, and the primary "mid-range instrument" on another track is an organ, I don't imagine things'll work out too well to compare them.

2. I'm sure some people are aware of this already, but just in case there's confusion: You can't take an EQ curve from a song and apply it to another song. It'll sound terrible. What you need to do is take the EQ curve from the reference song, and then tweak your song until the curves end up looking similar. Depending on the original content of YOUR track, the actual EQ applied to it in order to 'match' it to the reference track could end up looking completely different.

But, I ramble...

As I am wont to.

[drinelli]

May I come with a dump question too, What is "AAMS", and what does it have to do with Firium, Firium is a nice program, but Harbal sounds better in my opinion.

AAMS = Auto Audio Mastering System. It compares your track to a reference file, and creats a 50-point EQ curve to get your mix to more closely match the professionally mastered material. It exports this EQ file in the Firium EQ format, so you open your mastering program (Wavelab, etc) and load up the new EQ curve in Firium, plus apply the multiband compression and limiting values it suggests.

Sounds crazy, but it gets decent results, IMHO.

Thanks for enlighting me on the subject, so it is a standalone tool. BTW (I wonder why I was not notified of your reply, no mail from KVR turned up. Weird.)

[Igor 4000]

I think they should focus on improving the quality of the eq instead of taking it in a new direction. This move won't attract the pro engineers, that's for sure.
While I thought Har-Bal was a good idea (as a concept) their marketing strategy seems to me all wrong.
It's a pity as I hoped they will bring substantial improvements in sound quality instead of another product.

What exactly is wrong with Har-Bal's sound quality? It always sounded good to me