Sonible True Balance and Level vs Izotope Tonal Balance Control & Fabfilter Pro-L?

[Caine123]

hi,
so for referencing i use mostly my ears but with ear fatigue and each day not being the same + not having a professional studio setup etc. i think these tools come in a bit handy and sometimes gave me a hint and i A/B'ed again and adjusted some things. normally Tonal Balance Control is really nice but i recently saw True Balance by sonible which seems also to get a lot of praise and i mostly try to not use izotope stuff much.

does anyone have experiences with these two?

also i saw True LEvel but i think it is kinda not needed at all if you got Youlean and Fabfilter Pro-L? i mean i even dont use youlean at all as i just check Pro-L and thats it. i dont see much advantage from True Level over Pro-L?

thanks

[Frankie.T]

Tonal balance looks nice, but can be a bit misleading.

I prefer by miles blue cat audio freq analyst pro to check the balance. You can import and play your reference track and save the profile in a more detailed way, the cool thing is also the option to zoom the spectrum to have a better view in the frequencies along your already imported reference track, so you can compare them and see if the balance is correct or not.

I made a video showing this stuff not much times ago, but i don't wanna be the guy who links his yt videos because i know someone is kind of allergic on yt and i also don't give a heck to gather 2 views more and being sh*tted out for it.

Anyway this is a good plugin to check the balance of your mix in details.

About loudness meters just use whatever you like the most

[Ploki]

I just use SPAN (customized ballistics) + Corellometer (8bands 250ms) + Youlean.

[El°HYM]

I just use SPAN (customized ballistics) + Corellometer (8bands 250ms) + Youlean.

Give customized Preset now.

[Caine123]

hey guys, thanks a lot! so i bought the metering bundle as it was just 10 bucks more to get true level too. as i suspected true level seems a waste for me so far. cause smart limit, Pro-L, Youlean and Expose 2 are sufficient and i dont use all the infos at all.
true balance seems so far very nice, maybe even better in my opinion than tonal balance control, also much smoother. i dunno how accurate it is and if it will really help mixing/mastering better and comparing, i need to check.

i checked the blue cat one a bit in a video, somehow it didnt click with me, for these things i use SPAN. i like SPAN's Gui much more.

[neverbeeninariot]

I have both, but I use Tonal Balance Control (True Balance now uninstalled).

True balance (and smartEQ) have a completely weird frequency display unlike any other analyser (span, prism, etc...). I wrote to support about it ages ago; their reply : "This weighting helps to better represent critical level differences as perceived by a mixing engineer." Ok...

Screenshots here : viewtopic.php?t=593141

[Crowzilla]

I have both and I think true balance is now uninstalled. It stopped suddenly working and needed the serial, or whatever the copy protection was in it, to be renewed, probably because of a Windows update. I just didn't bother with it after that. It was an ok thingy.

With the Tonal Balance control I find that it works best, if you first mix with something else. Basically it works nicely on the material that is 90% there already. The "best" or the easiest way, I think, is to use SPAN and its master preset. If you mix with it so that it shows a flat straight line on the spectrum, then you can tweak the mix with the Tonal Balance Control and probably cut around 250-500 hz and make some minor adjustments here and there, based on the genre of your music you are guaranteed to get a massive coherent sound to your mix. With only the Tonal Balance Control I find it to be much harder to achieve this well balanced sound.

[neverbeeninariot]

It might be better to mix against a reference track or three (which it sounds like you might be doing already), to get your mix in the ball park before looking at any kind of analyser - mix with your ears and all that...

If you need the additional visual help, then you can import your references to TBC (it will analyse them and create a custom curve), then use that as your visual reference if you need to, rather than rely on it's preset curves. It can import single tracks, or a folder full.

My excuse for using TBC is that my ears are forked from years of abuse and I need a visual on the high end - you young pups can probably still hear all airy stuff ; )

[Caine123]

thanks a lot!
@neverbeeninariot:
strange definitely but it doesnt matter while analyzing much cause when i check with reference tracks all i care about if my track matches nearly so it shouldnt be a prob afaik?

i tested true balance a bit more but i would nearly say it was 39 bucks thrown away.... true level doesnt bring anything new for me. true balance is in some regards better, i like the handling and loading reference tracks more in true balance also the mono check is nice, but do you need this? i had never? mono problems so far but anyways nice. you cannot solo the sections which is really bad. i hope there will be a new version some time which gives you more possibilities so my money is not total waste :/

[neverbeeninariot]

strange definitely but it doesnt matter while analyzing much cause when i check with reference tracks all i care about if my track matches nearly so it shouldnt be a prob afaik?

I found the non-standard display really distracting but if it doesn't bother you and you're a/b referencing other tracks regularly, then you'll be fine - just don't try to compare what you see to any other analyser ; )

i like the handling and loading reference tracks more in true balance also the mono check is nice, but do you need this? i had never? mono problems so far but anyways nice. you cannot solo the sections which is really bad. i hope there will be a new version some time which gives you more possibilities so my money is not total waste :/

Do you need it? I can't answer that, but maybe?? : ) I usually do a couple of mono checks;
Using TDR Prism to check the stereo width across the entire spectrum.
Using the DAW mono button on the master channel to check mono compatibility of the mix.

[xerix]

I definitely prefer Tonal Balance Control 2 and I also use audiolens when listening to music casually so I am use to how izotope creates its curves and understand how it works. Basically... the more deviation you have from your lows and highs (dynamics), there more the curve will be thicker and the less dynamics the thinner the curve will become. The best thing to do with tonal balance control is to just snippet a loud part of a song and get the analyzer to import that you will get a more accurate curve when comparing choruses and then the quiet sections will be in the ball park.

Another trick is to use a matchEQ on the master bus to a reference track, see which areas the frequencies need to boost and then go back to your mix and adjust those frequencies. I use to EQ match the master bus but I dont do that anymore I just go back to the mix and make it perfect. Also, the more perfect the mix is the more you can boost it and squeeze as much LUFS as possible with it

[buzzlegs]

True balance has been a life saver for me, love it and use it every day. It’s brilliant for getting you in the right ballpark.