Frequency Chart

Click image to view larger version of the frequency chart

120Hz and lower: these frequencies are generally responsible for warmth in a recording. Too much and the recording will sound muddy.

120Hz - 600Hz: these frequencies give depth to a recording, giving vocals and other instruments a strong sense of presence without being clinical. On the other hand, these frequencies are where you're most likely to experience problems with vocal resonance. Too much in this area can be particularly fatiguing.

600Hz - 3kHz: these frequencies also give presence but of a generally harder nature. High output in this region is fairly common in rock music as it gives it a hard edge that suites the genre.

3kHz- 7kHz: is the area where vocal sibilance resides. 3kHz-5kHz is a very common peaking area in rock music because human hearing is pretty sensitive here and extra output here makes it sound louder. It also adds a harshness that is particularly fatiguing so don't over do it. Because of the high sensitivity in this region you can add warmth without loss of clarity by attenuating this region a bit.

7kHz -: Cymbals etc, and all the other components that add the sense of quality and accuracy. Above 10kHz too much output may make your recordings sound like they are lacking some definition.

If your tracks lack warmth and have too much sibilance you either have too little output below 500Hz or too much above 3kHz. A generally good balance will be pretty flat from around 60Hz up to 1-2kHz and then rolling off to be around 10-20 dB down at 10kHz. How much tapering at the spectrum ends you'll need will depend on the nature of the music.

If there are some sharp peaks in the peak spectrum (yellow trace) that stand out above the rest then they may need to be attenuated a bit. Again, don't try to eliminate the peak but just reduce and control it a bit. A good rule of thumb would be to reduce the peak so that it is about as high as the other undulations on the spectrum.

Finally, strong output in the region of 3-5kHz can make recordings sound fatiguing and clinical. If you have strong output in this region reduce it by approximately 3dB.

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What the Pro's are Saying

Overall, although it's still initially harder to get to grips with than some rival 'EQ ripper' utilities, I still prefer Harbal, with its more considered approach to improving the final sound of an audio track, the detail of its manual and tutorials, and its helpful on-line user forum hosted by Har-Bal's professional mastering and research engineers. It's a serious tool that can teach you a lot about why your mixes don't sound like commercial tracks, at the same time as improving them.

- Martin Walker, Sound On Sound Magazine, July 2004

BUY NOW!

Har-Bal version 2.3 can be purchased and downloaded immediately through RegNet by following this link.

Mastering Tutorial

The following is a mastering tutorial explaining many tips, tricks and audio mastering secrets. There are a number of methods used to accomplish harmonic balancing or spectral correction. Your tracks will sound their best when they are first processed in Har-Bal before any digital eq or multiband compression/limiting is applied.

FAQ's

Looks like a Steinberg Free Filter rip-off to me!

Yes, it does similar things to the Free Filter plugin but with significant differences.

Har-Bal is stand-alone which affords it a degree of usability that is not possible with a plugin.

The way you design an EQ filter in Har-Bal is totally different and more flexible. Free Filter is constrained to 1/3 octave. Har-Bal has no such constraint.

The way Steinberg's Free Filter and Har-Bal assess the spectral content of the music is very different too. Har-Bal works off the average of the entire track because the average of the entire track will best describe peaks that will cause listening fatigue. Looking at an RTA you get some idea but it isn't as clear cut as an average for the entire track. Har-Bal also tracks the peak spectrum too.

And the biggest difference as far as usability is concerned is compensating for perceived loudness effects which, as far as we're aware, only Har-Bal does. What do we mean by that?

A simple example can be visualized as follows.

If you had a graphic EQ in front of you and you realized a particular frequency using only boost and on a parallel one you implemented the same frequency response using only cut. Now do an A/B test on both and which sounds better? Obviously the one that uses only boost because it is louder, although from an Eq'ing point of view they are identical!

You might say this is a trivial case and you should adjust the EQ to use nominally the same boost and cut and then you'd only have one "correct" frequency response. Wrong! This would only be true if the source material was largely "pink" and human hearing wasn't frequency and level dependent! In performing mastering equalization neither of these assumptions are true so how do you account for the different perceived loudness in different EQ arrangements when performing A/B assessments? At worst you don't and at best you guess. Neither approach is objective.

Har-Bal takes an educated guess which is objective and likely to be far less biased than any manual approach. It does so by calculating a loudness index for the pre and post equalization spectrums and adding or removing the appropriate gain to the EQ'd case to remove loudness related biases. It is an educated guess in the sense that an A-weighting curve is only approximately indicative of human loudness perception at 85dB SPL but it's a far better approximation than being left to your own devices.

On this subject Har-Bal is not as good as it could be. Replacement of the A-weighting curve with something more accurate (at the HF end) would be better and we should also cater for different monitoring levels (other than 85 dB) because some like to preserve their hearing while others like to destroy it. But if we waited until everything was catered for it would never be released.