Educational uses

[dogwater studio]

Har-Bal is a very educational tool. I took sound production classes in college, and I wish they'd had this thing. I have a hard time describing what I hear in a track into words. I'm finding I can load in tracks that I really like the sound of, and tracks that I really hate, and immedately see WHY. Combined with viewing the tracks in SoundForge, I've put together my own guidelines for comrpession, RMS and EQ....the way I like it.

I just finished a very respectable (I think) mixing and mastering of a demo CD for client freinds, and I've had the program for all of 3 days.

They are an acoustic guitar and vocal duo, and I was flailing around with parametric EQ trying to get it to sound decent....just the right bottom end on the guitars without being boomy or dull. Burning tons of coasters to test play on my big home stereo, etc. The 'folk' reference seemed to include a bass (none on their demo) so I picked an example of an album they liked with no bass (Tim and Molly O'Brien's 'way up on the mountain') , and EQ'ed it, especially the bottom end, to come close to the O'Brien CD, but with only a few minor changes to bad peaks and valleys to keep the unique sounds of these clients. I also got the compression and limiting and RMS similar to this CD thru sound forge.

Anyway, i was stunned by the result, doing an A-B comparision of mastered and not. I'm a rank beginner and got a good result, plus learned a bunch for the next time around.

Thanks for this awesome tool and the great price! I feel like I'm learning to put words, or at least a picture, to tracks that I like and don't like.

DAN

[HarBal]

Thanks for sharing that with us Dan! I think I can safely say that most of us have had similar experiences to yours, myself very much included.

Have fun experimenting with the product and be but be prepared to have some tracks that are very difficult to work with. Occasionally you'll find then and will have a hard time figuring out what to do with it. We're working on improvments to HarBal to improve upon the more difficult cases.

Regards,


Paavo.

[Robert H]

, i was stunned by the result, doing an A-B comparision of mastered and not. I'm a rank beginner and got a good result, plus learned a bunch for the next time around.

DAN

Good for you Dan. I know what you mean. Ive been doing this for fifteen years and Har Bal has taught me a lot of stuff from the mxing of the project to the mastering.

[dogwater studio]

The guy who mastered our band's upcoming album used Har Bal also -- he was the one that recommended it to me. He gave me his Har-Bal filters that he used in making our album ready -- more and more info for that learning curve!

Some interesting challenges in our album, too -- for example giving the washtub bass some definition and punch without rattling pictures on the walls.......the washtub goes nearly a whole octave lower than a normal bass.

DAN