Har-Bal Users Forum BBS

Does Har-Bal support any samplerate including 192Khz, and 176.4Khz?

HarBal can handle whatever sampling rate that your sound card device driver can handle, so if your sound card supports this rate HarBal will.

The only caveat is that with these high sampling rates you will have to have a PC fast enough to handle the filtering without dropouts. I suspect that all new PC's will handle this with no problem whatsoever.

Finally another point to keep in mind is that by using such a high sampling rate you are reducing the effectiveness of the EQ filter at low frequencies because the resolution bandwidth (ie. the minimum bandwidth you can independently boost and cut without affecting adjacent frequencies) is proportional to the sampling rate divided by the filter length in samples. For example,

48kHz -> ~5.85Hz res bw.
96kHz -> ~11.72Hz res bw.
192kHz -> ~23.44Hz res bw.

23.44Hz at 192kHz is quite poor for fixing troublesome low frequency resonances, so my recommendation is to only use such a high sampling rate if you absolutely need to cos it will limit the effectiveness of the EQ.

Regards,


Paavo.

I see Har-Bal as an important tool for mixing and have asked about higher sampling rates to find out if it is future proof. I do not understand how the higher sampling rates will reduce effectiveness at the low frequencies. It sounds like a corner is being cut somewhere. Shouldn't the filter length be reduced proportionally to the increase in sample rate? What am I missing?

Electro

Why on earth would you want to use a sampling rate of 192khz? What kind of dynamic range is the music you are recording.
Why not go for the normal 96khz if you must convert?

You need to go to
www.musicplayer.com/ubb/F...02423.html

There is a great discussion over there explaining the pros and cons of different sampling rates.

Paavo simply explained the advantages and disadvantages of the different sampling rates. Now it is up to you to choose what you want to do.
Just as he said if your soundcard will support it so will Har-Bal.

Electro,

As far as I am aware, of the commonly available software based EQ apps, HarBal has the longest impulse response length of 8192 sample points.

The reason higher sampling rates reduce the effectiveness is because the filter length is fixed and the sampling rate is not. All the software based filters I know of have fixed length filters and no doubt many of the hardware based ones too (those that are FIRs).

The reason is a combination of complexity and the numerical overhead with filters of this size. For HarBal to support the filter size you suggest to maintain the resolution bandwidth of 48kHz sampling would require a switch to 64 bit fixed point arithmetic. This will involve a performance hit that at this point in time is not warranted.

As for being future capable, it already is as far as supporting any sampling rate. The issue of being able to support longer and longer impulse response lengths is an issue that will be addressed incrementally over time as the power of computing increases. As it stands now 8192 pts delivers very good performance over a very wide range of PC performance levels (runs fine on a 400Mhz PII).

We have no intentions of producing a compromised product, nor is HarBal compromised. Should you be aware of a superior product that has better resolution and scales with sampling rates I would love to here about it.

Kindest regards,


Paavo.

Finally a developer that actually knows what he is talking about. These HarBal folks are brilliant!

All these 'does Har-Bal do this and that?' reminds me that the Beatles, although extremely savvy in the recording studio, were usually never afforded the up-to-the-minute gear.

For example, Sgt. Pepper was recorded on two 4-track machines (numerous reductions and bounces). The all-inspiring/influential 'Pet Sounds', that preceeded 'Pepper', was recorded on an 8-track. It wasn't until well into the 'White Album' did the Beatles even occasionally use an 8-track. And that only happened when they did not record at Abbey Road.

165 million albums sold (RIAA U.S. only).

The point is, making great music has nothing to do with ridiculously high sampling rates or the ability/inability to make an mp3 file for your mom.

Compose!

Zumbido

I have to agree with you 100%. Where did this all come from? I know people with over $200,000 worth of gear in their studios and they are still stuck in the basement trying to perfect their sound instead of their craft. There is a great deal that people need to learn when it comes down to the consumers needs.

The consumer doesn't care/know if you regarded at a high sampling rate, tracked with Pro Tools or used the latest plug-in. The bottom line is simply this....does it sound good to them?

All people have to do is listen to the music recorded in the 80/90's. Now were talking about real engineers.

I think HarBal makes it real simple. It enables you to have great sounding music that sounds great on any speaker system.

Thats the real bottom line!

"I know people with over $200,000 worth of gear in their studios and they are still stuck in the basement trying to perfect their sound instead of their craft. "

Ah yes, the modern-day 'hack' : People who are more adept at their tools than their craft. It's one of the traps of technology, really. Knowing how to use a brush does not make me a painter !

It's all about what important to you. Some people want the perfect mix and perfect sound, and considerthemselves engineers before songwriters, somepeople consider themselves songwriters before engineers...it's not right or wrong to be that guy with $200,000 worth of gear in his basement, if that is how he has fun.

Personally, I prefer to have a good song and a good mastered, final product...sometimes my mixing stage gets cut shorter than it should cuz that isn't how I have fun, but I have freinds that can sit for hours andhour...hell, weeks and weeks, tweaking knobs and stuff...and they have a great time doing it, so it's all good.

It's all about personal choice and it's not really anyones place to tell anyone else that their choice is wrong. It's kinda like religion, we believe what we believe and do what we do for reasons only we know, and if someone isn't asking for advice on how to do it better or different, well, then just let 'em do it.

At least that my take on it.

The day is fast approaching when our VSThosts will allow us to mix at 64bit float/44.1Khz, but export the offline mixdown at 192Khz. This means that during offine mixdown, all Virtual FX and instruments will be running at 192Khz for the highest possible audio quality, especially beneficial when most of your audio is being generated by virtual instruments as opposed to recorded audiotracks. VSTInstruments also sound better at higher sampling rates. At this point we will wish to have our realtime mastering done at the same high level of fidelity.

I don't currently use the higher sample rates, at the moment, but I see it as being a plus for digital mixing.

Bear in mind that the Beatles and other great artists of the past were recording in 100% analog environments. Some of us wish to recapture it's benefits while still retaining the convenience of digital. Higher sample rates get us closer to that analog warmth.

Analog Warmth.

That's always been a curious thing for me.

Never had 'it' affect me to where i couldn't listen to a good recording.

It's rather nostalgic, too.

My 3-year old is NOT going to even care about 'analog warmth' by the time he is seriously listening. He doesn't care now, either.

It'll probably be nostalgic or maybe even the sought after 'thing' to have that 'Digital' sound by the time he's making records (or whatever they'll be called).

Analog warmth is really nothing but distortion and noise at low levels.

Currently surround sound is the highest comsumer standard of recording and playback maxing out at 96kHz...which results in pretty dynamic sound in my opinion. If one prefers working at 192kHz, well, thats their choice, but I don't personally see the needs for putting the excessive strain on a system for the marginal improvements and going that far over any commonly accepted standard that the project will ultimately get boiled down to anyway.

agree!

With hoter & hotter CDs...what dynamics?

I can't believe how 'hot' i can get tracks with Har-Bal and JUST the tape saturation section of T-RackS.

Of course, the dynamics are GONE!

But the CLIENT likes it. And the check clears.

quote:
"But the CLIENT likes it. And the check clears."

And that, my friends, is what matters...you have a client that will return for round 2...