mp3

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Girore
Posts: 10
Joined: Sat Apr 26, 2008 8:41 am
Location: Netherlands

mp3

Post by Girore »

Recently i joined a forum for homerecording and did harbalize a song of the owner of the site.I was a bit naive in that because i just did it to show the possibilities of what can be done with Harbal.The owner of the site didn't like it at all.In fact it did piss him off.( He believes that it isn't possible so far that a software program is able to make something nice out of a mix, wich of course depends on the use of your ears and eyes if it concerns Harbal.)I don't want to argue with anybody about that, You have to believe what you have to believe.

The song was an mp3 of 256kbit, 44 Khz and i imported it into cubase and exported it as an 24bit, 44 khz wave file .

The problem in my opinion lies in the fact hat the high end becomes a bit harsh i.e. not so nice sounding, it lacks warmth. (The song however wasn't all that bad, at least in mine and others ears.)

Is this because of the coverting of these files or is it just something that is there in the original mix?
Of course i know i shouldn't harbalize mp3's, but i just wonder if a higher bitrate would help.

anybody any experience?
HarBal
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Re: mp3

Post by HarBal »

Girore,

The nutshell of the problem lies in the nature of your experiment (statistical experiment that is). By posting a track that has been Har-Balized on a forum for appraisal you are attempting to answer the question, can Har-Bal improve the sound of a mix. The problem is your sample size is very small and likely to be statistically noisey because those assessing your work with Har-Bal will (necessarily) have systems that sound different to yours, partly through gear and partly through acoustics (the acoustics part being the biggest part of the difference). As such, all assessments will be biased by those differences, including yours.

In essence the question you are asking is the wrong one (in my opinion) and one often lost by those trying to answer questions like yours. The best sounding mix (in a commercial sense) is not necessarily the best sounding mix on your system, which includes those of high end mastering engineers. The best sounding mix is the one that sounds, on average (statistical average here), the best of all mixes. That is the nub of the problem. To know what sounds best (and in essence, to answer the question you are asking) you must have a large randomly selected sample size. At least one hundred opinions and systems ranging from high end Hi-Fi to low end portable radio. The very same range of systems that you produce recorded material for. Not only that, but you want a diverse range of people that mostly includes people who have no connection whatsoever with music and/or recording. After all, record companies aren't selling predominantly to music professionals. Any statistical assessment done with an expert panel will necessarily be biased because the panel is composed of experts.

To answer your question more specifically, mp3 encoding and decoding could well be a factor in driving the outcomes of your study but so too are other factors, like the sample size, was the assessment double blind? (ie. did they know which track they were playing, the harbalized one or not?) and was the assessing audience unbiased. In essence, if you go into a forum and say you are going to have a shoot out between this process and Har-Bal you are undoubtedly going to get biased results simply because of the stigma (in some circles) associated with Har-Bal. To be truly informative you need a study which is double blind on source material and blind on processing technique (ie. the audiance can't know apriori if A was processed with Har-Bal and B with say Manley Massive Passive). If not your assessment is biased and most likely worthless. My advice to you would be, unless you really want to go to a great deal of trouble in conducting an unbiased test, then don't bother. Polls conducted on forums are not unbiased as the members aren't average Jo Blows but members of a specific class (statistical) of people.

Cheers,


Paavo.
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