This area of the Forum is where you can post your suggestions and ideas for future update releases of Har-Bal, as well as any gripes you may have on the software, its useability and its interface.
That sounds (no pun intended ) like things are progressing nicely.
I think we would all expect that with the increase in capabilities of Harbal, an obvious increase in CPU clocks would result.
I'm looking forward to trying out the "multiband compression" aspect of the new Harbal as well as being able to split the music into smaller partitions.
Nothing like trying to make things look pretty for focusing the brain on the issues at hand. Good hunting on the optimisations.
I thought I'd post a quick update on the progress of version 3.0.
At present, more than 80% of the GUI is complete and the partitioned filtering and air functionality is working correctly. I'm yet to tackle my optimisation on filter realisations that I'll start working on again shortly.
I'm also developing a Har-Bal 3.0 stand-alone player application that will allow anyone to hear the effect of a well designed Har-Bal filter. The player will be freely available and we will put together filters for commercial releases that people can download and apply to those releases to hear the effect of a HB3 filter.
To expedite a release I'll be leaving some functionality out of version 3.0 and saving it for a future version. That will principally be complex time selection, compression and room compensation EQ.
I can understand you wanting to restrict the amount of new features (otherwise you will never finish it).
I am a bit puzzled by "complex time selection" ?
That is not option to split a song file into many sections and being able to apply different filters to each section is it ? I hope it isn't, because I was kinda looking forward to being able to do that...
Maybe complex time selection isn't a good name for it, but imagine if you will, a great recorded part of say, a vocal, that explodes in volume on a couple of notes. Those out of control bursts of sounds will show up as excessive peaks in the peak spectrum trace but not in the average trace as they occur rather infrequently.
Instead on manually trudging through the entire time trace to find the times at where those peaks occur you would use a tool based on placing a threshold line on the peak trace. Any time values with peaks above the line are selected and those below are not.
It's complex selection not because the process is complex but the selected time line is patchy and discontinuous. But by selecting the time line in that manner and then controlling those errant peaks by highly selective filters that only act on the minimum amount of time required to fix the problem you end up with much better results, or so the theory goes. I haven't got to a stage of being able to demo that feature but going on my experience with normal manual selection it certainly seems like a logical deduction to be made.
Complex time selection and filtering is my take on how to control errant peaks in highly dynamic instruments such as vocal parts. The conventional approach is multiband compression, for which I have a disliking to, mainly because to my mind it seems like a poor match to the problem at hand.
Time splitting with multiple filters is going to be in the release, just not the complex selection mode as it involves some complex GUI implementation that I just don't have time for.
Progress is steady but still quite a lot needs to be done though there is some good news as far as processing goes. I have to admit that I've been somewhat oblivious to the pace of change in the microprocessor world and in doing some processing speed tests, have found that the current generation of Intel processors are about as fast on floating point as fixed point. The fixed point implementation filtering code in Har-Bal was designed in the days of PII where that definitely wasn't the case so over that last few days I actually ditched all the fixed point DSP and updated it to 64 bit floating point DSP at not cost in performance (on my centrino duo development machine). In fact, performance was slightly better.
The upshot of that change is that now DSP coding in Har-Bal is much simpler (fixed point implementations are complicated) and the signal path in Har-Bal is 64 bit floating point so added noise through processing is essentially non-existent other than the addition of the dither when rendering to a fixed point buffer. Another side effect is that there is no longer a filter boost limit in Har-Bal. You should theoretically be able to boost as much as you want to and have a realisable filter. With the fixed point implementation you were limited to around 24dB.
I was thinking of not implementing the Har-Bal dynamics processing (compression) strategy yet out of implementation and performance concerns, though now I think I will at least have a stab at it as my concerns are probably unfounded.
Other developments include the near completion of a Har-Bal player application (which will be freely available) that will allow someone to take a commercial track and a filter we've designed for that track to hear the effect that the next generation Har-Bal can have (hearing is believing). I guess it could become an important tool for people dealing with clients over the internet too as you'll be able to demonstrate your processing to the client without having to send them the entire processed file, just the filter.
That's about it for now. Good news, good progress but still no release date I'm afraid. There's still a few bits in the back end that are unstable (specification wise) that need to be pinned down first. With those done I'll be able to be more clear about when a release might be possible though an alpha release is possible in a few months time.
Me, too! I haven't visited the site and board in a while. Lots of changes! Version 3 sounds like it will make a great product even greater! Can't wait!
Progress on version 3.0 is very good. The filtering backbone is becoming increasingly robust and is well proven. Still plenty of unimplemented functionality to finalise though.
Irrespective, it is still looking good for an official release by the 4th quarter of this year, maybe sooner depending on how well things go.
Earle is happily testing my developments and seems well pleased with what version 3.0 is capable of, as am I.
Great!Look forward to that!
Hey just saw you had a mention in "EQ" magazine, in a mastering article.
Saw it in borders today but not sure if it was the latest issue(airfreight)
or a month or two old
Just about completed compression in Har-Bal so version 3 will support compression along side limiting using the new method alluded to in my previous comments. The sound and behaviour of the method exceeded my expectations, giving a clean sounding compression that, to put it in a friends words, sounds more like limiting than compression, yet it is compression.
It's looking like a September beta release with a full release probably around December.
Initially a select few expanding into an open beta later on. We don't want it open to start with in case I've got some common issues as we'll just be spending all our time answering beta related emails. Once the initial beta is looking robust enough we'll switch to open beta.
Thought I'd post a follow up on progress. I'm about a month behind where I was planning to be so Beta release of HB3 is not likely until November. I'm sorry for the slipping schedule but I want to have this beta as robust as possible before releasing to you.
That being said, we are very happy with how things are shaping up with the development version. In the last few weeks I've built some filter files for commercial releases that anyone will be able to download along with a free HB player app that will showcase HB capabilities. Beta users will be able to download the filter files too, to uncover the filter structure and understand how it was done. The only thing that won't be free is the commercial tracks themselves which you'll either have to buy or, if you happen to already have the CD or mp3, use your existing copy. I want to use commercial releases to avoid any possibility of people suggesting the examples are contrived to be easy for HB.
As an aid to cope with mp3 files as source material, I've been adding conversion support for the mp3 format via Windows acm codecs to convert mp3 into wav so HB can process them. This will happen transparently provided you have a mp3 codec installed on Windows.
) like things are progressing nicely.
