Har-Bal 2.2 is amazing!!!!

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.
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Jammerg
Posts: 7
Joined: Wed Oct 11, 2006 1:45 am
Location: USA

Har-Bal 2.2 is amazing!!!!

Post by Jammerg »

I just recently bought this program (though I have considered it for quite some time) and felt with this latest version 2.2, it was the right time to buy. I just wish I could've had this program 10 years ago, it easily could've saved me hundreds of hours of work and vastly improve the quality of the sound.

I mainly wanted it for restoration of old recordings that sounded horrible and were simply the best quality sources that existed, but this program uses seem limitless and I've tried it on nearly every audio source I can find. I've tried so many programs in the past to correct the eq and nothing has come close to this program.

I still run into the odd song's eq pattern that is just so out of wack to begin with that nothing probably could help restore the eq, but 99% of the time, this program does an amazing job with the new IntuitQ cursor.

The only thing I wish was that there was a way of getting around eq "masking" problems easier, since I've found that's the main thing that can cause a eq pattern to look correct while still sounding wrong and I run into that quite often with old recordings. That's when the IntuitNULL cursor has to be used and you've got to rely on your ears and not your eyes more. The built-in tutorial was a great help here, but it only went so far with that area and it's often not easy figuring out just which frequency area is masking what. (trial and error sometimes, I guess.... lol)

The possible addition of a Mid/Side adjustment feature in a future version does sound interesting to me and I've run across a lot of audio that have that messed up (I've seen some really butchered), though I've always heard that any adjustments in that area will cause phasing errors, so it's a trade-off in what's more important. It would be awesome if some kind of solution could be found.

Also, the ability to compare or adjust a Stereo file's Left/Right eq spectrum's separately could be kinda helpful in "certain" circumstances, especially in the kind of Restoration work I do, but the "swap reference" feature is pretty handy for taking care of that with just a bit more hassle beforehand and so I'm happy without it for now.

All in all, I'm totally happy with the results I'm getting with it, even within the first few hours of messing with it and have only gotten better with more reading and practice. 8)
HarBal
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Post by HarBal »

Glad to hear you are getting good results with the program.

The issue with IntuitQ unmasking something that sounds better unheard is a tricky issue. The real problem is that it simply isn't analytically possible (at least for now) to know if the change will sound better or worse. As you've correctly pointed out, you need to rely on your ears and a bit of trial and error for this, although if there's boosting occuring around 3kHz you'll quite often find that better left un-boosted. This is most likely due to human hearing peak sensitivity being in that frequency range.

I've done experimental work on M-S processing that confirms your concerns. You can obtain exceptional improvements using it but it has to be done with care as some rather usual things can happen if you don't. In one particular case I made a change to the side component that ended up making the centre panned vocalist sound like he was moving from left to right and back again!

The individual left-right processing is a good point too. I'll add it to the feature list.

Cheers,


Paavo.
MERLIN
Posts: 28
Joined: Wed Jan 25, 2006 10:19 am
Location: Brighton

Post by MERLIN »

Hi Guys,

How about the functionality of 'soloing a small moveable freqency band so that we can find that frquency problem area quickly? That would help knowing where to inuitnull tweak etc. You could make this audition freq band wiider and thinner by using keyboard buttons.

Please :)
HarBal
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Joined: Mon Apr 19, 2004 8:18 pm
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Post by HarBal »

Merlin,

The Har-bal 2.2 code base is essentially frozen for now, only being look at for critical bug fixes. I'm seriously getting into the full-rewrite, building the necessary foundations for the new Har-Bal. Big job so don't expect to see some results for quite a while.

On your feature request, I'll look into it's feasibility / practicality in the re-write process. However, It may not be necessary with the additions I already have planned. I believe they should be able to pinpoint the problem areas. I've got heaps to do before I can confirm that to be true but my gut feeling is that they will.

Cheers,


Paavo.
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