Hi There, Paavo!
Congratulations on version 2.0!
I've been using Harbal all the time, not for mastering as I'm sending my stuff to another engineer to master, but for "pre eq'ing" tracks before I bring them into my mixdown DAW.
I've been running every single track through Harbal individually and eq'ing out any "mud" found in these tracks.
This gives me a chance to get intimate with each track, to really listen to it by itself and discover if there is anything I can do to clean it up, while still preserving its character, and without boosting the noise floor or adding any weird phasey sounds.
Whenever I bring a track into Harbal, I try the IntuitQ to see what it will do. Then, I'll start over and adjust everything manually. What I've noticed is that the IntuitQ is not really designed for individual instruments. For example, it tries to take out the midrange frequencies on guitar tracks, which makes them sound dull and thin. With other tracks, such as vocals or piano, it goes in the right direction, but often makes changes that are too drastic, such as removing way too much low mid, which makes the track cleaner, but lacking warmth.
I'll run the mixdown through Harbal to see how it compares to my reference tracks, and I've notice that I come a lot closer to matching the references tracks' low, mid, & high frequency content. It also sounds pretty good!
Do you ever anticipate adding an IntuitQ function designed for specific instruments or styles of music, say available from a drop down menu?
Keep up the good work, by the way. The latest version basically saved my first paid project that had sounded extremely dull before using Harbal.
Instrument specific IntuitQ?
To make intuitQ do the right thing on individual tracks requires some extra work and a bit more sophistication in the algorithm. How well it works depends a lot on how well it decides upon the range of frequencies to smooth over. This is much easier to get a hold on to in a full mix than for a single intrument.
I'll be improving the algorithm in the future but just wanted to put something out there for people to use and give feedback on. It was a pragmatic move to put it out now without trying to make it perfect. By doing so all those people using Har-bal, myself included, can find the limitations to intuitQ. Understanding that and your half way toward improving it. If your understanding of the problem is weak then most of your modifications would probably make things worse. I need some time to build up a better understanding of the problem at hand.
Regards,
Paavo.
I'll be improving the algorithm in the future but just wanted to put something out there for people to use and give feedback on. It was a pragmatic move to put it out now without trying to make it perfect. By doing so all those people using Har-bal, myself included, can find the limitations to intuitQ. Understanding that and your half way toward improving it. If your understanding of the problem is weak then most of your modifications would probably make things worse. I need some time to build up a better understanding of the problem at hand.
Regards,
Paavo.