192Khz Support

Having problems using the greatest Visual Mastering software of the century? Use this area of the Forum to post your technical questions to Earle and Paavo regarding Har-Bal or ask questions regarding how to work on a certain area of the software? Post away!
dbmasters1

and thats what it's all about

Post by dbmasters1 »

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...
Biskopen
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"...That analog sound...."

Post by Biskopen »

I have started to record my mixes to my 20 years Fostex Model M20.

This is a 7 inch reel-to-reel with 1/4 inch tape. I have had it serviced and aligned regularly since I bought it. It's only -10dBv, but so what - the sound is excellent and once recorded to tape, I dump it back to the PC for final mastering.

Excellent warmth and REAL analog sounding - far better than a plug-in I can tell you.

And the customers are coming back for round 2 here also!
It's not the desk in front of the man that counts, it's the man behind the desk!
Har/Bal

Very wise!

Post by Har/Bal »

Adrian

Your process is correct. I never extract the audio from CD when I have a client that needs their music mastered. You should always place the CD into a player and record it into the PC preferably through a good hardware parametric equalizer. This way you can insure the sound is much more balanced going in. Folks would be surprised how full the sound is not to mention how much better the track appears in Har-Bal.

Kudos to you Adrian!!

Earle
PristineAudio
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Post by PristineAudio »

Just butting in here with only a very slightly off-original-topic point for my first posting here (I've been using Har-Bal for a few months now). At this very moment the HarBal 1.5 beta is beavering away on some recordings I've recently restored for which I see no reason to go above 44.1k. I hope you guys are hearing the difference when sampling all the way up to 96k or 192k or whatever.

Why don't I need all that bandwidth? Well these recordings were made in 1933 and 1934 and are coming off 78s. The only thing you'll get up in bat frequencies is hiss and crackle from the disc surface!

But big thanks to the team for providing a tool that can help compensate for microphone technology that was less than a decade old (and big thanks to Pete at Disc2Disc for telling me abut Har-Bal).

Just thought you'd be interested to hear what else it's been used for! Sound samples available on the website if you're interested...
HarBal
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Post by HarBal »

PristineAudio wrote: .
snip
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Why don't I need all that bandwidth? Well these recordings were made in 1933 and 1934 and are coming off 78s. The only thing you'll get up in bat frequencies is hiss and crackle from the disc surface!

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snip
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Just thought you'd be interested to hear what else it's been used for! Sound samples available on the website if you're interested...
Cetainly am!

To tell you the truth, I've got a cardboard box full of 78 shelacs that I bought around three years ago at a garage sale for about $20 Australian. It is waiting for the time when I'll have time to re-master them to CD. Still waiting for the time though. I'd be really interested to hear whether HarBal was useful for this purpose.

Regards,


Paavo.
PristineAudio
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Post by PristineAudio »

HarBal wrote: To tell you the truth, I've got a cardboard box full of 78 shelacs that I bought around three years ago at a garage sale for about $20 Australian. It is waiting for the time when I'll have time to re-master them to CD. Still waiting for the time though. I'd be really interested to hear whether HarBal was useful for this purpose.
I've found it to be excellent for getting the final sound right. I'm currently working on Bach's 48 Preludes and Fugues (The Well-Tempered Clavier) which runs across 64 sides, recorded on different days over a 3 year period, 1933-1936, at Abbey Road. While the general recording quality is good, if a little dry by modern standards, there are clearly deficiencies in the technology available in those days!

The recordings pass through a series of click, crackle and noise reduction filters prior to saving at 32-bit resolution in Adobe Audition. I've loaded the unmixed and unedited files into Harbal for Book 1 (Nos. 1-24) as one big file, which gets an excellent average across the range. What I've then looked for is a modern classical piano recording where the tone is similar to these discs as a reference - the piano is quite bright - and then done one massive HarBal across the entire (in this case) 28 sides.

The reference file is really only there to remind my ears what a piano sounds like! I'm surprised at how little fine-tuning has been required on these tracks - but I guess that's a result of a single-mic recording approach and no mixing or editing!

BTW these tracks are available on Naxos CDs at the moment. I have Book 2 as a double-CD set and the sound is unlistenable - a quick look in HarBal demonstrates why. I could probably even save a load of time and trouble by HarBalising their CDs and passing them off as my own work - but that'd be less fun and very slightly illegal! 8)

Anyway, I'm playing in the final side of Book 2 as I write and intend see how the filter I developed for Book 1 works on the remaining sides post-processing. I can also now of course use the processed Book 1 as a reference for Book 2.

Once again - top tool and completely invaluable to me. If only it was a DX plug-in and could be added to my FX chain...

Regards

Andrew
Paavo

Post by Paavo »

PristineAudio wrote:.
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Once again - top tool and completely invaluable to me. If only it was a DX plug-in and could be added to my FX chain...
Andrew,

thanks for the feedback. That project you are working on sounds fascinating. I'm itching to try out something similar but it will have to wait. The DX plug-in is something in the pipline. There will be one but I can't be firm on the time frame...

Paavo.
PristineAudio
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Post by PristineAudio »

Paavo wrote: I can't be firm on the time frame...
:lol:
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