my mixes are really sounding much nicer now after using this brill programme but im finding that, by the end of my mix, its really giving me ear fatigue, almost ringing.
where am i going wrong?
regards
elliot
what am i doing wrong?
Hello Elliot
Elliot
Glad you are enjoying the program. We need to know step by step how you are using the program.
1.You may be adding too much in the higher frequency range.
2. The room you are working in is not reflecting sound appropiately. If this is the case you would have a tendency to want to add highs.
Send us a screenshot of a song that gives you ear fatigue.
Send it to no-spamsupport@har-bal.com
remove the words "nospam"
That would help us tremendously.
Cheers
Earle
Glad you are enjoying the program. We need to know step by step how you are using the program.
1.You may be adding too much in the higher frequency range.
2. The room you are working in is not reflecting sound appropiately. If this is the case you would have a tendency to want to add highs.
Send us a screenshot of a song that gives you ear fatigue.
Send it to no-spamsupport@har-bal.com
remove the words "nospam"
That would help us tremendously.
Cheers
Earle
No problem
Open Har-Bal and sculpt the spectrum. When you have your song sounding right do this:elliot wrote:thanx for the swiftey reply earle
without trying to sound like too much of an idiot, how do i do a screen shot?
regards
elliot
1. Press and hold your Alt key and while it is depressed press your "print screen" key.
2. You have now saved the image to your clipboard.
3. Open your "paint" application ...usually found under start/programs/accessories
4. When you open the paint program click on edit/paste and the image will appear.
5. Click on File/Save as/ and give it a name then email it to us as an attachment.
Earle
Re: what am i doing wrong?
Ignoring room acoustics issues, you can get hearing fatigue from a number of regions in the spectrum depending on how you've adjusted things.elliot wrote:my mixes are really sounding much nicer now after using this brill programme but im finding that, by the end of my mix, its really giving me ear fatigue, almost ringing.
where am i going wrong?
regards
elliot
Too much around 150Hz and below can make things sound muddy which has a tendancy to make you want to play it louder and become fatigued quicker.
The mid-range presence region from around 300Hz - 1kHz can be painful to listen to if over done. I have some driver resonances in my speakers that cause me some problems in my current room. In this region I find it easy to overdo things cos it makes everything sound loud and your hearing tends to compensate for your overemphasis making it sound acceptable. Easiest way to confirm this as a problem is to leave your work for half and hour and come back to it to see what it sounds like fresh. If you've overdone it it will sound a bit wooden.
The region from 3-5kHz is a place where human hearing has peak sensitivity so if you overdo it here it will certainly result in hearing fatigue and possibly ringing in the ears. Actually adding some cut in this region can make recordings sound mellower without loosing definition (eg. the music of Seal). On the other hand, many grunge rock bands like to peak in this region cos it makes them sound loud. It certainly does that but it also makes them unlistenable as well so don't overdo it in this region.
Probably the most common reasons for fatigue due to room acoustics would be overdamping (which results an a dead environment with little spatial dimension to it), Standing wave resonances in the low frequency end, and sound from the speakers reflected off the side walls directly to the listening position. The later confuses the brain by adding directional ambiguity to the spatial interpretation of the sound source and can lead to long term fatigue even though you can quite easily make out the image when fresh. You fix this problem with appropriately place diffusers.
Hope this helps.
Paavo.
thanx for the advise chaps
ive sent you a screen dump to have a look at earle, many thanx for that
i intend to build a studio in the back yard at the begining of next year as, indeed you say paavo, the acoustics in my present room are awful, im slotted in to an alcove which is no wider than 1.5m wide. just enough room for 2 crt monitors and 2 alesis monitors either side so im getting reflections like theres no tommorow
as im building from scratch, do you have any idea what an ideal size/shape for an optimal room would be? bearing in mind i virtually do no live recording, i have bought a few books on the subject but its a real science overload to me
thanx again guys
elliot
ive sent you a screen dump to have a look at earle, many thanx for that
i intend to build a studio in the back yard at the begining of next year as, indeed you say paavo, the acoustics in my present room are awful, im slotted in to an alcove which is no wider than 1.5m wide. just enough room for 2 crt monitors and 2 alesis monitors either side so im getting reflections like theres no tommorow
as im building from scratch, do you have any idea what an ideal size/shape for an optimal room would be? bearing in mind i virtually do no live recording, i have bought a few books on the subject but its a real science overload to me
thanx again guys
elliot
Elliot,
Though there's a lot of theory around acoustics it seems that good room acoustics is as much an art as a science so you can do pretty well without much science at all.
The key points in room construction is to avoid parallel walls, keep left/right symetry and no symetry between front and back. This will generally mean a room with more than 4 walls although you could contruct a four walled studio with tapered side walls and a slanted rear wall. Parallel walls are not good cos they encourage low frequency standing waves. The room should be as big as you can afford. Small rooms will invariably suffer from standing wave problems, and so do big rooms but the bigger the room the lower the frequency at which the standing waves cause problems. Hence a bigger room will be better because it is more likely that any standing wave problems will be out of band.
With the basic room geometry sorted then you need to add damping and diffusion. Generally you want most damping in front of you and above you and little damping to the rear or to the side fo you. This arrangement gives a big sound stage and a lot of space to the reproduction of stereo. You just need to make sure that there are no direct reflected paths from the drivers via the side walls as this will cause problems to the imaging. If the geometry is such that it is unavoidable then you'll need quadratic residual diffusers to break of the reflection and spread it out in all directions. If you are any good at wood work then you can build these yourself, otherwise you can buy them ready made but at a greater cost. I'm planning to build a pair for my room. It is pretty difficult to be exact about how much damping you need. It's best to start with no damping and just add as you go until you get the best sound. If you go too far you'll note that the quality of the imaging will start to suffer and then you should remove some damping. Good luck.
By the way, I took a look at your filtered spectrum. There's two points I'd make. In the peak spectrum there's a nasty peak at around 300Hz which is a particularly troublesome region as far as fatigue is concerned. I'd recommend taking that peak down by about 4 dB so that it is about the same height as the neighbouring peaks. The other thing is that your mix looks pretty bright at the top end. I'd recommend shelving above 2-3kHz such that the peak at around 8kHz is down about 8-10 dB relative to the highest peak in the entire spectrum. On that basis I'd guess you need a cut of around 4-5 dB. On the other hand, if your listening environment is dead and in a small room you might feel like you need that much for the sound to have clarity.
Cheers,
Paavo.
Though there's a lot of theory around acoustics it seems that good room acoustics is as much an art as a science so you can do pretty well without much science at all.
The key points in room construction is to avoid parallel walls, keep left/right symetry and no symetry between front and back. This will generally mean a room with more than 4 walls although you could contruct a four walled studio with tapered side walls and a slanted rear wall. Parallel walls are not good cos they encourage low frequency standing waves. The room should be as big as you can afford. Small rooms will invariably suffer from standing wave problems, and so do big rooms but the bigger the room the lower the frequency at which the standing waves cause problems. Hence a bigger room will be better because it is more likely that any standing wave problems will be out of band.
With the basic room geometry sorted then you need to add damping and diffusion. Generally you want most damping in front of you and above you and little damping to the rear or to the side fo you. This arrangement gives a big sound stage and a lot of space to the reproduction of stereo. You just need to make sure that there are no direct reflected paths from the drivers via the side walls as this will cause problems to the imaging. If the geometry is such that it is unavoidable then you'll need quadratic residual diffusers to break of the reflection and spread it out in all directions. If you are any good at wood work then you can build these yourself, otherwise you can buy them ready made but at a greater cost. I'm planning to build a pair for my room. It is pretty difficult to be exact about how much damping you need. It's best to start with no damping and just add as you go until you get the best sound. If you go too far you'll note that the quality of the imaging will start to suffer and then you should remove some damping. Good luck.
By the way, I took a look at your filtered spectrum. There's two points I'd make. In the peak spectrum there's a nasty peak at around 300Hz which is a particularly troublesome region as far as fatigue is concerned. I'd recommend taking that peak down by about 4 dB so that it is about the same height as the neighbouring peaks. The other thing is that your mix looks pretty bright at the top end. I'd recommend shelving above 2-3kHz such that the peak at around 8kHz is down about 8-10 dB relative to the highest peak in the entire spectrum. On that basis I'd guess you need a cut of around 4-5 dB. On the other hand, if your listening environment is dead and in a small room you might feel like you need that much for the sound to have clarity.
Cheers,
Paavo.
hey paavo
i wish books could explain things like you can, nice and straight forward, not blinded by scientific formulas and buzz words- thanks!
with respect to my filter, im still having trouble knowing which is a high peak and which has a hole, also im slightly confused on which line i should be concerntrating on, the green or the yellow, it seems if i change one to remove a peak it does the opposite to the other.
i apologise if im being really stupid here but im having trouble understanding some of the tutorials
regards
elliot
i wish books could explain things like you can, nice and straight forward, not blinded by scientific formulas and buzz words- thanks!
with respect to my filter, im still having trouble knowing which is a high peak and which has a hole, also im slightly confused on which line i should be concerntrating on, the green or the yellow, it seems if i change one to remove a peak it does the opposite to the other.
i apologise if im being really stupid here but im having trouble understanding some of the tutorials
regards
elliot
Hello
Elliotelliot wrote:hey paavo
i wish books could explain things like you can, nice and straight forward, not blinded by scientific formulas and buzz words- thanks!
with respect to my filter, im still having trouble knowing which is a high peak and which has a hole, also im slightly confused on which line i should be concerntrating on, the green or the yellow, it seems if i change one to remove a peak it does the opposite to the other.
i apologise if im being really stupid here but im having trouble understanding some of the tutorials
regards
elliot
Your concentration should be on the green line for holes and the yellow line for peaks.
YOu can alternate between the spectrun lines by holding down your left mouse button and pressing the tab key.
I actually disable the red line by going to the bottom right hand side of the application and toggling it off.
Your peaks should really be more than 1/8 inch (yellow line)
The overall spectrum should be somewhat even but not flat. You are attempting to gain consistency
Take a look here and let us know if it helps you gain a better understanding. http://www.har-bal.com/files/tutorial.pdf
Look at our screenshots on our main page. This will give you avisual overview of what needs to be accomplished.
You should be able to load any file into Har-Bal and immediately see what need to be done to improve the sound.
Your thoughts
Earle
thanks earle
ok the way i see it (please be aware that im only an electrician)
is that working on the green line, it wants to be more or less even across the frequency (but not perfect) within a couple of db`s
or am i barking up the wrong tree?
sorry for all the posts, its just i really want to learn how this works so i can use its full potential
regards
elliot
ok the way i see it (please be aware that im only an electrician)
is that working on the green line, it wants to be more or less even across the frequency (but not perfect) within a couple of db`s
or am i barking up the wrong tree?
sorry for all the posts, its just i really want to learn how this works so i can use its full potential
regards
elliot
That is correct
You are entirely correct in your thinking.
The green line makes for a good barometer. If it is pretty even across the spectrum and you see any large spikes in the yellow line simply attenuate (bring down yellow line) until it is about 1/8 inch.
Here is what I recommend for most folks. Start gathering your best sounding (mastered) Cd's in your collection and start feeding them into Har-Bal. You will start to observe patterns in the spectrum that are indicative of a well balanced track. This will surely help you in the long run.
You will be able to look at a track and understand why it sounds so thin....ahh the depth is missing between the 50 - 200hz region. The difference between Har-Bal and a regular equalizer is that with Har-Bal you are able to SEE the problem areas and with a reqular equalizer you have to guess and play with knobs until you get it right.
We can all say that mastering is subjective but there are certain rules a track has to adhere to in order to sound good across all spectrums. When the spectral content is correct you can perform slight tweaks based on your taste.
Another issue with a regular equalizer is the accoustics in a room. Unless you are going to pay an accoustic technician $5000 to balance your room you are really in trouble.
When the room is unbalanced most folks have to constantly burn CD's and play then in numerous mediums until they get it right. (What a waste of CD's)
Har-Bal success comes from enabling the user to maintain balanced sound consistency across all mediums everytime. and without fail.
We also have a contact in Europe if you need some real hands on experience.
His name is Adrian and his email address is nospamwebmaster@rolandvs2480.com
Remove the "nospam"
Cheers
Earle
The green line makes for a good barometer. If it is pretty even across the spectrum and you see any large spikes in the yellow line simply attenuate (bring down yellow line) until it is about 1/8 inch.
Here is what I recommend for most folks. Start gathering your best sounding (mastered) Cd's in your collection and start feeding them into Har-Bal. You will start to observe patterns in the spectrum that are indicative of a well balanced track. This will surely help you in the long run.
You will be able to look at a track and understand why it sounds so thin....ahh the depth is missing between the 50 - 200hz region. The difference between Har-Bal and a regular equalizer is that with Har-Bal you are able to SEE the problem areas and with a reqular equalizer you have to guess and play with knobs until you get it right.
We can all say that mastering is subjective but there are certain rules a track has to adhere to in order to sound good across all spectrums. When the spectral content is correct you can perform slight tweaks based on your taste.
Another issue with a regular equalizer is the accoustics in a room. Unless you are going to pay an accoustic technician $5000 to balance your room you are really in trouble.
When the room is unbalanced most folks have to constantly burn CD's and play then in numerous mediums until they get it right. (What a waste of CD's)
Har-Bal success comes from enabling the user to maintain balanced sound consistency across all mediums everytime. and without fail.
We also have a contact in Europe if you need some real hands on experience.
His name is Adrian and his email address is nospamwebmaster@rolandvs2480.com
Remove the "nospam"
Cheers
Earle
H'mmm,elliot wrote:hey paavo
i wish books could explain things like you can, nice and straight forward, not blinded by scientific formulas and buzz words- thanks!
with respect to my filter, im still having trouble knowing which is a high peak and which has a hole, also im slightly confused on which line i should be concerntrating on, the green or the yellow, it seems if i change one to remove a peak it does the opposite to the other.
i apologise if im being really stupid here but im having trouble understanding some of the tutorials
regards
elliot
Yeah, a lot of scientific books just dress things up in so much technical jargon that you're hard pressed to figure out what it's on about. If you willing to spend long enough you'll break through but some books are just not conducive for reading.
As for the approach, your balancing job was pretty much there except for the bits I mentioned. I generally work with the peak spectrum and the average spectrum showing simultaneously. Then I start evening out the issues in the average spectrum. After that's done I look at the peak spectrum (yellow line) and look out for peaks below 5kHz that stand out above all the rest. If there are any I cut them down to size. This will alter the average spectrum shape but you are basically making a compromise between uncontrolled and controlled dynamics. If you look at the peak spectrum in your track you should see which peak I'm refering to cos it is much bigger than the peaks either side of it.
Cheers,
Paavo.