Har-Bal Users Forum BBS

Hi! I have an unusual question about mastering a whole CD. What I'm trying to do is apply Har-Bal for each of my tracks and then limit them. I would then have to drop the volume a tad and add sound effects (I'm making a concept record with such noises as rain and crickets, which sometimes seamlessly run through tracks [a la Pink Floyd]). I don't believe I can apply Har-Bal to my tracks with the sound effects on them because the volumes of the effects have to be 100% even so as to prevent cracks between songs. So my thinking is, after I Har-Bal each track and then tack on sound effects, to run the entire disc through Har-Bal for final tweaking then limit again. Is that a good idea, or would double Har-Baling be bad? I realize my post is confusing, but what I'm trying to describe isn't easy.
Thanks!

Brian R. wrote:Hi! I have an unusual question about mastering a whole CD. What I'm trying to do is apply Har-Bal for each of my tracks and then limit them. I would then have to drop the volume a tad and add sound effects (I'm making a concept record with such noises as rain and crickets, which sometimes seamlessly run through tracks [a la Pink Floyd]). I don't believe I can apply Har-Bal to my tracks with the sound effects on them because the volumes of the effects have to be 100% even so as to prevent cracks between songs. So my thinking is, after I Har-Bal each track and then tack on sound effects, to run the entire disc through Har-Bal for final tweaking then limit again. Is that a good idea, or would double Har-Baling be bad? I realize my post is confusing, but what I'm trying to describe isn't easy.
Thanks!

Brian,

You could do as you suggest or alternatively you could have the entire CD as a single track, and use a wave editor app to split it into each track plus a little overlap. Then harbalize each track and recombine them by having a cross fade from one into the next if you get my drift.

This approach should work fine provided that you have the normalisation correct prior to splitting. If it isn't and you happen to adjust volumes to get consistency then you might here the volume change through the transition from one track to another if there are effects in that transition.

This is something I have thought about for quite a while and is something that HarBal will support better when we introduce the concept of a project (collection of trancks in a particular order).

Interestingly I di a re-mastering on Joe Jacksons "Night and Day" album which has a number of tracks that flow into one another. I wasn't concerned about getting the transitions perfect and just harbalized each track seperately with no cross-fade and overlap. When I re-assembled it, although there was siginificant changes in volume made between overlapping tracks I couldn't hear any glitches and didn't find the transitions objectionable at all! I was surprised that such crude processing sounded so good! I guess it's related to psychoacoustic (eg. why analog tape sounds acceptable even though the volume is modulated quite a bit by drop outs).

Regards,


Paavo.

Thanks! I'll give it a try!