Re: Reasons for inconsistencies -- Har-Bal Tech Tips and Suggestions

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Subject: Re: Reasons for inconsistencies

Author:
Har-Bal

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Date Posted: 22:08:21 09/04/03 Thu
In reply to: Motime 's message, "Reasons for inconsistencies" on 10:39:00 09/03/03 Wed

>Out of necessity, I slammed together a CD product,
>almost completely visually. Har-Bal, hard limiting,
>amplitude, burn it; 12 songs, rough mix to disk in
>about 5 hours and it sounded better than it should
>have.
>Now I can't duplicate the results. What I'm getting is
>too strident ...harsh almost, there is less warmth,
>and too much sibilance.
>Question: Did I luck out the first time or could this
>be a function of a) overall amplitude b) bit rate c)
>file type (raw vs windows)?

I'd suggest that doing a slightly different balance will give you the type of sound that you want. It's just a matter of how you go about it.

For me I would not suggest to consider the references that we supplied to be the be all and end all of the process. You should use these only as a guide and not the ultimate arbiter.

Ther way I'd suggest that you go about putting together a mastering EQ for a compilation is as follows:

Start with the best sounding track before harbalizing.

Open it in HarBal and design a filter to get the type of sound that you want and try to do it with the minimum number of changes. Try to do it with low Q changes (particularly at the high frequency end) as flattening out the spectrum completely will destroy the quality of the recording.

Also try to review the changes you make independently so you'll know whether a particular change was good or not (ie. make a change and play it back to see what effect it has, then make another change).

Don't expect too much. Sometimes you get into a mindset that says with this I can fix anything. You can certainly improve things but there will always be some problems that you can never fixed with EQ. Once you got it to a certainly quality be prepared to let it stand.

Save your filter. You can always come back to it later and change it as many times as you wish. Keep one point in mind though. If you've flattened out the spectrum too much and saved the filter you won't know where to un-flatten it to restore some of the quality. In these circumstances it is best to start again.

Now that you've got the best track sounding the way you wan't it to use it as a reference to do all the remaining tracks keeping the same points in mind. You can also get the normalisation done at the same time. When harbalizing the other tracks keep in mind that if the genre of the track and the instruments used are significantly different you should expect the spectrums to be different too. Use your ears as the final judge.

If your tracks lack warmth and have too much silibance you either have too little output below 500Hz or too much above 3kHz. A generally good balance will be pretty flat from around 60Hz up to 1-2kHz and then rolling off to be around 10-20 dB down at 10kHz. How much tapering at the spectrum ends you'll need will depend on the nature of the music.

If there are some sharp peaks in the peak spectrum (yellow trace) that stand out above the rest then they may need to be attenuated a bit. Again, don't try to eliminate the peak but just reduce and control it a bit. A good rule of thumb would be to reduce the peak so that it is about as high as the other undulations on the spectrum.

Finally, strong output in the region of 3-5kHz can make recordings sound fatiguing and clinical. If you have strong output in this region see what the effect of reducing it by 3 dB or so has.

The more you use it the better you'll understand it.

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