Har-Bal, Ozone, Both or Neither?

When Mastering, most recommend either product but is one any better than the other or can Audition finish nice sparkling mixdowns by itself. Do both products offer the same shiny finished mixdowns or do they have features very specific to either program and therefore require purchase of both?

When Mastering, most recommend either product but is one any better than the other or can Audition finish nice sparkling mixdowns by itself. Do both products offer the same shiny finished mixdowns or do they have features very specific to either program and therefore require purchase of both?

They are different. Technically you could do with Ozone what you can do with Har-Bal as far as EQ is concerned, I suppose - but it would be a heck of a lot harder, and the analysis isn't there. Har-Bal isn't a complete mastering tool at all - if you had to buy just the one product, it's actually no choice; it has to be Ozone.

There are circumstances - usually with other people's material - where Har-Bal's approach to fine-tuning the sound is unbeatable, and as a restoration tool it is amazingly useful, because of its ability to 'borrow' EQ curves. But Ozone will let you manipulate all sorts of other aspects of a mix as well, that Har-Bal won't touch.

So, you have to decide. I have both!

I can't speak for Har-bal, but I think Ozone is invaluable.  I honestly believe it is probably the best single plug-in ever created.  It does a lot, and everything it does, it does EXTREMELY well (except for the crappy reverb).

Emmett

I agree with Steve, I use Ozone for a lot of stuff, but I have had great results with Har-bal when I have had trouble getting the "right" eq sound. So I vote both as well.

(except for the crappy reverb).

The Mastering Reverb has been dire since day one, and for some strange reason they've never fixed (that should really be 'replaced') it.

Thanks for all your replies, I'm sold, however for the benefit of others, (including me ) if there are any other additional details and opinions (bar actually quoting the manuals etc) you would like to add i.e. any presets or whatever feel free. Also, is it possible Audition alone could do what Ozone does?

Also, is it possible Audition alone could do what Ozone does?

Not very easily, if at all. There are a few modules that it's short of, like the excitation one, and the multichannel width and timing manipulation, whilst being technically possible, would take an absolute age to achieve. And by the time you'd got there, you would have forgotten what it was you were trying to do anyway!

And by the time you'd got there, you would have forgotten what it was you were trying to do anyway!

Ha! Very good Steve, that's usually the case with me when I'm, using Audition normally

Ozone is, of course, designed for mastering.  But it works very well for a number of things.  Because it's such a CPU hog, it can't be used on a bunch of MT channels, but it could do nicely on a drums submix or a single voice or instrument.  I'm an especially big fan of Ozone's dynamics processor.  Even used as a single-band device, it still has many more practical options than the built-in Audition one.  The expander, compressor and limiter all function completely indepenently and have separat attack/release times.  I also very much like the Ozone EQ and tape saturation.

Emmett

.

Technically you could do with Ozone what you can do with Har-Bal as far as EQ is concerned, I suppose - but it would be a heck of a lot harder, and the analysis isn't there.

I have not used Harbal, but I have checked out their site and online demo and specs.  So far as I can see, I can do all that Harbal does with Ozone.  Ozone can save and recall average EQ templates across the whole mix and can constrain a mix to conform to those templates as well.  However, if you use too many EQ bands (like a few hundred for instance), you can end up with some strange results.  I have had very good success with "automatic EQ" or "harmonic balancing" with a few dozen bands.  I have used Audition batch mode to process hundreds of live recordings this way with good results.  Of course the multi-band compressor (I prefer three bands rather than 4), Harmonic Excitation and stereo narrowing (at low freq) come in very handy for these files as well.   

Too bad they made the DRM so hard to live with on the newest Ozone, so I just keep using the older version.
.

Too bad they made the DRM so hard to live with on the newest Ozone, so I just keep using the older version.

Hmm.  That's interesting.  I little while before this topic came up, I actually finally bought a 2nd-hand copy of Ozone, but I haven't actually got around to installing it yet.  Their DRM system seemed fairly flexible to me, though, from everything they say in their web site.  My difficulty is in deciding which external drive I should authorise it on.  Obviously, one of the smaller ones will be more convenient to move around.  Unfortunately, the smaller ones are the ones I carry around with me, and so are more likely to be lost.

Thus far in evaluating Har Bal (and it's still early), my take is to agree with Steve and some others here.

Both Hal Bal and Ozone seem to each have their place for doing different things and/or for diff styles of working.
We often get in outside stuff for which Har Bal may have value, and sometimes our own stuff too. 
But still a bit early to tell, I've only spent a couple hours reviewing its "mindset" and testing some stuff I know
well using it. Need to do more as time permits.

I use Ozone quite often and think it's terrific (except that reverb...) for a lot of things, both general
production work as well as mastering and remastering etc. I tend to use the Ozone multi-band, usually sparingly,
more these days than the Waves multi-band.

Hal Bal's ability to use a ref curve and also to do very slight boosts and cuts so far seems fairly intuitive
and useful. I wonder if it will evolve into a plug in or other device that will run in a host program.

The Har Bal folks seem like extremely nice people, and they obviously spent a lot of time and thought in
coming up with it and are very open to user input.  The version I have runs fine with Vista, by the way. (v2.3, rev 3)