Har-bal

I use Har-bal sometimes when working on restoration projects - it can be useful to get you to a result that would have otherwise taken ages. Also it's good if you are trying to give a bunch of tracks a 'feel'.

I believe that Andrew Rose uses it extensively, but he gets up to tricks that he might be less than willing to share (and I don't blame him) - because they give him a commercial edge...

Wasn't looking for enumeration of tricks, or even pointers.  Even before they were introduced in AA (beyond the basic frequency display) I had some frequency space editing tools with which I was fairly comfortable. Between 1.5 and 3 the frequency space editing seemed to become significantly more robust (though that could be because I didn't explore that aspect of previous versions of AA).  While I wish I understood a little better the how things were executed I'm more or less OK with practical results I've achieved, particularly when combining various frequency space editing with approaches and tools I've already refined through years of use.  Frequency space editing in AA wasn't like a jackhammer plunked into the middle of a tool kit filled with whittling tools and x-acto knives used to construct model sailing ships.  So the principal curiosity was not 'how' har-bal improved on the basic AA editing (as opposed to trying to tune speakers to a room) but merely whether it did for general editing.

While I was inquiring directly whether Andrew used Har-bal that wasn't because I think there is all that much overlap in type of audio work we do or even in how we might approach it.  For me I'd be curious whether Har-bal might help me improve the sophistication and speed the process of that sophistication in turning raw concert/club recordings into salable artifacts.  Even when there is time for a reasonable sound check that is seldom coupled with enough time or hands to optimally position mics for tracking.  Even with DI's & drum triggers there is always significant bleed in important voices.  Neither are we ever mixing this stuff in optimal surroundings.  And answer to that can only be optained by trying it . . . among tools of retracking, resynthesizing, regenerating with enough time I can already convert nearly any 'live' track into something resembling studio sterility.  Whether Har-bal would work for me is a question as intimately entwined with 'how' I do things as it is with Har-bal's inherent tool set.

The price tag on Har-bal was/is not particularly off putting but at some point attempting to learn yet another bit of software will be one 'somebody else's logic' too many and my head will explode.  And while Har-bal's claims are perhaps no more grandiose then, say, Melodyne's (which I also use) for some reason Har-bal's marketing always just sent me spinning in the opposite direction.  (& will admit a degree of snobbish prejudice of which I am not proud; if C. Anderton recommended a Weiss dynamic EQ or Siemens V72 my knee jerk reaction would be that they were pieces of junk)

From what I have heard of Andrew's audio reclaimations my gut reaction is that less of it depends on some special magic sauce (i.e. Har-bal) then accumulated  experience from obsessive attention to minute detail.  So, as testimonials go, if someone with Andrew's skill set finds the app to be useful it might be worth the $100 to check it out.  (For the record it's not that I have less respect for Steve's capability (and/or obsesivness) but I have had a lot more exposure to independent 'before' versions of Pristine Audio's offerings.)

So, as testimonials go, if someone with Andrew's skill set finds the app to be useful it might be worth the $100 to check it out.  (For the record it's not that I have less respect for Steve's capability (and/or obsesivness) but I have had a lot more exposure to independent 'before' versions of Pristine Audio's offerings.)

That's fair enough, and I agree about your comments re. C. Anderton, but for other reasons - his comments often simply don't accord with my experience. The most impartial review that I've seen for Har-bal (and bear in mind that this was for 1.02, not the 2.3 it currently is) is the SOS one - which you can read here.

thnxs for SOS review . . . another reminder of why I probably should follow that publication a bit more closely

another re: C. Andrtn . . . I'm a fan of oblique communication not because I eschew clarity but because I've found as a rule 'clarity' is seldom all that clear and inevitably leads to reductive legaleeze . . . widespread human distance communication is little more the 400 yr.. old and biologic underpinning for human behavior is based on environmental conditions 10k yr.. old . . . still a bit of gap between what's desired and what's possible (which not only lies at the core of much of my personal social ineptness but is also the condition that keeps me in business . . . because, as C.A. is an example, the 'norm' is for humans to exploit or manipulative the dichotomies of distance communication and there is a niche (albeit a small one) for not doing that and still getting paid)

I actually tend to be rather fond of Weiss processors (though I have yet been willing to pay for the box I'd actually want) and Siemens V72's.  Both products at different ends of 'a' gear lust arc, both with fairly didactic cult followings and each a bit difficult to access for hands on auditioning.  In December '84 was stranded for two or three days in a motel in Joplin MO.  Was actually headed 27 mi. NW, had expected to fly into Joplin but was forced down in Tulsa OK by a snow storm, caught the last bus out of Tulsa before the Interstates were closed.  It was one of two times in 39 yr. I was not carrying a guitar with me.  This was pre internet days, not much reading material in the motel, picked up a mag with an article by Anderton and based on that actually purchased two books with him listed as author during the ensuing year.  Based on those I would tend to believe that any product review by CA (though I can't imagine he has done a review or 'howto' of either Weiss or Siemens) would be supported by little hands on experience and likely have only a glancing relationship with physical reality. I'm as susceptible to slick mags with flashy pics as the next guy and it is possible that CA has been single handed aversion therapy for that addiction . . . my hand now recoils at most publications purporting a music or recording focus (to be fair CA is neither the only nor worst gear mnfc pimp in the industry & as touring musician I could not have survived without endorsement deals (for products I might have touched but certainly . . . well even now I working on a deal with Fiji water and I don't tend to buy cases of it at the grocery . . .) which is why I referenced my reaction to C. A. as snobbish and prejudiced . . . his name prominently displayed on the Har-Bal site was enough for me to forget having glanced at a favorable SOS review years before

yada yada yada . . . all kinds of ways to shoot ones self in the foot: to believe celebrity endorsement and to discount anything with celebrity endorsement 

For what it's worth, I've used Har-Bal for a few years now and find it very useful.

I've used Har-Bal on live sound to compensate for the inevitable poor mix generated for PA speaker systems, and it's worked very well. Remember, at its heart Har-Bal's only another way of determining and applying EQ - it's not Frequency Space Editing (that usually comes after!). But given the specific task you have in mind I suspect it would be very useful indeed.

My use of it is unusual and quite specific - I'm dealing with historic recordings where the frequency response of the recording equipment chain was anything but even, and trying to compensate for this - in other words, restoring not just the medium but the method. I've had to come up with a few tricks in order to carry this out with any regular degree of success, to learn the limitations of the approach, and figure out how best to handle a powerful and therefore potentially very damaging set of tools.

If you do get a copy of Har-Bal, try this: obtain a live track, recorded directly from the PA output feed, of a recording you also have in a good-sounding studio version. Load the former up as the track to be EQ'd (check they're in tune with each other first and repitch if necessary) and the latter as a reference. At the different resolutions you'll see where each differs, though they're supposedly the same notes being played by the same band on the same instruments - it'll give you a good idea of the shortcomings of the live sound. Then start to EQ-match them up - roughly to begin with (unless there are very specific problems to be overcome) and then more and more closely, and listen to how the live sound changes. (I found a bootleg live Camera Obscura recording, apparently made using a MiniDisc and microphone, which improved dramatically using this technique!)

Of course if the live sound is better than the studio sound, you can always try this the other way round...

It's just a starter, but it's likely to be a valuable lesson in EQ, as well as a very handy trick to have up your sleeve!