Har-Bal releases revision 6 of versio...

Just a quick FYI to all you Har-Bal users, I know there are quite a few of you. They released revision 6 of the 3.0 application recently. I few tweaks and fixes and whatnot.

Straight from Earle and Paavo:

This build provides two enhancements and a number of bug fixes. The enhancements include a change to the analysis to exclude silence and a change to the limiter.

Analysis Change
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In the previous release of Har-Bal track silence would be incorporated in the track analysis. If your track had a lot of silence in it this would bias the average spectrum analysis downward substantially. The new implementation rejects any content less than 65dB below the peak level of the track.

This change required a change to the file format so if you have existing projects that you have developed with revision 5 or earlier and you open them with revision 6, the files will be upgraded and if saved will no longer be editable by earlier versions of Har-Bal.

Limiter Change
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One criticism made of Har-Bal has been the inability of the Har-Bal limiter to push track levels into the current target levels for commercial tracks. If attempting to do so the result is typically pumping caused by the low frequency content modulating the level of the remainder.

This version largely eliminates that problem by taking the signal path, splitting it into two bands, a low frequency band (below 400Hz) and a high frequency band (above 400Hz), limit both bands, recombine them and then limit the final output. The limiters are identical and uses the stock standard implementation from release 5. The result is a limiter that arguably performs better than most and can easily support the "stupid" commercial levels demanded by clients, but with the clean sound typical of the single band Har-Bal limiter when used more conservatively.

Bug Fixes
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The following bug fixes have been addressed in this version.

1) Filter changed bug: Opening a filter and then closing it would result in a filter changed message when no change was made.
2) Open and cancel analysis bug: On opening a new track and cancelling the analysis phase the analysis would continue to run in the background despite it being cancelled.
3) Cursor icon disappearing after edit bug: On making a edit with the gain tool for example, the gain tool cursor icon would disappear and be replaced by the stock arrow cursor.
4) File New Incovenience: Clicking the filter new toolbar button would always result in a filter not saved warning message even if making edits to a segmented filter, making segment editing annoying. Now the warning is only displayed if a completely new filter is being created.
5) File corruption and playback stability issues: Under certain circumstances Har-Bal would corrupt the .hbf filter file and playback would stutter in others. A number of changes have been made to eliminate the file corruption and reduce playback stutter issues.

We recommend that you download and install the latest version from here,

www.har-bal.com/cgi-bin/product_downloads.pl

Log in with your customer name and order number from your previous version 3 purchase. If you are running version 2.3 and would like to upgrade please contact us via email at [email protected] .

In the case of Windows, please be sure to completely uninstall the previous Har-Bal 3.0 release before installing, otherwise a corrupt install may result.

Also be aware that the mp3 file loading feature in the Windows version may not function on Windows XP due to missing codec interfaces.

regards,

Paavo & Earle.

Get it here in the download area for users www.har-bal.com/cgi-bin/product_downloads.pl

Har-Bal releases revision 6 of version 3