Har-Bal

Over the past few weeks I have had the pleasure to talk to and work with the good people at HDQTRZ Digital Studios (US), the mastering house for the likes of Public Enemy and other acts. They have, in a joint venture with TAQUIS (Australia), created and are now distributing a product called "Har-Bal", OK, weird name, I'll give you that, but it stands for "Harmonic Balancer", which is what the good mastering engineer spends most of his or her time doing. Harmonic Balancing is aligning tones and frequencies to a consistent, pleasing level for the listener.

Very often, even the best home studios are not tuned as well as they should be, so the music coming out of the studio, while sounding great in the studio, is less than it should be outside the studio. This is usually caused by mix down and mastering techniques and processes that compensate for the less-than-adequate tuning of the listening environment of the room. The result of misaligned tones and inconsistent EQing of the music.

Enter Har-Bal...

Har-Bal takes your audio file (it supports many file types), analyzes the processing of it and displays the results (see screenshot below). These results can show significant peaks and valleys in your audio. These peaks and valleys increase the fatigue that your ears experience while listening...whether you know it or not. Har-Bal uses an 8196-point linear phase FIR filter to match and compensate for the average spectrum as closely as possible. In theory what this does is eliminate the need to test your mastered CD's in your car, on a small stereo, in a boom box, in a walkman and any other environment you can think of, because it's designed to balance the tones that create the problems from environment to environment.

Har-Bal allows you to grab the peak or valley in the spectrum and pull it down or raise it up to a more pleasing range and even out the sonic spectrum of the audio. From there it allows you to save the "filter" that you used, and compare it against other songs to prepare a group of songs for a release. When doing this it is important that the song sounds fluid, and moves nicely from one into another. Not in music style or anything like that, but in perceived volume and tonal quality. Being able to compare and contrast songs like Har-Bal allows you to do makes MUCH quicker work out of this step that is so often forgotten or hurried by the typical home studio owner. So much quicker in fact, maybe home studio owners may actually start doing it...

I did look through the documentation, which as a rule I really only had to once or twice because of the programs very targeted task list. It is pretty intuitive so the help menu may not get used much, but, the documentation is very good and very informative beyond just the "how do I do this" and explains what it does, not just how to do it. Their web site also has a very complete list of FAQ's to answer many of the common questions about this rather new concept in audio processing.

It has been an interesting experience so far, showing me the flaws in my current mastering jobs. I used two songs of very different style to play with. One very mellow acoustic tune and one dirtier, more hard rocking one. Both of these songs were not as finished as I would of liked them, but I was reasonably happy. I found that each had peaks and valleys in the spectrum, the acoustic one MUCH more than the dirty one. After tinkering around with Har-Bal I also found that the treatment I gave it worked better on the dirty tune, I was happier with those results than I was the acoustic one, though both had audible differences. However, that said, the more I played with it, and got to know it, the cleaner track started showing signs of improvement.

I do think there is some room for improvements, and judging by the receptiveness of the people I have been talking to improvements WILL be coming. Some things I immediately noticed that I really dug:

• Small, clean install and limited disk space usage
• Nice display of the spectrum, the spectrum display expands and contracts very well with the window size.
• Pretty simple, straightforward interface that takes limited time to understand

Things that I believe would be great additions to the product:

• I hate to admit it, but I like apps that look cool, if I am going to stare at a program all day, it better look pleasing, Har-Bal is kind of old-school with basic windows components to make up the interface.
• LED meters would be awesome to see when, as you adjust the spectrum, any clipping is introduced.
• A "Q" adjustment to control the width of the frequency range that is dragged. Though Har-Bal does manage the Q quite well automatically, I can see times where one might want full manual control.
• A "draw" function to draw a line from on peak to another and quickly bring up the volume of everything between them (also work for lowering signals between to valleys.
• My very first thought when opening this was "WOW, this would be awesome as a plugin that I can use in WaveLab", lo and behold, they are working on one. WooHoo! Then some the issues I presented above would actually be handled by the host application, not Har-Bal itself, and since I do the majority of my mastering in WaveLab, it seems only logical to try to keep all the processing in one app rather than bouncing back and forth.

According to Paavo Jumppanen, the developer of Har-Bal, it is becoming a very high priority to get a Mac-compatible version of Har-Bal developed as they have had many requests for it already. And, as stated previously, they are also working on a plugin version, which I personally very excited about. He also gave me a sneak peak into his visions of the future, which include working with layers to allow an engineer to work with a collection of tracks more easily and to get more consistent and predicable results. Also there was a mention of splitting tracks to allow applying multiple filters, which I can see adding a plethora of possibilities.

Har-Bal is already in use by some professional production houses for audio and television, as well as some recognizable artists predominantly in the rap and hip hop genres (who I may be able to mention, but ya know, the music industry is getting wacky these days protecting everything) and is starting to create quite a stir in the industry. If this is the first time you have heard of Har-Bal, it surely won't be the last. The uses of Har-Bal goes far beyond any genre, it's for music as a whole.

Currently Har-Bal is taking links to mp3's and will Harbalize many of them to prove the good it can do. They have listed some before and after samples on their web site that are pretty good examples of what it does, it is sometimes subtle, sometimes very dramatic, but it is almost always pleasing. You can get more information, listen to samples, submit your mp3 and purchase the software from http://www.har-bal.com/. They have a demo version available for download, but it's limitation is 8bit playback, which unfortunately gives limited incite into how it will perform in the real world, but they have to protect their product somehow.

All in all, I think this program has enough to make some waves in the currently perceived "norm" of the mastering process, and I also see a lot of room to grow. Judging by my experience with the marketers and developers thus far, I think it will continue to improve, as they are very receptive to comments and very passionate about this new product. The more I play with it, and get into it's "zone" the more I like it. One thing I know for sure, Steinberg, Sonic Foundry, Cakewalk and the other players in this space are going to be kind of pissed off they didn't think of this. I look forward to continuing my involvement with Har-Bal, as I think it can change the way we look at the often misunderstood or ignored process of home recording, the task of mastering.