quote:

Originally posted by tehlord Well I'm also not looking for a 'mastering' setup as I don't know how to master stuff and there's little agreement on what the word means anymore anyway I want glue and volume, and maybe a bit of EQ air. That's it.

For good clean loudness its hard to beat Voxengo Elephant, i find i can push it harder than the P Lim before it gets noticeable

___________________
hearthis
soundcloud
youtube

quote:

Originally posted by evo8 For good clean loudness its hard to beat Voxengo Elephant, i find i can push it harder than the P Lim before it gets noticeable

You know I demo'd that and I thought it added far too much colour to the mix.

Once again it may have been a user error so i'll take another look at it.

___________________
Soundcloud

quote:

Originally posted by chrissundive Thx for changing the tone mate : ) Well from my experience with Harbal, which I own, is that it can make the material sound harsh. The interface is not clear for me and I can't make it sound better then lets say UAD Cambridge EQ. The 32bitness isn't really a factor here. The linear phase is, but then again digital linear phase EQs are wide spread at the moment. My fav being the TC Dynamic EQ. Harbal works with advance FFT analysis and reconstruction (resyntesis if you like) of the audio material. The idea is great, but as I said the implementation doesn't cut it for me ... and I'm still waiting for the promised mac version :/ In the real world, you rarely have to EQ as much as Harbal gives you the advantage to. With a reasonably good mix, all you need is a couple of cuts here and there, one shelving filter, maybe a low cut and a hi cut (depends on the quality of the mix engineer). Thats it, you can do it with one instance of most EQs out there. I just remembered that I was once using Gliss EQ from voxengo and it also had a linear phase option plus a spectrum analyzer, which makes it a contender. It was ages ago so I can't say anything more. I also heard good stuff about the elephant limiter they've made but didn't try it myself.

I know, the authors haven't put in much time on the interface.. And they reason it with that they are audio engineers concentrating on audio purely, and they want the GUI to remain this way to reflect that. They simply don't want to make a fancy looking GUI.

Yes this is something I have experienced myself.. If the mix is good enough you don't need to do all the drastic changes Har-bal allows you to, it can only make it worse.. So ye I agree with you on that.. You don't always need all the control.. But for a little less excellent mixdowns it's pure gold, with the harmonic EQ control and all, just fantastic. About limiters, personally I prefer the Ozone4 limiter, and find it superior to any other thing I've ever tried.. Especially the Intelligent I and the new II behavior are excellent. And also the interface for the limiter is just great. You get a DC filter there as well, and dithering options. But for dithering though I'm rather using one of the POW-r algorithms, and very often the POW-r3 which pushes the noise-floor of dither below -150dB(!!) at 3kHz. I really like how silky and transparent this critical spectrum is handled, it's really 32bit like. Even Bob Katz can't hear the difference :P

Last edited by lenieNt Force on Jan-28-2010 at 12:55

Well I tend to send off rubbish mixes with free advice on what to correct. The same as "we can fix it in the mix", "we can fix it in the mastering" is also a false statement. Correcting a really bad mix with a lot of problem areas won't satisfy the client anyway, because they are expecting magic from you anyway : ) So for me its a fair trade if I sent someone off for a corrective remix.

The interface that you describe is the interface I found in TC 6000 processors and algos for the Poco. Its minimal and you can see ... or hear, that its about the sound, not the looks. With Harbal its the functionality of the interface that spoils it for me. And the developer didn't put any work into it for the last year or more, correct me if I'm wrong.

Anyway : ) the final answer to the mastering question is : do a good mix

___________________
www.myspace.com/chrissundive

quote:

Originally posted by chrissundive Well I tend to send off rubbish mixes with free advice on what to correct. The same as "we can fix it in the mix", "we can fix it in the mastering" is also a false statement. Correcting a really bad mix with a lot of problem areas won't satisfy the client anyway, because they are expecting magic from you anyway : ) So for me its a fair trade if I sent someone off for a corrective remix. The interface that you describe is the interface I found in TC 6000 processors and algos for the Poco. Its minimal and you can see ... or hear, that its about the sound, not the looks. With Harbal its the functionality of the interface that spoils it for me. And the developer didn't put any work into it for the last year or more, correct me if I'm wrong. Anyway : ) the final answer to the mastering question is : do a good mix

Mhm, totally agree with you. If the mix isn't up to par really the best thing to do would be to send it back.. Or request to do a multi-track master / new mixdown yourself..

Gotcha.. I get what you mean about Har-Bal.. It can be a bit cluttered, especially the timeline could need some serious improvements, but thats also what they're working on with the new version, even automation of the response curve alongside the changing material. But you get used to it as it is now, at least I did. And theres so many ingenious techniques to how you can use har-bal its just not funny :P .. One of the most interesting ones being Empathetic Equalisation!

I don't do mastering for clients myself, I just have a lot of knowledge about it. I only master my own work and for some friends.

quote:

Originally posted by chrissundive I do a fair bit of professional mastering, and either piece of kit doesn't deliver any professional sounding results. To get stuff up to a level just use a limiter. If you're using Logic, use Adaptive Limiter, Maximizer is fine in Cubase 4 and 5 and if you're using something else try a free Event Horizon from Stillwell Audio (or Shwa, I don't quite remember, but those companies are the same). If you want to use the term Mastering, well it means a hell lot more than just limiting : ) but if you've got a good sounding mix, just squeez it with a reasonable limiter to get RMS and you've got a decent demo. You can check some of my mastering works and a bit of theory here : www.myspace.com/powersoundengineering

are you using the actual tc 6000 or the ported powercore algorythms from the 5000

I'm renting the actual 6000 upon request. I've got the 5000 algos in my personal studio. £9k is a bit much at the moment.

___________________
www.myspace.com/chrissundive