Har-Bal - Anyone used it?

[Machinated]

Just caught their website today, it looks fairly interesting. Im still not exactly too sure what its getting at, but the impression I'm getting is, its a Spectrum Analyzer/EQ that shows where to edit and fix your general EQ of your mixes, before you master them.

If anyone has used it, does it make that much of a difference to your mixes? Easy to use? Worth the £55?

Har-Bal

-Ed

 

[Suicide_As_Alibi]

Yeah I've used it - it shows you spectrums for the peak, the mean, and the average of the song for the whole song, and lets you alter them too.

To be honest, I don't think it's much different than running the Waves PAZ thing and an EQ on the master bus - and only being able to edit the final track means it's not as flexible too. It only shows the average for the track too, so if you have a section where everything but the guitar drops out (for example), you get some odd effects. It does have a tool for creating an 'optimum' spectral pattern, but it changes thing too much for my liking.

It's definitely easy to use, but after mucking about with it a bit I don't think I'd use it enough to warrent buying it.

Steve

 

[AStacy2]

I've used it and I like it a lot. When you have a good spectrum analyzer that matches loudness as you work with the EQ curve it helps out a lot and dosen't make you overcompress things when mastering to reach your desired levels. I rely on mainly plugins to master the mixes I do and after using Har-Bal I wouldn't want to master tracks without it. I think it's definately worth the money and it is a lot different and better from other shit that's like it.

 

[AStacy2]

Also, unlike what Suicide said you can use it on any track you want, not just the final mix. I've never done this but I'm sure if you went through and did it to all your tracks you could get some pretty stellar results. You can also use any track you want for a reference track and try to get your EQ curve to look somewhat similar to any track you like.