Difference in Zebra sound quality on 2 different machines...

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Hi,

I've got fairly modern spec PC laptop which I use to run plug ins/soft synths and an elderly desktop PC which i use to run hardware synths.

As Zebra is pretty much the only soft synth I use I wanted to see how the older PC would cope with running it. As it turns out the old PC can cope with it ok (as long as I'm not using 4 x quad oscillators with the voices set to 'many'!!) and to compare the cpu usage I called up Zebra on my laptop.

I started to play around and I soon noticed a difference in sound quality between the two machines. I was using identical presets and the sound coming from my laptop was a lot brighter and generally sounded a lot nicer.

Now, the two machines are using different audio devices- the laptop is using an M-audio Firewire 410 (which has balanced connections) and the older PC is using an M-audio Audiophile 2496 sound card (which has unbalanced connections).

I was using them both at identical sample rates. Would the balanced VS unbalanced connections be the cause in the difference in sound quality?

Or does Zebra somehow work out that there is less CPU resources available (as with the older PC) and somehow adjust itself to fit the machine spec?

Or could it be something i've completely missed?!

*Edit*

I have yet to try it with 2 different soft synths...
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I would say the most obvious explanation to this is level mismatching. One computer is louder than the other thus sounding "better".
I doubt the difference in soundcards makes that much of a difference. And the connection should'nt matter at all.

"*Edit*

I have yet to try it with 2 different soft synths..."

Good,now you're thinking like a true scientist.
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jupiter8 wrote:Good,now you're thinking like a true scientist.
ha ha! more like a joker surrounded by flashing lights and computers!

I hear what you're saying with the leveling but both machines were kicking out equal volumes, I made sure of that.

It's bizarre!

:shock:
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grandmasterbird wrote:
jupiter8 wrote:Good,now you're thinking like a true scientist.
ha ha! more like a joker surrounded by flashing lights and computers!

I hear what you're saying with the leveling but both machines were kicking out equal volumes, I made sure of that.

It's bizarre!

:shock:
Can't say i've ever heard of a synth that adjusts it's quality depending on the CPU so that's probably not it,though i could obviously have missed something.

Render an audio file on both computers and play them back on both computers and see what happens then.

Level matching is tricky business and hard to get exactly right. That's still my number one suspect.
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Yeah, right. Wasn't first with my idea (look up) so ignore this. Me. Or whatever. :)
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jupiter8 wrote:
grandmasterbird wrote:
jupiter8 wrote:Good,now you're thinking like a true scientist.
ha ha! more like a joker surrounded by flashing lights and computers!

I hear what you're saying with the leveling but both machines were kicking out equal volumes, I made sure of that.

It's bizarre!

:shock:
Can't say i've ever heard of a synth that adjusts it's quality depending on the CPU so that's probably not it,though i could obviously have missed something.

Render an audio file on both computers and play them back on both computers and see what happens then.

Level matching is tricky business and hard to get exactly right. That's still my number one suspect.

Will do. I'm not going to have access for a bit so I'll post up my findings soon as...
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Can't think of any reason other than volume or audio card.

Zebra is definately *not* adjusting anything to match cpu requirements.
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audio card can make a significant difference... try rendering audio and play them back from one machine... also, use the same midi file to play both so you get the exact same input and make sure you actually have identical presets and the audio is not being affected by midi mapping on one machine that is different from the other.
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Urs wrote: Zebra is definately *not* adjusting anything to match cpu requirements.
Who knows ... Remember HAL 9000 ? .
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grandmasterbird wrote:Or could it be something i've completely missed?!
bounce them to disk and compare the actual files.
An idiot on Set Theory:
"In some cases there is an object called red that contains everything that is red. In much the same way a pot is a plate."
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Ok, bounced down the audio, burned onto cd and listened to it via a seperate cd player.

No difference in quality.

Tried with different audio cables and different channels on the mixer. Same problem.

So that leads me to believe it's the soundcard.

Most annoying!
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Phewwww... what's most annoying for you is a big relief for me :oops:
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Urs wrote:Phewwww... what's most annoying for you is a big relief for me :oops:
ha ha! apologies Urs, didnt mean to add to the stress!! :wink:
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I hope you are not using Directsound.. on certain boards it resamples all output and you can kiss your high freq definition goodbye. If that's not it, I'm out of ideas.

At least the rendered audio is unaffected, so the culprit must lie in the DAC?
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tetsuneko wrote:I hope you are not using Directsound.. on certain boards it resamples all output and you can kiss your high freq definition goodbye. If that's not it, I'm out of ideas.

At least the rendered audio is unaffected, so the culprit must lie in the DAC?

what's Directsound?

funnily enough it seemed to be the high end which was being affected.....
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