Different hosts produces different sound ?

[cron]

if one host processes audio internally ie through its on mixer as 32 bit audio while another processes audio as 16 there will be a difference because the 16 bit process will intoduce more aliasing -

Aliasing artifacts have nothing whatsoever to do with the bit depth of the audio.

okay then smart arse, if aliasing artefacts are not a prodct of resoulution what are they

[smart arse] They're a product of insufficient sampling rates causing the generation of false frequencies. [/smart arse]

Where did you pull the -100db figure from by the way?

[ceenda]

There's a website with a bit about aliasing between different music apps here:

http://www.simonv.com/music/quality/

Some interesting info. Can't vouch for it's accuracy though. But FLStudio's rendered output scores quite nicely.

And Renoise rendered output is very good, rendered output from that always sounds very rich and crisp. But at the end of the day I think alot depends on how personally you EQ your various channels. "Workman + tools" analogy possibly.

[saulc12]

if one host processes audio internally ie through its on mixer as 32 bit audio while another processes audio as 16 there will be a difference because the 16 bit process will intoduce more aliasing -

Aliasing artifacts have nothing whatsoever to do with the bit depth of the audio.

okay then smart arse, if aliasing artefacts are not a prodct of resoulution what are they

[smart arse] They're a product of insufficient sampling rates causing the generation of false frequencies. [/smart arse]

Where did you pull the -100db figure from by the way?

[saulc12]

if one host processes audio internally ie through its on mixer as 32 bit audio while another processes audio as 16 there will be a difference because the 16 bit process will intoduce more aliasing -

Aliasing artifacts have nothing whatsoever to do with the bit depth of the audio.

okay then smart arse, if aliasing artefacts are not a prodct of resoulution what are they

[smart arse] They're a product of insufficient sampling rates causing the generation of false frequencies. [/smart arse]

Where did you pull the -100db figure from by the way?

aliasing artefacts are as a result of insufficient resolution that can be either sample rates or bit depth, but I guess you already know this as you seem to know everything

[kritikon]

Can't say I've ever noticed any difference between hosts at comparable price points. I have however, noticed quite large differences between different setups that was due to amps, monitors, hardware, room accoustics...and even huger differences caused by mixing.

To be brutally honest - for most of us we should worry more about how good or crap our mixing is rather than pay any attention at all to things like spurious arguments about sound differences between Logic/Cubase/Sonar etc. That is the least of our worries that no outside listener could detect anyway. Half a dB of Eq boost or cut in the wrong place is going to make much more difference than the summing buss in any expensive host.

[saulc12]

Can't say I've ever noticed any difference between hosts at comparable price points. I have however, noticed quite large differences between different setups that was due to amps, monitors, hardware, room accoustics...and even huger differences caused by mixing.

To be brutally honest - for most of us we should worry more about how good or crap our mixing is rather than pay any attention at all to things like spurious arguments about sound differences between Logic/Cubase/Sonar etc. That is the least of our worries that no outside listener could detect anyway. Half a dB of Eq boost or cut in the wrong place is going to make much more difference than the summing buss in any expensive host.

I agree with you 100% and must admit I am ashamed at joining in such a stupid argument, but I did think the person who asked the original question deserved a better explanation tha somebody saying that he was wrong and that the differences (which really do exist) that he perceived were a myth.

But as I say, I am ashamed

[original flipper]

HI

I asked this same question a while back and got a considerably larger amout of silly responses than I myself have contributed; a good question but doomed to failure by the 'anoraks'; unfortunately.

The question is deserving of being answered from an emotional standpoint IMO, when people turn something like MUSIC into a techfest of explanation I think they have lost heart of what is essentially an emotive and timeless pursuit - but there you go.

Most currently avalible software will give you adequate 'sound quality' to produce recordings(should you have the talent) for worldwide global dominance of the record charts.

Flipper.

[cron]

Sorry if I've got my terminology wrong, didn't mean to come across as a dick (until you called me a smart arse anyway ) but that's the first time I've heard sample truncation referred to as aliasing. One thing I absolutely agree with though is that any sonic differences which may exist aren't anything more intrusive than an impercetibly slight EQ tweak, and that it's a little pointless arguing as to which host sounds the 'best'.

[tha_man]

There's a website with a bit about aliasing between different music apps here:

http://www.simonv.com/music/quality/

This is not comparision of hosts, but a comparision of samplers! There is important difference. You can use e.g. Kontakt in Fruity Loops, and you'll get Kontakt's results, not those of Fruity Loops.

[wrench45us]

there's a possibility that it's a sound card difference for my case
since P-5 will work with whatever's available and auto select
while Sonar will only work when the ASIO PCMCIA card is in the slot.
i tend to work in P-5 with the laptop's resident sound card simply out of convenience. I'll have to try some things tonight and see.
i suspect the differences i'm hearing will not be soundcard dependent

[stefancrs]

Aliasing is not a product of bit depth, it never is. It's always a product of sampling spectral content above nyquist. Hosts never alias. Ever. Synths / effects / sample rate conversions may cause aliasing. If the host (for whatever dumb-assed reason) performs automatic clipping on a channel basis, it _will_ f**k sounds up. But I seriously doubt any host does this.

[ceenda]

There's a website with a bit about aliasing between different music apps here:

http://www.simonv.com/music/quality/

This is not comparision of hosts, but a comparision of samplers! There is important difference. You can use e.g. Kontakt in Fruity Loops, and you'll get Kontakt's results, not those of Fruity Loops.

Ah, my bad. I got confused between the debate about rendered output and individual sampler quality at realtime.

In fact, I already use rgcaudio's SFZ as a Soundfont player in FruityLoops as it sounds a little better than the Fruity Soundfont Player one that comes with it (albeit for a price). I tend to just use the ordinary sampler in Orion as I'm quite impressed with the quality of it out of the box.

[saulc12]

Aliasing is not a product of bit depth, it never is. It's always a product of sampling spectral content above nyquist. Hosts never alias. Ever. Synths / effects / sample rate conversions may cause aliasing. If the host (for whatever dumb-assed reason) performs automatic clipping on a channel basis, it _will_ f**k sounds up. But I seriously doubt any host does this.

Well as you are a sound programmer for digital illusions, I guess that I must apologise because my many years working in graphics and multimedia, where the term aliasing as applied to resolution originated from has obviously led me to an incorrect definition in this context, but please at least consider this, you have two digital recordings, both recorded at identical sample rates, however, one recording is 32 bit and one is 16 bit, changes in volume between samples will be represented much more accurately in the 32 bit recording than in the 16 bit recording, what is more the effectiveness oversampling (a standard technique for reducing aliasing artefacts in both graphics and audio) will be greater in the 32 bit version than in the 16 bit version - these differences may be imperceptable, but they are there.

So I stand corrected on my 'abuse' of the term aliasing in the context of audio, but I would maintain that bit depth does have an effect on the measures used to reduce aliasing of digital audio. I would also suggest that there may be no such thing as a true alias free digital oscillator and that this term is used for oscillators that produce no perceptble aliasing. But I could be wrong about this also.

As for nyquist limit, I know that this states that you must make digital recordings at at least twice the frequency of the highest frequency that you wish to capture, but even if you stick to this rule I believe you would still get aliasing - consider this you record a sine wave played at a frequency of 11KHz using a sample rate of 44KHz - the resulting recording will consist of just 4 samples per cycle - this would not look very much like a real sine wave and would I suspect be very heavily aliased.

I would say that I am not talking from a totally uneducated position, but simply trying to present a reasonable explanation in simple terms to a question that somebody asked in relation to something they noticed about different hosts. It was not my intention to get involved in lengthy arguments or debates about anything and certainly not to cause offence to anyone.

Feel free to call me an idiot if you like, that is entirely up to you.

[Josmoker]

So I stand corrected on my 'abuse' of the term aliasing in the context of audio, but I would maintain that bit depth does have an effect on the measures used to reduce aliasing of digital audio.

That's usually referred to as 'quantization noise'.

Regarding the original question:
I don't think that this will be influencing my decision on which host to use so it doesn't make much of a difference to me...

Cheers, Jo

[ceenda]

There's a website with a bit about aliasing between different music apps here:

http://www.simonv.com/music/quality/

This is not comparision of hosts, but a comparision of samplers! There is important difference. You can use e.g. Kontakt in Fruity Loops, and you'll get Kontakt's results, not those of Fruity Loops.

Ah, my bad. I got confused between the debate about rendered output and individual sampler quality at realtime.

In fact, I already use rgcaudio's SFZ as a Soundfont player in FruityLoops as it sounds a little better than the Fruity Soundfont Player one that comes with it (albeit for a price). I tend to just use the ordinary sampler in Orion as I'm quite impressed with the quality of it out of the box.

Actually... doesn't even the output from Kontakt end up going through Fruity Loop's internal audio processing on it's way to the FX and Master output?