Everything you want to know about Studio One 3.2

[LawrenceF]

I didn't say "marketing people", rather, it's marketing concerns.

Again, you're making assumptions that have no supportable factual basis, you just "think" that might be happening so you present it as being "probably true"... then you support that assumption with additional comments. I would say if your first assumption has no basis in supportable fact, for any given company, all the rest of it is pure baseless speculation.

That you might have seen that happen in a company you worked in the past for doesn't mean it's happening elsewhere. If you have a factual basis to support it happening somewhere else, Avid, PreSonus, Steinberg, etc, then that would be a different story.

It's not up to KVR members to prove what you say isn't true, to prove a negative, it's up to your to prove what you imply is true... if it matters.

If you have evidence that a company's development path is driven by "marketing concerns", present it. I live in the real world and I tend to not ignore actual facts. If you have a factual basis for suggesting that something that showed up in a product that might have been on the development table for 18 months was driven by "marketing concerns" (not even sure what you mean by that) ... that would be what it is, if it's true.

Again, not making an argument, more just trying to have a reasonable and factual discussion.

[Gamma-UT]

This is a very good point, but, it is clearly dependent on how crosstalk is implemented, and modeled. If the source of crosstalk is pre-fader, then you may not get the gluing that you intend, rather you get a sort of a mushy glue.

Given that these plugins have arisen largely because of summing boxes, I reckon it's fairly safe to assume that the signal hitting the bus is everything that could contribute to inter-channel. Your point is well made, but I'm trying to think from the PoV of the analogue summing-bus fan (and how this might be replicated).

Also, as I mentioned above, crosstalk in boards that I've had (all cheap) was never uniform across all channels. So, you would not get the kick compressing everything in a nice uniform manner.

That's true, and it's something that could be exploited, especially if you want that overdriven 90s Mackie sound – but more controllably if you set up a bus with with the worst 'aggressor' signals and use those to drive the side chains of compressors on channels where you want to hear that effect. Personally, I prefer that idea to flailing around blindly with a summing-bus emulator.

[Gamma-UT]

It's an added feature, probably requested by real musicians that play real instruments that want the analog noise, crosstalk and drive of classic analog consoles. It probably works best with live instruments played by live players. If you're adding it to your sterile digital midi, you're probably not getting it's full potential.

Ah yes, good old live instrument electrons. Much better than those sterile digital electrons. Maybe the electrons were just different in the 90s when you had a DX wood-piano bass and a bunch of Akai sampler channels bouncing their way through a Mackie.

[ghettosynth]

I didn't say "marketing people", rather, it's marketing concerns.

Again, you're making assumptions that have no supportable factual basis

Nobody is proving or disproving anything here, it's a discussion, I've given my opinion based on my experience and perception of Presounus. In my experience it is the rule, not the exception. I'm not going to debate this endlessly, I think that, in general, most larger companies and even many smaller companies will work this way.

I'm not sure what your goal is here? Are you offended by my mentioning of Reaper? There is sufficient evidence in the forums alone to support my point that it is less market driven than S1, or Cubase, or really most of the other big daws. This is probably just a factor of the unique circumstances surrounding its development.

[LawrenceF]

...the room...

^^^ Is what separates most of us from the proverbial "big boys". ^^^

Those guys often talk about how two dimensional and narrow our recordings and mixes sound because we record everything dry, and they don't. It's the biggest disadvantage of the smallish home studio, not having a good ambient space to record... and trying to fake it with digital reverbs.

[LawrenceF]

I'm not sure what your goal is here?

I was tempted to ask you the same thing.

Assuming that what you believe is even true (which is highly debatable), why would it even matter if Steinberg is driven by marketing and the people buying it like the direction?

I do like and own Reaper,, but their lack of mass marketing plays no role whatsoever as to why I like it. I couldn't care less if they never had a Reaper ad or had 1000 Reaper ads claiming all kinds of things. I only care that it works.

The singular purpose of these products is to get something done, that's all. What the marketeers do trying to sell more of them to make more money has no direct relationship to that. Either the thing does what you need it to do or it doesn't. Marketing can't change that.

[nIGhT-SoN]

Sometimes you don't know how useful is something until you lose it. This could be the case with hiss/noise/crosstalk.

I think in some cases it could be good, but not in all of them. Having the opportunity to choose if you want to use it or not should be, and a think it is, a good thing.

...The singular purpose of these products is to get something done, that's all. What the marketeers do trying to sell more of them to make more money has no direct relationship to that. Either the thing does what you need it to do or it doesn't. Marketing can't change that.

And since there is a full demo, you can find yourself if it's pure marketing or it is actually something useful.

[LawrenceF]

Yes all that analog goodness everyone is trying to emulate comes from recording live instruments well in a great room.

Yeah, as relates to "depth" it does for sure. Some of the things these guys do with ambient mics sound great and are pretty hard to emulate with reverb plugins. Like with some sampler instrument tracks, they only sound good when you aren't directly comparing them to the real thing.

[LawrenceF]

And since there is a full demo, you can find yourself if it's pure marketing or it is actually something useful.

That's what confuses me about the entire marketing discussion really.

I recall long, long ago where you actually couldn't do that. Where if you wanted to own Cubase or something you pretty much had to trust the marketing, or magazine reviews, and kinda take a flyer, and hope that the $800 you just spent on it turns out to be mostly justified by what happened when you actually used it.

Those days are long gone (for most products). Demo a thing and if it doesn't live up to your expectations or if you think it was over-hyped and that disturbs you, don't buy it?

[ghettosynth]

This is a very good point, but, it is clearly dependent on how crosstalk is implemented, and modeled. If the source of crosstalk is pre-fader, then you may not get the gluing that you intend, rather you get a sort of a mushy glue.

Given that these plugins have arisen largely because of summing boxes, I reckon it's fairly safe to assume that the signal hitting the bus is everything that could contribute to inter-channel. Your point is well made, but I'm trying to think from the PoV of the analogue summing-bus fan (and how this might be replicated).

Yes, I expect that they are implementing it post fader, but then I haven't played with it at all, this would be easy to test. I'm just not convinced that it's modeling anything in particular, there are really too many variables in how crosstalk manifests in real analog hardware that I don't think that it's worth the effort to model it accurately.

I think that your point is rather valid and in that light it makes sense to model it as uniform post fader for everything routed to the bus.

[Gamma-UT]

You don't even know the basics of recording analog. The background noise, ambience, the room and all the added gear's transformers and other components, not to mention the converters. I think you need to educate yourself on the basics first, before making your bold statements of truth.

Well, if you say so. Could you supply a diagram of where you put the converters in an analogue recording and mixing chain?

[Gamma-UT]

I'm just not convinced that it's modeling anything in particular, there are really too many variables in how crosstalk manifests in real analog hardware that I don't think that it's worth the effort to model it accurately.

There are simple usability issues. Can you imagine the confusion if you made the crosstalk variable based on 'distance' from the largest aggressor channels or pre-fader? "Hey, this DAW sucks, I can hear drums in the mix but they're all muted" etc etc. You're back to the Waves "why is there is a noise generator in this plugin?" discussion. Well, it's like this....

[ghettosynth]

I'm not sure what your goal is here?

I was tempted to ask you the same thing.

There's no need, I state it clearly. You are the one objecting to my statements.

Assuming that what you believe is even true (which is highly debatable), why would it even matter if Steinberg is driven by marketing and the people buying it like the direction?

It is true, are you in development or product management? I doubt very seriously that you are or you would realize how silly this discussion is. Product management is all about determining the most important features to meet the business goals of an organization. Developers implement the features that management wants, not the other way around.

This is from wikipedia, I really don't think that I should have to quote something like this in a discussion like this, it is basic for software development.

The software manager leads and manages one or several products from the inception to the phase-out in order to maximize business value. He works with marketing, sales, engineering, finance, quality, manufacturing and installation to make the product a business success (usually engineering and marketing). He has business responsibility beyond a single project. He determines what product and features to make and guide fully instruction with engineering team, is accountable for the business success within an entire portfolio. He approves the roadmap and content and determines what to and how to innovate.

Note the statement "(usually engineering and marketing)" this is the key here. This balance is important and if you have any experience with it you can often see when features are more driven by marketing vs engineering. Seriously dude, all products in large companies are done this way. It's really naive to think that all marketing does is push what's presented to them. That just isn't true.

That said, it doesn't matter, again, please read what I write instead of responding to what you imagine that I write. If you are not in the class of people who respond well to that approach, then you might like the attitude of Cockos. Simply management at cockos is developement. That's what makes the difference. They are simply small enough and well funded enough to embrace that approach.

I do like and own Reaper,, but their lack of mass marketing plays no role whatsoever as to why I like it.

Logical fallacy, you have formed the converse which does not necessarily follow from the original statement. You are also clearly an S1 fan, which suggests that you are not in the class of user that I'm talking about.

[ghettosynth]

Sometimes you don't know how useful is something until you lose it. This could be the case with hiss/noise/crosstalk.

Fair enough, I don't think that you can disagree with the general sense of that. But I don't think that you can say that bringing them back makes things better without some specific justification, it might just be placebo.

I think in some cases it could be good, but not in all of them. Having the opportunity to choose if you want to use it or not should be, and a think it is, a good thing.

I'm not really interested in this idea that some random thing in a track could be good, I was trying to get at specifics of when it IS good, and why.

There is a lot of bias happening in these sorts of features. Belief that it's a good emulation alone can impact your perception of audio.

...The singular purpose of these products is to get something done, that's all. What the marketeers do trying to sell more of them to make more money has no direct relationship to that. Either the thing does what you need it to do or it doesn't. Marketing can't change that.

And since there is a full demo, you can find yourself if it's pure marketing or it is actually something useful.

But this completely misses the point of these kinds of discussions. I'm not at all asking "will I like it", I don't need anyone else to answer that question. I'm asking if YOU like it and then I'm putting you on the spot to know why? Some of you will like it because of various placebo effects and biases. This is just human nature, I'm not trying to insult anyone, I'm just not that interested in opinions that aren't backed by specifics. I'm hoping that some of you will like it for specific reasons and will have the ability to articulate why clearly.

So far, only Gamma UT has offered anything really specific and positive. That's the level of discussion, either pro or con, that I'm interested in, that's why I posted in this thread.

So, do you use noise and crosstalk in your mix, and if so, why?

[nIGhT-SoN]

... I'm not really interested in this idea that some random thing in a track could be good, I was trying to get at specifics of when it IS good, and why.

I can't say right now since I haven't played with it that much, but in time we'll know for which type of material is better. I'm mostly producing electronic music and dunno how beneficial would be for me crosstalk and hiss.