Every time I export an audiomixdown in cubase it sounds crap

[Sicklecell666]

No, John Vestman is a golden-eared mastering engineer. Check what some people say about him:


"He could suck a billiard ball through a garden hose."
--Ryan Hafer - tea boy- Coach House Records

Thanks, man..I had a cold sore on my lip that was almost healed & when I read that I laughed hard & split my f**king lip open..now I'm bleeding like crazy..

[ericj23]

good answer - have you been away looking that up for the last 20 minutes ?

[pannewb]

because the stuff that you would engineer would sound actually worse

indeed.
Proud of it

[LBN]

I took his advice and now record everything to a firewire drive because everyone knows firewire has a more natural warmth than internal drives.

[hvaring]

I'd swear I saw a Jitter in a record once....

Dr. Jameson
PhD. in Abstract Ambiguity

ROFL

[Sascha Franck]

Sound is more than zeroes and ones,

I won't even talk about all the other stuff, but sound in the digital domain (which is what we're talking about here) is EXACTLY that: 1s and 0s - nothing more, and there's no myths behind it either.

Saying anything else is plain bullshit.

Yes, there's multiple factors having a potential to blow things up, bad CD lasers, bad sync, bad cables and so on.
In a *faulty* digital mixdown there might be other reasons too, such as a plugin that won't play back the same each time you play the song (there's some, basically those emulating analogue behaviour).

But I've done some summing tests in both Logic and Cubase, using "uncritical" material (i.e. sample accurate synths and audio material), and they were perfect. Could they be different from host to host? Defenitely yes. Were they bit-identical when compared in the same host? Defenitely yes.
No myths.

Everything you (or your John Vestman and Roger Nichols celebrities) said isn't caused in the digital realm - just as others pointed out eloquently allready. Burning a CD is an analog process.
Transfering data from a harddisk is as well. I don't even doubt that some people *may* hear a difference in files being played from different harddrives - even if I couldn't make them do anything else but cancel each other out when I did that for a test. Maybe John Vestman is just using inferior HDD controllers. I mean, after all he's using a Mac, and we all know that file tranfer rates on Macs are lousy, compared to any modern PC - so there's room for errors due to a file probably not being able of being played back in time.

Still, anything (even placing the computer on some rubber feet or whatever they might have done) is an analog process. Digital sound, if used properly, is nothing but about 1s and 0s.


Note to the others (because I don't want to discuss that with this Davor bloke who's just religiously following some questionable statements): There's one little thing left that I actually don't know about, and my current equipment doesn't allow for scientific tests all too easy (but I'll do them one day): Could it possibly be that different hosts are making a difference when communicating with your soundcard? Oh yes, they certainly do (one host using MME, the other using WDM, the other using ASIO, and so on...), but could this be causing audible differences?
Could the same simple stereo file, played back at fader setting 0 sound different in Logic than it would sound in Cubase? Or in WaveLab?
I know, I had to do a rerecording, then line things up properly and finally invert one of them - but as said, undoable with my current home setup (without running it through anything analog).

[M'Snah]

I took his advice and now record everything to a firewire drive because everyone knows firewire has a more natural warmth than internal drives.

... running off to the nearest computer shop... I need more warmth...

[M'Snah]

It's just fascinating that you have the nerve to dimiss people like JOhn Vestman as crazy

I never said anyone was crazy. Don't put words in my mouth like that. And to my knowledge I never dimissed anyone in my life either....

Where are you from Davor?

I'm from the middle of nowhere/ The Never Neverland And you?

I noticed you changed Zagreb into Cro (Croatia)?

[blixa]

I had a very strange experience today. After reading the first pages of this thread, I decided to change my pc setup. Instead of having it on my desk, I have put it on the floor now.

Then I started eXT again, with Albino, ZV, etc. And suddenly all the songs I created last week sound so much brighter now. I would never have believed the change until I tried it. My pc is feeling more relaxed and confident now it's out of sight of the keyboard and away from the Behringer stuff.

I find that my pc performs much more reliably if I nestle it gently against a cushion, make sure it gets plenty of light (not too much), clean it with a light feather duster & occasionally talk to it, y'know - tell it how wonderful it is etc.

My P4 laptop works well if I regularly hoover out the vents and store it in the fridge overnight

(PS, I also find it helps not to use Cubase SX )

:lol::lol:

you guys are slaying me...

[c_huelsbeck]

Some people say they hear a different sound quality when playing back from different HDs??? Either those drives (or their ears) are broken or I guess they have no understanding whatsoever, how digital sound gets from the drive to the soundcard output. Reading Jitter from an error-free HD doesn't apply, since all sound data is buffered several times over (the Disk DMA for example and the lovely Direct-X/ASIO audio buffers that give us our "beloved" latency, just to name a few).

While the soundcard "can" make a difference due to it's internal architecture and converters, it can't be that the output timing is screwed because of different hard-drives... the buffers take that totally out of the equation.

I also heard about the myth that more expensive digital audio cables (optical or coax) are supposed to make the sound better. While I see the possibility of digital jitter in that setting, specially when long cables are involved, my tests so far have not shown me any difference between a cheap and an expensive cable. The data was bit-identical in all transfer tests.

Also, digital jitter when it happens could easily be "straightened" up on the receiving end (which it probably is in most cases anyways if the hardware engineers didn't sleep) by just buffering the incomming data stream and clocking it correctly when handing to the output converters.

[IIRs]

"Jitter" is utterly meaningless when applied to a file stored on a HD. Its only possible to have jitter (ie: inconsistencies in the timing clock) when the data is clocked out at the DAC.

A CD player clocks the data out at 1x, and is susceptible to jitter.. a HD will read the data at many times faster than 1x, as it will be stored in RAM and clocked out by the DAC in the soundcard: any jitter will therefore occur at the soundcard stage..

[ericj23]

the problem is particulalry bad with red book cd's as they lack the error protection codes of a cd-rom

this means a cd player can easily read a single bit in a chunk incorrectly and not notice - this is not possible with the error correction used in dvd's and cd-roms

net result much less distortion

don't know if this is jitter tho

I'm intruiged by sasha's comments tho - can different drivers have different jitter amounts or does the sound card use the same buffering techniques and clock source as the computer in order to ensure stability througout ?

[Equilibrium]

This thread is so wierd now, things like this don't really matter much in the grand scheme of things. For the record though I don't see why you have to base your opinions on what other people say because they are "experts". I know fairly well a guy who has produced for U2 as well as a bunch of other really big names. His understanding of equipment is really basic though, he really doesn't know that much, his sucess is down to a natural tallent that's it.

I lined up two samples after reading this thread. There was no difference, and I don't need anyone to tell me otherwise.

Someone should kill this thread.

[popsych]

Davor the thing about different HD's giving other streams is BS. Digital is digital and as long as there's error correction like the one provided today it does not change the data. A scratched cd-rom e.g. would either read the whole file perfectly bit for bit or not read it and realise that it cannot reproduce it.

CD-A has errors because it is supposed to perform realtime and cannot re-read the same data twice. In the case it does it just interpolates so as not to stop playback.

Platinumears no offense, and no questioning of your talent or experience - not having heard your work - but years of working is pretty much useless as an indication of quality output IMHO. I have heard mixes from well established sound or mastering engineers who have been in the job for years and have "golden ears" in the 40 > age region which are surpassed by mixes from 20-30 year olds with a couple of years of experience. All this boils down to talent , equipment, eagerness to learn and keeping an open mind.

I still believe that daws produce a different output under complicated circumstances and these show up in nulling tests even under not so complicated routings.

However I believe the major difference in "hearing" different between DAWs can either be attributed to drivers as mentioned above, but i mainly believe this is probably an effect of how each host goes from 32 bit float (which all vst hosts require and should use) to 24 bit (or lower) for playback.

As for firewire drives i believe they sound really warm but i think usb (especially 2) sounds more like tube and it gives me better stereo separation about 20-40%

[Sascha Franck]

As for firewire drives i believe they sound really warm but i think usb (especially 2) sounds more like tube and it gives me better stereo separation about 20-40%

What he said...

<rushes out buying a number of USB 2 10,000RPM drives cuz they're sounding like EL84's>