Samplitude: Best sounding Daw?

[thecontrolcentre]

no fruity loops in here?

Why would we be discussing breakfast cereal?

Coz it's more interesting than discussing which DAW sounds best. I like porridge with soya milk and honey

[budweiser]

No matters. It's the song, not the sound. When i'm listening to NIN, DM or something else, i just don't mind and NEVER ask me : " how greater this song could have been if trent have recorded within cubase instead of PT ?". It's emotional feeling, the sound is just a wear.
By the way i really like the way samplitude sounds , and always start in cubase and achieve in samp, but mainly for it's fantastic cpu friendly object features.

[trimph1]

of course they do!!!! now they have Pebbles Boulders, as counterintuitive as that sounds.

They have to use chipping hammers to break those apart...

[IncarnateX]

For far too long best-sounding-daw-tests that rejects the null hypothesis has been considered either to be universally true or -like at KVR- ridiculously false. However a little knowledge on the multimodal integration of perceptions might provide an alternative hypothesis that can explain such results. You probably all know the saying "seeing is believing"? Well it might equally be true that "seeing is hearing". Take for instance a look at this free article, which sums up some of the most important findings on the issue:

http://ocw.xjtu.edu.cn:2009/NR/rdonlyre ... visual.pdf

Here is a quote:

Ultimately multi-modal (or multi-sensory) integration should lead to noticeable behavioral effects. For human, the most interesting case is speech perception, which is usually considered an auditory modality but is strongly influenced by visual input. Being able to see the person that is talking to you leads to an increased intelligibility, especially in adverse conditions (high noise, reverberation, competing talkers) as shown by Sumby and Pollack (1954)

So do not underestimate how much you like the look of your favorite DAW. In principle it can affect your auditory perception to an extent where you actually hear differences.

Cheers

[trimph1]

No one ever wins, Except Charlie Sheen

my god now he's on those idiot fiat commercials. I hate that car

meh...it certainly beats a Renault 2CV

[hibidy]

for the record:

PT, live, sonar, and cubase are among those that have made the claim of better/warm/mostawsomest sounding. Nuendo is 20-40% better (well, that was the sound engine )

Wasn't Avid claiming the same regarding the new Pro Tools 10?

I don't know, but wouldn't surprise me



(sorry about the lame ad in the beginning, but please watch)

[AC222]

[quote="Burillo"][quote="AC222"]Yeah,

Let's keep this thread going! Let me say that I don't believe that "it's just math, all DAWS sum the same. Apply same panning, levels, and it cancels when you invert the phase. Null this. Null that". This guy ain't buying it.[/quote]
it is true regardless of whether or not you're "buying it". If the files null, they are the same. If they don't - [b]then[/b] you can talk about this or that sounding different. But then again, not nulling null tests usually come from either user error or incompetence (no disrespect meant, we all are incompetent in something).

but i hope you were being sarcastic and i didn't catch that.[/quote]

Hi Burillo,

No worries and no offense taken. In all honesty, I am not being all that sarcastic. Hopefully, I didn't come across that I performed controlled, scientific tests in attempts to prove the null theory.

Perhaps there is something to be said about how DAWS process sound when using dozens of plugins versus comparing just a simple track. I've noticed greater differences when switching between DAWs and adding more plugins and the more plugins I use, the more clarity I am hearing vs. other DAWS.

Maybe it is placebo but there are plenty of others that feel this way about Samplitude as well and I didn't buy Samplitude because of others "claims". I came to the same conclusions as others and what is being marketed before I was aware of these claims. Probably the biggest difference I notice is when I compare Mackie Tracktion (my first DAW) to Samplitude. The rendering on the same settings on Tracktion seems to come out like phasey mud while the Samplitude renders come out as sweet, musical, and pristine.

Maybe the differences can be accounted for by better coding. Samplitude and SAWstudio for instance, have integrated assembly language vs. how other DAWS and the result is increased efficiency. Why can't the coding account for perhaps subtle sound differences that when summing multiple tracks with many plugins sounds audibly different? We all know about the differences between Pro tools pan settings and other DAWS. Whether or not better coding or different dithering algorithms affect the sound, seems to be both hard to prove and disprove.

I'm not the only one that believes Samplitude sounds different (and to my ears better). I came to this conclusion before I was aware that others came to this conclusion as well. I also discovered that to my ears that Cubase, for example, sounds warmer than others I've tried (and to me preferrable to Pro Tools) and then found out that others feel this way too. Why is that I am finding that there are a number of others that have come to the exact same conclusions? Would you attribute this just to chance or coincidence? Would love to hear what you all think.

Thanks for input, Burillo. All good points. I only challenge these issues so I can make more sense of all of this in my own head because I am still not convinced that all DAWS sound the same.

[AC222]

No matters. It's the song, not the sound. When i'm listening to NIN, DM or something else, i just don't mind and NEVER ask me : " how greater this song could have been if trent have recorded within cubase instead of PT ?". It's emotional feeling, the sound is just a wear.
By the way i really like the way samplitude sounds , and always start in cubase and achieve in samp, but mainly for it's fantastic cpu friendly object features.

Can't argue with that. Yes, the song and music is always much more important. I still think it would be cool to know what some hit songs would sound like if recorded, mixed, and mastered through better gear.

[AC222]

For far too long best-sounding-daw-tests that rejects the null hypothesis has been considered either to be universally true or -like at KVR- ridiculously false. However a little knowledge on the multimodal integration of perceptions might provide an alternative hypothesis that can explain such results. You probably all know the saying "seeing is believing"? Well it might equally be true that "seeing is hearing". Take for instance a look at this free article, which sums up some of the most important findings on the issue:

http://ocw.xjtu.edu.cn:2009/NR/rdonlyre ... visual.pdf

Here is a quote:

Ultimately multi-modal (or multi-sensory) integration should lead to noticeable behavioral effects. For human, the most interesting case is speech perception, which is usually considered an auditory modality but is strongly influenced by visual input. Being able to see the person that is talking to you leads to an increased intelligibility, especially in adverse conditions (high noise, reverberation, competing talkers) as shown by Sumby and Pollack (1954)

So do not underestimate how much you like the look of your favorite DAW. In principle it can affect your auditory perception to an extent where you actually hear differences.

Cheers

It's funny that you say this because I really love how Samplitude is laid out vs. all the other DAWS I've tried. To me, it just makes more sense. Easy to toggle between the mixer, recording, and editing view. Easy to edit. And the menus are where I expect. Not so with Reaper. Even as customizable as it is, it's a pain the arse to have to sift through menus to see basic functions. Don't like it's object editing (to me, not intuitive at all).

To your point, I should also mention that I love the camo skin in Samplitude. I have heard others say they think it's ugly but I find the way the graphite background contrasts with the other colors to be both simple and elegant. When I'm tracking and mixing in Samplitude I feel like I'm driving a BMW vs. a corolla - no offense to anyone that owns one (think Reaper- stable, reliable efficient, some frills, no thrills). Maybe you're right that my clear bias towards the layout is clouding my judgment. But still not sure why there are so many others that feel the same way about Samplitude, Cubase sounds etc...

[AC222]

for the record:

PT, live, sonar, and cubase are among those that have made the claim of better/warm/mostawsomest sounding. Nuendo is 20-40% better (well, that was the sound engine )

Wasn't Avid claiming the same regarding the new Pro Tools 10?

I don't know, but wouldn't surprise me



(sorry about the lame ad in the beginning, but please watch)

Sorry, last past for me today.

You are a genius!

[tonkatodd]

I used Samplitude during the time Emagic Logic moved over to Apple and I was still using PC's and Samplitude handled multitrack mixes a lot better than anything I used since. Protools9-10, Cubase, Ableton and Logic never sounded as clear to me when mixing. I have on a number of occasions had exactly the same arrangements loaded in each of those Daws and Samplitude did in fact sound clearer without any Eq's, Dynamics etc on the mix(premix). There is always that argument about wether Daws sum properly but I can say that Samplitude always handled summing the mix a lot better. I'm currently looking at moving back to PC and if I do I will be using Samplitude for sure.

[IncarnateX]

Maybe you're right that my clear bias towards the layout is clouding my judgment. But still not sure why there are so many others that feel the same way about Samplitude, Cubase sounds etc...

The point is not that it clouds your judgement, but that it systematically makes you hear differences. Thus people with the same visual preferences like you would hear the same differences while others would not perceive them at all. This would be the explanation why others report the same as you. The differences you hear is therefore not an illusion, but in theory they are restricted to people who share the same visual preferences.

Cheers

[Burillo]

Yeah,

Let's keep this thread going! Let me say that I don't believe that "it's just math, all DAWS sum the same. Apply same panning, levels, and it cancels when you invert the phase. Null this. Null that". This guy ain't buying it.

it is true regardless of whether or not you're "buying it". If the files null, they are the same. If they don't - then you can talk about this or that sounding different. But then again, not nulling null tests usually come from either user error or incompetence (no disrespect meant, we all are incompetent in something).

but i hope you were being sarcastic and i didn't catch that.

Hi Burillo,

No worries and no offense taken. In all honesty, I am not being all that sarcastic. Hopefully, I didn't come across that I performed controlled, scientific tests in attempts to prove the null theory.

Perhaps there is something to be said about how DAWS process sound when using dozens of plugins versus comparing just a simple track. I've noticed greater differences when switching between DAWs and adding more plugins and the more plugins I use, the more clarity I am hearing vs. other DAWS.

Maybe it is placebo but there are plenty of others that feel this way about Samplitude as well and I didn't buy Samplitude because of others "claims". I came to the same conclusions as others and what is being marketed before I was aware of these claims. Probably the biggest difference I notice is when I compare Mackie Tracktion (my first DAW) to Samplitude. The rendering on the same settings on Tracktion seems to come out like phasey mud while the Samplitude renders come out as sweet, musical, and pristine.

Maybe the differences can be accounted for by better coding. Samplitude and SAWstudio for instance, have integrated assembly language vs. how other DAWS and the result is increased efficiency. Why can't the coding account for perhaps subtle sound differences that when summing multiple tracks with many plugins sounds audibly different? We all know about the differences between Pro tools pan settings and other DAWS. Whether or not better coding or different dithering algorithms affect the sound, seems to be both hard to prove and disprove.

I'm not the only one that believes Samplitude sounds different (and to my ears better). I came to this conclusion before I was aware that others came to this conclusion as well. I also discovered that to my ears that Cubase, for example, sounds warmer than others I've tried (and to me preferrable to Pro Tools) and then found out that others feel this way too. Why is that I am finding that there are a number of others that have come to the exact same conclusions? Would you attribute this just to chance or coincidence? Would love to hear what you all think.

Thanks for input, Burillo. All good points. I only challenge these issues so I can make more sense of all of this in my own head because I am still not convinced that all DAWS sound the same.

as i said, you don't need to "prove" anything - just do a null test. if the files null, they are the same, period. if they don't, the sound is different, but most likely because you've done something wrong e.g. pan law, oversampling, different levels, dithering, there are millions of ways to taint the null test.

as for better coding... mixing bus is one of the few things that you can't easily get wrong. i've written a simple sound mixer for my university project, and believe it or not, it's just adding samples. you get a sample, get a gain value (e.g. 0.5 would correspond to -6dB), multiply sample by gain, and do so for every track, and then you just add sample A with sample B with sample C with sample D that came from different tracks, and you're done. panning is the same - you get two channels, and you adjust both channels' volume according to your panning value and pan law. there's no magic, and there aren't a whole lot of ways to write an addition or multiplication of two numbers.

now i admit i'm not a DSP coder and this uni experience was about the first and last thing i done with DSP, but the i understand the theory behind it, and despite some folks believing assembly code or 64-80-128-100500 bit mixbus can make a difference, it really is simple - you add two numbers. you can have different precision, but it doesn't affect the sound as much as you would think it does. assembly code only makes things faster (when written properly), not introduces some magic qualities.

bottom line is, summing is addition. it's that simple. if you can't add two numbers and get the same result (same as other hosts), this means distortions that are out of your control, and you're doing something wrong. digital music is numbers. difference in plugins can very well be heard, especially when it comes to synths. difference between summing (e.g. panning, gain, mixing) can't, they are all the same, unless you screw up somewhere.

if you are a better mixer in Samplitude than in something else - great, you've found your tool! but it's not the tool that makes better sound. it's you. if you "hear" the difference - try the null test. if the files null (or if they differ just enough to account for quantization noise), they are identical, and no amount of "but i hear teh difference!!!!!111111eleven" will change that fact.

[IncarnateX]

if the files null (or if they differ just enough to account for quantization noise), they are identical, and no amount of "but i hear teh difference!!!!!111111eleven" will change that fact.

Yeah just remember the null test only consider the stimulation and not how the brain extracts and attends to different part of this information and combine it to a perceptual whole. What you can say for sure is that any perceived differences are not caused by the auditory stimulation in itself. However, the multi-connectivity of sensory areas in the brain and not at least these systems further connections to emotional and thereby value based areas such as the limbic system allow for many different (and testable) hypotheses about how the same stimulation can result in different perception, when it is combined with other patterns of stimulation and not at least our value systems.

[trimph1]

That's why it is a good idea to turn the screen off to really listen to your final mixes sometimes...