Poor sound quality out of Solo 2.0

[bman2]

Dell Laptop, Vista 32 bit, Tascam US-122L interface, Mackie mixer, Mackie Thump powered speakers, Yamaha CP-33 keyboard.

I am inputing midi from my keyboard, and a mic, into Cantabile Solo. I'm using a VSTi for the piano, TruePianos. The piano sound quality is nowhere as good when I play it in Cantabile Solo as it is when I play using TruePianos Standalone. The sound in Cantabile seems thin, and the volume seems suppressed even though the input and output level meters look fine. Sound is not popping or dropping out, latency no problem. Using ASIO driver for Tascam interface.

Is this a problem in my setup or is it just the nature of the program?

[TiUser]

Hi.

Your finding is a bit odd.

Only things I can imagine imfluencing the sound in Cantabile slightly are:

1) "Options" - "Audio Engine" - "Output Limiter"
- try that being disabled

2) "Options" - "Audio Engine" - "Sample rate conversion quality"
- try setting "Best"

If you are using the same audio interface / driver I can not really imagine drastic audio quality differences by changing these settings.

Anyways, beside the plugin itself usually speakers and probably to a smaller degree audio interfaces affect sound quality - I think the host is really the most uncritical part in this chain.

Probably your stand alone version does something additional to the sound the plugin does not?


Do you probably use midi filters?

Especially using velocity curves in any host supporting midi processing can degrade output velocity steps.

[bman2]

I tried your suggestions but could hear no difference with those changes, and, I'm not using any midi filters.
Here's what I do: I have Cantabile all set up with the piano plugin in Rack 1, mic input to Rack 2 with a reverb plugin, both racks going to Output, all volume levels set to good mix. I play the piano. Close Cantabile and open TruePianos Standalone. Play the piano and it is MUCH louder, lots of sympathetic resonance/polyphony. Just a big difference. The people at TruePianos say there should be no difference in sound quality no matter what host I use.
The sound isn't distorted or anything of that nature, it just seems somewhat muffled. Really, the difference is that I don't hear as much polyphony, sympathetic resonance, or volume. (Plus, I'm listening with headphones plugged into my mixer.) It helps if I increase the main mix out on the mixer, but I'm wondering why there is this difference. (By the way, I get the same difference when I use RealBand.)
I have discovered that by using a limiter plugin with the piano it sounds pretty close to the same as in the standalone program. Anyway, I can live with it. Thanks very much for your help.

[TiUser]

Well, it's an old psychoascustic thing that "louder sounds better"...

That's why compressors are often used in modern music - either for single instruments or a total mix.

I personally like the free LFX-1310 effects plugin. It is a 3 slot multi effector that provides most of the basic effects. With this you can experiemnt and find out which type of effect will suit your taste before you start hunting for sophisticated state of the art plugins...

If you work much with headphones also be aware that stereo effects will sound much more pronounced as on usual speakers. There are plugins that simulate speaker acoustics on headphones. I'd love to have one of those but didn't have the money to spend on that yet.

Finally while many of us want to have their "own sound" devices that provide good, ready to use presets are a valuable asset for players. While makers of most top level HW put much effort into this tweaking SW is probably more difficult and more frustrating unless you get what you desire...

My experience is also that it takes some time and experience with SW to get a good (or probably better) sound than HW which often provides a better out of the box experience.