KVR Audio

Ahmed · Post by **Ahmed** » Sat Mar 12, 2005 5:11 am

I've read an article in one of the music sites in the net someone saying that It's not a good idea to master your work in Soundforge or Wavelab etc. He says that The problem with such setups is that they make it impossible to do A/B comparisons between the processed signal and the unprocessed signal at the same loudness. He says that this is probably one of the reasons why so much of the online electronic music is overcompressed!

What do think of this?

plush2 · Post by **plush2** » Sat Mar 12, 2005 6:23 am

Where there is a will there is a way. It is not impossible to do A/B comparisons in a wave editor between processed and uprocessed signal at the same loudness, it's just not built into the programs to automatically do so. Perhaps one could argue with that sort of logic that a TC6000 is an unsuitable mastering processor because it doesn't have a bypass button that compensates for whatever perceived volume changes the dsp is causing. If you think about the principal of what this individual is trying to say you should be able to come up with a simple workaround that allows you to do in software what mastering engineers have traditionally done with customized hardware mixers.

Ahmed · Post by **Ahmed** » Sat Mar 12, 2005 6:53 am

Where there is a will there is a way. It is not impossible to do A/B comparisons in a wave editor between processed and uprocessed signal at the same loudness, it's just not built into the programs to automatically do so

I see.
Thanks for your insight!

xander · Post by **xander** » Sat Mar 12, 2005 7:55 am

plush2 wrote: Perhaps one could argue with that sort of logic that a TC6000 is an unsuitable mastering processor because it doesn't have a bypass button that compensates for whatever perceived volume changes the dsp is causing.

Well made point!

I wonder what the author of that piece offered up as alternatives? Interesting...

audiobot202 · Post by **audiobot202** » Sat Mar 12, 2005 8:04 am

Well, I'm not sure what editors you are all using but both Wavelab and Audition have clear bypass buttons so that the sounds can be compared. You can preview play any mastering plugins and simply click 'bypass' to compare the signals. This is a pretty basic function.

xander · Post by **xander** » Sat Mar 12, 2005 8:11 am

audiobot202 wrote:Well, I'm not sure what editors you are all using but both Wavelab and Audition have clear bypass buttons so that the sounds can be compared. You can preview play any mastering plugins and simply click 'bypass' to compare the signals. This is a pretty basic function.

Yes they do in wavform edit, but, at least in Audition, there is no bypass function in multitrack mode, and it is from multitrack mode that many choose to master -- especially when using multiple buss outputs.

bMachine · Post by **bMachine** » Sat Mar 12, 2005 8:48 am

OK then, where I should master? In Windows Media Player?

WaveLab suits me perfectly

xander · Post by **xander** » Sat Mar 12, 2005 9:20 am

bMachine wrote:OK then, where I should master? In Windows Media Player?

WaveLab suits me perfectly

Yeah, like I said, I wonder what he recommends we use instead? Two tin cans and a piece of string?

Ahmed · Post by **Ahmed** » Sat Mar 12, 2005 10:43 am

No problem here is the link;
http://devdsp.net/index.pl?main=categories&category=20

Is there a better way to put up links here?

Alan · Post by **Alan** » Sat Mar 12, 2005 10:53 am

Ahmed wrote: it impossible to do A/B comparisons between the processed signal and the unprocessed signal

As mentioned ealier,you can clearly do this in Wavelab(in the effects rack) so I'm not sure where this guy is coming from.

kovacs · Post by **kovacs** » Sat Mar 12, 2005 11:46 am

Hold on...isn't that a copyrighted article??? I think a link would suffice.

psynus · Post by **psynus** » Sat Mar 12, 2005 12:16 pm

kovacs wrote:Hold on...isn't that a copyrighted article??? I think a link would suffice.

Who cares? It doesn't include any helpful information. Some points are even totally wrong.

shamann · Post by **shamann** » Sat Mar 12, 2005 12:47 pm

kovacs wrote:Hold on...isn't that a copyrighted article??? I think a link would suffice.

As long as it is attributed, it's fair use to quote from items. Given that it is so small an article, quoting in full is harmless.

kovacs · Post by **kovacs** » Sat Mar 12, 2005 12:58 pm

shamann wrote:
kovacs wrote:Hold on...isn't that a copyrighted article??? I think a link would suffice.
As long as it is attributed, it's fair use to quote from items. Given that it is so small an article, quoting in full is harmless.

I disagree. The site has this on the bottom:
"copyright 2002 - 2003 DevDSP"

Quoting an entire text is not fair use, IMHO.

But my apologies for hijacking this thread.

To be on topic:
I use Audition for editing and have never given second thoughts to whether it is good for mastering or not. It is my mastering tool, so I use it for that when required.

olepro · Post by **olepro** » Sat Mar 12, 2005 1:08 pm

It is not impossible to do A/B comparisons in a wave editor between processed and uprocessed signal at the same loudness

I think some of you missed this last line in the quote.

You can't do A/B comparison by switching between processed on/of only.
The processed signal have to have the same volume as the original signal to hear how the processing influence the sound.
So in the most cases you have to place a volume plugin last in the chain when you use audio editors for mastering for A/B'ing at the same loudnes.

Mastering in wave editors; good or bad idea?