Best SOUNDING software

[clineaudio]

This is sorta following along w/ the dither/mix bus discussion previously. And the analog summing discussion. Which softwares have you heard, been most/least impressed with how the mix bus sounds? General tonal quality, simply as a player and editor. Of course, sound of EQs, effects that are native are a factor, but which do you prefer?

I personally have been really impressed with how logic sounds, in general. And I'm sometimes less than impressed w/ how pro tools sounds during editing etc, versus the final product that I deliver.

[dagosto]

I think that in recent years the difference between the different engines has blurred almost to the point of non-existence. They almost all have at least a 32-bit mix bus, use pow-r dithering and in my experience delegate processes within the system fairly well. Of course when you are talking about anything versus pro-tools there is no fair comparison in software since you are stuck with such a slim choice of different converters. I think the ADAC process has a lot more to do with the sound coming out during mixing. The DA is where a lot of companies will cheap out on their interfaces. I'm not sure why this is because DA is probably the simplest part of the process.

One thing that I do think about is that during edit there has got to be a few processes dropped here and there when the load on the CPU is extreme. My logic (small l) would conclude that sound quality during edit has a lot to do with speed and condition of the computer you are recording on.

[smopo24]

Originally Posted by dagosto

I think that in recent years the difference between the different engines has blurred almost to the point of non-existence. They almost all have at least a 32-bit mix bus, use pow-r dithering and in my experience delegate processes within the system fairly well. Of course when you are talking about anything versus pro-tools there is no fair comparison in software since you are stuck with such a slim choice of different converters. I think the ADAC process has a lot more to do with the sound coming out during mixing. The DA is where a lot of companies will cheap out on their interfaces. I'm not sure why this is because DA is probably the simplest part of the process.

One thing that I do think about is that during edit there has got to be a few processes dropped here and there when the load on the CPU is extreme. My logic (small l) would conclude that sound quality during edit has a lot to do with speed and condition of the computer you are recording on.

would it be lame of me to just agree with what you said about pro tools and other formats? well, i do. a friend said he a/b'd mixes in a few software formats and first told me that logic sounded best, then a few weeks later nuendo.....i couldn't hear the difference; or i'm just deaf.

[clineaudio]

Originally Posted by dagosto

One thing that I do think about is that during edit there has got to be a few processes dropped here and there when the load on the CPU is extreme. My logic (small l) would conclude that sound quality during edit has a lot to do with speed and condition of the computer you are recording on.

Just to clarify, my point was a loss of fidelity in mix down, rather than loss of fidelity during edit. My edit sounds good, even during mixdown, but the final bounced file, even with dither, is often missing something. This of course is largely related to a "step-down" in resolution. But I do notice it simply during a stem mixdown/bounce within same session. This comes back to Dagosto's prev "digital gain staging" topic regarding dither, bit resolution relative to fader level, etc.

On that topic:
Am I better off bussing my tracks 1-4 w/ dither, at the level that I want to monitor those tracks onto a new "bounced" track whose level is at unity gain.. ...or am I better bouncing each track 1-4 at their hottest relative levels, and running the bouncED track at a lower level?

(kick me if this needs to be moved over to that topic)

[dagosto]

Originally Posted by clineaudio

On that topic:
Am I better off bussing my tracks 1-4 w/ dither, at the level that I want to monitor those tracks onto a new "bounced" track whose level is at unity gain.. ...or am I better bouncing each track 1-4 at their hottest relative levels, and running the bouncED track at a lower level?

(kick me if this needs to be moved over to that topic)

Are you using pro-tools? I remember a friend of mine who was using protools would use this little trick that seemed to improve his mixes. He would put the waves L2 limiter across any tracks that he was bouncing not for the purpose of limiting but because the dithering in that version of Pro-Tools (LE ?.?) had poor dithering. The L2 has the option of adding it's own different types of dithering. I never had to worry because by that time Sonar 4 had powr dithering which is the same as Logic 7.

If you really want to do bounced submixes you should really be tracking at 24-bit if you are not already. This makes dither a non-issue. There will already be enough noise to prevent LSB error.

I personally don't know how different digital summing can be from program to program. I know it is a very delicate process but I don't see how one engine could differ very greatly from another. It's basically addition (eg. 10+10=100). Perhaps its the plug-ins you are using. I find that the Logic plug-ins that come out of the box are actually quite nice compared to the digidesign.