First some background, three years ago, I ran a studio here where we had the best mic collection I've ever seen, SSL, Trident, and Neve consoles, all the killer mic pre's you could think of, and tons of good outboard, like Pultec EQ's, LA-2A's, Eventide H3000, the works. For tape, we had Studer A-827's, Sony PCM 3324, Ampex MM-1600, and Mitsubishi DASH. As luck would have it, my favorite engineer of all my favorite albums worked there from time to time. Three years ago, the studio owner and I had some differences, and I started building my own place.
My studio is very very modest in comparison. Now I compete with the studios I only could laugh at back at the last place. I have tried to get the maximum bang for the buck in each and every bit of the studio. The signal path from the mic to the tape recorder has gotten the most attention, with all details agonized over till I could find the best compromise. Next was the accoustics. I am very proud of my control room, and think that it can hang with anything built in the under 500,000 $ range, and it probably cost $2,000.
Of course, with my budget, I couldnt get an SSL, or a Neve, nor a Studer. What I was able to afford was a set of tascam dax8's and a soundcraft ghost console. I'd be DAMMNED if I had to mix on that console I thought! I already had some good experiences with sound forge, so when vegas came out, EXACTLY at the right time, I knew this would be a way to stay off of that ghost. I had already run the gamut of cheap audio apps, from cubase, to cool edit, to logic, and all were lacking. Seriously vegas came for me in the nick of time.
After a few mixes on vegas, I was able to get albums, that in total sounded much much better than anything I was able to get on the studer/neve combo. I say " in total " because the sound itself certainly wasn't as *hi-fi* as at the last place, but the control I now have gave me soooo much new power. Gone are drums played out of time, yes it takes a while, but every drummer comes out of here sounding like a clock, not in a dead quantized way either, just fixing the inconsistencies and such. Oh, the control! Tom-toms, always the scourge of my existence, trying to make them loud enough, yet not have the cymbals bleed through, was a pain and never really right in the old days of gates, trriggering and such, always a NASTY compromise! Now I can just edit out everything BUT the toms, time consuming, but what a joy when its done! You know the rest; easy to fix timing of guitars, places where drums and other instruments dont hit at the same time, FIXED! Doubled vocals not tight enough together? FIXED! Pitch problems that otherwise were a kickass performance? FIXED!
Sure, vegas has crashing problems, routing problems(big time), and lacks phase switches and you have to MOUSE AROUND EVERY RIGGIN FADER!, but all in all, where it all counts, it rules! Nowadays when I take my mixes to the mastering lab, the same guy Ive been using for 8 years, he is surprised EVERY time, by the quality of my mixes! In the old days, we would labor over some things that a traditional mixer/tape recorder just cant fix, now we get one song dialed, and the rest fly pretty quick. CONTROL and consistency! So far so good!
Now, back to my favorite engineer hero. I have been out of the loop so to speak, ignored by the record companies I used to deal with, since I started building my own studio. Chance smiled upon me and one of the records I mixed landed on his lap! He called, asked me to send some other projects I had done, so he could see if I was still capable of delivering product up to his standards. He must have liked what he heard, cuz he gave me yet another step up, he brought a band in to do a demo, and decided to just observe, and not take an active part, testing me pretty much.
Now I havent seen him in three years,and when he stepped into my new studio, he saw just how modest things were, but realized everything was sensible, and as it should be. Tracking went well. Then I dumped the tracks into vegas to mix. Heres where it gets nasty.
Of course I had about 50 of the obligatory vegas crashes in the first 3 hours, but after that, not so many. Having him here made obvious something that had always been brewing in my mind( not that he said anything ). I think he was happy with the overall product, well see if and when I end up getting to do the album! But here it is, THE "vegas sound":
If a track was at 0db nothing on it in anyway, busses at zero, etc... and soloed, it seemed to sound just as it had on tape. I should say that I use soundscape mixtreme TDIF cards, so ALLEGEDLY if the tape says 1000 1010 1111 0000 at a particular time, it will send the app 1000 1010 1111 0000 as well. hmmmm not so sure, but I hope. The problem is, that once the faders or pans are moved in any way, the sound is DRASTICALLY different. I know that this is the nature of digital audio here, but it shouldnt be THIS bad!
Even worse is when multiple tracks are mixed together, the stereo field seems mushed together, and looses a LOT of depth! This is probably the same general " smalleness of DAW sound " that you hear in everything from nuendo to pro-tools, yet I havent ever heard about in PARIS.
SF engineers, I would like to know if vegas is capable of " garbage in, garbage out" performance, that is not altering a file in anyway at the rendered output.
* If so, what console settings achieve this?
* It is well known, that if you want to use discrete outs, you MUST pan the tracks Hard left or right and drop them 6 db. Is GIGO performance still possible in this way? Also this is a BIG problem in vegas, that if you DO use these discrete outs per track, and also have an fx send from that track, the fx send will follow the panning of that track and COMPLETELY RUIN the stereo placement of that track for things like reverb
I have a hunch that lack of resolution may be to blame for the unfortunate signal degradation. This would be somewhat akin to " gain staging " in a traditional studio environment. How exactly are signals in vegas mixed or summed? I hear there is an internal resolution of 32 bits or 64 bits or whatever, but what about at each point?
At the point that the channel fader sends the track to the mixdown buss, what is the resolution? Could the fader be turning up or down in 16 bit steps, instead of the maximum internal resolution of the app itself? Or at all points is the resolution at its highest? If most of the signal path is carried out and edited at 16 bits, then this could EASILY be the problem of the collapsing soundfield!
Also is there a way that dither could be applied to the output of each fader, BEFORE it hit the mix buss? Could some settings in vegas cause each and every point in Vegas' mix architecture to be at a higher or lower resolution?
As for the direct-x plugs themselves, many have high internal resolutions, but what bit rate do they send and recieve? This could also be whats killing the sound!
Flame away, no doubt many will say how none of these apps should have a sound, that none of them DO have a sound. This may be true in theory, but not in practice. Also maybe we need to change our thinking about all of digital audio. Many times digital apps talk about signal to noise ratio, how it works tthe same in analog as in digital. IT DOES NOT!
In an analog singal chain, as the SNR drops noise is more noticeable, yet the signal is still the same, maybe with some losses in the extreme highs or lows do to tranfer loading, capacitors, or transformers, etc.. but it is still very close. In digital, quantization " noise" is higher at lower resolutions, but the signal itslef is now VERY VERY VERY different from the original.
Try it yourself. Turn down a fader on your analog console with the signal coming from vegas, zeroed out. Listen close. Now play vegas thru your two track outs or whatever, and turn down a fader in vegas. These two signals are now DRASTICALLY different!!!
What can we do? Maybe Im too anal, but thats me! What can we do?
My studio is very very modest in comparison. Now I compete with the studios I only could laugh at back at the last place. I have tried to get the maximum bang for the buck in each and every bit of the studio. The signal path from the mic to the tape recorder has gotten the most attention, with all details agonized over till I could find the best compromise. Next was the accoustics. I am very proud of my control room, and think that it can hang with anything built in the under 500,000 $ range, and it probably cost $2,000.
Of course, with my budget, I couldnt get an SSL, or a Neve, nor a Studer. What I was able to afford was a set of tascam dax8's and a soundcraft ghost console. I'd be DAMMNED if I had to mix on that console I thought! I already had some good experiences with sound forge, so when vegas came out, EXACTLY at the right time, I knew this would be a way to stay off of that ghost. I had already run the gamut of cheap audio apps, from cubase, to cool edit, to logic, and all were lacking. Seriously vegas came for me in the nick of time.
After a few mixes on vegas, I was able to get albums, that in total sounded much much better than anything I was able to get on the studer/neve combo. I say " in total " because the sound itself certainly wasn't as *hi-fi* as at the last place, but the control I now have gave me soooo much new power. Gone are drums played out of time, yes it takes a while, but every drummer comes out of here sounding like a clock, not in a dead quantized way either, just fixing the inconsistencies and such. Oh, the control! Tom-toms, always the scourge of my existence, trying to make them loud enough, yet not have the cymbals bleed through, was a pain and never really right in the old days of gates, trriggering and such, always a NASTY compromise! Now I can just edit out everything BUT the toms, time consuming, but what a joy when its done! You know the rest; easy to fix timing of guitars, places where drums and other instruments dont hit at the same time, FIXED! Doubled vocals not tight enough together? FIXED! Pitch problems that otherwise were a kickass performance? FIXED!
Sure, vegas has crashing problems, routing problems(big time), and lacks phase switches and you have to MOUSE AROUND EVERY RIGGIN FADER!, but all in all, where it all counts, it rules! Nowadays when I take my mixes to the mastering lab, the same guy Ive been using for 8 years, he is surprised EVERY time, by the quality of my mixes! In the old days, we would labor over some things that a traditional mixer/tape recorder just cant fix, now we get one song dialed, and the rest fly pretty quick. CONTROL and consistency! So far so good!
Now, back to my favorite engineer hero. I have been out of the loop so to speak, ignored by the record companies I used to deal with, since I started building my own studio. Chance smiled upon me and one of the records I mixed landed on his lap! He called, asked me to send some other projects I had done, so he could see if I was still capable of delivering product up to his standards. He must have liked what he heard, cuz he gave me yet another step up, he brought a band in to do a demo, and decided to just observe, and not take an active part, testing me pretty much.
Now I havent seen him in three years,and when he stepped into my new studio, he saw just how modest things were, but realized everything was sensible, and as it should be. Tracking went well. Then I dumped the tracks into vegas to mix. Heres where it gets nasty.
Of course I had about 50 of the obligatory vegas crashes in the first 3 hours, but after that, not so many. Having him here made obvious something that had always been brewing in my mind( not that he said anything ). I think he was happy with the overall product, well see if and when I end up getting to do the album! But here it is, THE "vegas sound":
If a track was at 0db nothing on it in anyway, busses at zero, etc... and soloed, it seemed to sound just as it had on tape. I should say that I use soundscape mixtreme TDIF cards, so ALLEGEDLY if the tape says 1000 1010 1111 0000 at a particular time, it will send the app 1000 1010 1111 0000 as well. hmmmm not so sure, but I hope. The problem is, that once the faders or pans are moved in any way, the sound is DRASTICALLY different. I know that this is the nature of digital audio here, but it shouldnt be THIS bad!
Even worse is when multiple tracks are mixed together, the stereo field seems mushed together, and looses a LOT of depth! This is probably the same general " smalleness of DAW sound " that you hear in everything from nuendo to pro-tools, yet I havent ever heard about in PARIS.
SF engineers, I would like to know if vegas is capable of " garbage in, garbage out" performance, that is not altering a file in anyway at the rendered output.
* If so, what console settings achieve this?
* It is well known, that if you want to use discrete outs, you MUST pan the tracks Hard left or right and drop them 6 db. Is GIGO performance still possible in this way? Also this is a BIG problem in vegas, that if you DO use these discrete outs per track, and also have an fx send from that track, the fx send will follow the panning of that track and COMPLETELY RUIN the stereo placement of that track for things like reverb
I have a hunch that lack of resolution may be to blame for the unfortunate signal degradation. This would be somewhat akin to " gain staging " in a traditional studio environment. How exactly are signals in vegas mixed or summed? I hear there is an internal resolution of 32 bits or 64 bits or whatever, but what about at each point?
At the point that the channel fader sends the track to the mixdown buss, what is the resolution? Could the fader be turning up or down in 16 bit steps, instead of the maximum internal resolution of the app itself? Or at all points is the resolution at its highest? If most of the signal path is carried out and edited at 16 bits, then this could EASILY be the problem of the collapsing soundfield!
Also is there a way that dither could be applied to the output of each fader, BEFORE it hit the mix buss? Could some settings in vegas cause each and every point in Vegas' mix architecture to be at a higher or lower resolution?
As for the direct-x plugs themselves, many have high internal resolutions, but what bit rate do they send and recieve? This could also be whats killing the sound!
Flame away, no doubt many will say how none of these apps should have a sound, that none of them DO have a sound. This may be true in theory, but not in practice. Also maybe we need to change our thinking about all of digital audio. Many times digital apps talk about signal to noise ratio, how it works tthe same in analog as in digital. IT DOES NOT!
In an analog singal chain, as the SNR drops noise is more noticeable, yet the signal is still the same, maybe with some losses in the extreme highs or lows do to tranfer loading, capacitors, or transformers, etc.. but it is still very close. In digital, quantization " noise" is higher at lower resolutions, but the signal itslef is now VERY VERY VERY different from the original.
Try it yourself. Turn down a fader on your analog console with the signal coming from vegas, zeroed out. Listen close. Now play vegas thru your two track outs or whatever, and turn down a fader in vegas. These two signals are now DRASTICALLY different!!!
What can we do? Maybe Im too anal, but thats me! What can we do?