Export Audio causes tonal changes in mix

Hi guys,
Exporting a  (30 track) song from Sonar X3 Studio into a 2 track wave "master" file appears to cause rather large tonal changes in my mix.  I'm exporting from Sonar using 32 bit, no dither, 64 bit engine, no fast bounce.  
I open the file with Ozone 7, and upon first listen, even with all the Ozone modules off, the treble is accentuated quite a bit.  Other changes include added crispness, less warmth, cymbals stand out like mad after export, the song seems to no longer have the "glue" that held it together. Have to re-mix to get things in balance. 
Is this common ?   Is it the export function of Sonar that causes the tonal changes, or the way Ozone is presenting the information? I've never really considered how the "output engines" of Sonar might affect the sound...   do other DAWs "sound" different than Sonar ?    Do other DAWs also affect how a mix sounds when it's exported?
Thanks much,

No DAW modifies the mix on a 32-bit wave export. It should sound exactly the same.
 
Differences may be heard if you play back the exported file through other software, which may have some DSP enabled such as EQ or bass enhancement. To see if that's the problem, import the file back into the SONAR project and route it to the main outs rather than to the master bus, to avoid any processing. The export should sound exactly like the project mix.
 
If it doesn't, then it may be a routing issue. Make sure all your tracks are routed through the master bus by muting it and verifying that everything goes silent.

Kalle Rantaaho
I've never experienced anything you describe. Having used SONAR for thirteen years, have you had this
issue all the time?
In my experience, the export is exactly what I hear in SONAR. I don't know how standalone Ozone 7 creates the audio. How come you expect it's about SONAR, my first suspect would be Ozone.
How did you test this four-five years ago, before Ozone 7?

I'm relatively new to the music production game...  been at it more seriously maybe a year or so.  you might not think so, but there it is....  perhaps not the brightest bulb on the tree...   and yes, I was wondering if Ozone was the thing...

If no plugins or eq etc are in use then DAWs may output very slightly different audio files due to differences in things like how they round up or down when doing their sums or minor differences in how they handle dithering, but the difference is - or should be - so slight it's barely noticable to ears if noticable at all.

The sonic characteristics of modern DAWs mostly come down to plugins, different eq processing algorithms or modelling, dither mathematics and so on, not any noticeable inbuilt differences in the results produced by the audio engines themselves when presented with a simple unprocessed audio track.

Pick a DAW you can afford that runs on your hardware and operating system of choice and has an interface and workflow that suits you. No-one is going to be able to spot from the finished product whether you used Sonar, Pro Tools, Logic, Live, Cubase, S1 or some other DAW. The people who insist you must use Pro Tools "because it's the best sounding which is why the pros use it" are indulging in the same kind of magical thinking that persuades "audiophiles" they need to place a few little wooden discs around the room or swap their amplifier's volume knob for a wooden one to "make the mids smoother and the treble warmer".*

In reality Pro Tools became a near industry-standard because it could handle high track counts and the HD system's hardware and software combinations were created by Avid to ensure they would "pretty much just work" back when computers had a lot less power and were more crash-prone than they are today (no studio wants to run the risk that a computer crash means a great performance never made it to disk).

And once tens of thousands have been invested in a system and the users know it backwards, changing to a different system carries the costs not only of maybe replacing that hardware but the time to learn the new setup and optimise everything.

In the world of commercial studios time very much equals money so the incentive is always to stick with what you have and know and only make changes cautiously and for very good reasons.

*I kid you not. Both these "hi-fi enhancers" exist or at least they did recently. And will set you back several hundreds of dollars, pounds or euros should you believe their creator's claims.

bitflipper
No DAW modifies the mix on a 32-bit wave export. It should sound exactly the same.
 
Differences may be heard if you play back the exported file through other software, which may have some DSP enabled such as EQ or bass enhancement. To see if that's the problem, import the file back into the SONAR project and route it to the main outs rather than to the master bus, to avoid any processing. The export should sound exactly like the project mix.
 
If it doesn't, then it may be a routing issue. Make sure all your tracks are routed through the master bus by muting it and verifying that everything goes silent.

OK, did import the master 2 track back into Sonar, and voila !    it sounds the same as my project tracks mixed in Sonar.  Then I imported exact same master 2 track into Ozone 7, and it sounds decidedly different!  brighter.  cymbals are jumping out of the mix.  and this is with the Ozone master bypass engaged.   aaaaargh !   what a dufus...  just been kinda going along with the process, just having faith in OZone, not using my ears as I should.  At least I know what to troubleshoot now...  what a waste of time!  aaaargh.  Have to look much more closely at Ozone, see what's going on there. I just got Ozone 7 around Christmas time, so it's something I'm not up to speed on yet either. 
Thanks for the tips!
 
BTW...  anyone else having this issue with Ozone ?    What software are you guys using for mastering ?

Kalle Rantaaho
If I understand correctly, you use Ozone standalone. Is everything normal if you insert it as a plugin in the  project?
 
What kind of audio settings does the standalone version have? Have you checked it uses the same interface (instead of possibly SONAR using an external interface and Ozone using the integrated sound chip) or if anything in the basic settings is different?

Yes, trying to utilize Ozone 7 Standalone, and getting the treble and volume boost. 
If I use Ozone 7 as a plugin in my Sonar project, just as a quick A/B test with the plugin turned on and off in Sonar, yes , it seems to be ok. There is just a slight increase in volume and brightness, but nothing you couldn't quickly correct with an EQ or something. 
 
Yes, good point.... I went to the Audio Devices, and found out Ozone was set at Default Output Device, changed it to Scarlett ASIO, and it made no difference.  There are 4 options available here:  Default Output Device, Line Out (Scarlett 2i2 USB), Speakers (High Definition Audio), and Scarlett ASIO.  I didn't try the remaining 2.  Sonar is set for the ASIO option. 

I don't believe for a second that you could tell the DAWs from eachother by the raw sound.
That Ozone thing does sound mysterious, though.

Chevy
Further to all this...   I have a friend with a rather elaborate and decent (by my standards) studio in the works. just talked with him today about my concerns...  He'd been using Sonar for several years, but has switched, a while back, to Pro Tools.  He tells me he had the same issue with Ozone 7 standalone and Sonar.....  a master 2 track would sound different in Sonar than it would in Ozone standalone. Had to be remixed. He said the Pro Tools doesn't do that...  what you hear in Pro Tools, you also hear in Ozone 7. He said Sonar sounds muddy in comparison to Pro Tools, Pro Tools being much clearer.
So....   this is all news to me, but if he's right, it definitely means that all DAWs don't sound alike.  Anyone compare Sonar to Reaper ?  To Harrison Mix Bus?  To Pro Tools ?

Your friend is wrong. He's not alone in that misconception, though; it's a surprisingly widely-held belief that different DAWs have distinctive sounds. But they do not. They in fact all do the same thing. (ProTools HD was arguably different, being based on a sliding-window integer system rather than floating-point math. But even if that ever was an audible factor, and I'm not convinced it was, those days are behind us. Today, all DAWs arrive at the same conclusion given the same data and processing. 2 + 2 = 4 whether you ask Reaper, ProTools, Logic, SONAR or Band in a Box.
 
Think about it: if you're running a standalone application, feeding it a simple standard wave file, how could it possibly know or care about what application originally generated that file? 
 
Ozone does have a true bypass, meaning when all of its modules are disabled and faders are zeroed it does not alter the signal. I have verified that to my own satisfaction by comparing spectral graphs and amplitude statistics in Adobe Audition, as well as a blind A/B test. Although the files are not going to be bit-identical (file headers change even if the audio data doesn't), they are audibly equivalent in every measurable way.
 
 
If Ozone is altering the sound, then it's not fully bypassed and some feature has been inadvertently enabled.

Hmmm..... ok, so what am I doing wrong?   It's not rocket science as far as bypassing Ozone 7 goes;  I just hit the master bypass in the lower right corner and the main screen goes grey (and by the way, all the Ozone modules are individually bypassed as well) and it should be out of the picture, right?  
But then I import a specific 2 track into Ozone 7 standalone, and listen.  It's quite a bit brighter and also louder than the exact same 2 track imported into a fresh Sonar X3 Studio project, without any plugins. This is only my 2nd song I'm attempting to master, and it has a lot of ride cymbal which just jumps out of the mix terribly in Ozone. But not in Sonar.  
??????????????

A few DAWs do have their own sound. One that comes to mind is Mixbus.  Sonar also has its own sound when one engages Pro Channel with some of the coloring modules. Another one would be Studio One with its new Mix FX module. All the above is due entirely to deliberate coloring by specific additions to those DAWs. Normally without those modules used audio from one DAW can null with audio from another DAW if no processing is down to the audio and bit depth and sample rate are the same. Therefore it follows that Ozone will also change the sound if one has one or more modules processing the audio.  
 
 
 
However, what is being said above by the posters on this thread is also true when no coloring is employed by the DAW.  The reason you hear a difference is you have Ozone set up to process the audio it is receiving. One or more of its modules is processing the audio. Its that simple. 
 
All of this is very well understood by the vast majority of the members on the CW forums. What your friend is saying is pure nonsense. There is no added benefit in sonic quality in any DAW that is demonstrable. Basically they all sound the same if one takes away any added coloring they may employ. 
 
 
   

"(Edited to add)

This can be one of the times where metering outside the DAW such as in the audio interface's mixing application can be extremely useful to check comparative levels. Ears and brain can and will be fooled, meters not so easily."

 
I use a mixer and it has meters so I totally agree. I know exactly what I'm sending out. 
 

Aaaargh......    thanks for your patience with me...   learning on the fly...   I tried the exact same thing again with the same track, and there was some volume increase getting into Ozone (again with bypass engaged), which likely accounted for some of the brightness which I mentioned, but not the "cymbals jumping out of the mix" anomaly that I ran into before. I can't explain what happened, but I did get a lot of good info from y'all, which I appreciate muchly.  I'll just keep on  truckin and the more I do it, the more comfortable the process will become.
Also kinda glad nobody feels Pro Tools "sounds better" than Sonar, as I didn't want to change platforms at this time. Enough to figure out as it is!