Freeze synth sound quality => SOLVED

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Rob[at]Sound-Rehab
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2011/08/19 03:55:56 (permalink)

Freeze synth sound quality => SOLVED

I just noticed something odd that puzzles me and is against what researching this forum tells me: Freezing a synth should not change sound quality.

However, I did the following ...
(1) recorded a track using TruePiano
(2) froze the track
(3) dragged the frozen audio into a virgin audio track
(4) unfroze TruePiano

If I now switch between these tracks by muting them individually, I hear a clear distinction i.e. the frozen & copied audio sounding sort of duller than the unfrozen TruePiano ...

What did I do wrong? There are no EQs, FXs etc applied on either, output is to same bus. I tried increasing render bit depth from 32 to 64 bit and disabling 'Fast bounce' in the synth options. Same result, though.

BTW, I'm still on X1b (no time to upgrade yet) and it's all 64bit ...

Help is appreciated as my system makes me dependend on frozen synths.


post edited by FreeFlyBertl - 2011/08/22 05:17:22
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    Rob[at]Sound-Rehab
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    Re:Freeze synth sound quality 2011/08/22 05:17:10 (permalink)
    From the wealth of responses I gathered that it can only be me being the idiot ...

    Well, as it turned out the track wasn't quite as virgin as I had believed - somehow the interleave button had disengaged (don't know how) ... anyway, you can't spot that on the track view and I kept overlooking it on console, either, as I wasn't thinking it could something that trivial ...


    Now I still wonder whether the 64 bit rendering yields any benefits when bouncing tracks / freezing synths. I reckon I read up on it somewhere ... unless some of you guys have the answer at hand ???


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    Sidroe
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    Re:Freeze synth sound quality 2011/08/22 06:24:59 (permalink)
    Hi,guy! Sometimes it takes a while for people to get around to responding here. I must say, once you are really accepted into the fold here, you will not find any better place for info. Now, I don't know what your setup is so I can't say for sure what is going on with your rig. I can tell you this much. Even if you are running in 32 bit mode when you bounce you have the option to use the 64 bit precision engine. Check that option! It allows you to use the built in 64 engine in Sonar itself. A great benefit audio-wise. Otherwise, any of your 64 bit processed plugins will be crunched down to 32 bit. It does make somewhat of a difference. When you ask questions here concerning these kind of matters we need to know: What OS,What computer and it's processor,RAM, Audio Interface, which version of Sonar, 32 or 64. These are pretty much a necessity to help us help you. I hope this has been of help.
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    Rob[at]Sound-Rehab
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    Re:Freeze synth sound quality 2011/08/22 07:59:02 (permalink)
    Thanks mate for reminding me to finally to update my profile.
    post edited by FreeFlyBertl - 2011/08/22 08:01:22

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    Bub
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    Re:Freeze synth sound quality 2011/08/22 10:08:28 (permalink)
    Sonar changes Track Interleave based on if you have your track input set to Stereo or Mono and then when you turn Input Echo on, with no input from the end user and it does not stick when you change it back to the way want it.

    It's like this in 8.5 also, but the Track Interleave button was on the track and you could see it change, in X1 Track Interleave is hidden so you only pick up on it when there is a problem.

    This is the exact reason why I and others have been requesting that Track Interleave be put back on the Track rather than hidden. Same with Phase. There's a reason these buttons made it to the Track in all previous versions of Sonar ... removing them in X1 was a very bad idea.

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    brundlefly
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    Re:Freeze synth sound quality 2011/08/22 10:23:24 (permalink)
    Now I still wonder whether the 64 bit rendering yields any benefits when bouncing tracks / freezing synths. I reckon I read up on it somewhere .



    The benefit of 64-bit processing is mainly in rendering FX and summing tracks without "rounding" errors. In my opinion, it's one of those things that's nice to know is being done as precisely as possible, but you'll likely never be able to hear it.


    For rendering synth audio, which has a maximum output resolution of 32 bits, there is no benefit to 64-bit processing, and SONAR does not render or store at more than 32 bits anyway (Preferences > File > Audio Data).


    In general, the frozen output of a synth should be identical to the real-time rendering, except for some synths that have an option to use lower-resolution samples in real-time playback to improve performance. Also, some synths/patches have random elements that can make every rendering unique so bounced output will never null with the live track, though the overall quality is the same.

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