tzzsmk
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[Solved] Exported Mix drastically different than what I hear - Sonar audio engine bug?
Hello friends, during my more than 10-year old various audio works, this is the first time I ran into such incredible problem, and I'm pretty much beyond being pissed off from it, let me write as accurately as possible what's the problem: What I hear is drastically different than what is exported, most prominent is completely missing kick drum (about 25% of the song overall) which is not just audible, but even clearly visible on waveform (comparing Sonar exported "entire mix" and "live recorded, what I hear" output via RME Totalmix zero-latency Loopback into SoundForge), "background" info: decent project of about 26 tracks (each of few takes) recorded on one machine at "humble 44100/16), being mixed on another machine (both rigs have same Sonar version, just the first one doesn't have the plugins since it's for pure recording), 9 of them are drums, kick drum recorded with 2 mics snare with 2 mics, saxophone with 3 mics, guitar with 2 mics etc., every "instrument" - all the "instruments" have own mixdown busses, drums are manually slightly sorted with AudioSnap (phase coherence between all the drum tracks is maintained), practically all clips in the project are cut/adjusted, some tracks have volume/pan automation applied, many tracks have slight effects, but majority of FX stuff is done on the busses (some Waves, iZotope, , AIR Music and DMG Audio plugins, but not more than few per bus), at export, all things are ticked, 44100/16 (so absolutely no sample rate or bit depth recalculation) interesting thing is that exported result seems to be about equally bad regardless if it's fast or slow bounce, which makes me think that plugins are not the cause of the problem; what irritates me most - even the bounce of the individual tracks visually results in difference, which leads me to (probably wrong but who knows) conclusion that Sonar (exporting) audio engine is far less accurate (to process Audio Snap especially) than my "realtime" RME Hammerfall DSP - which appears really strange to me, since the PC specs are more-than sufficient ( i7-5820K 12 cpu threads, 32GB ram in quad-channel, 500GB 850EVO SSD for system, 2TB Seagate HDDs for storage and up to 20GB (12GB/s I/O) RAMdisk for caching+temps, RME HDSPe AIO PCIex audio interface) thanks in advance, any help appreciated Tom
post edited by tzzsmk - 2016/09/01 13:35:54
Core i7-5820K, ASUS X99-S, Kingston 32GB DDR4, EVGA GTX980Ti Classified, Samsung 850 EVO 500GBRME HDSPe AIO, RME Fireface 802, RME Octamic D, Seaboard RISE49, Presonus Eris E8, AKG K240 MKII, DELL U2713HM
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dcumpian
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Re: Exported Mix drastically different than what I hear
2016/08/22 08:33:35
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What, exact, export options did you select? Are you sure all the tracks (or none of them) were selected? What I do: - Edit -> Select -> None
- File -> Export -> Audio -> Preset: What You Hear
Works every time... Dan
Mixing is all about control. My music: http://dancumpian.bandcamp.com/ or https://soundcloud.com/dcumpian Studiocat Advanced Studio DAW (Intel i5 3550 @ 3.7GHz, Z77 motherboard, 16GB Ram, lots of HDDs), Sonar Plat, Mackie 1604, PreSonus Audiobox 44VSL, ESI 4x4 Midi Interface, Ibanez Bass, Custom Fender Mexi-Strat, NI S88, Roland JV-2080 & MDB-1, Komplete, Omnisphere, Lots o' plugins.
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tzzsmk
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Re: Exported Mix drastically different than what I hear
2016/08/22 11:31:04
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it's my custom preset, which has ticked same things as "what you hear", plus with ticked "64-bit Engine" and format is "FLAC"
Core i7-5820K, ASUS X99-S, Kingston 32GB DDR4, EVGA GTX980Ti Classified, Samsung 850 EVO 500GBRME HDSPe AIO, RME Fireface 802, RME Octamic D, Seaboard RISE49, Presonus Eris E8, AKG K240 MKII, DELL U2713HM
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dcumpian
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Re: Exported Mix drastically different than what I hear
2016/08/22 15:11:22
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What happens if you use the built-in "What You Hear" preset? Regards, Dan
Mixing is all about control. My music: http://dancumpian.bandcamp.com/ or https://soundcloud.com/dcumpian Studiocat Advanced Studio DAW (Intel i5 3550 @ 3.7GHz, Z77 motherboard, 16GB Ram, lots of HDDs), Sonar Plat, Mackie 1604, PreSonus Audiobox 44VSL, ESI 4x4 Midi Interface, Ibanez Bass, Custom Fender Mexi-Strat, NI S88, Roland JV-2080 & MDB-1, Komplete, Omnisphere, Lots o' plugins.
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Klaus
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Re: Exported Mix drastically different than what I hear
2016/08/22 17:21:24
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I use the same audio interface but never experienced this issue. If the difference would be only the reading of TotalMix meters and SONAR meters, that could be explained by a setting in TotalMix preferences: RMS +3dB This setting assures that full scale level is identical for Peak and RMS at 0 dBFS which is different from SONAR's RMS peak level (RMS -3dB). But you said your exported mix is drastically different, so it must be a different (export or routing) setting which causes what you hear.
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brundlefly
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Re: Exported Mix drastically different than what I hear
2016/08/22 19:53:26
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tzzsmk it's my custom preset, which has ticked same things as "what you hear", plus with ticked "64-bit Engine" and format is "FLAC"
Are you by any chance exporting with Fast Bounce disabled? I don't know about FLAC, but I know combining real-time export with MP3 compression can be problematic. Have you tried export to .WAV? I would also recommend bouncing the Audiosnapped drums (or a stem of the drum bus) to a track(s) first so that the AS rendering with the desired offline algorithm is already done (and preserved for posterity) before mixdown. If all else fails, you might try disabling the 64-bit double precision engine as it may not play nice with AS stretching in some cases.
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Noel Borthwick [Cakewalk]
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Re: Exported Mix drastically different than what I hear
2016/08/22 23:41:19
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To rule out plugins more definitively have you tried bouncing after bypassing all plugins or removing them? Check if all the audio renders properly then. This isn't related to your PC or audio interface since bounce doesn't care about those specs. If you can share a version of your project that exhibits this problem we can certainly take a look at it. Have you observed this on other projects or is it specific to only this one?
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tzzsmk
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Re: Exported Mix drastically different than what I hear
2016/08/23 04:43:28
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thanks for all the ideas pals, I'm pretty sure problem isn't in volume or relative volume levels Klaus, but will check TMFX settings just to make sure, I also tried export with fast bounce disabled in wav format, problem seems to be same, brundlefly BUT, it appears there is already a problem with bounced solely the AudioSnapped drum tracks individually, so I'll examine more thoroughly what could cause the problem, will try to disable the 64bit DP engine once I'll get back to my workstation... after bypassing/disabling them (greyed out in the trays) Noel, not sure if I'm allowed to "publish" the project, but I guess I can try share project without additional instrument's audio sources, since it appears only AudioSnapped drum tracks (maybe not even all of them) are the trouble maker there :)
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Lance Riley [Cakewalk]
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Re: Exported Mix drastically different than what I hear
2016/08/23 19:15:55
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This sounds like it could be related to AudioSnap. There are separate playback and rendering options. With one of the tracks selected click on the Track button along the top of the Inspector (Usually docked left). There is a online (Playback) and Offline (Bounced) algorithm. Typically the Online is Groove and the Offline is Radius. You can test this by setting the offline to "Same as Online". Afterwards Freeze that track or create a new bounce of it. Depending on the results the offline algorithm may be creating unwanted artifacts. Different types of sources require different settings here so it's good to get use to trying different ones out as you get a feel for when & where to use each one. If it sounds good while mixing you may be able to keep this setting of "Same as Online" your exported mix should then sound the same.
Lance Riley Product Manager
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tzzsmk
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Re: Exported Mix drastically different than what I hear
2016/08/24 02:33:25
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"...AudioSnap. There are separate playback and rendering options." whoa looks like this could really be the cause of it, I knew I mislooked something - will investigate thoroughly! thanks a lot for the heads up Lance
Core i7-5820K, ASUS X99-S, Kingston 32GB DDR4, EVGA GTX980Ti Classified, Samsung 850 EVO 500GBRME HDSPe AIO, RME Fireface 802, RME Octamic D, Seaboard RISE49, Presonus Eris E8, AKG K240 MKII, DELL U2713HM
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Noel Borthwick [Cakewalk]
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Re: Exported Mix drastically different than what I hear
2016/08/31 20:27:25
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tzzsmk
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Re: Exported Mix drastically different than what I hear
2016/09/01 13:14:58
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hello again, sorry for late response, I've been converting my PC workstation into Hackintosh (getting ready for Sonar OSX Alpha heh), unbelievable success so far with El Capitan btw, switching AudioSnap offline render mode to "same as online" did the trick (had to apply for whole project though, somehow couldn't make it work on individual parts, but that's not important), here's waveform image comparison for reference:  from top to bottom: 1) rendered by "same as online" 2) recorded via RME TotalMix FX HDSPe AIO Loopback (AES) 3) rendered by default settings "radius mix" I'm still trying to understand how come so I never really noticed such audible problem, perhaps this time the drummer and bassist were almost precisely phase-off (didn't audiosnap bass, only drums) so it could have resulted in such big difference... big thanks to everyone, especially Lance Riley for pointing me the right direction! fingers crossed for bright Sonar future :)
post edited by tzzsmk - 2016/09/01 13:36:23
Core i7-5820K, ASUS X99-S, Kingston 32GB DDR4, EVGA GTX980Ti Classified, Samsung 850 EVO 500GBRME HDSPe AIO, RME Fireface 802, RME Octamic D, Seaboard RISE49, Presonus Eris E8, AKG K240 MKII, DELL U2713HM
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Noel Borthwick [Cakewalk]
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Re: Exported Mix drastically different than what I hear
2016/09/01 18:27:43
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But the offline render should have sounded better - unless you like lofi stretching :)
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