Question about Pro Channel Consolue Emulation

Danny Danzi

To be honest, I still don't think I need that and definitely don't neeTo be honest....I think some guys just think they like the sound of those things because they look so cool in your project. :) 

-Danny

Danny Danzi


LOL Paul! Speaking of "cool", someone once asked me what I used in my mastering chain...so I showed them this:

https://dl.dropbox.com/u/4909348/uad2_wall_o_plugs.jpg

Hahahaha! That's like...the king of cool...but I'd be lying if I said every one of those plugs was useful...and I'd REALLY be lying if I said that was my mastering chain. LOL! :)

-Danny

sharke

Danny Danzi


LOL Paul! Speaking of "cool", someone once asked me what I used in my mastering chain...so I showed them this:

https://dl.dropbox.com/u/4909348/uad2_wall_o_plugs.jpg

Hahahaha! That's like...the king of cool...but I'd be lying if I said every one of those plugs was useful...and I'd REALLY be lying if I said that was my mastering chain. LOL! :)

-Danny

That is just gratuitous audio porn. 

Danny Danzi

Bub, is it possible you had that track frozen and then re-enabled the CE? The reason I ask, when you freeze track with the PC enabled, it disables PC completely as it is included in the freeze. Or, I've noticed that in some older projects, the master PC light at the top right, was turned off. I'm sitting here working not even noticing the master on/off on the channel was off until nothing I changed made a difference....then I noticed the light was out.

I haven't experienced any of those old anomalies we had in X1 with the on/off thing thankfully. I can say this though...older projects not created in X2 have always been a bit strange for me to where I've had to alter things. I can't remember exactly what I've had to fix, but let's just say that when I had enough of listening extra hard and watching every little thing, I started labeling my songs "name of song X1" or "name of song X2" or "name of song 8.5" so I never make any mistakes. I've found that is's best to always finish a project in the version your started it with just to keep things cool.

One of the things that I DO remember that always happens to me with older projects and X2 is....it always tells me "can't find wave data, so silence will be inserted". Open the project in 8.5 where it was created, it doesn't do that.

As for the CE, I hear absolutely nothing while using the bus CE. The channel CE just gives me a little drive and makes things a little crisper. The only thing I've found this useful on so far has been newer bass guitar tones where a client is crying for a little drive and sometimes on backing vocals to give them a little "zip" so to speak.

The good thing about the CE drive is...it's good drive. One of the best "drive" sounds I've ever heard from a digital plugin to be honest. It's close to a saturation or sorts depending on which model you use. I've tried enabling one on every track like they recommend and then mixing that way. Then, when you turn them off, you're supposed to hear a pretty decent difference. There's a difference, but not one that I personally welcome. I've worked my entire life to keep drive out of my mixes....it's not something I want or need on every track and to be honest, I can't even tell it's being used unless I crank up that gain a considerable amount. I don't WANT gain on my stuff, so I've stopped using these things.

The Waves versions of these are a little cooler as they give you 32 modeled channels to choose from and each channel has it's own distinct sound without using ANY gain at all. So that to me is a little closer to the way this stuff SHOULD be working. But to be honest, I still don't think I need that and definitely don't need it on every track. To be honest....I think some guys just think they like the sound of those things because they look so cool in your project. :)

ampfixer

3 Different Sonar versions in 4 years, and I'm sick of change. My main reason to upgrade was to protect my investment. I don't want to get behind and have to pay big bucks for an upgrade if they get it right one day.

I won't switch to any other DAW, but I may just get out of the DAW game completely if it doesn't get better in the next few months. Life is too short and already full of anxiety.

Danny Danzi


LOL Paul! Speaking of "cool", someone once asked me what I used in my mastering chain...so I showed them this:

https://dl.dropbox.com/u/4909348/uad2_wall_o_plugs.jpg

Hahahaha! That's like...the king of cool...but I'd be lying if I said every one of those plugs was useful...and I'd REALLY be lying if I said that was my mastering chain. LOL! :)

-Danny

Danny Danzi

Bub

Danny Danzi

Bub, is it possible you had that track frozen and then re-enabled the CE? The reason I ask, when you freeze track with the PC enabled, it disables PC completely as it is included in the freeze. Or, I've noticed that in some older projects, the master PC light at the top right, was turned off. I'm sitting here working not even noticing the master on/off on the channel was off until nothing I changed made a difference....then I noticed the light was out.

Nope, it was never frozen.

I haven't experienced any of those old anomalies we had in X1 with the on/off thing thankfully. I can say this though...older projects not created in X2 have always been a bit strange for me to where I've had to alter things. I can't remember exactly what I've had to fix, but let's just say that when I had enough of listening extra hard and watching every little thing, I started labeling my songs "name of song X1" or "name of song X2" or "name of song 8.5" so I never make any mistakes. I've found that is's best to always finish a project in the version your started it with just to keep things cool.

It's a new project started in X2. That's a good idea about naming them with the version number they were started with.

One of the things that I DO remember that always happens to me with older projects and X2 is....it always tells me "can't find wave data, so silence will be inserted". Open the project in 8.5 where it was created, it doesn't do that.

I haven't had that happen in a long time but I do remember it happening.

As for the CE, I hear absolutely nothing while using the bus CE. The channel CE just gives me a little drive and makes things a little crisper. The only thing I've found this useful on so far has been newer bass guitar tones where a client is crying for a little drive and sometimes on backing vocals to give them a little "zip" so to speak.

I don't hear anything either. I'm still scratching my head over those Craig Anderton A/B comparison's he did upstairs a while back. I heard a 'tiny' difference when I used them on strings once, but that's it.

The good thing about the CE drive is...it's good drive. One of the best "drive" sounds I've ever heard from a digital plugin to be honest. It's close to a saturation or sorts depending on which model you use. I've tried enabling one on every track like they recommend and then mixing that way. Then, when you turn them off, you're supposed to hear a pretty decent difference. There's a difference, but not one that I personally welcome. I've worked my entire life to keep drive out of my mixes....it's not something I want or need on every track and to be honest, I can't even tell it's being used unless I crank up that gain a considerable amount. I don't WANT gain on my stuff, so I've stopped using these things.

I tried setting it up the way they recommend too. I have it on all my tracks in this project, and buses and tried to A/B it and heard absolutely no difference until this happened. You are 100% right, it did sound just like a nice saturation once I backed it off.

The Waves versions of these are a little cooler as they give you 32 modeled channels to choose from and each channel has it's own distinct sound without using ANY gain at all. So that to me is a little closer to the way this stuff SHOULD be working. But to be honest, I still don't think I need that and definitely don't need it on every track. To be honest....I think some guys just think they like the sound of those things because they look so cool in your project. :)

I was trying it just to see if I could get anything out of them if you know what I mean.

BTW ... I opened up the project again tonight, now it's not working again. I can crank it all the way up and no difference.

I honestly think the people who say they can't hear a difference are telling the truth because there is no difference. I think this is a flaky plug-in and it's not turning on like we saw with the other Pro Channel modules in X1. I never would have thought this if I hadn't heard it work on this system for 30 seconds.

I'm done. All my stuff will be done in another DAW from now on. I'm cutting my losses with X2. This isn't even funny anymore. It's sad.

After all you've been through, I can't say I blame you. Just make sure you stick around and hang with us. :) Bub, I know it's silly to even bring this up, but have you ever tried a different soundcard? The reason I ask this is because, we run several different interface rigs over here and I've been seeing different quirks in each one. For example, all the Echo Audio stuff we have (Layla 24/96's, Audiofire 12's, Echo Mia) all have the same issues no matter how new or old they are. We crash when we do certain changes when buffer sizes are at 64, and we get a nice gap in our audio when using that arm on the fly option during punch-outs.
 
All our cards do this but our RME FF 800. We can use arm on the fly with tracks 1 &2, but from tracks 3-12 we get a big hole in the audio during a punch and these crashes at 64 samples are nuts with certain VSTi's. We can record at 64 buffers but as soon as we're done, we have to up the buffer size before we do anything.
 
In my case, I think Echo and Sonar don't seem to play too well together. Our RME seems to be ok though even at low latency. I know this has nothing to do with your problem....but the reason I bring it up...remember when we had that issue in X1? It NEVER did that with my RME and it didn't do it with my stupid Realtek's either.
 
But it did it with our Echo stuff at random and it happened several times per week. I'm just wondering if some of these weird gremlins may be soundcard related? Come to think of it, I DO recall the CE being on about 3 weeks ago and not doing anything with the knob all the way up. I closed the project, reopened and it was ok. I've not seen that since, but I really don't use those things anymore. The new plugin manager has wreaked a little havoc on me as well...but it seems to be stable finally.
 
What I really don't get that drives me nuts....my test boxes that have all sorts of crap on them for all the beta work I do for other companies....barely gives me any issues when I use Sonar without testing weird plugs and other strange things. How can a Dell with a Realtek maintain itself with a load of crap on it yet I have issues with my good boxes that are all clean? LOL! I don't get it.
 
-Danny

Karyn


You're not supposed to be able to tell whether CE is turned on or off on a single channel just by listening to a single channel.

You're certainly not expected to hit it hot and declare that it's overdrive sound is terrible.  Of course it is, have you ever heard an input channel of a Neve or Otari or Soundcraft or Yamaha desk that's been pushed to overdrive by a way to hot signal?  It is bad, I assure you.

Mixing desk channels, inputs or busses, are not FX units.  The aim of any mixer is to be as transparent to the audio as possible and the only colour added should be through deliberate use of the EQ section.

The reality of old and modern electronics means that a perfectly transparent mixer is not possible.  The more you spend on circuit design and high quality components the closer you'll get, but it'll never be perfect. The mixer will always impart some colouration to the audio.  Differences in circuit design by different manufactures will give different colour to the sound, hence a Neve sounds different to a Yamaha which sounds different to a $50 Radioshack DJ mixer.

Which you think sounds better is purely subjective and everyone will have their own oppinion.  The differences in sound between most high end mixers is so small as to be insignificant in most cases because the rest of the equipment has much more effect.  The size and type of studio monitors, their possition relative to the mixer, your possition relative to them, the volume you have them set at, the way they're mounted....  each of those alone has more effect on the audio than the "sound" of the mixer.  Add them all together and the mixer is almost irrelevant.

To compare two mixers in a studio setting you'd need to use one for several days to learn its "sound" with different instrument sources, maybe do some recording and mixing to see how it balances different frequencies and how they interact with each other in the busses.  THEN you'd rip it out and replace it with another mixer, using all the same outboard equipment and cables, making sure everything is exactly as before. Then spend another few days doing the same routine of learning the sound of the mixer...

At the end of it you'd either swear that "A" was way better than "B" (because you tried to match the sound of "A" and couldn't) or after 3 days trying to make "B" sound like what you thought you remembered "A" sounding like, you  finally admit that you've forgotten...  (because you can't actually tell a difference)

Either way,  in Sonar it appears to be easy to make comparisons.  You just change the emulation setting don't you?  Well,  no.
First, you have to use the CE on EVERY channel and bus.  Then you need to do a mix from scratch with each of the emulation settings and also a mix with no CE at all.   The CE will alter the frequency responce and harmonic content of the channel/bus, thus you have to start from scratch with your EQ at the very least.
Finaly, when you have been through the entire process for each emulation (incuding none) and you have a set of 2 track masters, you can do a blind listening test to see which one you think sounds better.  This then assumes that any differences you hear are actually due to the CE and not simply because you mixed the same track 4 times and got better at it each time....

OMG look at that post....  I'm turning into Danni

the starkness of digital

Karyn

You're not supposed to be able to tell whether CE is turned on or off on a single channel just by listening to a single channel.

You're certainly not expected to hit it hot and declare that it's overdrive sound is terrible.

Of course it is, have you ever heard an input channel of a Neve or Otari or Soundcraft or Yamaha desk that's been pushed to overdrive by a way to hot signal?  It is bad, I assure you.

To compare two mixers in a studio setting you'd need to use one for several days to learn its "sound" with different instrument sources, maybe do some recording and mixing to see how it balances different frequencies and how they interact with each other in the busses.  THEN you'd rip it out and replace it with another mixer, using all the same outboard equipment and cables, making sure everything is exactly as before. Then spend another few days doing the same routine of learning the sound of the mixer...

At the end of it you'd either swear that "A" was way better than "B" (because you tried to match the sound of "A" and couldn't) or after 3 days trying to make "B" sound like what you thought you remembered "A" sounding like, you  finally admit that you've forgotten...  (because you can't actually tell a difference)

Either way,  in Sonar it appears to be easy to make comparisons.  You just change the emulation setting don't you?  Well,  no.
First, you have to use the CE on EVERY channel and bus.  Then you need to do a mix from scratch with each of the emulation settings and also a mix with no CE at all.   The CE will alter the frequency responce and harmonic content of the channel/bus, thus you have to start from scratch with your EQ at the very least.
Finaly, when you have been through the entire process for each emulation (incuding none) and you have a set of 2 track masters, you can do a blind listening test to see which one you think sounds better.  This then assumes that any differences you hear are actually due to the CE and not simply because you mixed the same track 4 times and got better at it each time....

OMG look at that post....  I'm turning into Danni