ORIGINAL: jmcelroy

ORIGINAL: daverich

I agree

I don't want sonar to be my burning program.

They could bundle Nero and then everyone would be happy ;)

Kind regards

Dave Rich

Yeah, if they could score some sort of partnership with somone who makes that type of software (like Nero, as you suggested), that would be the best possible solution. That way, everyone does what they're good at and we get all that we need.

Of coures, it's a moot point for me until I finish some songs !!!

:)


Edited: I goofed up the quote tags and had to fix 'em.

The thing I find slightly amusing is that nero is bundled with 99% of cd writers anyway :D

Nero is still my Bang 4 Buck winner of all time :) (not including free stuff)

Kind regards

Dave Rich

ORIGINAL: ericzang
I was just reading in the izotope ozone manual that dithering should be the very last thing before changing bit depth to 16. Even the sample rate change (such as down to 44.1) should be before applying dither.

This gives rise to an interesting question.

If you have a project recorded at 24/88.2 and you want to mix it down to 16/44.1 with say powr-3 dithering selected (inder Options, Audio), does Sonar do this automatically in the correct order - ie

1. Change sampel rate
2. Apply dithering
3. Change bit rate

Or are you saying that I shoiuld first mix down from 24/88.2 to 24/44.1 without dithering, then in a second pass convert it to 16/44.1 with the dithering?

I have never thought of this as an issue before.

Best
Geoff

Yes, dithering has to be done once, and as the last step.

Dithering, and digital audio in general, is explained very well in Nika Aldrich's book you can buy from Sweetwater. One of the things it will do is to make fades much smoother - the last few bits in 16-bit audio can be a little coarse in a fade out, and dithering smooths this.

ORIGINAL: daverich

I use sonar for mastering all the time.

I basically work on an album as on long .wav - crossfading if need be and all trimmed and effected as required (even easier with the new clip insert effects).

I then export the entire thing as 16bit 44.1khz audio which i then import into nero and add the track markers there myself.

I really don't see what's the difference between doing that in sonar/nero and doing it in wavelab.

Personally I would rather do the final burn in nero as it supports my burners VariRec mode which gives a very very low (if any) error rate.

Kind regards

Dave Rich

wow! I dont think most people have the cpu power to do that -- but if you do...... good for you-- I think I would just freeze my computer after about the 2nd or third song.

For me...... and this was brought up a few times all ready. None of my stuff is really ever going to get commercial play. It's for clients who hire my band, and to pass out to family and friends. Using plug-ins like t-racks and ozone is fine for that stuff. Sounds really good too!
I think if your going to go commercial with your stuff, or just have the desire to really make it sound commercial, then you have 2 choices. Learn how to master the right way. right tools. With college classes or workshops.... which I think none of us who haven't picked this for a career have time for or money for the right equipment. OR the second choice..... send it out to the pro's to master. That said, if you have the ear and time you could come close to getting a good master your self, with out the expensive tools and training. But really is what you have at home as good as a professional studio that has literally millions of dollars worth of equipment? A professional engineer who really knows his stuff? I doubt it. I love sonar and most people can't tell the difference between the quality of sound I make and a commercial recording from Columbia records. But at the same time, lets get real. We really are all just big kids having fun with neat toys that could be used for decent profession work becuase we all love music

Check out page 552 of SONAR 5 manual. Read "Preparing Higher-quality Audio for CD burning" segment. It's kind of a pain but seems to make a difference.

Regards,

Hawky

I use Samplitude 8.21 Professional to master. It is a terrific program, but it requires a Codemeter dongle...a piece of junk. Other than that, I rank it right up on top as a DAW app. SONAR can do some things that Samp. can't. Samp can do a lot of things that SONAR can't (like burn a redbook quality CD on the FLY calculating effects as it is burning the CD—amazing...and batch processing...and sample level volume and waveform editing (I once took a guitar take that I liked but that had dropouts and exported from SONAR into Samplitude and then drew in individual samples (as in 1 of 48,000) to take out the glitches...worked like a charm...

ORIGINAL: hv

Kip McGinnis over at Bardstown Audio says he finds greater mastering integration with Samplitude and Sequoia. He says that it combines the functionality of Wavelab, Bias Peak, and Sound Forge and that it's now his DAW of choice...

http://www.bardstownaudio.com/frames/soft.html

He doesn't single out Sonar in his comentary but I recall it used to be his DAW of choice and I know he sells both the Cakewalk and Magix product lines.

I'm far from ready to jump ship myself over this, particularly considering the recent 64-bit processing advances in Sonar, but I have to admit it's a real pain in the neck getting from Sonar exports to finished CD without any communication of markers or regions to the CD authoring software. I use CD Architect but I imagine I'd have the same issues with DiscWelder or anything else. Other mastering capabilities are a side issue for me. The real problem is that if I have to make one change at the Sonar level requiring a new export, it blows away everything downstream from that.

If the regions were created in Sonar and passed to the export, at least I'd have a fighting chance. I don't really mind calling up external programs for specialized processing from within Sonar. It's way too late for me to save money there cause I already own them all. I'd even be willing to fork over some more $$$ if Cakewalk introduced its own external full featured CD authoring tool... as long as it was as full featured as CD Architect (between track audio, cd text, isrc, barcode, etc). And communicated with Sonar.

Howard

ORIGINAL: sammyp

My understanding is that you will then have a "demo" that you can burn to CD that will "approximate" a professional recording.

Most users seem to agree that for a mass-production commercial CD, you will need to use a professional to master the CD.

This is so true. I've tried many - Wavelab, T-racks, SoundForge, Sonar etc. - as soon as you start to compress and limit (maximize) your work in any of these software environments you get a "grainy" unprofessional sound to your mix. They all do that to the music. If you can't hear it your ears are a bit weak.

IMO this just isn't true - weak ears? grainy sound? my god man what are you on about?

I think you'll find people just use TOO MANY MASTERING PLUGS! - Try getting the mix right and using elephant in 4x oversampling and PLParEQ3 or Curve EQ for some very gentle polishing.

It really isn't rocket science - and I don't have weak ears and have a pretty good (Dynaudio bm6a) monitoring setup.

I think most of the voodoo lies in how little premastering engineers do, whereas folks who try to premaster themselves think- "right, lets add a little multibander, a little eq, a little widener, a little exciter, a little bass enhancer ooh and a mastering compressor and finally lets smash the lot to pieces with a limiter" - and then wonder why it sounds awful ;)


Kind regards

Dave Rich

wow! I dont think most people have the cpu power to do that -- but if you do...... good for you-- I think I would just freeze my computer after about the 2nd or third song.

Have you tried the new S5 per-clip FX bins? They might help. In Samplitude Master that's how I keep the CPU usage down. Each song clip gets its own FX. So, for a 15 song CD you only pay the FX CPU penalty for one song (unless the song clips overlap). So, on my lowly 1.3 GHz Athlon I usually see less than 20% CPU usage while mastering so I can do on-the-fly CD burning.

I have used the per clip FX a few times now in S5, but have not paid attention to the CPU usage reduction aspect of them. It really depends on how it was implemented.

If you have a project recorded at 24/88.2 and you want to mix it down to 16/44.1 with say powr-3 dithering selected (inder Options, Audio), does Sonar do this automatically in the correct order - ie

1. Change sampel rate
2. Apply dithering
3. Change bit rate

Or are you saying that I shoiuld first mix down from 24/88.2 to 24/44.1 without dithering, then in a second pass convert it to 16/44.1 with the dithering?

I have never thought of this as an issue before.

Best
Geoff

If one is exporting out of sonar, yes the above two pass procedure is what the ozone manual stated. I don't know if sonar does the correct order. We should ask cakewalk.

ORIGINAL: jmcelroy

ORIGINAL: daverich

IMO this just isn't true - weak ears? grainy sound? my god man what are you on about?

I think you'll find people just use TOO MANY MASTERING PLUGS! - Try getting the mix right and using elephant in 4x oversampling and PLParEQ3 or Curve EQ for some very gentle polishing.

It really isn't rocket science - and I don't have weak ears and have a pretty good (Dynaudio bm6a) monitoring setup.

I think most of the voodoo lies in how little premastering engineers do, whereas folks who try to premaster themselves think- "right, lets add a little multibander, a little eq, a little widener, a little exciter, a little bass enhancer ooh and a mastering compressor and finally lets smash the lot to pieces with a limiter" - and then wonder why it sounds awful ;)


Kind regards

Dave Rich

C'mon Dave, face up to it - you've just got weak ears, dude. Anyone who listens to you tunes can tell, bro. You know - all that "Overload" stuff that I checked out where my wife walked in and said "Wow, you finally found a decent radio station in Gainesville!", yeah definitely the product of weak ears You should hear my stuff, my mixes are so clear and pristine you can almost, like, discern the individual instruments! Pretty soon, I'll be so good that the listener will have a vague notion of what I'm trying to get across to them! Try that on for size, Captain Weak Ears.

OK, all kidding aside, I'm starting to understand that if I spend more time getting the mix right I won't have to spend as much time and money on mastering. You like PLParEQ3 and elephant. I've got PLParEQ, and I'll pick up Elephant. Do you suggest getting Curve EQ in addition to PLParEQ3 for the variety, or is it OK to stick with just PLParEQ3 in your opinion? What about tracking\mixing plugs. I know you're fond of wavearts trackplug, what else do you like? I assume the voxengo mixing suite is probably good, but I'd probably never use the phase alignment one (I never record with more than one mic), or the voxformer (once I have trackplug) and I'm not sure how much I'd use the warming\amplifier stuff, so maybe just a few a la carte voxengo plugs would be better.

Anway thanks, as always! I really value your opinion - and anyone else who cares to share one!

;)

Curve EQ has some nice options, but I never find myself using them now. It's very very surgical and has some gear-matching features which are nice, but for subtle premastering eq PLpar3EQ is more transparent to my ears. Of course you might be after a little harmonic boost too which CurveEQ will give you but I would be hesitant to do this over the whole mix.

Although it's useful to go over which plugs are decent, which give a cleaner sound etc - (and yeah I'm a big wavearts fan right now), the painful truth is that if you're looking for that commercial quality sound on stuff that's recorded with poor quality converters/preamps then you've got quite a battle on your hands - and this is where I think people start using huge chains of plugs to try and compensate.

I got the fireface about a year ago now - and before that I had the emu1820m. Both of these cards make getting a good mix almost childsplay - purely because you dont need to use the plugs to get the sound to be *right* - it's already a bloody good quality sound and mostly you only need to use a little gentle persuasion to get the sound you're after, rather than having to chisel it out of a worse-quality audio file. You're using the effects to *effect* the sound, not to *fix* it.

The monitors I have also make life alot easier - sometimes you can find yourself adjusting a mix away from a clean and natural sound just to get it to sound ok on a bad monitoring setup. I've sufferred from this in the past but it's a lesson well learnt.

Although the drivers are sometimes a bit hit and miss I would recommend someone with an older soundcard to buy an 1820M soundcard over say izotope ozone anyday.

Good monitoring is also something that will have a much more positive effect on mixes than plugins.

You can always take away quality, - it's VERY hard if not impossible to add it.

Kind regards

Dave Rich

ORIGINAL: glazfolk

ORIGINAL: seriousfun

Yes, dithering has to be done once, and as the last step.

Dithering, and digital audio in general, is explained very well in Nika Aldrich's book you can buy from Sweetwater. One of the things it will do is to make fades much smoother - the last few bits in 16-bit audio can be a little coarse in a fade out, and dithering smooths this.

Yes, I understand this, thanks. My question, however, is whether, when you export to file within Sonar, going from say 24/88.2 to 16/44.1, Sonar applies these processes in the correct order, ie downsample, dither, bit rate conversion? I've always assumed it does, and this is reinforced by the following (from the Help File on Export, Audio):

Set the sample rate for the file. CD audio uses 44100 kHz. If you don't have Dithering turned on, this is a good time to turn it on (on the Advanced tab of the Audio Options dialog).

But it would be nice to be sure ...

Hi Dave,

I had the same very important question back when POWr dither became available with Sonar...

http://forum.cakewalk.com/fb.asp?m=241739

Asked and answered.

ORIGINAL: eric_peterson

wow! I dont think most people have the cpu power to do that -- but if you do...... good for you-- I think I would just freeze my computer after about the 2nd or third song.

Have you tried the new S5 per-clip FX bins? They might help. In Samplitude Master that's how I keep the CPU usage down. Each song clip gets its own FX. So, for a 15 song CD you only pay the FX CPU penalty for one song (unless the song clips overlap). So, on my lowly 1.3 GHz Athlon I usually see less than 20% CPU usage while mastering so I can do on-the-fly CD burning.

I have used the per clip FX a few times now in S5, but have not paid attention to the CPU usage reduction aspect of them. It really depends on how it was implemented.

But Sonar 5's FX per clip don't work in the same manner as those in Samplitude ! Sonar's FX are active at all times, whereas, Samplitudes only when they play. Mastering is a prime example where Samplitude's way of using FX on clips is prefferable. You can load ( as you've found) as many FX as you need and the CPU will not hit the roof. Not so in Sonar. Yes we've got a superb implementation of freeze, but still...

ORIGINAL: glazfolk

I think most of the voodoo lies in how little premastering engineers do, whereas folks who try to premaster themselves think- "right, lets add a little multibander, a little eq, a little widener, a little exciter, a little bass enhancer ooh and a mastering compressor and finally lets smash the lot to pieces with a limiter" - and then wonder why it sounds awful ;)

Dave ... you forgot the extra touch of reverb, you know, just to polish it up a little.
Best,
Geoff

And don't forget the cowbell...

ORIGINAL: SteveD
...I had the same very important question back when POWr dither became available with Sonar...

http://forum.cakewalk.com/fb.asp?m=241739

Asked and answered.

Yes, Steve, it was clearly answered in that post. And you summed it up:

In Sonar 4, I will just export a 44.1/16 file and use CD Architect to audition the entire multi-song project for level matching. I will be forced to return to Sonar to make level adjustments because the file is already dithered, but stereo file exports are pretty quick in Sonar.

And sammyp,

Wavelab, T-racks, SoundForge, Sonar etc. - as soon as you start to compress and limit (maximize) your work in any of these software environments you get a "grainy" unprofessional sound to your mix. They all do that to the music.

is just plain wrong. Compressing and limiting is not maximizing. I don't know if my results would have been worse if I was using Sonitus instead of UAD. I have compared these masters on Tannoy speakers with Manley/Mastering Labs crossovers, and on soffit-mounted Augsberger monitors (as well as on computer speakers and headphones), and the masters compare well to the high-priced MEs' work.

Every improvement in SRC, dithering, monitoring, CD media, etc., etc., etc., will certainly have a potential benefit. Our current affordable computer-based recording systems, SONAR included, are not our ultimate limiting factor in delivering high-qualitymixes for delivery. The limiting factor is our ears and our experience.

ORIGINAL: Rain

I've read interviews w/ many pro Mastering Engineers who use software in conjunction w/ high-end hardware. Quite a few of them actually use Pro Tools which has none of the so "crucial" mastering features mentionned throughout this thread. You have to use it in conjunction w/ Digi's MasterList CD in order to burn cd's.*

I don't see much difference between their solution and using Sonar and Nero or whichever app you decide to use to master.

...

Yes, there is not much difference at that point, in terms of workflow.

The standard Pro Tools|HD converters are IMO nothing special. Clocked with a Big Ben, replaced with Lavry, Meitner, Apogee, etc., PT will sound as good as the digital converters. Dedicated workstations like Pyramix have a dedicated sound card, but are still often used with better converters.