@brozobob,

As requested multiple times now, please post an A/B sample of what you are talking about.

Rimshot

I have just completed a test and had some interesting results. This will be more from a high fidelity point of view. I have got a great recording of a very good band playing a sort of light rock latin groove with vocals. It has been recorded by a very fine engineer (on an independent third DAW) and it is a total lesson in great mike choices and placement. Even when you use no plugins a fantastic mix is easily possible and it just sounds great with no effects or plugins at all being used. The balance just needs to be correct.

I mixed this down in Sonar 8.5 and Studio One V2. Here are some important points about the test.

The sessions are at 48K 24 bit and I left them at that res all the way through to avoid any other influences due to dithering and sample rate conversion.

I panned only Left, Right and Centre to avoid any pan law differences. (Even famous engineers have said you should only use these three positions!) I was surprised how good the panning sounds. There are a bunch of stereo tracks.

The channel faders are at only whole numbers of -dB's eg -5 dB or -7 dB etc

There are 18 audio tracks and they are mono so two were used for stereo parts eg piano, drum oheads etc

No plug ins used on any tracks so we are testing the mix engine mainly.

64 bit double res was used in both.

Real Time mixes were done as well has off line bounces. (they both sounded the same)

Sound Quality assessment. Both DAW's sounded excellent and they were identical level wise. I did suspect however that the bottom end in Sonar (upper bass) sounded a little different to Studio One but not major. I must say they both sounded superlative. There is not a major this one sounds bad the other sounds great.

Null test did not give me a complete null. If you are wondering did I get my horizontal positioning correct, I certainly did. Even minute time differences produce a very loud output very quickly. I was able to adjust the timing so the entire track disappeared, except almost. Also got my levels matched perfectly for the most minimum sound left behind right up at higher volume.

Firstly this does show that there may in fact be differences in even how two different DAW's handle the mix engine. 

Back to null sounds. All top end completely cancelled and what was left was not above 500Hz or 1Khz at most. This was confirmed as switching the two waves (without null test) or just comparing, I heard the top end was excellent in both or identical.

What was left in the null test was short bursts of low freq energy (between 30 and 150 Hz) in time with the kick drum and you could hear parts of the bass line wandering around too, very deep parts. So it means one of the DAW's is doing something different to these areas.

So there you have it, a situation where a complete null was not obtained and I was very careful to match everything as closely as possible.  Up loud the mixes both sound great and even the differences in that low end area are maybe not significant but just audible at times. I felt the Sonar mix had a slightly harder sound in the low end and the Studio One mix was a bit smoother and clearer and deeper down there but very very subjective. Hard to hear in reality. I am glad though that a complete null is also not possible.

I can also agree with Scott in that synths can and do produce some interesting combinations of fequencies so this may be heightened in other styles.


Update: It is much harder to hear the differences audio wise.  But if you set up Span and just look at the remains of the null components there are two frequencies present mainly in this track anyway under 40 Hz and about 120 Hz. When you expand Span right out so you are only looking at say 20 Hz to 400 Hz only, there are differences in the way the curves move to the music in each case. Studio One seems to have more energy around 30 to 35 Hz on the Span graphs. It looks like it is a less steep slope around 30 Hz to 20 Hz as well.

Also if you are wondering how far down the remains of the null components are compared to the tracks themselves I have measured it and it is around 12 to 14 dB. It varies, it jumps a little high at times and also drops down to 20 db in some cases. So the question you may ask is how much to the overall picture would these artifacts effect the sound. We all know that even small amounts can be perceived.

There are two reasons why you will get null components left over. One is the levels may be different from the two DAW's at those frequencies but also there may be timing differences also at those points. Timing differences also create null components or sounds. Hard to tell which it is but they are there.

Testing how the same plugin behaves inside two different DAW's is also a valid test and is something a bit different to what I think I have done here.

bitflipper

Dappa1, I for one hope you don't get banned. You can always be counted on to liven a conversation, even if it's just to get John T's blood boiling.

+1!
 
He's like the good buddy you have that always gets way more drunk than everyone else and says and does the stuff you talk about for years.
 
BTW, I'm a big fan of John T as well!
 
Sven

Exactly Jim!

Lance

Jim Roseberry

Danny - as I understand it, enabling the 64 bit engine *can* result in better sound, at least in theory. BUT, and it's a big "but", this isn't some automatic thing where everything sounds nice and shiny in 64 bit mode. It's more to do with how complicated your mix is, what your effects chains are up to, how complex your routing is and so on. Mathematically speaking, as a mix gets more and more complicated, there is a higher possibility of degradation (through and increased amount of rounding inaccuracy) in the 32 bit space than the 64 bit space. That's the bit that's definitely happening and not a matter for debate. To what extent this is audible is an open question. I *think* I can hear the difference too (on really complex mixes), but I wouldn't go to the cross for that view, it's hard to be sure.

 
John, that's a pretty good summary of how I feel.
All things being equal, I'll take the extra resolution (effectively making any potential rounding-error a moot point).
 
Roughly 10 years ago, I was one who was convinced that different DAW apps sounded different.
Over time... all the major apps (IMO) improved... as did the quality of native EFX/processing.
At this point, any potential differences are FAR less than the different "sound" you'd achieve by using a different tape machine.  There are far more significant things to concentrate on (mic choice/position, playing, arrangement, mix, etc)... that will have a much more profound impact on the final result.
 
Unless you're encountering a specific bug, you can achieve good results with any of the major applications.

You don't have the faintest idea what you're talking about.

What homestudio? What on earth are you blathering on about?

All I can say on this, Is that i have used, ableton, cubase, Reason, Studio one, reaper
My finds:
4th) ableton well below par,some what muffled compared to these other daws, needs a lot more Intelligent mixing and mastering.
3rd) Studio one _ Has lost sound quality since V1, i feel has a nasty harsh texture in the upper ranges, in overall sound comparing both Raw sounds and mixed sounds, somthing i cant quite put my finger on,
2nd) Cubase and reaper -Good,
1st) Reason_ Excellent although differ from sonar my ears say,
1st) Sonar actually sounds best by far to me in its natural un-mixed state before effects processing, just something that words can try to explain but would not justify, summing it up in my ears , Its stands out it feels/sounds nice in all the frequency ranges that my Own ears can hear, Before i even try to mix or master, it sounds pretty dam good,makes me feel confident, (Shame about the stability of the audio engine).

Many of us will have different views on this the sound we like, becuase of the scientific and psychological nature or hearing and our perception of hearing. But then again their is plane old poor sound in genral, or songs trashed if we mess up the mixing and mastering, Beauty is in the eye of the beholder said someone , i would say Ask a/the "8bit Kid" the hearing equivelant of that question.

Sonar will definitely not be what stops somebody from having a number 1 hit lmao!!!

Your delirious!!

Lance

Interesting. So basically, in using Sonar, if your argument is correct, you always have a good excuse for not achieving much. I think I get it now.

It's what I do for a living.

In Regards to Sound on Sound, here is their response to me emailing them to test the differences amongst the DAW's:

We'd love to, and have explored the idea many times. But it's just not practical, given the number of variables that would need testing for the dozen or more DAWs there are out there.

Other than the built-in plug-ins — which obviously will colour the sound differently in each DAW — the key differences are the precision (word length) at which the DAW and plug-ins are operating — ie 24-bit fixed point, or 32 or 64-bit floating point; any default settings, such as the pan-law, which may by default be set differently in each DAW and thus skew results; and the on-board sample-rate conversion when importing and converting files.

With all those things being equal, there should be no difference. So unless anyone making claims of sonic differences between DAWs has made all these things equal and then done a proper double-blind test and a phase-null test, then I'd be disinclined to trust their opinions!

Hope that helps.

Matt.

So There you have it! Oh and by the way I NEVER USE Windows Media Player to Judge anything!

All my real work is done on my desktop,and I use a variety of players to check my own work[though it's still EARLY DAYS for me]
No I was just mentioning an observation with importing a Zep song on my LAPTOP[Dell XPS 15 L502x i7 2630qm]and this machine is hardly Pro,it was just surprising how much difference between playing the track with WMP and playing back the same song in Sonar X1c Expanded,Im guessing there is a huge amount of difference in the two sound engines on this El Cheapo laptop,I don't know,just an observation I now wish I'd NEVER mentioned.

Any way I will do the same thing on my desktop[when I get time] and I bet there will be little difference[I hope!!] RK.

"So unless anyone making claims of sonic differences between DAWs has made all these things equal and then done a proper double-blind test and a phase-null test, then I'd be disinclined to trust their opinions! "


Exactly!!! 

This is really odd.

It sounds like one of those discussions where one hears that songs made on a certain DAW sounds a certain way...this really makes no sense.

I always thought that it was what YOU put into the piece that counted..not the DAW.  

Agree, even IF there are tiny sound differences to begin with, why should that affect the end result?

So the Black Eyed Peas are doing Motown now?