Cubase/Reaper Collab: Timing Issues

[schust]

background: a buddy and I are doing a collab. He's uses Cubase and lives in CA, I use Reaper and live in Chicago.

i record all the instruments (guitar/bass/drums) and then send him an mp3 mix of the song that he loads into Cubase and then records his vocals tracks. when he's done, he exports his vocals tracks and sends them back to me. i grab the tracks and load them back into Reaper and mix.

we've done a few songs - and since he sends back his vocals tracks as the complete length of the original MP3 i sent him - they usually line up no problem. however, one song is not lining up correctly. we've tried everything we can think of with no luck.

has anybody experienced this before? any ideas what we could be missing or tips for figuring this out?

thanks in advance.

 

[HatchetDrummer]

MP3s are not sample accurate, depending on the conversion algo used, thats probably your problem. Just use a dropbox account and post the .wav files in there, why would you not do that. If your serious about collaboration then why not send .wav mixes? Thats my guess.

 

[Sloan]

Interesting, I have never had problems collaborating via mp3's.

 

[schust]

MP3s are not sample accurate, depending on the conversion algo used, thats probably your problem. Just use a dropbox account and post the .wav files in there, why would you not do that. If your serious about collaboration then why not send .wav mixes? Thats my guess.

trust me, i am serious about it - just never did a collab before and it seemed MP3s would be the easiest and quickest way to send a mix to him. he just needs a reference to sing to. all my tracks (aka "the band") and his vocal tracks are 44.1 24bit WAVs.

however, during my research the last few days i have come across the fact that MP3s are not reliable - so we'll be dropping that as a means for me to send him a mix to sing to. one person on the Reaper forum suggested FLAC.

i sent a WAV yesterday but it still doesn't line up. i'm tired of racking my head at this point. it has to be something obscure. we're fundamentally doing what we should - there's just something else in one (or both) DAWs that's hosing it.

 

[locus_coeruleus]

maybe he's just singing out of tempo.

 

[HatchetDrummer]

Interesting, I have never had problems collaborating via mp3's.

Its normally not a huge problem, but in the day and age where everything is tracked to a grid and hyper-edited a couple samples can sometimes mean a lot, sometimes its not shit. It really depends.

But is a fact that MP3s loose samples from the original source, one of the many reasons why mp3's suck, but thats an entirely different debate all together...

Its almost like syncing two 2" tape machines without SMPTE lock, or running 2 different 8ch ADDA converters without a wordclock lock. It might work, but chances are shits going to be off.

OP: If you used .wavs and there is still something off, it could be something else. Maybe hes exporting the vox track with it not starting at 0. I would try a few different things:
1. Have him export vox and mixdown thu cubase as different files.
2. Have him export vox layered (mixed) with the mixdown in cubase. That should give you enough info to rectify the problem.

I've had some issues when creating drum samples sometimes that they are not starting off at zero, causing drumagog to place the sample late in relation to the original source. It could be something to do with that.

Other then that you shouldnt have issues working with both programs. I had a situation once recording a band that all of a sudden I couldn't get any low latency monitoring in Nuendo, even though my aiso control panel was set at 32 samples. i tracked drums and guitar scratch track in nuendo then bounced the mix and finished tracking everything else in reaper... No issues what so ever.

 

[bryan_kilco]

But what exactly is wrong with the tracks? Like, is all the vocal material actually there, just not lining up?

Or the whole performance is slightly off time over the entire song?

 

[schust]

But what exactly is wrong with the tracks? Like, is all the vocal material actually there, just not lining up?

Or the whole performance is slightly off time over the entire song?

the tracks are fine. well recorded, just not lining up with the song i recorded on this end. i tried sending exact times at which different things were happening on my end (drums coming in,etc) but apparently the times on his side in Cubase were different.

we decided yesterday to just scrap the current project file for this song and start over. i was always going to re-record the guitars/bass/drums so no biggie on my end - but his vocals were done so he has to redo them now. i may institute a 4 click intro just to make sure there's no question in the future.

thanks for everybody's feedback.

 

[LeSedna]

If he just records vocals, why doesn't he uses Reaper as well ? So that you could send him the project file with the wav, he would record his takes on it, and send it back to you. Minimal efforts.

 

[locus_coeruleus]

trust me, i am serious about it - just never did a collab before and it seemed MP3s would be the easiest and quickest way to send a mix to him. he just needs a reference to sing to. all my tracks (aka "the band") and his vocal tracks are 44.1 24bit WAVs.

however, during my research the last few days i have come across the fact that MP3s are not reliable - so we'll be dropping that as a means for me to send him a mix to sing to. one person on the Reaper forum suggested FLAC.

i sent a WAV yesterday but it still doesn't line up. i'm tired of racking my head at this point. it has to be something obscure. we're fundamentally doing what we should - there's just something else in one (or both) DAWs that's hosing it.

that's because encoding to mp3 produces a little latency of 528 samples. I don't remember the exact explanation for this, but it always happens. Use lossless audio