nuendo export Vs session sound question

covil

johny bigode
Mar 22, 2007
56
0
6
Lately i´ve discovered that when i export a song in nuendo it sounds always a litle bit different from the actual session in nuendo.
Have you ever experienced that?? Is it just me? Or it´s because my pc is an ancient piece of crap that works always with the RAM maxed out!!!!
Please help me on this one because i´m already thinking of buying a new pc.
I´m hopping i don´t have to, but i don´t really like to be surprized when i export a song and finding out it doesn´t sound the same!!!!

I´m only talking about ram but i could be anything else, I´m just not shure of what????
Help???? Anyone!!!!
 
You're not alone. I have always felt the same about bouncing out of Cubase 4, same engine as Nuendo. It sounds one way inside Cubase, but when I play back the bounced file it sounds different to me. I know Ermz on the forum here has concurred with me that he has felt that way before too. I don't think it's your computer at all man, no worries.
 
is it possible that when we are using almost all RAM the hole process starts to suffer??
 
Not in my opinion, because it doesn't matter if the session is using a lot of power or a little for me, the bounce always sounds a little different than it does inside Cubase.
 
I noticed this as well. But now that I think about it I'm always in 24-Bit in cubase and bounce to 16-Bit. It might be the dither in cubase causing the difference in sound. I've never compared a 24-Bit session to a 24-Bit bounce.
 
I noticed this as well. But now that I think about it I'm always in 24-Bit in cubase and bounce to 16-Bit. It might be the dither in cubase causing the difference in sound. I've never compared a 24-Bit session to a 24-Bit bounce.

For the record, I record in 24-bit and bounce 24-bit wav files and I get the sound difference.
 
Probably the most irritating part about this is that I can't simply bounce something to show anyone the difference in sound, lol. You would have to experience it yourself. I may try to do something like mic up my monitors and record it playing back from those in both Cubase and like QuickTime or something. Maybe that can work as far as showing others what exactly it seems to be doing. Will be a few days before all my stuff is back at my house though, doing a project on location for the time being...
 
i feel that a bounced mix played back through winamp sounds different than through windows media player...
and my mixes sound different when my monitor is turned off... :loco:
i don't know, maybe its just that we're so used to "seeing" music nowadays...

anyway i have not experienced a remarkable difference,
but i always stay in 32 bit floating point (not for master dithering though..)
and i'm on cubase 5 now, maybe its different with nuendo ?


is it day and night difference ? or is it loss of highs ? what exactly is different?
 
Hello there. Was just checking the forum and stumbled across this thread and my eyes and ears lit up a little. I remember thinking a similar thing was happening to me also. I believe winamp to the culprit here. Under preferences: playback. there is the option to allow 24 bit. God knows what kind of unwanted dithering it does to your nice wav file if it isnt allowing 24 bit but i beleive the default setting for this is to not allow it.
Also under preferences: playback: equaliser. Theres an option for use limiter; the winamp default for this is 'On' also.
Cant imagine this helping the consistancy either.
 
Rocco: You are misunderstanding man... He is bouncing in 16-bit, so the wav file itself is 16-bit, winamp is not doing any dithering to play it back.

As far as explaining it... hmm.. one thing I have noticed is that inside Cubase a mix will sound glued and solid, bounce it out and listen to it in QuickTime or iTunes (both with any sound altering/enhancing features turned off, of course) and it seems less glued or something. It's not a OMG HUGE difference, but you can easily hear it. It's not just a tiny bit that can be ignored. Again, it's hard to explain really, and you need to hear it for yourself to understand what is happening. I'll see what I can do to get an example up but again, I'm working on a project currently on location and my stuff is all there so...
 
are you bouncing in realtime?

I never had that problem with cubase tbh, I even did a null test.
actually, you should try a null test yourself, if it cancelles out it's just the good old "mixing with the eyes" problem.
more than once I thought a live mix sounded much better when the musicvideo was playing....your mind can play some wicked tricks on you
 
I usually find that the session within the DAW sounds a little 'cleaner' or slicker to me. After bouncing it seems to lose some of that depth and clarity. I'm not sure whether it's my imagination or the differences between real-time summing and summing everything to an offline file. It's never really bothered me all that much, but I have wondered whether it was actually occurring in reality or only in my mind. With the amount of people wondering the same thing, we might be onto something?
 
I've always noticed this too but I chalked it up to just being my imagination.

The amount of people noticing it makes me wonder though..
 
Sorry 006 for misunderstanding information that isn't there heh.

Ive been a cubase user for a lot of years now all the way back to sx2. The only time Ive noticed a problem is back in the day when i was a mere bairn and was mixing on audigy 10k driver rig or something or other that vst instruments that weren't frozen would give a slightly different 'performance' when exported faster than real-time as when played in cubase, as if the card just wasn't clever enough to do everything at once at speed and the sync of the instruments suffered for it. Or for instance drumagog or even the original DKHS would not export a drum track the same due to the random element of its sampling: but this is the case on any soundcard.

Perhaps this is why I'm always either freezing tracks or bouncing out to new project when VSTis are involved to get my consistency. Just to clarify though you say he bounces in 16-bit? With a dither on the master-bus from a 24-bit project? Or is he actually mixing in 16-bit from the start?
Ive never thought that exporting a mix with no random element sounded any different myself other than when its passed through a limiter or filter on winamp for instance.

I have a friend that claims his tracking in cubase was always wavering in and out of time with his old PC fitted with 1GB of old SD-ram but has eradicated the problem buy upgrading to newer DDR2 at 2GB. So there definitely could be something in that. I cant imagine it being the software though.

Id be straight into Steinberg customer service if I was experiencing these problems mind it. . .
 
all my tracks are recorded at 24 bit 48khz and than exported to 16 bit 44.100khz. I don´t think it´s because of dithering, i´ve tried it with and without sounds the same after export. I tried to dither when exporting , after exporting and no dithering at all but i don´t ear any difference. I´ve read some here that dithering is only noticebale when theres a big dynamics (softer passages/high passages).
What i don´t think i´ve done is to export at the same bit depht as i record and than pass it to 16bit,44.100KHZ.
I´ll try that and keep you posted if that´s better!!!