Tuning and VST Instruments

[53Crëw]

Do any of you guys have issues with VST instruments being out of tune? I recorded a few bass and guitar tracks after tuning the instruments on my Boss tuner. After these tracks were done, I added some VSTi keyboard parts and it sounded horrible. They sound like they're 5-10 cents off from the bass and guitar parts. It makes me wonder if my tuner is off (which I doubt), or if the keyboard samples are off, or if there is a setting somewhere in SONAR or in my PC that needs to be changed to bring the keys to proper pitch. Anyone else ever have this problem?

(I double checked the intonation on the bass and guitar. Bass is good within a few cents and guitar is spot on.)

 

[ahjteam]

The drummers also always wonder why the click is out of time. But if you suspect it is the keyboard samples, why not pass the thru a tuner plugin like GVST Gtune (it's free, google)

 

[Habsburgs]

Intonation?

 

[Erkan]

I've had this issue with CVPiano which uses real samples of a piano for each key. I ran CVPiano through a tuner and indeed found that some of the keys were a bit flat, which was a great disappointment It sounds good on its own or with instruments that somehow don't collide that much with its frequencies, but with full on distortion guitars and shit, it doesn't sound so awesome. Of course, it's not THAT much off so it's not an emergency issue but yeah, I can relate to what you are saying.

 

[tarnationsauce2]

Most likely your tuner is out of calibration. I always calibrate my tuners using my computer as reference. The CPU clock determines the A=440 of the VST. Combined with the interface clock determine the frequency of the VST while listening.
Both of those clocks are usually extremely accurate by comparison to a stompbox tuner.
That being said, some VSTi's you can offset the A=ƒ.

Try this: Get your VST and set it to a simple sine oscillator with no LFO, modulation, etc. Then hit A while the output of your DAW is ran into your guitar tuner. See if A on your computer = A on your tuner. If not that is your problem. Make sure you're not overloading the tuner pedal, so start it at a very low output level and bring it up until it is reading the frequency without jumping around.

 

[Jind]

I would not doubt that some samples are out of tune. There has been a long running complaint over at the Sonar forums about certain samples in the Dimension Pro library being out of tune, particularly some bass samples if I recall.

 

[KnifeVariable]

Mellowsound (freebie mellotron VST) has a nasty bug that causes hilarious/apocalyptic out-of-tuneness when some parameters are in a certain combination (Voice: Choir, Attack: Medium, Release: Long). Don't know if it's a documented bug or not, but that's the only tuning issue I've ever had with a VST synth. Samples are a whole different affair though!

 

[geokesidi]

hi guys.i do have the same tuning problem.i think its a vst issue.i checked dxi truepiano with cakewalk tuner and its perfectly tuned but many other vst are out of tune.i dont know what kind of problem is this.first i thout it was my midi keyboard but its not.

 

[FIXXXER]

free VSTi's often sound out of tune, especially bass and piano plugins.
the reason could be the chamber pitch that was used while recording the samples.
classical instruments very or at least differ grom guitar/bass in chamber pitch IIRC.

cheers
S.

 

[geokesidi]

soultrash ,i think that is a completely different problem.i can see all vsti been out of tune using the cakewalk tuner.

 

[TheWinterSnow]

I know of a few samples that i have used that were horribly out of intonation/ out of tube just by listening to the instrument by itself, in some case two note one half step apart either being practically the same exact note or being off by a quarter (micro) tone. Good use for Melodyne or Autotune.

 

[53Crëw]

Since my old thread got bumped, here's an update.... The VSTi I was using did in fact have some out-of-tune samples. The programmer recently re-released it with corrected samples to fix the tuning issue. ...Much better now.