Poll: Do some DAWs have superior sound? (and, are you a programmer / engineer?)

[jrhager84]

Originally Posted by drBill

Well it's obvious that you DON'T care. And that's 100% fine by me. Less knuckleheads = more & better paying work for those of us doin' it. Keep programming though. We need more DAW's cause we're stupid enough to believe they sound different.

So I'm a knucklehead, eh? I'm charmed! :-D

I'm not a programmer btw, but I did take classes in college when I foolishly thought programmers make money

Honestly bill, I like you. I will say you're getting a bit personal now. I forgive you, though. I just can't stay mad at you!

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[UnderTow]

Originally Posted by drBill

Alaistair - I suspected that. Moved audio files forward / backward in 1 sample increments several samples (hard to remember, but I'd guess close to 10) and results did not null. Stuff got weirder though....

Yes, I wasn't drawing any conclusions about your test just from the way you worded it. But it did make me think of this issue in null tests in general and how they can fail simply because of misalignment. Hence my post.

Alistair

[chk23]

Originally Posted by krheatman

Not limiting the scope.I went back and counted,in these 1000+ posts, and compared how many times you guys have repeated the same thing over and over.It nulls with the same amount of time drBill has spent pumping out audio and laughing at you all the while.

Life is short,enjoy it.Use the tools that get you in the ZONE.You know that place where your senses are in control,not your analytical side.Paralysis by analysis can cripple productivity and creativity.



Sent from my PC36100 using Tapatalk

Funny, I thought the same about your hundreds of posts here: Start making music, stop your quest for the best sounding DAW.

[David Rick]

Originally Posted by Muser

The opportunity for a DAW to be broken in some way is high I suppose.

I remember this interesting part in an article on Magix Samplitude Pro X.

Thanks so much for posting this, Muser. I hadn't seen this interview with Samplitude creators Titus Toast and Tilman Herberger, which appeared in Sound On Sound earlier this year. It's fun to read, because I was that guy. Well actually the guy was my client. I wasn't certain if I could hear a difference between the two releases or not, but my client could hear it consistently. To keep him happy, I had to find out what had changed and document it for the Samplitude folks so they could fix it. I ended up writing a suite of tests in Matlab which demonstrated that the difference was a very low level truncation error that hadn't been there before. You might think that dither doesn't matter at the level of the 24th bit, but it turns out that it does.

Just recently the same client and I discovered that Sequoia 10 or 11 (I forget which) would dither a 32-bit floating point bounce if you set it up wrongly. It makes no sense to do that, and it turned out to be clearly audible (even though the original track files were recorded years ago with 20-bit converters!), so we had to spend a whole afternoon redoing a bunch of work.

Titus and Tilman are darn smart, and they have some very good programmers working for them. Magix doesn't have a monopoly on smart programmers, though. The fact that several major DAWs can now pass a round-robin null test shows that standards have risen throughout the industry. That's good news for the majority of folks, who would rather not lose sleep over what their DAW is doing. As for me, I've learned to head the advice of the late President Reagan, who said "trust, but verify!"

David L. Rick
Seventh String Recording

[chk23]

Originally Posted by krheatman

Eye for an eye,tooth for a tooth.That is what he got because he deserved it.How dare he enter the lair of the King of null with such unfounded nonsense.He drew first.

Live by the sword,die by the sword.
You were wrong to challenge the masters of DAW reality in the first place with such unfounded logic.

You can lead a horse to water.
Sometimes people will not agree with you,even if you are right in your eyes,and of some others.And you have to be OK to live and let live.Otherwise you are equated to having a mindset not unlike that of a tyrannical leader.

Sent from my PC36100 using Tapatalk

Says Mr. "I have to hunt down every non-believer and throw insults at him until he kneels down before me and begs for forgiveness". Stop this pedantic search for the golden bit that sounds better than ours. Stop believing in catchy marketing phrases - just be creative and spend your time for better things like making music.

[UnderTow]

Originally Posted by drBill

Hey, question for the programmer types....

Is there a piece of analytical software that actually counts/compares bits for bits on two (or more) files. Thus eliminating the need for "null by listening", or "null @ 80+dB down" type observations. There must be. Seems to be a simple application, and would eliminate the need to flip polarity and compare.

What is the name of said software(s), and what is/are the cost(s)? Available for Mac? Or PC only?

And do you guys USE it, or do you do the flip polarity type of comparison only?

When I'm not making music but testing stuff, I usually use Sound Forge first and do it by hand. Sample align the two files and copy one into the other phase reversed then analyse the resulting file. If it is not a perfect null, I might use Audio DiffMaker to analyse the type and level of difference. This application can do null tests on any files even if there is sub sample misalignment. (Due to SRC or going through the analogue domain or whatever).

Alistair

[rksguit]

By the way,does anyone think daw's sound different?

[drBill]

Originally Posted by jrhager84

I forgive you, though. I just can't stay mad at you!

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It's all good man! Didn't mean to get personal, but this thread can heat up pretty hot. Cheers, bp

[jrhager84]

Originally Posted by drBill

It's all good man! Didn't mean to get personal, but this thread can heat up pretty hot. Cheers, bp

I hear ya bro. You're alright in my book...

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[krheatman]

Originally Posted by chk23

Funny, I thought the same about your hundreds of posts here: Start making music, stop your quest for the best sounding DAW.

I have never felt limited by a DAW,called one as better than the other or blamed one for that matter.I have never said one DAW sounded different from another just running a mix through.I did have a problem rendering files that sounded different,which I gave references as to why,which was an automation issue.
As far as this thread goes I have only been stating my opinion that the average guy cares more about the result than the inner workings of the system.What time it is rather than how to build a watch if you will.Which I know has nothing to do with the original threads premise,but this thread has been all over the charts.
That and why do you feel the need to beat them down.

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[Jason West]

Originally Posted by krheatman

As far as this thread goes I have only been stating my opinion that the average guy cares more about the result than the inner workings of the system.What time it is rather than how to build a watch if you will.

This is correct. But I'm baffled as to why do you keep writing sentences that everybody already agrees on.

The intense discussion was created by and who actively questioned and made claims about the internal workings of the system... which thereby leads to dissection of those inner workings.

The people that truly only care about results and want to remain blissfully unaware of how it works, by definition, are not participating in this thread. (They're busy making making hit records, as some would say, haha.) This means you're defending people who don't need defending -- they're not even here!

In this thread, I have not seen one person insult or disparage a DAW user who cares more about results than how the underlying programming code actually works. If so, please quote it. On the other hand, the "null scientists" have been ruthless in ripping apart false statements about software code and presenting pseudo-science opinions as facts. That's quite a different thing.

Do people get to pass off pseudo-scientific opinions as fact because they've won a Grammy? No.

Do people get to pass off pseudo-scientific opinions as fact because they "trust their ears"? No.

Do people get to pass off pseudo-scientific opinions as fact because some chicken fossil dinosaur was proved a hoax? No.

[chk23]

Originally Posted by krheatman

I have never felt limited by a DAW,called one as better than the other or blamed one for that matter.I have never said one DAW sounded different from another just running a mix through.I did have a problem rendering files that sounded different,which I gave references as to why,which was an automation issue.
As far as this thread goes I have only been stating my opinion that the average guy cares more about the result than the inner workings of the system.What time it is rather than how to build a watch if you will.Which I know has nothing to do with the original threads premise,but this thread has been all over the charts.
That and why do you feel the need to beat them down.

Sent from my PC36100 using Tapatalk

I never beat anybody down - just corrected or clarified false assumptions that may lead others to the wrong decisions when choosing their DAW.
And it's easier to concentrate on the important things if you don't have to worry about your DAW might having an inferior sound compared to others, at least if you're a beginner that is not that sure about his own judgement yet.

I remember that threads like these confused me, back at the time when I was going from just tracking to more serious mixing, and thus planning to upgrade my light/educational version to a full feature DAW. Because, if you're going to spend about 1000$ on software, you want to be sure it's the best you can get for your money, and if there are people claiming that one DAW sounds better than the other, you might get influenced in your decision.

[krheatman]

Originally Posted by Jason West

This is correct. But I'm baffled as to why do you keep writing sentences that everybody already agrees on.

The intense discussion was created by and who actively questioned and made claims about the internal workings of the system... which thereby leads to dissection of those inner workings.

The people that truly only care about results and want to remain blissfully unaware of how it works, by definition, are not participating in this thread. (They're busy making making hit records, as some would say, haha.) This means you're defending people that don't need defending -- they're not even here!

In this thread, I have not seen one person insult or disparage a DAW user that cares more about results than how the underlying programming code actually works. If so, please quote it. On the other hand, the "null scientists" have been ruthless in ripping apart false statements about software code and presenting pseudo-science opinions as fact. That's quite a different thing.

I guess because I know you are right,and are so intensely serious about it as to seem to gang up on people.So in turn,I have been poking fun at you guys.I have been accused of the very thing I have been ribbing you about when it comes to having a discussion about something when I know I am right.

I know you are probably as passionate about this as I am about my convictions in any given area where I feel I have expertise.
But it still looks ugly if we are not using that knowledge with humility with others.Peace.


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[Jason West]

Originally Posted by krheatman

But it still looks ugly if we are not using that knowledge with humility with others.

You are right.

If a scientific programmer waltzes into a poetry thread and makes claims (his "personal truth" haha) that a computerized algorithm that generates rhymes is superior to the poetry generated by human poets... those poets will mock him mercilessly. No humility at all will be shown. LOL

Same thing happens if a scientific programmer makes factual claims that computer algorithms (e.g. Band-in-the-Box) generate better music than songwriters. No humility will be shown by musicians in responding to such "facts."

If such programmers have those kinds of "personal truths" harboring in their head (and I know some of them do), they best keep those sentiments private and not publicly proclaim pseudo-scientific opinion as a indisputable fact.

Both the artistic and scientific mindsets can walk into minefields. They both have to be cognizant of their surroundings (hmmm... which forum am I in and what's the actual topic being discussed???). Both groups can inadvertently share opinions dressed up as facts. Science & software programming does not have the upper hand in all conversations. However, in the limited scope of this thread, it does.

[krheatman]

Originally Posted by chk23

I never beat anybody down - just corrected or clarified false assumptions that may lead others to the wrong decisions when choosing their DAW.
And it's easier to concentrate on the important things if you don't have to worry about your DAW might having an inferior sound compared to others, at least if you're a beginner that is not that sure about his own judgement yet.

I remember that threads like these confused me, back at the time when I was going from just tracking to more serious mixing, and thus planning to upgrade my light/educational version to a full feature DAW. Because, if you're going to spend about 1000$ on software, you want to be sure it's the best you can get for your money, and if there are people claiming that one DAW sounds better than the other, you might get influenced in your decision.

The worst part is there are 1000 other threads like this one,and the analog guys argued the same premise before this with elements in their world.

So you had to laugh at drBills post where the wife was calling the guy to bed,and he said just a min, right?

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[UnderTow]

Originally Posted by FLYINGJAY

Protools has 2 pan pots for each stereo track!

Cubase and logic have only one per stereo track.no need to talk about that here,clearly a rare feature.

Jay, your credibility as a Cubase expert is in jeopardy here! Cubase has the choice between Stereo Panner, Stereo Balance or Stereo Dual Panner. Right click on the panner of any track/bus and select which one you want.

Alistair

[chk23]

Originally Posted by krheatman

The worst part is there are 1000 other threads like this one,and the analog guys argued the same premise before this with elements in their world.

That's something completely different, as there are significant differences between the analog and digital world in most cases. In contrast to this topic here there are several totally logical reasons for that and in those threads it goes without saying that people back their claims with sound material and A/B tests. While we're still waiting for something like that on this topic here.

Originally Posted by krheatman

So you had to laugh at drBills post where the wife was calling the guy to bed,and he said just a min, right?

As I was the first one to post this cartoon on GS, he propably had it from me

And no, I'm not on some kind of sisyphos mission of correcting false information on the internet - I just partake on this thread during the breaks from my current DIY project which currently blocks my home studio. But as you are the most comitted and agitated writer on this thread - what is your mission, why do you feel the need to convince every single member in this thread with a dissenting opinion like they'd offended you personally?

[UnderTow]

Originally Posted by FLYINGJAY

I know you don't agree but there is only 2 daws that can chop and screw(pitch and time stretch)that give you 'THAT' sound.one being protools two being live.

The rest are 'shitty' sounding.

No beef but I can let you hear logic cubase and protools.I guarantee only one will be on the money!

Sonar's time stretching doesn't sound bad. It uses the iZotope RADIUS engine. (It also has the Roland V-Vocal stuff and a bunch of other algorithms).

Alistair

[Duane_Estill]

"There's NO nuances in maths - there's a right way and everything else."

I'd have to take issue with that. Mathematics can be elegant, non-elegant, incomplete, consistent....Mathematics captures nuance, empirically. To assume that Mathematics is final truth, I think, is not grasping the argument. To further assume that to be armed with said math is to obtain some sort've finality with regards to pro audio quality.....well I'd just have to doubt that like the dickens.


Math is description, a measurement of reality, nuances and all.....but who are we to think that we could actually hear those nuances that are expressed in math and supposedly hearable by humans? It seems that past some point we do....the big leaps in technology, I can hear those. But the first time I heard a 96k audio playback the difference in quality was not immediately obvious at all, only upon further listening did I hear different things, and that was probably "listener expectation."

I probably don't grasp your argument....whoopidy doo.
I do know this.....that I don't know. And in that at least I do know one thing.

[krheatman]

Originally Posted by chk23

That's something completely different, as there are significant differences between the analog and digital world in most cases. In contrast to this topic here there are several totally logical reasons for that and in those threads it goes without saying that people back their claims with sound material and A/B tests. While we're still waiting for something like that on this topic here.



As I was the first one to post this cartoon on GS, he propably had it from me

And no, I'm not on some kind of sisyphos mission of correcting false information on the internet - I just partake on this thread during the breaks from my current DIY project which currently blocks my home studio. But as you are the most comitted and agitated writer on this thread - what is your mission, why do you feel the need to convince every single member in this thread with a dissenting opinion like they'd offended you personally?

And you must just like to argue.Hurting people hurt others.I have no mission,and I am not agitated.I could care less.I have been nothing but curious about most peoples premise regarding the subject and their motive for their response.

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[chk23]

Originally Posted by FLYINGJAY

When it comes to mixing some daws have better tools,its in fact a great sounding 'digital I know you don't agree but there is only 2 daws that can chop and screw(pitch and time stretch)that give you 'THAT' sound.one being protools two being live.

The rest are 'shitty' sounding.

No beef but I can let you hear logic cubase and protools.I guarantee only one will be on the money!

Did you try with cubase 6.5? They worked a lot on this fature since cubase 4...

[UnderTow]

Originally Posted by krheatman

You mean more empowering to the archer?

The archer is aiming for the mark.He doesn't need to be so obsessive as to constantly focus on the arrow.His only focus is the mark.

And he knows to hit the mark he should not listen to others who incessantly try to get him to focus on the arrow.

And that goes for the ones who say the arrow could be crooked,as well as the one who swears it is straight.He let's no outside influence affect the focus on the mark.

Why are those archers budding into a conversation between weapon smiths? (Some of those weapon smiths happen to also be excellent archers. The one does not preclude the other but some archers seem to have a hard time figuring that one out).

Are you still talking about nulls?Maybe they don't care.

If they don't care, why are they constantly budding into a weapon's smith discussion? It seems some archers really have an issue with basic reason and rationality.

Alistair

[Muser]

Originally Posted by David Rick

Thanks so much for posting this, Muser. I hadn't seen this interview with Samplitude creators Titus Toast and Tilman Herberger, which appeared in Sound On Sound earlier this year. It's fun to read, because I was that guy. Well actually the guy was my client. I wasn't certain if I could hear a difference between the two releases or not, but my client could hear it consistently. To keep him happy, I had to find out what had changed and document it for the Samplitude folks so they could fix it. I ended up writing a suite of tests in Matlab which demonstrated that the difference was a very low level truncation error that hadn't been there before. You might think that dither doesn't matter at the level of the 24th bit, but it turns out that it does.

Just recently the same client and I discovered that Sequoia 10 or 11 (I forget which) would dither a 32-bit floating point bounce if you set it up wrongly. It makes no sense to do that, and it turned out to be clearly audible (even though the original track files were recorded years ago with 20-bit converters!), so we had to spend a whole afternoon redoing a bunch of work.

Titus and Tilman are darn smart, and they have some very good programmers working for them. Magix doesn't have a monopoly on smart programmers, though. The fact that several major DAWs can now pass a round-robin null test shows that standards have risen throughout the industry. That's good news for the majority of folks, who would rather not lose sleep over what their DAW is doing. As for me, I've learned to head the advice of the late President Reagan, who said "trust, but verify!"

David L. Rick
Seventh String Recording

oh great David. that was a good job you two did there.

it's a great example of some people saying, they think they can sense a problem or a difference in products.
some people might experience that as a subjective experience and not have the experience to identify it as a technical fault, and some might be more attuned and understand it's a possible fault. your situation also demonstrates that this can appear between release versions of a product.

That event is really interesting because of all the stages you all went through to eventually sort out the issue. if I may ask. did your client try to describe the audible artefact at all ? I'd be interested to know that if you can remember. I'd also be interested to know if the 24th bit truncation error would leave any kind of obvious clue in a null test file and if so, what that might look like on a such a small error. e.g. is that what made you think you needed to do the Matlab tests or did you find the null to not give sufficient clues. ?

how far down in the scale did it appear in technical terms and so on.
it was obviously far down enough for most people not to even hear it.

the fact that it was identified by hearing is what interests me.
why would something theoretically so technically obvious not be found before release ?
especially if a simple null test is what is being put forward as a simple argument.

This is the part I'm trying to get to grips with a little better.
which I think is what seems to be implied in johns post.

Well once you've got a fail on a null test then you can look as to what the reason is, and one DAW being broken might be the answer.

But if they're nulling, you know they're operating identically within the parameters you've set up in your test. Perform a few tests and you can extrapolate with a high degree of certainty (for example if your playback nulls with a channel at a very small, medium, and very high level then you can be pretty certain there's no difference in the linearity.

if it's that simple and your client came across the problem in a straight forward context I'm not sure how such a theoretically obvious flag to a problem, would pass what you would think should be a rather run of the mill quality control test, before release.

at base I'm not happy with my own grasp of the sufficiency of nulls.
there seems to also be varying points as to where people consider a null to be sufficient
or where they consider the results to be so low in the range as to be non important.

to me and your client, it would be insuficient to use the trust your ears argument.
because clearly one persons ears can spark a whole investigation.
anyhow, thanks for the post.

[Jason West]

Originally Posted by Duane_Estill

To assume that Mathematics is final truth, I think, is not grasping the argument. To further assume that to be armed with said math is to obtain some sort've finality with regards to pro audio quality.....

Two scenarios:

Process 13 million cellphone customer billing items:
voice plan $49.99 + data plan $15.99 = $65.98
Ok, we're all cool with that math logic, right?

Process 13 million sample frames from 2 waveform files:
numeric_value_from_file1 + numeric_value_from_file2 = sum_of_file1_and_file2
Oh wait, WAIT!!! Are you crazy!!! There's hidden unknowable patent-pending nuances that's not in embedded in that calculation!

(13 million sample frames is the count of samples of a 5 minute song (@ 44.1k))

All around the world, programmers write software code to run arithmetic on:

13 million (and more) customer invoices,
13 million (and more) shopping carts at amazon.com and apple.com
13 million (and more) warehouse inventory counts
13 million (and more) tax returns and line items
13 million (and more) highway toll speed pass cards
13 million (and more) shipping fees, duties, and tariffs

... all without a controversy. However, the second a programmer explains that applying arithmetic to 13 million sample frames is the same discipline in math logic, a total flabbergasted disbelief takes hold. Amazing. In the other non-music topics, the math logic is accepted; with music the math logic is suddenly "incomplete." WTF???

The computer chip and harddrives don't know the difference. Data is data. Numbers are numbers. Processing according to known rules is simply processing. The computer chips have no "emotions" or "feeling" about what data flows through its logic gates.

[krheatman]

Originally Posted by UnderTow

Why are those archers budding into a conversation between weapon smiths? (Some of those weapon smiths happen to also be excellent archers. The one does not preclude the other but some archers seem to have a hard time figuring that one out).



If they don't care, why are they constantly budding into a weapon's smith discussion? It seems some archers really have an issue with basic reason and rationality.

Alistair

You are too smart for me,but I will give it a shot.

I am do dumb to know any better.

And for the record,I have always appreciated your knowledge and demeanor in any post or thread.All of us should try and emulate your etiquette.

Sent from my PC36100 using Tapatalk

[FLYINGJAY]

Since some don't agree with math,I'd like to know what's being added?

And at what percentage and is that percentage exactly the same everytime or random?

Silly me,artificial intelligence was in that last cubase update!

It's call the mix assistant,its on page 6 of the addendum


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[joeq]

Originally Posted by krheatman

That and why do you feel the need to beat them down.

are you suggesting that we pull our punches when arguing against lies and bullshit?

should we report only partial nulls instead of the full nulls we get in our tests?

should we not mention the blind listening tests we did or the results we got? Should we 'politely refrain' from pointing out the Other Side has done NO blind listening trials?

If we have 4 logical reasons why a claim cannot be true should we only present 2 of them?

They are being "beaten down" ONLY because they are wrong. If they are engaged in a debate about the factual existence or non-existence of a provable phenomenon, and they have no reply against logic, facts and evidence, whose fault is that?

If they had any truth to their arguments, that truth would be their shield. They are just making up theories in a desperate attempt to keep the dreaded Placebo away.


In this whole side-line of discussion about "manners", you have been getting it exactly backwards in each post. You are accusing the wrong people of 'harm'. You are accusing the wrong people of 'discouragement'. You are accusing the WRONG people of 'lack of humility.'

I SUBMIT to the evidence. That is far more 'humble' than insisting my subjective experience trumps fact- for everyone else as well as myself!!!

Nothing could be a worse example of arrogance than coming on to a public forum and declaring your own personal anecdote to be the equivalent of scientific evidence. Where is the 'humility' in declaring that your own hearing so good that you "don't need" to eliminate placebo and bias to present it to the world as "science" ? .

[eplust]

whoops my bad for posting a response to the thread, didn't realize we weren't doing that

[Jason West]

Originally Posted by FLYINGJAY

Since some don't agree with math,I'd like to know what's being added?

Suppose I write a program that automates a DAW to do the following steps 1000 times:

bounce fileX.wav + zeros.wav (all digital zeros of silence) to mix0001.wav
bounce mix0001.wav + zeros.wav to mix0002.wav
bounce mix0002.wav + zeros.wav to mix0003.wav
...continue that bounce operation 997 more times... to mix1000.wav

Would you agree that if mix1000.wav sounds the same as fileX.wav, that means there was no cumulative "sonic signature" applied or added? For example, if a DAW sprinkled some pixie dust LPF to "tame the harshness" of the mix, that means mix1000.wav would be severely "muffled" from the cumulative effects of such processing being done one thousand times. We're no longer talking about pure, transparent, artifact-free summing. Any numeric manipulation done to the digital stream to give it a "characteristic sound" will exaggerate itself to grotesque proportions when applied repeatedly 1000 times, right?

Ok, which DAW do people have doubts about that we should do this test, and if so, would this test be conclusive to them? Do we need more iterations? 10,000 iterations?

[UnderTow]

Originally Posted by FLYINGJAY

Since some don't agree with math,I'd like to know what's being added?

And at what percentage and is that percentage exactly the same everytime or random?

You are still talking maths. It seems some insist on talking ego. That might be why they project ego on to those trying to speak maths. (That and some occasionally discernible frustration of the part on those trying to talk maths).

On a more general note, although in the end whether DAWs have identical sounding engines doesn't matter much on the grander scale of things, when I read some of the things some people write here and elsewhere I can't help but assume they apply the same lack of logic and reason on matters of great importance. Hence the world being as it is despite all the knowledge and wisdom we should have gained as a species over the millennia...

As long as belief trumps science in the minds of some, especially those in power, our cultural, philosophical and scientific evolution will always be slowed down and sometimes reversed. So yes, reason and logic do matter and we should never withhold it in a misguided attempt to spare the fragile egos of those that can not or will comprehend.

Alistair