A/B ing nuendo and samplitude sound engines

[The dman]

I've been using nuendo 2 and I really like the program but after hearing so much about samplitude I decided to check out the demo and i have to say I'm impressed.

I decided to compare the sound of the two since I've heard so much about the sound of samplitude. Right off the bat samplitude sounds more open in the high end and not as muffy. More dynamic sounding for lack of a better word.

The reason for this post is that I want to make sure that the test is apples for apples because I know there's a lot of knowledgable people that come here and it seems like this forum has more samplitude and nuendo users than other forums I go to. Plus this is a kick ass forum

Here's what I did

Recorded 2 takes of 2 songs through nuendo and samplitude: Acoustic guitar and vocal

The tracks were recorded mono and the returns were panned hard left and hard right returning to a d8b monitored through genelec 1030a and rca bookshelf speakers.

Vocal chain: U87 to vintech 1272 to adl 1000 to motu HD192

Acoustic chain: AKG 451 to vintech 1272 to adl 1000 to motu HD 192

Fed daw returns lightpipe to the d8b AES EBU a masterlink @ 24 bit

No pluins, eq etc and all the faders were at 0 on both programs and the d8b.


1. I realize that takes can vary but I was extremley careful to maintain the same mic distance. I didn't have to move to switch programs so no bumped mics or nothing

2. I did this on two songs with the same outcome

3. I decided to send the mix through the d8b and the masterlink as opposed to the programs mix engines so the sound wasn't altered by the different mix engines. I will do this with the internal mixing also to compare.


I've heard that there's a difference in the pan laws bettween these two programs. What do I have to change? Will it make a difference because I didn't use the internal mixdown?



There's no question in my mind that samplitude souds better in the tests that I've done so far. The samplitude mix is slightly louder but it's not the volume that makes it sound better, it's the clarity.


Any observations or tips would be apreciated. Maybe I'm overlooking one link in the chain. I've heard the arguments back and forth about daw summing and all I know is I hear a difference bettween the two programs.


Thanks

[jlotto]

I still keep a PC around for just Samplitude. Been using it since version 5.12 now up to 7.2 which is amazing. Not quite sure if the "sound" is better than nuendo. But I know the built in fx/dynamics/eq are better than anything I've heard in the native DAW market.

[Ianneve]

I left Nuendo completely for Samp 7. Awesome. The reason I left Nuendo was I couldn't get my tracks to sound the way I wanted. Nuendo is mushy sounding. After countless forum chats and fights with nuendo guys (LOL) I left and have never looked back. The sound of Samplitude is far superior to Nuendo as is the editing and routing and mixing, not to mention the room simulator which is better then any software reverb I've heard including the UAD 1 dreamverb. Much better in fact. I wish the whole world would switch to Samplitude and make better sounding music and me compatible. LOL. :>)

[jazzius II]

Confirmation bias!

[Ianneve]

Not to mention the fact that I think Steinberg is one of the worst companies in our business. I can't think of any one company that has done me so wrong repeatedly. It's GREAT to be away from them. I LOVE Samplitude. Nothiign but good. Great forum with nice professional people and nice tech support.

[Ianneve]

LOL. It's amazing what Nuendo loyalists will come up with to stick up for their inferior product and (I would like to say lack of ears but l will rather say) lack of knowledge. :>). DUH! There I am out of line again. Best I shut up altogether I think and just do music. :>) Yes I know some great engineers use it. That's just cause they have never heard Samplitude. Probably never even heard of it. But I'm not getting into this discussion again with nuendo people. Not gonna happen. I got flamed way too much a year ago. I'm done. One of my best friends uses Cubase SX. Samplitude smokes it. But that's just my opinion of course. :>)

[AlphaDingo]

now download a demo of saw studio and see what you think of THAT sound difference!

[Ruphus]

There was a read from someone who had been convinced of Samplitudes better sound ( like me too ) and who after he heard of the panning law adjusted the levels and found it to be similar afterwards. It made me a bit cautious since then, still all I know is that I hear sound in Samplitude that completely satisfies me.

Samp I believe is at 0dB and possibly the only program with such a value. Nuendo could be set lower. Would be interesting if you found out what the difference is ( one of the fellas here will know ) and let us know how it is when aligned.

Ruphus

[De chromium cob]

Originally posted by Ianneve
LOL. It's amazing what Nuendo loyalists will come up with to stick up for their inferior product and (I would like to say lack of ears but l will rather say) lack of knowledge. :>). DUH! There I am out of line again. Best I shut up altogether I think and just do music. :>) Yes I know some great engineers use it. That's just cause they have never heard Samplitude. Probably never even heard of it. But I'm not getting into this discussion again with nuendo people. Not gonna happen. I got flamed way too much a year ago. I'm done. One of my best friends uses Cubase SX. Samplitude smokes it. But that's just my opinion of course. :>)

Amazing self restraint on your part- Except you said everything you said you werent going to say...
Here's a shocking thought- use what you like and let people use what they like without infering that your better then them because of it. Because guess what...your not. tutt

[jazzius II]

Nuendo is the tropical rain forest of DAW's.......geddit?

[GearGuy]

Originally posted by jazzius II
Nuendo is the tropical rain forest of DAW's.......geddit?

I just spent 2 minutes of brain power trying to figure this one out.... sorry, I'm still stumped. I don't geddit!

[laughingbear]

Originally posted by jazzius II
Nuendo is the tropical rain forest of DAW's.......geddit?

OFLMAO

Does Sam7.2 have capabilities in terms of video like Nuendo does?

Nuendo aint bad, really not..... but I grant you that this company sucks big times, and not only your money!

Me thinks, after a few of the steinberg suits cashed in, things got even worse, a lot of people who were on the front and always very helpfull left the ship..... sinking?.... don't know about that.... but I know that I would not buy stocks from a company with such a bad reputation and level of customer service, a forum site that is best to be described as an adolescent wankers hideout and a upgrade policy that makes you sometimes wonder whether the poor chaps surrvive on intravene nutrition...

However.... a the pricetag on SAW studio is plain ridiculous, is scientology involved there? LOL

Seriously, dod you check those $ they ask? Besides, personally, the interface scares me away.... If I do a lot in the box and I am to stare on my 3 screens all day, well this aint it....

Can someone please bring the Nuendo GUI to samplitude, add DTS encoding, DVD Authoring and more scoring abilities.... sell it as DUH-Studio and I buy it......

[AlphaDingo]

yeah the price is insane but the sound quality man. download a demo and see. It has a bunch of features that no other software has and the sound quality man. check it out.

[Ianneve]

My original writings were much worse. I deleted them. :>) I know I was wrong to say that stuff and I KNOW I'm not better then anyone. Not in Gods eyes anyway. :>) And certainly not cause I use Samplitude. I just want to be nice to everyone but when it is suggested that I am imagining things because I like Samplitude I get a little stupid is all. Emotional you could call it. Cause to me it's just way better but that's just me. But I don't want to talk about this anymore as like I said I wore it out a year ago and still haven't recovered from the abuse. :>) And that's all I have to say about it. Use what you like. It's just music after all.

[sammz]

I guarantee there is no way I would pay $1000.00 plus for ANY DAW and there is no way anyone could convince me that ANY DAW is worth that much . If Magix was not offering the killer deal on the crossgrade for Samp 7 Pro I would have probably went with Sonar for less then $500.00 . To me once I played with the Samp Demo it was a no brainer .
Think of it this way ...with Saw or Nuendo you would STILL have to purchase a seperate CD burning proggy for red book audio so in effect it would be closer to $1500.00, again a no brainer .
Magix with Samplitude has raised the bar for PC based native DAW and I predict it won't be long before they dominate that market( even with their crappy registration procedure) .

Dave

[Ruphus]

I´ve been wrong, DSD, there are other apps too with 0 dB panning law. Nuendo has -3dB ( Cubase -6, Logic 0 db like Samplitude ).

So, you would need to lower Samps master for 3 dB. Let us know how the comparison sounds then.

Ruphus

[RhOdEz]

either you got really nice pair of ears AlphaDingo or we're both insane

Saw Pro/Studio has best sound to me..and ofcourse worst GUI ..
compared to cubase/nuendo its not that "fizzy" and low mids and "depth" stay there and dont dissapear into 1-dimensional high mid/high freq jitterish digital jibberish like almost every nuendo "mix" ends up
Comparing all that is really difficult and differences 're "subtile" so i must say i'm maybe talkin bullshit ,i never did real 100% accurate test ,i just loaded few wavs and added same plugins and even shitty DX reverbs somehow sounded wider in saw..i must be really insane .
Okay now Samplitude..sheesh ... ,its room simulator is damn nice ,i wonder where these impulses came from ,they 're high above most impulses floating on net ,but it uses more cpu then SIR or similar plugz? Sound is different then nuendo but front/back relations seems to be more solid ,but uhm IMHO its nowhere near Saw depth .Okay this is really difficult thing cause most ppl love clarity and its easy to trick your ears with slight high freq boost .
When i'm listening stuff like that i'm trying to hear/feel complete balance : sub,bass,low mids,mids,high mids,high ,ultra high
then stereo separation in diff freq bands ,reverb influence on front/rear illusion ,dynamic range in diff freq bands ,jitterish spiky resonances,blah,blah ...
best overall balance of all that may be in Saw for my taste (prolly cause its coded in assembler - less is more ¿),then Pro Tools LE - very different "modern" sound ,everything else follows ,Samplitude ,NUendo ,Logic (bit darker then others ?- i use it every day go figure ) ,and at the end worst sound engine seems to be Reason and similar apps (no life - dead -fake -plastic -dj friendly )

Now i know whut i want :
App with Saw sound,PT plugz ,Logic midi and linked arrange/mix windows,Nuendo audio editing and recording ,and Samplitude object level processing,freeze and other cool functions i forgot -
"Avalon" DAW eh ?

i guess someone will mention procedure which involves brick and stabbing therfore i'll refrain from final comment

have a nice day

[RhOdEz]

LOLOL

jazzius you nailed it and you owe me some coffee i just spit over desk ,you made my day

[fifthcircle]

I've been a long time Samplitude and Sequoia user... There is a reason for it too. I've worked in several platforms and consistantly I get my best sounds in Sequoia. That said, in all fairness, that is also what I'm best at, but there is just a certain openness to the sound that I don't get elsewhere.

BTW. Just wait until Version 8 comes out in a couple months... There is some mighty cool stuff in there. I don't know how much is public knowledge (what they showed at MusicMesse or NAB) so I don't know how much I can say, but it is really exciting.

--Ben

[Ianneve]

its room simulator is damn nice ,i wonder where these impulses came from ,they 're high above most impulses floating on net ,but it uses more cpu then SIR or similar plugz?its room simulator is damn nice ,i wonder where these impulses came from ,they 're high above most impulses floating on net ,but it uses more cpu then SIR or similar plugz?

REALLY?

I have found that the Samp roomsim uses LESS CPU then the SIR. And it's impulses sound better too. :>)

[Ianneve]

COOL! :>)

[fifthcircle]

Originally posted by Ianneve

I have found that the Samp roomsim uses LESS CPU then the SIR. And it's impulses sound better too. :>)

Are you using it at full sample rate? It does sound good, but at full sample rate it takes up much more CPU. It also sounds much better....

--Ben

[Jupiter]

I 'am using Nuendo and Sam 7.22.
I must say,for songwriting and composing Nuendo is much much better than Sam.Especially the grid bar and lines are very helpfull for fast arranging.I also prefer the look of the project window compare to sam(not the mixer)
Sam got his strengths in audioediting,cd burning ...mastering...
I did hundrets of A B tests and found out that they sound completely similar when you compare apples with apples.Make shure to use the same pan law setting!!!!
and make a blindtest.
When using monofiles in Nuendo you must put them in a stereotrack, this is very important when u are using a verb,otherwise the verb is played mono.Sam playes the verb always stereo.

Fred

[trazan]

Originally posted by Ruphus
I´ve been wrong, DSD, there are other apps too with 0 dB panning law. Nuendo has -3dB ( Cubase -6, Logic 0 db like Samplitude ).

So, you would need to lower Samps master for 3 dB. Let us know how the comparison sounds then.

Ruphus

Just right click on a pan knob in the mixer. Then, in the "Channel volume center (dB)" field, type in "-3" (or whatever you want the pan law to be. Click the "All Tracks" button beside the field if you want to apply to all tracks in the mixer.

So, you can actually set the panning law manually to whatever you want for every channel. Quite neat when you want to fly things around with some pan automation

[Ruphus]

Originally posted by RhOdEz
best overall balance of all that may be in Saw for my taste (prolly cause its coded in assembler - less is more ¿),then Pro Tools LE - very different "modern" sound ,everything else follows ,Samplitude ,NUendo ,Logic

Without irony, I find it really fascinating how different we perceive sound. And even the individual perception doesn´t stay the same, developes and changes over time.

Now, here is the first person that I noticed who prefers the in my ears dull and veiled sound of PT LE to what you get in Samplitude ( or in the Steijerk stuff / once I compared PT to SX and found SX to be clearer as well.)

So if we stranded on an island and had only one PT rig and one of the others, we could share them in peace. Rhodez would take PT and I the other version. I like that.

Besides, I very much doubt the clearer sound to simply come from hyped hights. At least with the EQs which I had at hand ( Digi and Waves stuff ) there was no way to achieve the quality of the other sequencers sound. Especially less with the muddy Waves plugs.

Ruphus

[mplancke]

Originally posted by dsd
Any observations or tips would be apreciated. Maybe I'm overlooking one link in the chain. I've heard the arguments back and forth about daw summing and all I know is I hear a difference bettween the two programs.
Thanks

I've found that the sound in Samplitude improves even more when you do an internal mixdown. IE let the mix engine create the final mix file instead of playing the mix into another device. I think this is because any plugins that are active while playing the mix tend to sound muddy until they've been applied to the file. This goes for master plugins and any plugins that are applied to individual tracks. My usual method is to use the FREEZE command on individual tracks before running the mixdown engine to apply the plugins to all the tracks.

The difference is not subtle, I notice a great deal more clarity, openess and the bottom end is a lot more solid as well. It's such a big difference between live playback and mixdown (when plugins are actively running) that I often have to run multiple passes through the mixdown engine and adjust EQ & Plugin settings on individual tracks to tweak the final mix.

Mark

[Ruphus]

Sounds very interesting. Could you explain some more please? How do you do the mix bounce when the mashine can´t handle all the tracks unfreezed? Bounce the individual tracks first?

Thanks,

Ruphus

[Midlandmorgan]

Yes...I freeze objects firstt, then tracks often, and a simple mouse click to make any adjustments (usually don't need them) and the original file pops right up...

Just for giggles, I took a 30 stereo track project (60 total) and using the freeze feature and object editing, was able to get a rather complex mix, with multiband dynamics and final limiting on the the masters, with about 25% CPU load and 20% harddrive load....I use a tweaked 2.66 P4....


That is a bunch of tracks, each having its own roomsim, EQ, and/or VST...and contained in those tracks were a bunch of objects each with its own set of instructions for effects...

Works like a champ for me.

[Ruphus]

So, freeze works just as well, right? No bounce needed. [?] ( I know freeze actually is bounce, but just to get confirmation.)

Gives me hope that I won´t run into trouble with midsized 96k sessions and my Athlon 1800. ( Unless system performance was to change considerably after installing the rest of plugs and Kontakt.)

Ruphus

[Midlandmorgan]

Right...freeze is a temporary, non descructive bounce, if you will...

Disclaimer: I only work up to 48K, so I have no first hand knowledge on how well it works in the higher rates...that said, I can't imagine any reason why it will not perform exactly the same way.