ProTools Mix Vs Nuendo Mix: MP3s Posted

[Bang]

Don't know if this would interest people here, but I decided to mix my band's second single out of my pals HD rig. I was curious to see if one mix would sound any better. Lord knows his PT rig was way more then my Nuendo Rig. I admit that this would be more of true comparison of the two systems if I mixed the same song out of each system, and I still may do that, but for now I got two songs, same genre of music, mixed with each rig, using same plugins and outboard (UAD compressors both VST and TDM). Each file is a 192kbps MP3 and the encoding is pretty good as far as MP3s go. Right click and "save target as" to download the files or if you have a fast connection, left click and stream them.

the first is mixed out of the Pro Tools rig, its here:
http://www.blacklinerock.com/music/K...NEROCK.COM.mp3

remixed last week out of the Nuendo Rig:
http://www.blacklinerock.com/music/R...NEROCK.COM.mp3

so thats that.
Steve
www.blacklinerock.com

[Ckevperry]

Well....your right. Different songs/performances kinda make the whole excercise a lil pointless.

Regardless, I enjoyed listening. I don't get called on to do much "wall of guitar" metal like that. How were the guitars done? more than two passes hard panned? amps, mics, and preamps?

[Bang]

Originally posted by Ckevperry
Well....your right. Different songs/performances kinda make the whole excercise a lil pointless.

Regardless, I enjoyed listening. I don't get called on to do much "wall of guitar" metal like that. How were the guitars done? more than two passes hard panned? amps, mics, and preamps?

True, two different performances, but there is a different sound vibe to each of them which I can only connect to the mixing software, because my mixing style, plugins, eqs, are the same. But the same song to both platforms would make things better for a comparison as you've said. Thanks for listening though, glad you enjoyed.

As for the guitars, RUN had two passes with a single 57 mic'd 4 x 12 cab with my mesa Tremoverb Head. Usually I do another pass with another guitar making it four total, but it didn't need it. Panned those wide.

KNEES had two 57s on a 4 x 12 with a Dual Rec Solo head, and we recorded that four times with two guitars, and I panned it around the spectrum to give the massive wall effect. Preamps were Neve 1272s.
Steve
www.blacklinerock.com

[Alécio Costa]

I relly enjoyed both, but isn´t the bass guitar too low?
I felt some lack of bottom. I did not see much differnce betwen the PT and Nuendo mix. With PT high end detail sounds sweeter but with Nuendo mix, seems you have more info around 240hz. However, songs are different, so it is hard to compare.
nice week

[CV7]

Yeah, Knees sounded a bit harsh to me.

[CV7]

After Listening again, I liked Run much Better, What kind of converters are you using on Run?

[GearHunter]

I have done direct shootouts between PTHD and Nuendo, using the same I/O hardware (Digi 192) and program material.

Nuendo won.


That's right.



Nuendo




won.

[jbuntz]

Of course it did. 32 bit vs. 24 bit summing is a substantial difference.

[CV7]

I bet it won, just from the samples alone I want the Nuendo system, but what do you need? Sound card and converters?anybody have an example of a Nuendo System w/good converters?

[C.Lambrechts]

Originally posted by jbuntz
Of course it did. 32 bit vs. 24 bit summing is a substantial difference.

I presume you refer to Nuendo summing at 32bits and PT at 24bits ???

In which case I have to correct you : PT mixbus has 48 bit precission.

[GearHunter]

Typical Nuendo system uses the Nuendo/RME 9652 Hammerfall card as the PCI soundcard, which has 24 tracks of ADAT lightpipe at 48K, as well as word-clock and SPDIF. That lets you use anybody's converters.

Lots of people use Apogees, and there is an Apogee/Nuendo project bundle available. But almost all the converters out there, even high-end ones like Mytek and Prism, offer lightpipe now.

I use the Steinberg Nuendo 8 I/O 96K (aka RME), which sounds excellent, a Crane Song HEDD, and one of those awesome Panasonic WZ-DA96 8-channel DACs (discontinued, impossible to find), so I have 12 ins and 18 outs.

[Ckevperry]

Originally posted by jbuntz
Of course it did. 32 bit vs. 24 bit summing is a substantial difference.

This is incorrect. PT's internal summing is 48 bit. It outputs to 24 bit just like every other digital mixer/workstation device in existence does.

(Yes I know some bounce to 32 bit float...but what d/a converters plays that back again?)

[Ckevperry]

Originally posted by GearHunter
I have done direct shootouts between PTHD and Nuendo, using the same I/O hardware (Digi 192) and program material.

Nuendo won.


That's right.



Nuendo




won.

Can you shed some light on your methodolgy? Plugins used or not? Ouputs level matched or not? Dither used or not? Free hand mixed or individual tracks calibrated?

There are too many variables to simply say "x won over y."

[CV7]

Thanx GH! The samples Bang has are a bit subjective, but I have definitely heard great things about Nuendo and if Fletcher sells it, it's gotta be pretty good, right.

[troubado]

It sounds pretty similar to me, but if I remember right RUN had some different sounds going on than KNEES, so it's hard to tell.

[I Lurk]

Originally posted by GearHunter


Nuendo won.

To all the guys who are seriously comparing two different rig out of two mp3s of two different mixes of two different songs and performance :

you are seriously on crack

and by the way

Nuendo is 32 floating point
PT is 48 fixed ...

anyone knows how does this translate in term of dynamic and accuracy of calculation ?

[CV7]

I've been looking for an alternative to PT for a long time.

[Bang]

Originally posted by I Lurk
To all the guys who are seriously comparing two different rig out of two mp3s of two different mixes of two different songs and performance :

you are seriously on crack

and by the way

Nuendo is 32 floating point
PT is 48 fixed ...

anyone knows how does this translate in term of dynamic and accuracy of calculation ?

While its not easy to try to compare the daws using my two different mixes, I can tell you that there is an audible difference between them and I could hear it as soon as I listened back to the raw tracks of KNEES after hearing it through Nuendo for a few weeks. I really didn't do anything different in the PT mix. Same UAD plugins, same outboard delays and verbs, same API EQs on the guitars, same mastering chain, and everything minus the vocal was recorded the same. At this point, I think I'll keep my Nuendo rig. I use Apogee, Lynx, and Ramsa converters right now btw.
Steve
www.blacklinerock.com

[Bang]

Originally posted by troubado
I'm just suprised people are still playing music like this.
And I thought people playing the whole emo/alternative thing now were out of touch.

This isn't on topic but I might as well bite back...

I write music that I like to hear. When I play RUN, I still get the same huge burst of energy and emotion that I got when I wrote the song. But thats only 50% of the battle. The remainder comes when I play that song live and I watch as the crazy drunken fans in the front row sing every damn word with me and nearly seizure when I get to the chorus. When that stops happening then I'll agree with you, I'm out of touch.

I realize and respect that not everyone is going to like my music, but as long as the above keeps happening, I'm happy.
Steve
www.blacklinerock.com

[thethrillfactor]

The vocal sounds better in the PT mix.

The Nuendo mix has a little bit more thickness(mids) while not as much definition.

Is this a production thing or different platforms? How about different keys for each song?

Without doing the first song twice on both its too hard to tell.

[jazzius II]

Pointless

[GearHunter]

Can you shed some light on your methodolgy? Plugins used or not? Ouputs level matched or not? Dither used or not? Free hand mixed or individual tracks calibrated?

When we did the shootout, we used a stereo wav file of a 16-bit 44.1 stero mix (believe it or not). We imported the file in to a PT session, put the faders on zero and played it, no plug ins. It went out the digital out of the 192 in to the first two channels of a Yamaha DM2000, again, set to "unity".

We then imported the exact same file in to a Nuendo session, averything else the same, and it was like somone cleaned your ears out. Immediately we noticed more detail, better frequency, and more three-dimenensionality. Front-back is very important to me and that's one of the reasons I've always been dissapointed in ProTools. The Front/back in Nuendo sounds better to me.

Then we did a headroom and latency comparison, I don't remember exactly how we did it, but again, Nuendo beat the crap out of PT.

By the way, I don't know that 48-bit fixed actually is better than 32-bit float. In general with float don't you get more accurate resolution than with fixed?

Anybody who knows the science want to elaborate? I just use my ears, and so far, I like Nuendo. And even if they both sounded exactly the same or even if PT sounded a hair better (which it doesn't), look at the price difference, for gosh sakes!

[Ckevperry]

Originally posted by GearHunter


Anybody who knows the science want to elaborate?

There is no denying your personal experience here. But your testimony makes it sound as if PT is "broken" so I wonder what is wrong with that particular HD system. I have done ditherless 24 track mixes out of Nuendo and PT with the faders at unity (pre-leveled tracks) and had the outputs null completely when phase reversed and summed. In fact my tests are what spurred Lynn Fuston to do the infamous exhaustive DAW-summing comparison cd with 30+ daw's.


I'll quote Paul Frindle on this fixed vs. floating issue...one of the designer's for the Sony Oxford which is 32 bit fixed. This should satisfy any science craving you have and give you a headache after reading:


Floating data consists of a mantissa (the meaty bit) and the exponent (the scaling bit). So for instance a 24bit mantissa signal with an 8 bit exponent can represent a 24bit signal accuracy at vast ranges of values. In other words the data with basic accuracy can be maintained at 24bits (SNR of -144dB) whatever the actual signal value level happens to be within reason. So a signal at -100dBs can still be delivered at 24bit precision to the next function. This sounds like a great idea, but the only rub is that the base precision depends on the mantissa and not the exponent, so this example has a need to re-dither (or already have noise) at 24bits for each transfer - so its really no better than a 24bit fixed system in absolute terms and you've used up 32 data bits to get it. Using the 32 data signals as fixed point instead would have been much better.
BUT in the specific case where signals get larger and smaller indiscriminatly it actually fares much better because you don't need to lose math precision (SNR) to accomodate internal overload margins. You can for instance boost your EQ and the signal will not degrade by being too big, you can reduce the signal and it will not degrade by falling into excess truncation 'noise' due to math scaling errors or the original signal's dither falling off the bottom etc.
So although floating point is actually a theoretical disdvantage in a well designed system, for applications without any headroom margin with operating levels that coincide with absolute max modulation, with meters that don't read actual level and users that are obsessed with recording flat out (because they misunderstand 'resolution'), the floating format actually provides a real (if accidental) benefit under these awfully disadvantageous conditions. And some people may find that the practical business of mixing is actually inexplicably easier on some existing floating mixer applications, especially since they may in fact be using far greater floating precision than my example.

On the other hand, if you find yourself in front of one of the affected systems, you can do yourself a big favour by recording at lower levels (i.e. -12 to -20dB - if your plug-ins are of high enough quality), take no notice of the quantisation of the wave display (please!) and aim for a final mix modulation level of around -1 to -2dBs below what the meter says is flat out, even if that does mean you need to insert some gain before the main fader somehow

[CV7]

I take it that 48 Bit fixed is superior to 32 bit Vari?, if I read greek right.

[I Lurk]

Originally posted by jazzius II
Pointless

Thanx, I'm not alone

[I Lurk]

Originally posted by CV7
I take it that 48 Bit fixed is superior to 32 bit Vari?, if I read greek right.

As I understood the problem (although I voted between the two methods with my ears) :


48 is inferior in terms of dynamic range ( that can reach around 1500 db in floating point) and superior in term of accuracy although when you are dealing with heavy processing of very loud recorded signal, 32 floating point is helpful as the headroom has about no limits.
In the mean time, lower level are also better in 32 floating point.

In fact, recording level is critical in 24 (48) fixed: to low will give you quantification noise, to hi will overload when you use pluggins (like hi gain eq)

In 32 floating point, bouncing tracks often will cause problems as you add dithering artifacts any time you process a track ...

[Ckevperry]

Originally posted by I Lurk

In fact, recording level is critical in 24 (48) fixed: to low will give you quantification noise, to hi will overload when you use pluggins (like hi gain eq)

I see what your saying but the terminology is off. Again, 99% of the time the dynamic range of your converters are going to be WAY more than that of your analog chain. 24 bit quantization noise is by the math 1/2 the least significant bit...meaning its around -140 db. But for processing once within the PT mixer, quantization error is happening a couple of thousand db down. (1/2 the lsb of the 48 bits) So lower quantization noise is not a benefit of floating point. The real benefit is the dynamic range and "scaling" of data that allows one to be more casual about recording levels.

But your dead on about the eq, this is why (as Paul Frindle stated) in fixed systems you must be aware of the headroom needs in processing.

[I Lurk]

Originally posted by Ckevperry
I see what your saying but the terminology is off. Again, 99% of the time the dynamic range of your converters are going to be WAY more than that of your analog chain. 24 bit quantization noise is by the math 1/2 the least significant bit...meaning its around -140 db. But for processing once within the PT mixer, quantization error is happening a couple of thousand db down. (1/2 the lsb of the 48 bits) So lower quantization noise is not a benefit of floating point. The real benefit is the dynamic range and "scaling" of data that allows one to be more casual about recording levels.

Point well taken, as I said, I'm more practical than technical ...

But your dead on about the eq, this is why (as Paul Frindle stated) in fixed systems you must be aware of the headroom needs in processing.

That is the most noticeable problem of Pro Tool in mixing situation,IMHO

More than summing buss problem

anyway...

[troubado]

Originally posted by Bang
This isn't on topic but I might as well bite back...

I write music that I like to hear. When I play RUN, I still get the same huge burst of energy and emotion that I got when I wrote the song. But thats only 50% of the battle. The remainder comes when I play that song live and I watch as the crazy drunken fans in the front row sing every damn word with me and nearly seizure when I get to the chorus. When that stops happening then I'll agree with you, I'm out of touch.

I realize and respect that not everyone is going to like my music, but as long as the above keeps happening, I'm happy.
Steve
www.blacklinerock.com

OH, sorry - I didn't realize that was your own band.
I thought you were producing someone else.

[THE FLY]

Yes !!!! Nuendo better than PT , more cheaper ,flexible , Sounds Great ... no complain at all ( software and hardware )