solved Difference in recording quality between Sonar and Ableton light 12?

[Mr No Name]

1 hour ago, HOOK said:

Call me deaf if you want.  I don't particularly hear much of a difference in any of those clips that couldn't be attributed to proximity or axis placement.

Could be overthinking.

some people have very good hearing, I personally can hear dog whistles very clearly.

[Scott C. Stahl]

5 hours ago, HOOK said:

Call me deaf if you want.  I don't particularly hear much of a difference in any of those clips that couldn't be attributed to proximity or axis placement.

Could be overthinking.

I did my best to avoid proximity and axis issues as much as possible... recording in quick succession. There will always be quality variation unless I found a constant source other than my crappy voice. The BIG difference is going from GEN 4 to GEN 3. This has been consistent with repeated attempts. The top end on the GEN 4 recordings in real world (With effects, compression, etc) is unmanageable.

Now judging between versions of whether I like Triangle or powr3 on the GEN 3 for example, is more problematic I agree.

Still, the overall quality is one thing... it's whether on repeated tests the COMPARATIVE results are consistent is what caught my eye. 

Folks must understand I did not suspect this cause at first at all. It ruined a session (I thought my Mic pre was going out on me)

My client will have to re-record his vocals some time when he's back here unless he goes to another studio up his way. (650 miles from here)

Put a little sweetener like an EQ or other effect on those GEN 4 files and try to enjoy the results. (You won't)

I do appreciate the input tho. I need to be on my toes as much as I can, when it comes to my own perceptions on all this. Thanks

Edited yesterday at 12:32 AM by Scott C. Stahl

[Will.]

16 hours ago, Scott C. Stahl said:

These are all without Effects. Taste varies on warmth, but the smoother they start out and you add compression, eq, etc. that gets ugly fast. No music as I sung these lines. Tried to maintain exact same voice level and mic position. Obviously not a good vocalist, but I hope this gets the point across

And how does the unit sound to you with tge Air mode off? You have to press it three times. The Gen 4 has 3 Air Modes. 

Keep in mind the gen 4 is designed more brighter, clearer and upfront than what the Gen 3 sounded. It has bettet pre-amps. I believe its housing some ISA preamps. So, the airy sound you hear in the Gen 4 comes from the preamps. Between the Focusrite Gen-4 and my Audient iD14 I dont hear much of a difference in my recordings - with focurite now having real analog feel in their budget units. I do lean more towards the Audient for my vocals, but thats only because I know the audient really well. Where I use the Focusrite is wihen I do my mixing. For me the Gen-4 has better (cleaner) outputs than the Audient - so my monitors gets a boost there. 

You might be dealing with the exposure that the Gen 4 is projecting in the vocal. Its more upfront, you might be hearing the flaws in your vocal recordings in more detail. 

[Scott C. Stahl]

5 hours ago, Will. said:

And how does the unit sound to you with tge Air mode off? You have to press it three times. The Gen 4 has 3 Air Modes. 

 

You might be dealing with the exposure that the Gen 4 is projecting in the vocal. Its more upfront, you might be hearing the flaws in your vocal recordings in more detail. 

I tried the air mode in GEN 4 in all settings just to be sure it wasn't actually being turned on by accident. Actually you're right, I was concerned I might have been mixing the new upfront sound with a problem, except that

#1 The Ableton recording Focusrite support took me thru sounded ok compared to Sonar just a few mins later. Repeatedly tested this. The quality of my attempts to perfectly repeat my voice recordings was not the best I know, but the comparison  between GEN 4 and 3 and Ableton and Sonar was always consistent in showing a problem

#2 The Gen 4 recordings are way too off. They are really exposed in real world mixes. My examples posted here minimize the differences due to their being no effects

My Mic pre is a Manley Voxbox and my Mic is a Soundeluxe U99 so a lotta tubes! Not gonna deny I have to be careful of crappy ambience here, inconsistent singing etc. All of that bears watching, agreed. But TBH I've swapped out the GEN 4 and 3 So many times to test again I've kinda hit my limit. 

At this point until I can get some answers the GEN 4 is a brick right now for me. Very surprising

The other surprise was following your suggestion, on checking the difference in sound recording depending on the dither setting in Sonar. Why dither would change recording sound I do not know. I simply listened after changing the dither settings and recording, never exporting to listen in another way. I appreciate your input. It does help. Pilot error is always the first thing I have to relearn over and over to check for first

[pwalpwal]

did you test them both with a basic sine wave?

[Will.]

11 minutes ago, Scott C. Stahl said:

#2 The Gen 4 recordings are way too off. They are really exposed in real world mixes. My examples posted here minimize the differences due to their being no effects

But TBH I've swapped out the GEN 4 and 3 So many times to test again I've kinda hit my limit. 

As I have stated - The Gen 4 has brand new | and | different preamps than the Gen 3. It is literally a brand-new unit with major upgrades regarding sound quality and circuitry.

Auto-Gain & Clip-Safe Mode are settings I personally leave off. They, sound awful - if I could disable them completely I would. Then again there are lot of users that like these two features. 

[Scott C. Stahl]

1 hour ago, pwalpwal said:

did you test them both with a basic sine wave?

Something like that would be a good idea since there too many variables to a sung vocal, but I have to produce something outside of the box to record via the interface since that's where the problem is. Once in the box there's no issue

[Bristol_Jonesey]

7 hours ago, Scott C. Stahl said:

The other surprise was following your suggestion, on checking the difference in sound recording depending on the dither setting in Sonar. Why dither would change recording sound I do not know. I simply listened after changing the dither settings and recording, never exporting to listen in another way.

Not sure if this has been covered already, but the only time you should use dither is when you're exporting from a higher bit depth to a lower one.

The classic example of this is when going from 24 bit to 16 bit with the intention of burning a CD.

At all other times it should be disabled

[Scott C. Stahl]

1 hour ago, Bristol_Jonesey said:

Not sure if this has been covered already, but the only time you should use dither is when you're exporting from a higher bit depth to a lower one.

The classic example of this is when going from 24 bit to 16 bit with the intention of burning a CD.

At all other times it should be disabled

Which is what I always thought. It's just in preferences there is just a dialog to turn it off or the various types. Just for giggles, since I was having problems, I had tried recording after just changing the dither settings and they sounded different, but after further tests it's simply voice level and variation. So the dithering issue was my overthinking after all. Jeez.

As for the rest, I'm about to post that the GEN 4 problem has been solved by the new build which came out yesterday. The GEN 4 is brighter than GEN 3 now but not distorted as it was before. Appreciate the input

[Scott C. Stahl]

Looks like the new Sonar build that came out seems to have resolved my problem. GEN 4 sounds ok now. It's brighter than GEN 3, but only in the way you'd expect with the better drivers. I was hoping the new install would overwrite any bad install files and it seems to have done it.

Just tested everything out OK.

My thanks to all for the replies and suggestions! I'm gonna be side eyeing every new install even more than ever from now on! 

[Will.]

5 hours ago, Bristol_Jonesey said:

Not sure if this has been covered already, but the only time you should use dither is when you're exporting from a higher bit depth to a lower one.

The classic example of this is when going from 24 bit to 16 bit with the intention of burning a CD.

At all other times it should be disabled

You do realize that digital quatization happens during recording too right? Your interface is computing a file from analog to digital as the file gets written to digital in the DAW. Dithering is needed when ever you "Bounce" a file too. You are working in a digital enviroment not analog. Dithering was needed for exporting to CD in the analog days - these days its needed in your DAW too, because you're in a digital realm.

@Scott C. Stahl

Feel free to read.

Edited 9 hours ago by Will.

[AB9]

1 hour ago, Will. said:

You do realize that digital quatization happens during recording too right? Your interface is computing a file from analog to digital as the file gets written to digital in the DAW. Dithering is needed when ever you "Bounce" a file too. You are working in a digital enviroment not analog. Dithering was needed for exporting to CD in the analog days - these days its needed in your DAW too, because you're in a digital realm.

@Scott C. Stahl

Feel free to read.

I am not finding what you are writing, in the article.  Maybe I missed it.  Here it states that one should dither when changing bit depth and almost no other time. https://www.izotope.com/en/learn/what-is-dithering-in-audio.html#:~:text=Dithering should always be off,bit to 16-bit).

I do not see how recording is changing the bit depth.  Maybe I am missing something here.  

Edited 8 hours ago by AB9

[Bristol_Jonesey]

2 hours ago, Will. said:

You do realize that digital quatization happens during recording too right? Your interface is computing a file from analog to digital as the file gets written to digital in the DAW. Dithering is needed when ever you "Bounce" a file too. You are working in a digital enviroment not analog. Dithering was needed for exporting to CD in the analog days - these days its needed in your DAW too, because you're in a digital realm.

@Scott C. Stahl

Feel free to read.

I cannot find a single source saying you should use dither when bouncing a file

All reference material points to it only being used when reducing bit depth

Do you know what dither is?

[Bristol_Jonesey]

From AI

Dithering should be applied when reducing the bit depth of an audio file, such as when bouncing from a 32-bit or 24-bit session to a 16-bit or 8-bit file. This is typically done during the final mastering process before export. Dithering helps to minimize quantization distortion that can occur when reducing the bit depth of an audio signal. 

Elaboration:

When not to dither:

Dithering is generally not needed when working with 32-bit floating-point audio, as the dynamic range is wide enough to make quantization errors negligible. 

Where to dither:

Dithering should be applied as the final step in the mastering process, just before the final export. You typically only need to dither once in a DAW application, on the main stereo output, says Production Advice. 

When to dither:

Dither is necessary when reducing the bit depth of an audio file, for example, when exporting from a 32-bit session to a 16-bit file for CD or streaming services. 

Why dither?

Dithering introduces a small amount of noise to help mask quantization error, which is the distortion that can occur when the bit depth of a signal is reduced. 

[Mr No Name]

is the 64 bit audio engine enabled in both DAWS?

 

edit: just noticed problem was solved.

Edited 5 hours ago by Mr No Name

[Will.]

5 hours ago, AB9 said:

I am not finding what you are writing, in the article.  Maybe I missed it.  Here it states that one should dither when changing bit depth and almost no other time. https://www.izotope.com/en/learn/what-is-dithering-in-audio.html#:~:text=Dithering should always be off,bit to 16-bit).

I do not see how recording is changing the bit depth.  Maybe I am missing something here.  

It says clearly: Dithering is an important yet often overlooked technique used in digital audio production. Dithering is the process of adding a small amount of random noise to a digital audio signal in order to reduce the distortion caused by quantization error. This technique is crucial for maintaining audio quality during the conversion process from analog to digital, and it can greatly improve the overall sound of a digital recording.

I also never said dither your recording and import ot back into the DAW. Seeing that most interfaces dont dither during record it is best to enable the playback and recording dither option to give you a better understanding what is going on in your Record Audio File at 24bit. The option is there to project what you will here in the end result to your audio files. Experiment with it. Then we can have the conversation again. 🙂

Then it also says during:

Bouncing, flattening, freezing: No, we’re not talking about some obscure food preparation method. Different audio workstations operate in different ways, but most offer some method to commit a complex audio effects chain to a file. If you’ve not explored the options for doing this in your DAW, it may be time to give them a look.

Edited 3 hours ago by Will.

[HOOK]

4 hours ago, AB9 said:

I do not see how recording is changing the bit depth.  Maybe I am missing something here.  

It's not.  He's wrong.

[Will.]

7 minutes ago, HOOK said:

It's not.  He's wrong.

Show me evidence how am i wrong when your source gets converted to digital during recording. You're not recording to tape in a digital enviroment. 

Edited 3 hours ago by Will.

[HOOK]

Show me where you control input dither in Sonar or on your converter.

[Will.]

18 minutes ago, HOOK said:

Show me where you control input dither in Sonar or on your converter.

Exactly your interface cant do this. So your recorded file from ANALOG to DIGITAL is now just 1s and 0s living in your DAW. If you import a file thats 32bit - does the DAW dither the  file automatically during the process or when you apply effects? 

Edited 2 hours ago by Will.