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Neil.......are you crowding the Pulsar? [message #77462] Tue, 26 December 2006 10:00 Go to next message
DJ is currently offline  DJ   UNITED STATES
Messages: 1124
Registered: July 2005
Senior Member
IOW, are you able to slam the stems out of Cubase into the CW DSP and "mix
hot" as we can do with Paris?

I'm going to be moving my mom to some new digs this week so I'm at least 10
days away from getting back to the lab. Once the lab is open again, barring
unforseen delays, another DAW with a Gigabyte GA-K8NS Ultra 939 mobo, 2 G
RAM and an AMD 64 4800 x 2 CPU with 2 x HDSP 9652's and an HDSP Multiface
PCI shall spew forth. I'm gonna be able to do some direct summing
comparisons of Paris vs Creamware at that point.
Re: Neil.......are you crowding the Pulsar? [message #77468 is a reply to message #77462] Tue, 26 December 2006 12:33 Go to previous messageGo to next message
neil[1] is currently offline  neil[1]
Messages: 164
Registered: October 2006
Senior Member
"DJ" <nowayjose@dude.net> wrote:
>IOW, are you able to slam the stems out of Cubase into the CW DSP and "mix

>hot" as we can do with Paris?

Not even trying to - since I'm going out via digilight, I'm
peakstop limiting each sumbix at -0.03 db before it hits the
Pulsar inputs. Then I'm keeping all submixes/sums at zero in the
Pulsar Mixer, and varying the Master level a bit, since I've
been playing with that Optimaster plugin - the limiter therein
isn't exactly brickwall, I'm finding.

Neil
Re: Neil.......are you crowding the Pulsar? [message #77530 is a reply to message #77468] Thu, 28 December 2006 03:38 Go to previous messageGo to next message
Bill Lorentzen is currently offline  Bill Lorentzen   UNITED STATES
Messages: 140
Registered: June 2005
Senior Member
Neil, when you made the clip below was there any other processing in the
signal flow? Was that a straight up comparison? Don't mean to imply you
don't know what you are doing, but I was pretty amazed at the difference. If
the summing in Pulsar is that much better, then I gotta have one!

I can always use more synths too. You have yours in a separate machine? Is
it possible to route the stems straight from Cubase into the Pulsar all in
one box?

If you are recording at 88.2 then are you sending 8 x SMUX chans or do you
have 16 chans?

Bill

"Neil" <IOUOIU@OIU.com> wrote in message news:45917915$1@linux...
>
> "DJ" <nowayjose@dude.net> wrote:
>>IOW, are you able to slam the stems out of Cubase into the CW DSP and "mix
>
>>hot" as we can do with Paris?
>
> Not even trying to - since I'm going out via digilight, I'm
> peakstop limiting each sumbix at -0.03 db before it hits the
> Pulsar inputs. Then I'm keeping all submixes/sums at zero in the
> Pulsar Mixer, and varying the Master level a bit, since I've
> been playing with that Optimaster plugin - the limiter therein
> isn't exactly brickwall, I'm finding.
>
> Neil
Re: Neil.......are you crowding the Pulsar? [message #77533 is a reply to message #77530] Thu, 28 December 2006 07:21 Go to previous message
IOUOI is currently offline  IOUOI
Messages: 38
Registered: June 2007
Member
"Bill Lorentzen" <bill@lorentzen.ws> wrote:

>Neil, when you made the clip below was there any other
>processing in the signal flow?

Yes, a little bit: as I had mentioned before, in order to not
send out a digital signal with any overs, I inserted a peakstop
limiter across each submix in Cubase... this didn't have too
much of an effect, though, because I set the threshhold to zero
& the limiting to only -0.03. Two of the busses didn't have any
overs registering to begin with, but just to be safe I left the
limiters in; the drum submix had perhaps a half-dozen overs
throughout the entire song & the remaining submix had I think
just 2 or 3, so these limiters certainly weren't hammering the
signals very much at all... if you've seen any of my posts back
when we were discussing how Native mixing differs from Paris,
you'll recall one of the big things I mentioned was that you
have to mind your gain structure - so if I practice what I
preach, then it should be clear that these limiters were not
impacting the sound in anything more than an extremely
miniscule fashion.

Also, in this comparison there was a limiter across the 2-buss
in Pulsar - this was to emulate the 2-buss limiter that I had
used on the Cubase-only mix (remember, I had said this was the
BEST mix I could get in Cubase, so to make it comparable, I had
to try & emulate the same processing in Pulsar). The limiter I
used in the Cubase mix was the one in Izotope's Ozone, the one
I used in Pulsar was the one in their mastering plugin,
Optimaster. Both were set to the same threshhold (which was,
IIRC, -2 or -3db), and for essentially a smooth, transparent
limiting character.

>Was that a straight up comparison?

As straight-up as I could get it, while still replicating the
same - albiet minor - processing that I had going in Cubase.

>Don't mean to imply you don't know what you are doing,

Never fear, there are plenty who've beaten you to that.
I've done enough straight a/b comparisons with no back-end
processing to be convinced that there WAS something different
going on when you stemmed-out a Native mix or summed it
differently, so I needed to do a "best mix" comparison.... this
was the first one. I've done a couple more since I posted that
& once I get a chance to re-listen to them with fresh ears,
I'll post clips of those, if I'm satisfied with the difference,
so you guys can hear 'em.

>but I was pretty amazed at the difference. If the summing in
>Pulsar is that much better, then I gotta have one!

Very slight differences in processing aside, I'm pretty
impressed with the sonic improvement, too. Since the Submix
limiters were barely touching a half-dozen overs across an
entire song on I don't think that we can attribute ANY audible
difference to those, and the only other difference was the
2-buss limiters... since the one in Ozone doesn't exactly suck
(if you've used it you'll know what I'm talking about) I don't
think we can atribute the openness & clarity of the Pulsar-
summed version to the difference in 2-buss limiters... you
COULD say that the difference in punchiness might be due to
this - if so, then fine; again, if I had intended this clip to
be an objective listening test, I wouldn't have prejudiced
everyone's opinion upfront by saying "here's what I'm hearing
the differences as..." right when I posted the link.

>I can always use more synths too. You have yours in a separate
>machine? Is it possible to route the stems straight from
>Cubase into the Pulsar all in one box?

I do have the Pulsar card on a separate machine from my Cubase
rig. Also, I don't even know if I have ANY synths on this
version of the Creamware software - I don't think that I do -
Thad apparently got the Pro Card package (it's about $1,250)
that has both the Mix & Master pack AND the Synths & Samplers
pack of software... with the other cards you have to pick which
one you want (or pay extra if you want both). As far as if you
can route stems or individual channels through the Pulsar card
internally if you have them on one box, then the answer
is: "Yes, if you're using any of the following sample rates...
32k, 44.1k, 48k, 96k" if you're using 88.2k, you can't do it -
the card will clock to it, but it doesn't report it back to
your Native software app properly, so it plays back at the wrong
speed & the files are all out of time, on top of that. I wish I
could, because then I could just sum all my individual channels
through the Pulsar mixer like Deej is apparently doing, and not
have to even do submixes.

>If you are recording at 88.2 then are you sending 8 x SMUX
>chans or do you have 16 chans?

Eight S/Mux channels (equaling four stereo submixes); which is
the most I can send out of my Multifaces, anyway (one lightpipe
out per Multiface) or receive in the one Pulsar card (two
lightpipe in's) at that samplerate.

Neil
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