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General discussion about music production Discussion concerning music production, composing, studio work, sequencing, software, etc.

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  #1  
Old 20.05.2014, 11:38 AM
luigi71cx3 luigi71cx3 is offline
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Default Cubase mixdown sounds different

Good morning everyone.

I'm not sure that this is the right place to post this question.

I am experiencing a quite unusual situation with the mixdown in Cubase (hopefully due to my limited skills).

My project consists of a few tracks VST (Kontakt player) and a physical Virus TI Desktop (external then connected via USB). The Virus TI is seen from cubase as a normal VST, with the difference that is the Virus TI to generate sounds instead the PC. The sounds thus generated come back into the PC via the USB connection.

While listening to Cubase (playing back the song) everything sounds perfectly, but when doing the mixdown and then listen to it (whether mp3 or wav), some tracks played by the Virus TI sounds without all the voices , for example, if a track consist of an arrangement for three voices , only one voice is played instead.

To make it even more difficult to understand the problem is that if I do the mixdown only for the portion of the song where the problem appears (including few bars before and after), everything sounds perfectly , like listening in Cubase (playing back the song).

W7 x64, 8GB RAM, intel i5, Cubase 6.

Any suggestion is greatly appreciated , thank-you very much to all.
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  #2  
Old 20.05.2014, 05:14 PM
TweakHead TweakHead is offline
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An easy fix would be:

record each Virus part individually! this way you have all the DSP power (that translates to the number of voices) available and therefore no note stealing.

Your problem seems to be just that: the Virus has a limited number of voices and DSP power. For complex patches, the number of voices can get high even with just one oscillator going (if using unison, for example); when it overloads, some voices won't be played at all 'cause there's no system resources left to reproduce them. Check the manual, you can set the priority of each channel, setting a channel to high priority means the system will preferably play this channel over others in the event of an overload.

Think of the multiple channels as something you use for composing, arranging and for previewing stuff only. Afterwards, record each part like you would with a Moog or a guitar. Slight change in workflow, but seems like you have no problem at all cheers
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  #3  
Old 20.05.2014, 09:02 PM
luigi71cx3 luigi71cx3 is offline
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Quote:
Originally Posted by TweakHead View Post

Think of the multiple channels as something you use for composing, arranging and for previewing stuff only. Afterwards, record each part like you would with a Moog or a guitar. Slight change in workflow, but seems like you have no problem at all cheers
So I am obliged to make audio files each Virus track, correct?
The behaviour of the Virus DSP is then different between playback and mixdown?

I thought I could avoid this approach and use the Virus as a VSTi thus saving a lot of disk space.

I can not explain, however, why doing the mixdown of that portion the problem disappears.

Addendum: at this time I'm making some tests.
The project has three tracks played by the Virus (one is a single voice and the others are chords) and (during the mixdown) seems one of these is played at a different pitch...
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Old 20.05.2014, 09:19 PM
MBTC MBTC is offline
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But playing the song in Cubase with your MIDI tracks going straight to the Virus sounds okay in real time, right?

If I'm understanding properly, it sounds related to TI in the sense that the export process of the DAW would need some pretty tight cooperation from the Virus DSP in terms of rendering the audio the way the DAW wants to be "fed" so to speak. So it's possible that the DSP in the Virus is doing some extra work during the export, requiring it to take away some of the polyphony that you hear during regular playback, which would correspond to what Tweak is saying.

And his proposed solution is one possible solution -- and it's what I have to do anyway with non-integrated hardware that's just going straight into audio ports on the interface (Leipzig for example), but yes that's quite limiting in terms of workflow flexibility. Have you tried freezing the MIDI tracks in Cubase first? If it's a DSP resource issue on the Virus, that should reveal it or solve it and is a little more forgiving than treating everything as audio clips (at least you can unfreeze and modify while editing and freeze just prior to export).

I'm not sure any hardware instrument helps save disk space, because they are almost always going to leave you holding more audio clips which of course are huge compared to just MIDI data + patch settings for soft synths. Where you get the benefit from hardware is taking a load off your DAW CPU which there never seems to be enough of, especially working with the really good soft synths which are CPU hogs.
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  #5  
Old 21.05.2014, 02:37 AM
TweakHead TweakHead is offline
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You can't just bounce down to audio (offline) with the Virus, you actually do have to record it as with any other external instrument. The DSP doesn't in fact have anything to do with any audio rendering of any sort, it's just busy being what it is: a synth engine. The TI side of things is more about being able to edit parameters and record automation within the DSP, total recall of presets within a project, to act as a librarian software, and for sample accurate timing - which I believe includes some kind of latency compensation using it's own audio interface, aligning the phase with the note on information (maybe?). The other advantage is that it dispenses with audio routings, involving at least 3 pairs of inputs so that the channels available are all put to good use; streaming this channels with the usb connection.

Think the important part is really the DSP, though. Having this kind of convenience in a hardware unit that's got such a wide sonic scope is already good enough reason to have it, but any editor, even using Midi can give you most things attributed to TI, with the exception of the sample accurate timing - not exactly a problem if you know your latency, you can deal it on a sample delay (negative value) and it's done.

On topic now. On the mixer you can activate and deactivate the parts. Presumably, if only one part is playing at a time, the engine will have all its power available for it - not divided with the other parts. The more voices you have going at once, the sooner you'll hit the ceiling. That's the sole reason you should record each part alone.
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Old 21.05.2014, 10:47 AM
luigi71cx3 luigi71cx3 is offline
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Yes playing back the song everything sounds fine.

About saving disk space, in the case of the Virus, this is due to the hybrid purpose of the Virus: it is an hardware component, but the tracks are played as a normal VST, therefore, in addition to a less DAW CPU duty, no further disk space is required for the Virus tracks also. In othe words the Virus runs in Cubase like any other VST, with the only difference that the sounds are generated by the Virus DSP in realtime, so no audio clips are required.

After some test it seems that the issue appear while using some high DSP consuming patches.

So I think to solve the issue, the best approach is to test the mixdown from time to time and transferring in audio those tracks based on high DSP consuming patches.

Still remains the fact that rendering only the portion of the song that contains the malfunction, everything runs smoothly.
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  #7  
Old 21.05.2014, 05:33 PM
MBTC MBTC is offline
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Ok this may or may not help, because there are a couple of big differences in my setup:

(a) I don't have a Virus currently so I'm using my Ultranova which it's own VST and USB integration similar to the TI series
(b) I'm using Cubase 7.5 and I'm not sure if parts of what I'm about to write are the same in 6.0 but hopefully the principles still apply

My Cubase template project for the Ultranova has two tracks that apply to that hardware synth -- one for the MIDI and one for the audio output. It's been a while since I set it up that way so I don't remember all the reasons why, but I seem to recall doing that because if not the Nova output would go straight to stereo out, removing a lot of mixer flexibility. If your setup is not like this, you might consider going this route. If I wanted to I can just capture the output from the Nova on that track, working with it independently from the MIDI data and the Nova, which comes in handy anyway since it isn't a multi-timbral synth (the Virus of course is but there are times when the DSP power might nag at you to work with only one patch at a time anyway). So it's bounced to audio at that point but it's not necessarily a final commitment to that audio take as long as you can get back to the same patch on the Nova if you need to modify and record again.

But if I am sure I only want one sound out of the Nova for a track, I can leave audio capturing out of the picture as long as I do a real-time mix down, and that's the key setting in the export dialog that I think is your best hope. If it's not captured in a real-time mix down the synth DSP probably can't keep up and produce the audio efficiently enough to meet the demand of the DAW. So if I exported batch channels without ticking the realtime box, I've got nothing from the Nova on any wav files that were created. In a realtime export I've got audio from the Nova on both the files produced from Stereo Out and from the track handling the Nova audio output (even though it was never captured as part of the project), and of course in either case the MIDI track that the Nova VST is on produces no sound at all.

Something slightly different is going on with your setup and I'm not sure if that's your version of Cubase or the way VC does things, but the fact that you are able to mix down a smaller clip of the track and not the whole thing leads me to believe doing a "safer" type of export (namely real-time) would address any DSP bottlenecking. Just small things like reverb tails, envelope release values and of course total keys played could make a big difference in whether a non-realtime export would work in one portion of the track versus the entire track.

Sorry if it's old news but I couldn't see that you had tried this or thought of it from your post.
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  #8  
Old 21.05.2014, 09:36 PM
TweakHead TweakHead is offline
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I think the problem is really just note stealing from DSP overload. If you care about the quality of your music, then rendering down once the track is arranged is paramount for many reasons. recall is nice and neat, for when you're still in between, once you're sure about some sound and how it fits into the context, plus you have your song structure in place, then it's time to render.

Saving disk is an easy fix: get yourself an external one and back things up! You will regret it one day if you don't, as most people who've done this long enough (including myself) know, the hard way. The Virus is just like your computer, once your happy, rendering will free its power for other stuff, plus it will fix the material for good - 'cause there's always the chance you might introduce some random factor to some patches.

@MBTC you can only record the virus in real time, no offline rendering is possible; just like if you're using a Moog.
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  #9  
Old 21.05.2014, 09:40 PM
TweakHead TweakHead is offline
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Actually it's quite simple: the number of voices used or complexity of the patches, or playing many of them simultaneously is something that changes with time in a normal track - so when the system gets busier, there's note steal and that's it.

Recording just one part at a time is the secure method here for making sure it's recorded with maximum quality and all the notes going.
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  #10  
Old 22.05.2014, 12:05 AM
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The op has to know you can't do a mixdown with the virus in any configuration. You need to record in "realtime" the whole mix thus not needing to record individual parts. There is no non realtime way to capture the virus sounds like other vstis.
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