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Post by Quint on Oct 17, 2024 9:54:02 GMT -6
I'm a big fan of HW inserts in Cubase. I use them for hybrid mixing all the time. One thing to be careful of. They are GLOBAL. If you adjust input/output level on the plugin interface of your "La2a HW" insert when working on song A, then you open song B, the levels will now be where you left them in song A. Again, they are GLOBAL. So I always use a trim plugin right before and after the HW insert plugin, and I do any gain staging from there. Also, if you don't already have it, check out the free plugin "Snapshot" that lets you take photos of your analog gear settings and upload them into the plugin so they live with your sessions... Easy recall Good to know about the global thing. That kind of sucks. They need to fix that. However, I suppose there is a silver lining here. If I use trim plugins, as you suggested, I could set up presets on the trim plugins for varied gain staging uses. I was disappointed that Cubase didn't have presets for the HW inserts plugin, as I was wanting to use presets for different gain staging uses, but the trim plugins could do the same thing. But Cubase really just needs to update to get rid of the global thing, and add presets. |
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Post by damoongo on Oct 17, 2024 10:31:08 GMT -6
I'm a big fan of HW inserts in Cubase. I use them for hybrid mixing all the time. One thing to be careful of. They are GLOBAL. If you adjust input/output level on the plugin interface of your "La2a HW" insert when working on song A, then you open song B, the levels will now be where you left them in song A. Again, they are GLOBAL. So I always use a trim plugin right before and after the HW insert plugin, and I do any gain staging from there. Also, if you don't already have it, check out the free plugin "Snapshot" that lets you take photos of your analog gear settings and upload them into the plugin so they live with your sessions... Easy recall Good to know about the global thing. That kind of sucks. They need to fix that. However, I suppose there is a silver lining here. If I use trim plugins, as you suggested, I could set up presets on the trim plugins for varied gain staging uses. I was disappointed that Cubase didn't have presets for the HW inserts plugin, as I was wanting to use presets for different gain staging uses, but the trim plugins could do the same thing. But Cubase really just needs to update to get rid of the global thing, and add presets. Yeah, it's been requested for a long time, but I don't think improving HW integration is their priority these days... But we'll see. |
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Post by popmann on Oct 17, 2024 13:59:56 GMT -6
Nothing to “fix”….thats a calibration setting for a piece of gear. Not a “how loud you want it to be in the mix after I turned all the analog knobs”.
But you’re right. Even 10+ years ago when I had a rack of analog kit integrated into the Cubase mixer…I was the only person I knew doing it. I figured it was on borrowed time left over from Nuendo’s taking in Protools for the audio for video market.
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Post by Quint on Oct 17, 2024 14:42:01 GMT -6
Nothing to “fix”….thats a calibration setting for a piece of gear. Not a “how loud you want it to be in the mix after I turned all the analog knobs”. But you’re right. Even 10+ years ago when I had a rack of analog kit integrated into the Cubase mixer…I was the only person I knew doing it. I figured it was on borrowed time left over from Nuendo’s taking in Protools for the audio for video market. I completely understand that it's not a "how loud do you want it in the mix" thing. That's not what this is about. What this is about is being able to have sort of preset "drive" levels, if you will, into compressors, with the requisite return level reduced accordingly. There are plenty of people who use hardware inserts in this way, where they set the knobs on an analog compressor a certain way, and then don't ever touch it again. They just simply drive more level into it, using digital gain, for increasing amounts of compression. This is why the presets in the HW-insert plugin would be nice. You could, for example, have a preset for "gentle bass" and a preset for "crushed bass" and so on an so forth. The crushed bass preset would have more digital gain driven into it, obviously, and then then the return level would be accordingly set at a reduced level to compensate. It's about not having to mess with recall on an analog compressor. It's also about being able to quickly scroll thru presets, same as you would on a plugin, which makes using hardware inserts one step closer, on a workflow level, to using plugins. This is why I've been adamant that my new DAW of choice have plugin based HW inserts. I want to be able to treat those HW inserts as if they were plugins, in every way possible. |
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Post by dok on Oct 17, 2024 22:58:40 GMT -6
This is why the presets in the HW-insert plugin would be nice. You could, for example, have a preset for "gentle bass" and a preset for "crushed bass" and so on an so forth. The crushed bass preset would have more digital gain driven into it, obviously, and then then the return level would be accordingly set at a reduced level to compensate. It's about not having to mess with recall on an analog compressor. It's also about being able to quickly scroll thru presets, same as you would on a plugin, which makes using hardware inserts one step closer, on a workflow level, to using plugins. This is why I've been adamant that my new DAW of choice have plugin based HW inserts. I want to be able to treat those HW inserts as if they were plugins, in every way possible. Logic's I/O plugin does this! |
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Post by gravesnumber9 on Oct 18, 2024 8:59:34 GMT -6
Nothing to “fix”….thats a calibration setting for a piece of gear. Not a “how loud you want it to be in the mix after I turned all the analog knobs”. But you’re right. Even 10+ years ago when I had a rack of analog kit integrated into the Cubase mixer…I was the only person I knew doing it. I figured it was on borrowed time left over from Nuendo’s taking in Protools for the audio for video market. I completely understand that it's not a "how loud do you want it in the mix" thing. That's not what this is about. What this is about is being able to have sort of preset "drive" levels, if you will, into compressors, with the requisite return level reduced accordingly. There are plenty of people who use hardware inserts in this way, where they set the knobs on an analog compressor a certain way, and then don't ever touch it again. They just simply drive more level into it, using digital gain, for increasing amounts of compression. This is why the presets in the HW-insert plugin would be nice. You could, for example, have a preset for "gentle bass" and a preset for "crushed bass" and so on an so forth. The crushed bass preset would have more digital gain driven into it, obviously, and then then the return level would be accordingly set at a reduced level to compensate. It's about not having to mess with recall on an analog compressor. It's also about being able to quickly scroll thru presets, same as you would on a plugin, which makes using hardware inserts one step closer, on a workflow level, to using plugins. This is why I've been adamant that my new DAW of choice have plugin based HW inserts. I want to be able to treat those HW inserts as if they were plugins, in every way possible. This is how it works in S1. |
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Post by Quint on Oct 18, 2024 9:38:55 GMT -6
I completely understand that it's not a "how loud do you want it in the mix" thing. That's not what this is about. What this is about is being able to have sort of preset "drive" levels, if you will, into compressors, with the requisite return level reduced accordingly. There are plenty of people who use hardware inserts in this way, where they set the knobs on an analog compressor a certain way, and then don't ever touch it again. They just simply drive more level into it, using digital gain, for increasing amounts of compression. This is why the presets in the HW-insert plugin would be nice. You could, for example, have a preset for "gentle bass" and a preset for "crushed bass" and so on an so forth. The crushed bass preset would have more digital gain driven into it, obviously, and then then the return level would be accordingly set at a reduced level to compensate. It's about not having to mess with recall on an analog compressor. It's also about being able to quickly scroll thru presets, same as you would on a plugin, which makes using hardware inserts one step closer, on a workflow level, to using plugins. This is why I've been adamant that my new DAW of choice have plugin based HW inserts. I want to be able to treat those HW inserts as if they were plugins, in every way possible. This is how it works in S1. Yeah, Pipeline is the best I've seen for HW inserts. It's just the lack of certain MCU stuff that is making me look elsewhere other than S1, I think. Am I correct in my observations that, if S1 is connected to a hardware MCU controller, S1 does not ever send out the plugin names to the screen on the controller, which you can then select by pushing the Vpot below a particular plugin name? In other words, can you open and close a specific plugin completely by pushing buttons on the controller, or does a mouse have to get involved? |
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Post by gravesnumber9 on Oct 19, 2024 8:10:26 GMT -6
This is how it works in S1. Yeah, Pipeline is the best I've seen for HW inserts. It's just the lack of certain MCU stuff that is making me look elsewhere other than S1, I think. Am I correct in my observations that, if S1 is connected to a hardware MCU controller, S1 does not ever send out the plugin names to the screen on the controller, which you can then select by pushing the Vpot below a particular plugin name? In other words, can you open and close a specific plugin completely by pushing buttons on the controller, or does a mouse have to get involved? I don't really remember. There's a plugin "spill" option for the Faderport but I can't remember if it includes the plugin names or not. I bailed on getting that to work with Faderport because I ended up not really using that feature all that much. |
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Post by Quint on Oct 21, 2024 9:26:52 GMT -6
I'm a big fan of HW inserts in Cubase. I use them for hybrid mixing all the time. One thing to be careful of. They are GLOBAL. If you adjust input/output level on the plugin interface of your "La2a HW" insert when working on song A, then you open song B, the levels will now be where you left them in song A. Again, they are GLOBAL. So I always use a trim plugin right before and after the HW insert plugin, and I do any gain staging from there. Also, if you don't already have it, check out the free plugin "Snapshot" that lets you take photos of your analog gear settings and upload them into the plugin so they live with your sessions... Easy recall How are you handling dither for your HW inserts in Cubase? |
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Post by damoongo on Oct 21, 2024 10:57:16 GMT -6
I'm a big fan of HW inserts in Cubase. I use them for hybrid mixing all the time. One thing to be careful of. They are GLOBAL. If you adjust input/output level on the plugin interface of your "La2a HW" insert when working on song A, then you open song B, the levels will now be where you left them in song A. Again, they are GLOBAL. So I always use a trim plugin right before and after the HW insert plugin, and I do any gain staging from there. Also, if you don't already have it, check out the free plugin "Snapshot" that lets you take photos of your analog gear settings and upload them into the plugin so they live with your sessions... Easy recall How are you handling dither for your HW inserts in Cubase? No need. It's a 24 bit round trip. No need to apply dither for A to D conversion in general. Only for D to D when going from higher bit depth to lower... |
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Post by Quint on Oct 21, 2024 12:17:52 GMT -6
How are you handling dither for your HW inserts in Cubase? No need. It's a 24 bit round trip. No need to apply dither for A to D conversion in general. Only for D to D when going from higher bit depth to lower... I think we disagree on these matters pertaining to dither, but no worries. I was just curious how you were implementing it. If you're not, I'll just do what I was thinking of doing anyway. |
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Post by wiz on Oct 21, 2024 14:45:11 GMT -6
How are you handling dither for your HW inserts in Cubase? No need. It's a 24 bit round trip. No need to apply dither for A to D conversion in general. Only for D to D when going from higher bit depth to lower... Is your thinking here because noise floor masks quantisation error? cheers Wiz |
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Post by damoongo on Oct 21, 2024 22:31:28 GMT -6
No need. It's a 24 bit round trip. No need to apply dither for A to D conversion in general. Only for D to D when going from higher bit depth to lower... Is your thinking here because noise floor masks quantisation error? cheers Wiz What quantization error? We're not converting to digital at a lower bit rate. It's just a 24bit DA conversion out to the HW and 24bit back into the AD. |
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Post by damoongo on Oct 21, 2024 22:41:03 GMT -6
No need. It's a 24 bit round trip. No need to apply dither for A to D conversion in general. Only for D to D when going from higher bit depth to lower... I think we disagree on these matters pertaining to dither, but no worries. I was just curious how you were implementing it. If you're not, I'll just do what I was thinking of doing anyway. Hmmm... Why would you be applying dither? There's no down conversion happening, so no quantization errors, which is the point of dither (to mask those quantization errors). This is just D to A and back again. Do you dither your mix bus feeding your control room monitors all day? No. You DO dither your mixbus when (digitally) bouncing a 16bit version of a master from a 24 bit session or similar scenario where you're reducing bit depth. What is it that are you thinking of doing? |
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Post by wiz on Oct 22, 2024 0:33:34 GMT -6
Is your thinking here because noise floor masks quantisation error? cheers Wiz What quantization error? We're not converting to digital at a lower bit rate. It's just a 24bit DA conversion out to the HW and 24bit back into the AD. My mistake..... misread... thought you were bit reducing... cheers Wiz |
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Post by wiz on Oct 22, 2024 0:36:02 GMT -6
Is your thinking here because noise floor masks quantisation error? cheers Wiz What quantization error? We're not converting to digital at a lower bit rate. It's just a 24bit DA conversion out to the HW and 24bit back into the AD. My confusion came from back when using logics IO plug in... IIRC at the time... I had to dither when sending out because logic wasn't doing it... because the mix engine was way higher than 24 bit... you needed to avoid truncation.... so... I dithered... Bob O was my source of help on that one...I used air windows dither and the difference was audible for me.... So.... that's something to think of cheers Wiz |
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Post by thehightenor on Oct 22, 2024 1:02:18 GMT -6
I think we disagree on these matters pertaining to dither, but no worries. I was just curious how you were implementing it. If you're not, I'll just do what I was thinking of doing anyway. Hmmm... Why would you be applying dither? There's no down conversion happening, so no quantization errors, which is the point of dither (to mask those quantization errors). This is just D to A and back again. Do you dither your mix bus feeding your control room monitors all day? No. You DO dither your mixbus when (digitally) bouncing a 16bit version of a master from a 24 bit session or similar scenario where you're reducing bit depth. What is it that are you thinking of doing? My understanding is, Whenever you send anything out of your DAW via converters to hardware - be it the stereo mix bus or hardware inserts you should apply differ. I’m running Cubase at 48/24. There was a huge thread on this and several other forums and whilst I never fully understood the technical reasons it seemed to be virtually unanimous agreement it’s the correct protocol to do so. |
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Post by Quint on Oct 22, 2024 6:11:18 GMT -6
Hmmm... Why would you be applying dither? There's no down conversion happening, so no quantization errors, which is the point of dither (to mask those quantization errors). This is just D to A and back again. Do you dither your mix bus feeding your control room monitors all day? No. You DO dither your mixbus when (digitally) bouncing a 16bit version of a master from a 24 bit session or similar scenario where you're reducing bit depth. What is it that are you thinking of doing? My understanding is, Whenever you send anything out of your DAW via converters to hardware - be it the stereo mix bus or hardware inserts you should apply differ. I’m running Cubase at 48/24. There was a huge thread on this and several other forums and whilst I never fully understood the technical reasons it seemed to be virtually unanimous agreement it’s the correct protocol to do so. This was the thread here on RGO. realgearonline.com/thread/7535/dithering-analog-summing-hardware-inserts?page=1And from that thread: If there is signal processing or gain changes ahead of the insert, you should dither to 24. If it's just reading raw data off the disk, there is no need. That's a very common misconception among developers. It's true 32 float is only, if I remember right, 23 bits of data however it's calculated with every sample at full level. When you convert this back to fixed point in order to drive a DAC, there will still be truncation distortion unless you dither. By the way, I just posted in that old thread, so it's been brought back to life. |
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Post by Quint on Oct 22, 2024 6:20:28 GMT -6
I think we disagree on these matters pertaining to dither, but no worries. I was just curious how you were implementing it. If you're not, I'll just do what I was thinking of doing anyway. Hmmm... Why would you be applying dither? There's no down conversion happening, so no quantization errors, which is the point of dither (to mask those quantization errors). This is just D to A and back again. Do you dither your mix bus feeding your control room monitors all day? No. You DO dither your mixbus when (digitally) bouncing a 16bit version of a master from a 24 bit session or similar scenario where you're reducing bit depth. What is it that are you thinking of doing? There IS quantization error though. Any plugins, gain staging, etc which you have done upstream of the hardware insert is causing QE, and thus dither is needed, unless none of that other stuff has happened upstream, and I would venture to say it almost invariably has happened. It certainly is being done upstream by me, prior to sending out to an insert. Also, if your DAW is running at 32 bit float, and your converters are running at 24 bit (they likely are), that also creates the need for dither when going out of your DA for HW inserts (or anything else). In any case, I don't want to turn this thread into another debate on dither, so we'll just have to agree to disagree. No biggie. |
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Post by svart on Oct 22, 2024 8:03:32 GMT -6
Hmmm... Why would you be applying dither? There's no down conversion happening, so no quantization errors, which is the point of dither (to mask those quantization errors). This is just D to A and back again. Do you dither your mix bus feeding your control room monitors all day? No. You DO dither your mixbus when (digitally) bouncing a 16bit version of a master from a 24 bit session or similar scenario where you're reducing bit depth. What is it that are you thinking of doing? There IS quantization error though. Any plugins, gain staging, etc which you have done upstream of the hardware insert is causing QE, and thus dither is needed, unless none of that other stuff has happened upstream, and I would venture to say it almost invariably has happened. It certainly is being done upstream by me, prior to sending out to an insert. Also, if your DAW is running at 32 bit float, and your converters are running at 24 bit (they likely are), that also creates the need for dither when going out of your DA for HW inserts. In any case, I don't want to turn this thread into another debate on dither, so we'll just have to agree to disagree. No biggie. Not really, because they are done in floating point. There is no error in precision there. Dither only needs to happen when doing fixed point conversion, such as going from 24 to 16 bits. Dither does NOT need to be done on A/D inputs nor any digital signal that is already at the sampling rate of the D/A. |
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Post by Quint on Oct 22, 2024 8:07:17 GMT -6
There IS quantization error though. Any plugins, gain staging, etc which you have done upstream of the hardware insert is causing QE, and thus dither is needed, unless none of that other stuff has happened upstream, and I would venture to say it almost invariably has happened. It certainly is being done upstream by me, prior to sending out to an insert. Also, if your DAW is running at 32 bit float, and your converters are running at 24 bit (they likely are), that also creates the need for dither when going out of your DA for HW inserts. In any case, I don't want to turn this thread into another debate on dither, so we'll just have to agree to disagree. No biggie. Not really, because they are done in floating point. There is no error in precision there. Dither only needs to happen when doing fixed point conversion, such as going from 24 to 16 bits. Dither does NOT need to be done on A/D inputs nor any digital signal that is already at the sampling rate of the D/A. Let's move this discussion over to the dither thread. I don't want to bog this dual buffer thread down with dither discussion. realgearonline.com/thread/7535/dithering-analog-summing-hardware-inserts?page=1 |
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Post by damoongo on Oct 22, 2024 9:17:37 GMT -6
You can disagree if you want, but any quantization errors going from 32bit float to 24bit are INSANELY low level. Around -144db. Not only can you definitely NOT hear this, but the noise floor of the analog gear in your HW insert is going to be magnitudes higher than any dither you’d (unnecessarily) apply.. Super high end analog gear has a noise floor in the -100db range. So you certainly don’t need to be adding any dither noise to mask errors down at -144db.
Again, do you apply dither to your mix bus output all day, every day while monitoring? That 32bit float to 24bit conversion is always happening between audio engine and physical outputs (converters).
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Post by Quint on Oct 22, 2024 9:23:47 GMT -6
You can disagree if you want, but any quantization errors going from 32bit float to 24bit are INSANELY low level. Around -144db. Not only can you definitely NOT hear this, but the noise floor of the analog gear in your HW insert is going to be magnitudes higher than any dither you’d (unnecessarily) apply.. Super high end analog gear has a noise floor in the -100db range. So you certainly don’t need to be adding any dither noise to mask errors down at -144db. Again, do you apply dither to your mix bus output all day, every day while monitoring? That 32bit float to 24bit conversion is always happening between audio engine and physical outputs (converters). I'd again refer you to the thread I linked above. I get what you're saying, but it's not that simple. |
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Post by Quint on Oct 22, 2024 10:32:25 GMT -6
There IS quantization error though. Any plugins, gain staging, etc which you have done upstream of the hardware insert is causing QE, and thus dither is needed, unless none of that other stuff has happened upstream, and I would venture to say it almost invariably has happened. It certainly is being done upstream by me, prior to sending out to an insert. Also, if your DAW is running at 32 bit float, and your converters are running at 24 bit (they likely are), that also creates the need for dither when going out of your DA for HW inserts. In any case, I don't want to turn this thread into another debate on dither, so we'll just have to agree to disagree. No biggie. Not really, because they are done in floating point. There is no error in precision there. Dither only needs to happen when doing fixed point conversion, such as going from 24 to 16 bits. Dither does NOT need to be done on A/D inputs nor any digital signal that is already at the sampling rate of the D/A. We weren't talking about A/D though. We're talking about the D/A. In any case, let's pick this up over in the dither thread. |
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Post by gravesnumber9 on Oct 22, 2024 11:59:48 GMT -6
To KIND of bring this back on track, Studio One automatically applies dither to playback and export (this is checked by default).
I would assume that Pipeline falls into the category of export, pretty sure it's just a fancy wrapper that presents I/O routing in a different interface and adds a couple of Insert related features such as Ping and Wet/Dry. But I doubt that they coded some distinct way of doing I/O just for that plugin, it's almost definitely mapped back to the standard I/O which would mean it's treated like any other export.
I bet Cubase and the others all work the same way though we've all seen odd things in DAW's so I suppose anything is possible.
EDIT: (Just to stay on track, let's limit this to discussion of DAW features and keep the discussion on the value of dither in the other threads)
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