Why does consolidation &or bouncing tracks=loss of sound quality

[John Kurzweg]

I've held off on this topic for a while because when I'm working I dont have time to A-B stuff as much as I'd like-much less have the time to do any research-But here it is......
I've noticed for a while now(starting with my old Mix System and now with HD)That every time I consolidate my files to get rid of edits & crossfades that my new files dont sound quite as good as they did before the duplication-Most noticeable on low end material and exteme highs.This effect is subtle but its there-Its even more noticeable when you bounce or buss a track with or without a plug-in,-(try bncing or bussing a track and then compare the original with the new bounced track)-And yes all my settings are at 24 bit etc.. I've tried this with and without dithering, noise shaping etc(Im currently doing everything at 96k/24bit with no dither)I am not the only one who has heard this effect-several producers have asked me if I noticed this slight loss of depth and clarity.SO.......Do I need to use a high quality external clock to remedy this?-or is this a clocking issue at all? Shouldn't a consolidation or duplication sound EXACTLY like my files did with edits and crossfades pre-duplication?

[Wolfgang Eller]

Your first post? [img]images/icons/rolleyes.gif[/img]

Have fun! [img]images/icons/smile.gif[/img] [img]images/icons/smile.gif[/img] [img]images/icons/smile.gif[/img]

Cheers Wolfgang

[shoo]

thats like saying after I defrag my drive the tune doesn't sound the same. Get some analysis of some files and check what changes take place. I would have thought you'd only really get slight phase changes instead of high frequency loss.
I think more producers complain about this more than engineers - it gives them something to winge about

[zboy2854]

Well, there's a really easy way to check if it's a real phenomenon or just your ears playing tricks on you. Keep the original track with all the edits, etc., then duplicate that track, and on the duplicate, consolidate it first, then in Audiosuite, Invert the consolidated audio, and play it back at the exact same levels and panning along with the original. If when playing both tracks together you hear perfect silence, even when turning up your speakers to the max, the consolidated track IS identical, and it's just you. If you still hear something, well then that's a new can of worms...

[jaysun]

a very trusted engineer friend of mine, who was practically my mentor, asked me this: "have you ever noticed when you are tracking and then you hit stop and listen back that it sounds a little different?" he says this is clock flutter...so he just purchased a high end master clock generator....

as far as consilidating ive never done the a-b thing but that's worth checking out...

last but not least, after bouncing to disk is where ive noticed the biggest differences...but my gut tells me that topic has been gone over before on this forum...

[sphereman]

I agree with John on this one guys. Sometimes its just not a thing you can measure with phase. Ive refrained from consolidating as much as possible in the past 12 years. Also it seems to be a cumilitive affect over a bunch of tracks and not really just one. Sometimes my mix just starts to suck after ive done a bunch of consolidating, maybe i suck but whatever the reason i just avoid it.

Mills Logan [img]images/icons/smile.gif[/img]