LE to HD quality difference

[Sean Russell]

[QUOTE=grendizer;1552220]


I record a guitar track on a HD system. Then I import the track with same bit sample rate to an LE 003 system. Did I lose any quality yet? if not lets keep going.



On the HD system i use Waves TDM plugs to process the guitar track... Now I do the same exact processing on the LE 003 system, but with waves NATIVE plugs, not TDM. Is there a difference in quality?

---------------------

LE has a fixed 32 bit bus. HD has a 48 bit double precision bus, right?

LE means no tracking with plugs on the channel, right? Some of those Waves plugs have a pretty good delay on them - right? That makes it hard to track with plugs on the channel.

And it might just be my little LE system I have to float around, but LE seems flaky-er then HD. I was prepping multitracks yesterday at home and PTLE just sorta 'ran away' with SWOD and PT playing until I hit force quit - twice. It didn't loop, or crash neccessarily, but it was unresponsive and was a drag. I've seenlots of HD systems do weird stuff before, but this was a 24 track no plugs no automation - no good reason for a fail.

I cut bands all day. I am constantly changing the 64 voice to 96 voice DSP for playback cause I need 'two more' tracks for whatever. So, for me, HD is needed for any 'real' session. Of course, YMMV.

[Keybeeetsss]

[QUOTE=Sean Russell;1552668]

Originally Posted by grendizer

I record a guitar track on a HD system. Then I import the track with same bit sample rate to an LE 003 system. Did I lose any quality yet? if not lets keep going.



On the HD system i use Waves TDM plugs to process the guitar track... Now I do the same exact processing on the LE 003 system, but with waves NATIVE plugs, not TDM. Is there a difference in quality?

---------------------

LE has a fixed 32 bit bus. HD has a 48 bit double precision bus, right?

LE means no tracking with plugs on the channel, right? Some of those Waves plugs have a pretty good delay on them - right? That makes it hard to track with plugs on the channel.

And it might just be my little LE system I have to float around, but LE seems flaky-er then HD. I was prepping multitracks yesterday at home and PTLE just sorta 'ran away' with SWOD and PT playing until I hit force quit - twice. It didn't loop, or crash neccessarily, but it was unresponsive and was a drag. I've seenlots of HD systems do weird stuff before, but this was a 24 track no plugs no automation - no good reason for a fail.

I cut bands all day. I am constantly changing the 64 voice to 96 voice DSP for playback cause I need 'two more' tracks for whatever. So, for me, HD is needed for any 'real' session. Of course, YMMV.

More wrongs than right...

[BradLyons]

Originally Posted by Tone

Brad - to answer as brief as I can, we tested PT HD, LE and Logic 8 with a (very simple) mocked up mix containing around 20 tracks using only plug ins we could instantiate across all 3 platforms with ADC turned off (RTAS only on PT and AU in Logic). We copied all levels/pans into Logic and did a BTD in each case. The HD and LE mixes were identical, the only thing that didn't null between the 3 was anything that wasn't panned either hard left, right or central in Logic - this is down to the difference in Logic's pan law (they've since added a flag to alter this). We redid the test with the pans adjusted to make them cancel. As well as nulling - we played each mix through an Apogee DA and had someone switch - no one could tell them apart with the slightest bit of consistency or conviction I understand the differences in the mathematics between TDM and LE summing but as I say we couldn't find anything to separate them sonically.

I gather there are meant to be a few plugs (including some from Waves) that are supposed to be slightly different between TDM and LE but I've never heard anything convincing. (I do still want an AU version of Pheonix though )

I've been mixing ITB on HD since it first appeared and wanted to know if I could get good results in Logic as I needed to take advantage of the efficiency of AU over RTAS (doing a lot of electronic pop with big track counts).

Grendizer - working ITB if you do a BTD there will be absolutely no jitter but a good clock really counts every time you go in or come out of the computer. If I was you I would probably get a decent AD/DA with good clock specs (Apogee/Lavry etc) and a new mac to last well into the future (G5's are already obsolete). If you don't already have the MPTK that is worth having to get you up to 64 tracks - if you have anything left the Waves CLA collection is very nice

Only 20-tracks? Why not do this with say 100-tracks, multiple busses, and lots of automation going on and then compare the sonic differences? I'm pretty sure when you get into that, you'll hear the differences sonically.

[WernerF]

Originally Posted by dmazurek

Nonsense.

http://www.smassey.com/blog.html#28_apr_2009

This has been posted several times.

Brad, I think you need to check out this link.

[Sean Russell]

[QUOTE=Keybeeetsss;1552722]

Originally Posted by Sean Russell

More wrongs than right...

Oh, really, Marque? Where did I go wrong?

Let's review, since you're not ANSWERING the QUESTIONS I asked, but merely saying 'more wrongs than right[s]' :

LE 32 bit floating point mix bus - RIGHT? yes or no ?

HD DOUBLE PRECISION 48 bit mix bus - YES? NO? Do you even know?

What happens when you record arm a track with plugs on it in LE? That's right. They get bypassed. Did I get that wrong, too, champ?

LE being installed on a non-dedicated system = less stability then an HD system (which is usually a dedicated CPU setup) - right? Right.

So WTF are you talking about?

And why does your MySpace tank Safari? The editor you used to build it is ... well, tanking the Flash plug in Safari. Fail.

Did you hear DATT? I said - DID YOU HEAR DATT, DAWG?

[BradLyons]

Originally Posted by WernerF

Brad, I think you need to check out this link.

I did (and already knew that, but thanks) but this proves my point.... There ARE plugins that are identical and there are those that are not. I understand what's said, there are many arguments on both sides. Let me ask you this---do you feel and believe 100% that it is ALWAYS BETTER to use the internal clock of a product than to re-clock with another clock? I ask this because there are those that claim this should never be done, which I also heavily disagree with.

[Keybeeetsss]

[QUOTE=Sean Russell;1552771]

Originally Posted by Keybeeetsss

Oh, really, Marque? Where did I go wrong?

Let's review, since you're not ANSWERING the QUESTIONS I asked, but merely saying 'more wrongs than right[s]' :

LE 32 bit floating point mix bus - RIGHT? yes or no ?

right

HD DOUBLE PRECISION 48 bit mix bus - YES? NO? Do you even know?

Obviously this is som'n u don't know much about DAWG

What happens when you record arm a track with plugs on it in LE? That's right. They get bypassed. Did I get that wrong, too, champ?

wrong

LE being installed on a non-dedicated system = less stability then an HD system (which is usually a dedicated CPU setup) - right? Right.

So WTF are you talking about?

[Sean Russell]

[QUOTE=Keybeeetsss;1552778]

Originally Posted by Sean Russell

right

Obviously this is som'n u don't know much about DAWG

Uhhh...

http://akmedia.digidesign.com/suppor...ixer_26688.pdf

http://www.gearslutz.com/board/music...questions.html

http://www.digidesign.com/index.cfm?...&categoryid=34


Maybe you should read up a little bit on what you're doing for a living...

And plugs on every LE system I've ever seen bypass themselves when the track in question is put into record.

Are you kidding? This is *pretty basic* stuff. I've never seen you act so ignorant on the threads before...

[Keybeeetsss]

[QUOTE=Sean Russell;1552780]

Originally Posted by Keybeeetsss

Uhhh...

http://akmedia.digidesign.com/suppor...ixer_26688.pdf

http://www.gearslutz.com/board/music...questions.html

http://www.digidesign.com/index.cfm?...&categoryid=34


Maybe you should read up a little bit on what you're doing for a living...

And plugs on every LE system I've ever seen bypass themselves when the track in question is put into record.

Are you kidding? This is *pretty basic* stuff. I've never seen you act so ignorant on the threads before...

No maybe u should... *& no I'm not kidding but since u feel as though I am then I'm done because I don't like being ignorant as MJ would say

[nst7]

Sean,

When you experienced the plugs being bypassed on LE it may have been in Low Latency recording mode, where this is supposed to happen. Otherwise, that's simply not the case. Otherwise it would be impossible to record a guitar through an amp sim. Of course the plugins that are inserted don't record the effect on to the track, but they don't bypass and you can here the effect.