RME soundcards Babyface Pro, UCX, etc. and latency crackling

I run a pretty involved music setup with Reaper as a DAW and many high-CPU-intensive synths for live performance. Dune 2, Falcon, and Reaktor plus many FX are used in tandem on my setup. The most current i7 8700K OC'ed to 5.0ghz and plenty of 3200mhz ram at 32gb are my power parts. I still get some crackling when driving Dune 2 and Falcon pretty hard at 64 samples i/o buffer. I must run at 64 i/o, I'm aiming for the lowest latency possible.

I have found the internal soundcard to have less crackles & pops than my Avid Mbox Mini over USB (gen 3). I can't use the internal soundcard for gigs though because there's no analog i/o suitable for live performance, only a headphone jack and some RCA outs.

I have heard good things about RME soundcards. The soundcard appears to be the bottleneck in my quest for crackle & pop-free low latency high quality audio.

I am curious if you guys have ever used Babyface Pro or the UC/UCX line from RME. Are they possible solutions to my problems?

Thanks. If you have Dune 2, load up some really CPU intensive patches (Redemption from the "pads" section for example), tune down to 64 samples i/o audio buffer at 44.1khz and you'll see what I'm talking about. It's tough on the computer!

Thanks.

M

Well my friend, we have pretty similar setups and interests. I just finished putting together an 8700K/32GB memory build in the last few days. No overclock yet, still getting everything settled.

So basically I am now using an RME HDPSe AIO. This is the pci-express version of their Hammerfall DSP. I just loaded up Dune 2 with the Redemption patch. I also added one instance each of Valhalla Room reverb, Valhalla Shimmer reverb, Valhalla Uber Mod, Valhalla Vintage Verb and Valhalla Freq Echo on the same mixer track as Dune 2. In addition I set the ASIO buffer length to 32. For reference my DAW software is FL Studio 12.5. My MIDI controller is a black Waldorf Blofeld synthesizer with it's outputs unassigned to any mixer tracks in the DAW.

For the test I held down enough notes to reach 128 active voices. This produced no pops or crackling. The FL Studio CPU load meter reached 75 percent. Mind you this meter is not the same as the Windows meter. I think it measures the ASIO buffer capacity. The Windows CPU meter hit about 7 percent max.

I went back and repeated the test but this time changed notes several times, each time using 128 voices. Basically just holding down as many notes as I could with 2 hands and then moving that around. I did this a few times and only managed to get 2 or 3 very mild ticks (not even bad enough to be called a pop). Oddly enough this occurred while the reverb tails were playing out as the Valhalla plugins were set to modulate the tails for this test.

With that being said, I only have experience with PCI and PCIe audio interfaces as I have always been after the lowest latency possible. My previous interface was an EMU 1212m PCIe card. I was able to run an ASIO buffer length of 64. 32 produced many pops and crackles but 64 was rock solid.

The USB RME interfaces are very well spoken of in general. I think one of the newer ones actually beat the RME PCIe card in latency, cannot remember if it was USB, Thunderbolt or both. The "Music Computers" section over on Gearslutz would be a good place to get others insite on the external RME interfaces. They seem quite popular over there.

I will always recommend internal interfaces for best possible latency, but you may have reasons as to why you cannot. The RME AIO has 2 add-on cards that expand the analog 2 in/2 out to 6 in/6 out. I purchased the 4 in expansion as I did not need the additional outs. It is working great so far. I hope this helps some, feel free to ask any questions you have.

Battleship said:

Well my friend, we have pretty similar setups and interests. I just finished putting together an 8700K/32GB memory build in the last few days. No overclock yet, still getting everything settled.

So basically I am now using an RME HDPSe AIO. This is the pci-express version of their Hammerfall DSP. I just loaded up Dune 2 with the Redemption patch. I also added one instance each of Valhalla Room reverb, Valhalla Shimmer reverb, Valhalla Uber Mod, Valhalla Vintage Verb and Valhalla Freq Echo on the same mixer track as Dune 2. In addition I set the ASIO buffer length to 32. For reference my DAW software is FL Studio 12.5. My MIDI controller is a black Waldorf Blofeld synthesizer with it's outputs unassigned to any mixer tracks in the DAW.

For the test I held down enough notes to reach 128 active voices. This produced no pops or crackling. The FL Studio CPU load meter reached 75 percent. Mind you this meter is not the same as the Windows meter. I think it measures the ASIO buffer capacity. The Windows CPU meter hit about 7 percent max.

I went back and repeated the test but this time changed notes several times, each time using 128 voices. Basically just holding down as many notes as I could with 2 hands and then moving that around. I did this a few times and only managed to get 2 or 3 very mild ticks (not even bad enough to be called a pop). Oddly enough this occurred while the reverb tails were playing out as the Valhalla plugins were set to modulate the tails for this test.

With that being said, I only have experience with PCI and PCIe audio interfaces as I have always been after the lowest latency possible. My previous interface was an EMU 1212m PCIe card. I was able to run an ASIO buffer length of 64. 32 produced many pops and crackles but 64 was rock solid.

The USB RME interfaces are very well spoken of in general. I think one of the newer ones actually beat the RME PCIe card in latency, cannot remember if it was USB, Thunderbolt or both. The "Music Computers" section over on Gearslutz would be a good place to get others insite on the external RME interfaces. They seem quite popular over there.

I will always recommend internal interfaces for best possible latency, but you may have reasons as to why you cannot. The RME AIO has 2 add-on cards that expand the analog 2 in/2 out to 6 in/6 out. I purchased the 4 in expansion as I did not need the additional outs. It is working great so far. I hope this helps some, feel free to ask any questions you have.

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Hey there Battleship,

Oh man, imagine the odds! That's amazing we have virtually the same builds. I've overclocked to 5.0ghz on my i7 8700k and the performance is pretty incredible for a range of tasks.

Thank you for testing Dune 2 with Redemption on your setup! Glad to hear that it is working well, and at 32 samples wow.

Well, I usually use Reaper as a DAW. I don't know if that makes much of a difference but... It sounds like the main differences between our setups is the soundcard.

I did not know that internal RME's could go down to 32 samples! That's raging. I can only go down to 64 samples i/o buffer on either the ASIO4All or the Avid Mbox Mini I usually use. That would be an added bonus to get less latency for performing with. Something to think about...

I run my setup inside my gaming computer, although by far the main point of building this PC for me was music performance. I have a mini itx setup in an Ncase M1 case. So it's small enough that I can (and have) taken it on the plane for gigs and it can be carried easily in a small padded gig bag!

However, I currently have a sweet GPU in the only available PCIe slot. I had always wanted a gaming computer so I'm not totally sold on giving up the GPU, but I suppose I could simply take out the GPU and install the internal RME soundcard for gigs. Would be much simpler to just use an external soundcard though, especially since I have available USB slots in my motherboard already.

The other reason I thought having an external sound would be good is I'd probably end up selling the Mbox Mini if I got a new soundcard and I also use a Macbook Pro 2010 machine for lighter wind synth gigs where I'm just playing solos, no chords, and can afford to sacrifice some computing power for simpler solo patches and the occasional lighter weight chord patch. Being able to use an external USB soundcard would mean it could work for both the new Windows superpower PC as well as my older Mac since both have USB ports.

I can deal with 48 or 64 samples i/o buffer if the performance otherwise will be the same level. I'm really only looking for something that can perform with more audio clarity and not crackle & pop with Dune 2 intense patches like Redemption etc.

Do you think it would be a safe bet to try the Babyface Pro instead? Or should I opt for the internal soundcard? It's less a battle for extremely low latency as it is for audio clarity at large voice counts with layered patches, like you proved is possible in your tests with the internal RME card.

Glad to hear you found an awesome solution either way, and hopefully the performance would be close to the same with both the internal & external RME cards. What do you think?

M

Honestly from all of my research I "think" you would be fine with a Babyface Pro. They are very well spoken of everywhere I look. Most of the people on Gearslutz are crazy about having tight MIDI timing and I always see recommendations for the the Babyface pro. With that being said I also often see people mentioning using buffers of 128 and even up to 1024 and such, so I am only speculating.

In general the talk is that RME puts a lot of work into their drivers to make their stuff the best it can be. So really what it comes down to is this. Does USB provide enough bandwidth to support a 64 sample buffer length?

Here is an excerpt from a post over at GS: "Just got the Babyface Pro for two days, played with it, the ASIO performance is incredible, a significant improvement over the original Babyface I had. At 44.1 kHz, 128 samples, the round trip latency reads 7.32ms, compared to 8.48ms of the first generation. At 48kHz, 64 samples, it goes down to 3.98ms!! Wow, what a great device. Loving it!"

So, it sounds promising. As they say, "Only one way to find out for sure"

Let me know what you decide.

P.S. Do you have any of your music posted online?

Well, you can try a Babyface Pro for no risk other than shipping if you want, Amazon has them on Prime, which means Amazon fulfillment which means you can return it for the reason "I don't like it," and they want nothing other than return shipping. It won't do as low a latency, "only" 48 samples as opposed to 32 but still their USB drivers are legendarily good. However PCIe solutions (be they internal or thunderbolt) are the lowest latency and lowest load, as you can be directly attached to the CPU itself, and the bus protocol is very low overhead. So all other things being equal, you get better results from a PCIe card. I'd bet their USB ones would do just fine for 64 samples though, and that is super low latency, maybe 1.5ms-2ms at 44.1kHz even with the USB guard buffer and the DAC buffers.

Also DAW can matter. I don't have the article handy, but there was a comparison done of Mac vs Windows with Protools and Cubase on both platforms and on both platforms, Cubase allowed for more load before having issues. So it could be worth your while to give some other DAWs a shot. Abelton Live is a good choice for Live work, as the name implies, Cubase is one of the gold standards (though you need a dongle to do a trial), Studio One gets rave reviews for the fluidity and stability of its audio engine. Maybe try a few out, and see if they make a difference. They may well not, but they could.

Sycraft said:

Well, you can try a Babyface Pro for no risk other than shipping if you want, Amazon has them on Prime, which means Amazon fulfillment which means you can return it for the reason "I don't like it," and they want nothing other than return shipping. It won't do as low a latency, "only" 48 samples as opposed to 32 but still their USB drivers are legendarily good. However PCIe solutions (be they internal or thunderbolt) are the lowest latency and lowest load, as you can be directly attached to the CPU itself, and the bus protocol is very low overhead. So all other things being equal, you get better results from a PCIe card. I'd bet their USB ones would do just fine for 64 samples though, and that is super low latency, maybe 1.5ms-2ms at 44.1kHz even with the USB guard buffer and the DAC buffers.

Also DAW can matter. I don't have the article handy, but there was a comparison done of Mac vs Windows with Protools and Cubase on both platforms and on both platforms, Cubase allowed for more load before having issues. So it could be worth your while to give some other DAWs a shot. Abelton Live is a good choice for Live work, as the name implies, Cubase is one of the gold standards (though you need a dongle to do a trial), Studio One gets rave reviews for the fluidity and stability of its audio engine. Maybe try a few out, and see if they make a difference. They may well not, but they could.

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Thanks Sycraft! Your thoughts are much appreciated. Lots to chew on. Yes you're right DAW's can matter. I think Reaper (which is what I'm using) is supposed to be very light on CPU. I have also used Usine Hollyhock a lot and that's CPU friendly but half the time something wasn't working right and it's a small company so I gave up on it for now. I have Pro Tools but I use that more for production/mixing, I haven't tried it for MIDI but I doubt I could do all the complicated MIDI routing and live patch switching my gig setup needs in PT... Maybe I am wrong though! Wouldn't hurt to try, I'll look into it. Cubase was always unattractive to me simply because I've read about so many compatibility issues with plugins I like to use. I also can't fathom using any DAW that required a dongle for playing gigs. What if you forgot it... But I will continue to work on looking around for other options! Ableton sounds like the gold standard for live use.

Thanks for your thoughts on RME USB too. If the USB version works well enough, that's all I'd need! Not looking to break the sound barrier or set a new world record for latency. I just want to be able to load up big layered great sounding patches for huge pads and not have the audio destroyed anymore with crackles & pops at an acceptably playable latency. I was playing at 128/44.1khz on Mac for years without minding the latency, just couldn't get as much out of the CPU in their laptops as is possible with a portable desktop solution...

Battleship said:

Honestly from all of my research I "think" you would be fine with a Babyface Pro. They are very well spoken of everywhere I look. Most of the people on Gearslutz are crazy about having tight MIDI timing and I always see recommendations for the the Babyface pro. With that being said I also often see people mentioning using buffers of 128 and even up to 1024 and such, so I am only speculating.

In general the talk is that RME puts a lot of work into their drivers to make their stuff the best it can be. So really what it comes down to is this. Does USB provide enough bandwidth to support a 64 sample buffer length?

Here is an excerpt from a post over at GS: "Just got the Babyface Pro for two days, played with it, the ASIO performance is incredible, a significant improvement over the original Babyface I had. At 44.1 kHz, 128 samples, the round trip latency reads 7.32ms, compared to 8.48ms of the first generation. At 48kHz, 64 samples, it goes down to 3.98ms!! Wow, what a great device. Loving it!"

So, it sounds promising. As they say, "Only one way to find out for sure"

Let me know what you decide.

P.S. Do you have any of your music posted online?

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Thanks Battleship! Cheers man. You're right, just gotta try it in the end. I also had good luck emailing them. They've been really helpful so far at RME providing some info about testing everything else before making a soundcard change to make sure the problem is not elsewhere.

I would be aiming for 64 samples or lower, yes. So USB at 64 or 48 would be great! 128 starts to be noticeable to me but I've played at that buffer setting plenty of times without any real issues it's just not quite as comfortable as 64 & lower is.

Re: Music: Yes I have some stuff posted! I'm not famous but I do love music & integrating the computer with it. A good example of what I'm trying to do with all this could be summed up here:



The chords are triggered with MIDI foot pedals linked to a single virtual MIDI bus and programmed to send note informaiton to sent to midiChords which transposes the single-note inputs to pre-programmed chord voicings I wrote. Then on a seperate MIDI bus, the wind synth's MIDI is sent to a solo patch on a different track. That way you can play both at the same time with no conflicting MIDI inputs on the separate tracks. This song is actually just a rubato intro for a song my band plays.

Most of what I do is more along the acoustic jazz line of things:




How about you, anything posted online?

Best,
M

MIDIBoss said:

Thanks Sycraft! Your thoughts are much appreciated. Lots to chew on. Yes you're right DAW's can matter. I think Reaper (which is what I'm using) is supposed to be very light on CPU. I have also used Usine Hollyhock a lot and that's CPU friendly but half the time something wasn't working right and it's a small company so I gave up on it for now. I have Pro Tools but I use that more for production/mixing, I haven't tried it for MIDI but I doubt I could do all the complicated MIDI routing and live patch switching my gig setup needs in PT... Maybe I am wrong though! Wouldn't hurt to try, I'll look into it. Cubase was always unattractive to me simply because I've read about so many compatibility issues with plugins I like to use. I also can't fathom using any DAW that required a dongle for playing gigs. What if you forgot it... But I will continue to work on looking around for other options! Ableton sounds like the gold standard for live use.

Thanks for your thoughts on RME USB too. If the USB version works well enough, that's all I'd need! Not looking to break the sound barrier or set a new world record for latency. I just want to be able to load up big layered great sounding patches for huge pads and not have the audio destroyed anymore with crackles & pops at an acceptably playable latency. I was playing at 128/44.1khz on Mac for years without minding the latency, just couldn't get as much out of the CPU in their laptops as is possible with a portable desktop solution...

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It isn't so much as to if DAWs are light on CPU or not, but how they handle plugin processing. Some are more efficient than others with it. What precisely is the difference I don't know but basically if the software is more efficient, you can get better latency results. So just worth giving some others a try maybe. Like I said, Ableton Live is very highly regarded for live use, and thus low latency. Pro Tools is not, and is usually regarded as the slowest for that kind of thing (and testing has borne that out).

The chords are triggered with MIDI foot pedals linked to a single virtual MIDI bus and programmed to send note informaiton to sent to midiChords which transposes the single-note inputs to pre-programmed chord voicings I wrote. Then on a seperate MIDI bus, the wind synth's MIDI is sent to a solo patch on a different track. That way you can play both at the same time with no conflicting MIDI inputs on the separate tracks. This song is actually just a rubato intro for a song my band plays.

Most of what I do is more along the acoustic jazz line of things:


How about you, anything posted online?

Best,
M

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Hey man, I think the rule is....if you are on the internet in a video, you are famous now

That's cool man, I see you are very much into the performance aspect of things. Good chops dude!

While our equipment is similar our music is quite different. I do electro breaky type electronic stuff generally. But hey it takes all kinds to make the world go.

Sadly the last tracks I completed were back in the early 2000's when I should have been working on my skills rather than making an album. Most of it I am not super proud of. These days my focus is just on improving, when time permits. I tend to work on several things at once, so hoping to complete something new soon. As always time is my enemy. Anyway, I do have one posted track that was made back in those days. Escape Velocity

I am glad RME is working with you on this. I have heard that they are very helpful and supportive of their product. This is one of the things that pushed me in their direction. Keep us posted on what you go with. Cheers buddy!

So some more info for you, here is a little comparison with RME and other interfaces. It is old but it shows some general info/trends. Basically only the RME PCIe solutions can do 32 samples, but the RME Firewire external card (they are testing FW in this one) does 64 samples no issue and is only slightly behind the PCIe card, and way ahead of other FW cards at that latency.

Sycraft said:

So some more info for you, here is a little comparison with RME and other interfaces. It is old but it shows some general info/trends. Basically only the RME PCIe solutions can do 32 samples, but the RME Firewire external card (they are testing FW in this one) does 64 samples no issue and is only slightly behind the PCIe card, and way ahead of other FW cards at that latency.

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Interesting stuff. I know it is mostly for convenience, but it is a bummer that that PCIe solutions are not more common as they are great performers. My entire chain of interfaces have been internal cards and I have always been very happy with them. I am thankful that RME still provides them. However, if the USB devices can pull off 64 samples....that should be quite acceptable. Firewire always sounded finicky to me with a lot of people saying you needed the Texas Instruments chipset for it to work well. Maybe that has changed, I don't follow it to much.

MIDIBoss, what operating system are you running? I know there is a great debate over Windows 7 versus Windows 10. It seems to me like there were a decent amount of people lamenting Windows 10 performance in the audio realm in the big Gearslutz Windows 10 thread. Something else to think about I suppose.

Sycraft said:

So some more info for you, here is a little comparison with RME and other interfaces. It is old but it shows some general info/trends. Basically only the RME PCIe solutions can do 32 samples, but the RME Firewire external card (they are testing FW in this one) does 64 samples no issue and is only slightly behind the PCIe card, and way ahead of other FW cards at that latency.

Click to expand...

Thanks! I'll definitely look into this.

Battleship said:

Interesting stuff. I know it is mostly for convenience, but it is a bummer that that PCIe solutions are not more common as they are great performers. My entire chain of interfaces have been internal cards and I have always been very happy with them. I am thankful that RME still provides them. However, if the USB devices can pull off 64 samples....that should be quite acceptable. Firewire always sounded finicky to me with a lot of people saying you needed the Texas Instruments chipset for it to work well. Maybe that has changed, I don't follow it to much.

MIDIBoss, what operating system are you running? I know there is a great debate over Windows 7 versus Windows 10. It seems to me like there were a decent amount of people lamenting Windows 10 performance in the audio realm in the big Gearslutz Windows 10 thread. Something else to think about I suppose.

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Cool. On my PC I am on Windows 10. On my Macbook Pro I'm on Sierra. The Macbook is in great shape but it is "old", a 2010 machine. Dual core, 2.6ghz, it melts when compared to the PC machine.

I'm actually happy with Windows 10 for audio so far. My new PC with the OC'ed i7 8700k and 32gb of OC'ed RAM can run circles around the Macbook on audio stuff! I'm a recent PC convert and, to me, the cost-to-performance ratio improvement rules when compared with Mac. MIDI and audio are much more of a pain to get running/understand on Windows, but after a few months I'm comfy with it and it all works just as reliably as it does on Mac to me. I don't see the need to install Hackintosh. This m-itx machine fits into a tiny gym bag for transport and it's light! Can't believe how far computers have come since I was a kid trying to play Oregon Trail on an unmovably heavy Apple IIe at school. On the other hand, I don't know anything about Windows 7 so I have nothing to compare Windows 10 to for audio.

Although I can completely imagine the power of an internal audio card, I would really love to stay with USB if possible. 50% of the joy of building this new machine is now having a PC gaming PC, too. So uninstalling/reinstalling PCIe cards all the time to exchange the GPU for an internal soundcard on gig days might get a little old... I'd be willing to do it if the results I'm looking for aren't achievable via USB, but I'm more likely just going to give a shot to a Babyface Pro before I try something like the internal soundcard from RME.

I tried another interface last night: The Dangerous Audio Source. The Source is my favorite DAC for monitoring while mixing on my Mac production setup. It's a crystal clear sounding reference DAC. Unfortunately its Windows drivers are pretty much useless. I can run it successfully on ASIO4All, but there is a noticeable latency with the Source on Windows. Even on 64 samples buffer, there's something up. The latency is pretty noticeable, very sluggish. The Source is not like that on my Mac, and it also works without installing drivers on my Mac, so it'll stay in the rack as a production tool where it lives and I'll experiment with an RME card next.

My PC's motherboard does not have Firewire. You could install a Firewire PCIe card of course, but then at that point on my personal rig you're running into the same problem mentioned above with the routine GPU swapping that I'd like to avoid if possible. At that point I'd just as soon get the RME internal card.

Really appreciate you guys' helpful info on this subject! It's been great to have your input as a resource. I'll definitely update the thread when I get a chance to try a different soundcard on this machine!

Cheers,
M

I ordered an RME Babyface Pro to try. Really hoping this solves the problems. I didn't really want to spend more money on a soundcard when I already have two really great ones for tracking and mastering, but neither one of them fit the bill for this exact situation i.e. live use with high quality sound output performance and low latency. It should be here this week. Was able to secure a pretty good deal, $619 for a min condition one with a return policy from a used dealer. I'll let you know how it goes when I get it.

Will also try some other DAWs. I downloaded Cubase thinking I could register the demo to my iLok. Wouldn't you know, they have their own proprietary USB eLicenser stick you have to buy just to try it... Oh well. Maybe I'll try it still. Why don't they just use iLok if they're going to require a dongle? Most people already have that... Oy.

Cubase uses eLicenser (formerly Syncrosoft) because they are paranoid about piracy. Like SUPER paranoid. They put an absurd amount of copy protection code in to their DAW. It seems to work in terms of not getting Cubase cracked, but I've no idea if it is useful in increasing sales enough to pay for itself. Whatever the case, they are married to the idea. They've made a "soft elicenser" that doens't need a dongle that they use for a couple things, but for Cubase itself it is all proprietary dongle all the time. There are a few other companies that use it as well, the Vienna Symphonic Library being the most notable, but it pales in comparison to iLok.

It's annoying.

Sycraft said:

Cubase uses eLicenser (formerly Syncrosoft) because they are paranoid about piracy. Like SUPER paranoid. They put an absurd amount of copy protection code in to their DAW. It seems to work in terms of not getting Cubase cracked, but I've no idea if it is useful in increasing sales enough to pay for itself. Whatever the case, they are married to the idea. They've made a "soft elicenser" that doens't need a dongle that they use for a couple things, but for Cubase itself it is all proprietary dongle all the time. There are a few other companies that use it as well, the Vienna Symphonic Library being the most notable, but it pales in comparison to iLok.

It's annoying.

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Funny, you all bring up Cubase. I had considered switching from FL Studio recently due to acquiring several bits of outboard hardware in the past year. FL Studio is great for some things but convoluted in others. But I ran into the same silliness that you are speaking of. I will not run anything requiring a dongle as I am just bothered by the idea. I have gone back to trying to work through FL Studio with Reaper as my "well if this doesnt work out" DAW.

Good luck with the Babyface MIDIBoss! I think that is the best option given your constraints.

One unrelated question for you MIDI, what voltage did it take to get your 8700K stable at 5 GHZ? I have started the OC process and was curious where you had landed as far as settings.

Battleship said:

Funny, you all bring up Cubase. I had considered switching from FL Studio recently due to acquiring several bits of outboard hardware in the past year. FL Studio is great for some things but convoluted in others. But I ran into the same silliness that you are speaking of. I will not run anything requiring a dongle as I am just bothered by the idea. I have gone back to trying to work through FL Studio with Reaper as my "well if this doesnt work out" DAW.

Good luck with the Babyface MIDIBoss! I think that is the best option given your constraints.

One unrelated question for you MIDI, what voltage did it take to get your 8700K stable at 5 GHZ? I have started the OC process and was curious where you had landed as far as settings.

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Ah, I see. I thought about going the FL Studio route but read about instability and this setup is mainly used for live stuff so can't be messing around with an unstable DAW! Reaper is almost perfect for me but the Soundtoys 5 stuff is not officially supported and causes crashes sometimes, more on the Mac side of things than the PC side of things. I have crashes in Reaper every once in a while because of the Soundtoys Sie-EQ on PC. On Mac Reaper + Soundtoys is totally incompatible. Echoboy delay in particular causes crazy random bouts of distortion and crashes. Can't live without those plugins so will probably try to switch to something else on both platforms, Cubase or otherwise, if possible. I got way into this DAW Usine Hollyhock 3 for a while which for MIDI and live stuff is nothing short of amazing, but unfortunately the developers keep breaking it with updates... All sorts of issues in the last few builds. Given up on that one for now. I have Pro Tools for the mixing studio but I use a lot of stuff that does not support AAX, plus I doubt PT can do all the comicated MIDI routing... That’s more of a Reaper/Cubase/Ableton/other DAW strength. Studio One has come highly recommend... Dunno, gonna try some things.

Anyway re: CPU voltage ~ Yeah, actually when I built my machine I just tried the stock overclock feature on my board (Asus Rog Strix z370-i the m-itx one) and it worked perfectly! It is nice and stable at 5.0ghz. I just looked in the BIOS monitor and it said it's resting at 1.088V for the CPU core, 33C resting temperature, it probaly goes up to the mid 60s on most intense sessions of gaming or whatever, I've checked it before. That is lower than I thought it was. I was pretty sure when I used stock OC on the i3, the CPU voltage was 1.35V, but now it says 1.088V in BIOS monitor. I delidded and used Grizzly conductonaut to bring the temps down. Worked great. What's really crazy is that the i7 8700K stays much cooler than the i3 8350K (also 8th Gen Intel) CPU I used for a few months no matter the load. i3 was reaching mid 70s and 80s Celsius sometimes, i7 stays cooler like mid 60s. Maybe I got luckier with the delidding process on the i7, not sure... Who knows.

Point is, on the current Gen Asus ROG Stric motherboards, the stock OC worked great for me, and 5.0ghz is plenty fast! I tried faster speeds but couldn't easily find a stable voltage. This is plenty of speed for me...

Cheers,
M

Battleship said:

Funny, you all bring up Cubase. I had considered switching from FL Studio recently due to acquiring several bits of outboard hardware in the past year. FL Studio is great for some things but convoluted in others. But I ran into the same silliness that you are speaking of. I will not run anything requiring a dongle as I am just bothered by the idea. I have gone back to trying to work through FL Studio with Reaper as my "well if this doesnt work out" DAW.

Click to expand...

I hate the concept of dongles but I knuckled under and I own an eLicenser and iLok. Neither was particularly expensive, and it means I can use whatever I want. I switched to Cubase after Sonar folded so I actually make use of the eLicenser now for more than then Halion. The iLok I've actually made less and less use since I've stopped using the EastWest products on account of Play being garbage software. It annoys me that companies are paranoid enough to want dongles, but I've just decided it isn't worth fighting.

And I will say, I really like Cubase. I used Sonar since forever, going back to the days when it was Cakewalk and it has a lot to like (such as good WASAPI support meaning low latency with regular Realtek soundcards) but Cubase really is a better program. It is extremely well done software from the big things like the audio engine down to the little things like using 3D acceleration for a silky smooth UI. Also has the advantage of working well with pretty much every plugin on the market since they write the VST standard and along with Pro Tools they are one of the hitters in music and post production (or rather Nuendo, the big boy version is). So while I don't like needing the dongle, I'll accept it as the price for the DAW I like.

Also who knows? Maybe that's why Cubase is still around and Sonar is dead.

MIDIBoss said:

Yeah, actually when I built my machine I just tried the stock overclock feature on my board (Asus Rog Strix z370-i the m-itx one) and it worked perfectly! It is nice and stable at 5.0ghz. I just looked in the BIOS monitor and it said it's resting at 1.088V for the CPU core, 33C resting temperature, it probaly goes up to the mid 60s on most intense sessions of gaming or whatever, I've checked it before. That is lower than I thought it was. I was pretty sure when I used stock OC on the i3, the CPU voltage was 1.35V, but now it says 1.088V in BIOS monitor. I delidded and used Grizzly conductonaut to bring the temps down. Worked great. What's really crazy is that the i7 8700K stays much cooler than the i3 8350K (also 8th Gen Intel) CPU I used for a few months no matter the load. i3 was reaching mid 70s and 80s Celsius sometimes, i7 stays cooler like mid 60s. Maybe I got luckier with the delidding process on the i7, not sure... Who knows.

Cheers,
M

Click to expand...

Copy that, thanks buddy.

Battleship said:

Copy that, thanks buddy.

Click to expand...

Hey guys, thought I'd give an update. I got the RME Babyface Pro in the mail a few days ago. Only had time to do a little testing until today when I did a lot of trial & error in Reaper. So far, it seems like a real improvement over the Avid Mbox Mini. Latency wasn't really an issue before in terms of the "feel" of my softsynths, but it's down from around 4.1ms with the Mbox to 1.9/2.1ms with the Babyface. This is at 44.1khz and 64 samples. The Babyface can go down to 48 samples at 44.1khz too. 64 is more than fast enough to me though.

Reaper has a lot of customization options in the audio buffer settings. I tried disabling anticipative FX but that didn't work, tons of crackling. Reaper also has a forced multithreading option where it forces multithreading to all CPUs, in my case 12 threads on the i7 8700K. Strangely, this made performance worse. There is a warning in the settings menu saying that might happen, and it's correct. I left the option checked that auto-detects the number of available CPUs for multiprocessing though.

I am finding that in Reaper, running at 44.1khz at 64 samples buffer, my setup is working crystal clear for the first time. I'll continue to experiment, and maybe it'll get even better on some layered patches that still cause slight crackles but for right now it's stable and working as I'd hoped it would when I built this machine. Single layers of the most complicated Dune 2 patches are clear sounding. CPU #1 is maxing out at around 28%-35% CPU usage on the really intense patches at this latency buffer.

The sound quality of the RME Babyface Pro is also quite a bit nicer than the Mbox Mini, especially out of the headphone port. I use some high-impedance headphones I think maybe 320ohm Beyerdynamic DT990's and headphone amp in the Babyface drives them so much better than the little weak headphone amp in the Mbox.

Another nice feature of the RME is the ability to switch the signal to mono in one button in Totalmix. I find I often need to do this in the DAW at venues that only have a mono house system so you don't lose one side of signal (some things are panned in my setup and also some of the delays & choruses are stereo FX). So that's a nice feature and it's easier to just press a button in Totalmix than bring up a separate plugin on the master track in the DAW to sum down to mono.

I'm more than impressed with the RME. It seems like a serious piece of gear, built to last. I'm pretty sure that this one is brand new even though I bought it "used" from a dealer. Came in the plastic wrapping and everything. Maybe it was a factory refurb or something...

I still want to try Cubase since you guys said it might handle low latency high-CPU stuff a little better. The only thing that worries me about Reaper is that there have been reports of crashes with the Soundtoys plugins, and I have had it crash on me 2 or 3 times with the Soundtoys Sie-EQ. Something to do with their folder permissions code not being fully compatible. It's a huge shame cause I use those and otherwise I love Reaper, so customizable and tweakable. My complicated MIDI setup with MIDI-button patch selections and all kinds of MIDI routing works perfectly in it. I'm sure Cubase can do those things, I'd rather just not spend more money and also I still am not sold on the idea of a dongle for a live rig... Will continue to test. Maybe Soundtoys stuff will cooperate. It usually doesn't cause any issues, has mainly been a problem on load or switching soundcards during a session.

Anyway, thanks for the help Sycraft and Battleship, overall this seems like a huge improvement. I tried running Dune 2 on those high-voice-count patches like Redemption at 96khz. Still brings the whole system to its knees. But for live use, 44.1khz is fine and I am pretty amazed at how fast the .vst softsynths respond now with clear audio. I guess I'll be keeping the RME Babyface Pro. Time to sell off some old FX pedals to try and recoup some of the cost of this thing, quality ain't cheap!

Cheers,
Matt

Something else to try is to disable hyperthreading in your BIOS. This is something I just recently heard about, but a non-trivial number of people say that they find they get better polyphony with ultra low buffer settings with HT off, and the opposite with higher buffer settings. It isn't a totally illogical idea either, since HT doesn't actually increase the amount of cores there are just the amount of threads that the hardware will run at once, but if one starts doing something the other has to wait. Good for making maximum use of the CPU's execution units but that isn't the problem at low latencies, at low latencies it is getting done with the task at hand and getting the data out to the card. So give that a shot, see if it helps at all. Don't worry about performance in Windows and games, your 6 actual cores are way more than enough you'll notice no difference. Only place HT would matter really is if you were doing something intense like video conversion or 3D rendering, then you'd want it back on for speed.

Also, not that you need or want a reason to spend money but... Cubase is on sale for a crossgrade right now. If you own another DAW program you can get it for like half price, which is not normal. They started it because of the Sonar implosion and I don't know how long it'll go on for. If you own Live, Logic, Pro Tools, Sonar, FL Studio, DP, Studio One, or Reason, you are eligible. When I ordered from Sweetwater all I had to do was talk to them on the phone and say I was crossgrading from Sonar and they sold it to me, no verification needed. Still $325 (plus an eLicenser) but a much lower than normal price. Worth considering, though as I said I'm sure you aren't looking for reasons to spend more right now .

Sycraft said:

Something else to try is to disable hyperthreading in your BIOS. This is something I just recently heard about, but a non-trivial number of people say that they find they get better polyphony with ultra low buffer settings with HT off, and the opposite with higher buffer settings. It isn't a totally illogical idea either, since HT doesn't actually increase the amount of cores there are just the amount of threads that the hardware will run at once, but if one starts doing something the other has to wait. Good for making maximum use of the CPU's execution units but that isn't the problem at low latencies, at low latencies it is getting done with the task at hand and getting the data out to the card. So give that a shot, see if it helps at all. Don't worry about performance in Windows and games, your 6 actual cores are way more than enough you'll notice no difference. Only place HT would matter really is if you were doing something intense like video conversion or 3D rendering, then you'd want it back on for speed.

Also, not that you need or want a reason to spend money but... Cubase is on sale for a crossgrade right now. If you own another DAW program you can get it for like half price, which is not normal. They started it because of the Sonar implosion and I don't know how long it'll go on for. If you own Live, Logic, Pro Tools, Sonar, FL Studio, DP, Studio One, or Reason, you are eligible. When I ordered from Sweetwater all I had to do was talk to them on the phone and say I was crossgrading from Sonar and they sold it to me, no verification needed. Still $325 (plus an eLicenser) but a much lower than normal price. Worth considering, though as I said I'm sure you aren't looking for reasons to spend more right now .

Click to expand...

Thanks Sycraft! I tried disabling hyperthreading. It appeared to help even more with polyphony on big patches. Very cool, thanks for the tip. I have tweaked so many things in the computer OS, Reaper, and BIOS at this point I don't think I'd ever be able to retrace the steps, lol, but everything is working great now. The RME is a keeper, really big difference in overall performance. I can seem to run just about every patch I can think of at 64 samples at 44.1khz without a problem. Layering of medium-intensive patches is possible too. Pretty happy with it. My EWI setup is blazing now! I also tried some live audio processing on my sax and that works great too. The low latency setting would work for a live situation processing some FX on the sax, I think. I tried some octave-ing via Eventide Octavox (downloaded a demo) and that worked great. I usually use a Micro Pog EHX pedal for this. That sounds a little bit cooler, but it's neat to have it all running inside the computer.

I did see that sale on Cubase. Oof... Ha. I do have Logic X and Pro Tools. Neither one works with many of the things I like to use unfortunately. I thought about doing Hackintosh but it seems pointless when Logic doesn't let you use .vst's. Their Midi-Chorder .au does not work correctly with 3rd party synths, and they don't let you use MIDIChords since it's a .vst so no point in trying to run Logic.

I might end up going with Cubase. If anything else, it would be great to have my live gigging setup be cross-platform. Reaper doesn't run so well on my Mac. Lots of crashes and incompatibility issues. I'm gonna order the USB licenser stick and give it a try. Thanks for the headsup on the sale.

Cheers!

M

MIDIBoss said:

Thanks Sycraft! I tried disabling hyperthreading. It appeared to help even more with polyphony on big patches. Very cool, thanks for the tip. I have tweaked so many things in the computer OS, Reaper, and BIOS at this point I don't think I'd ever be able to retrace the steps, lol, but everything is working great now. The RME is a keeper, really big difference in overall performance. I can seem to run just about every patch I can think of at 64 samples at 44.1khz without a problem. Layering of medium-intensive patches is possible too. Pretty happy with it. My EWI setup is blazing now! I also tried some live audio processing on my sax and that works great too. The low latency setting would work for a live situation processing some FX on the sax, I think. I tried some octave-ing via Eventide Octavox (downloaded a demo) and that worked great. I usually use a Micro Pog EHX pedal for this. That sounds a little bit cooler, but it's neat to have it all running inside the computer.

M

Click to expand...

Good deal! Let the funky beats commence!

Sycraft said:

Something else to try is to disable hyperthreading in your BIOS. This is something I just recently heard about, but a non-trivial number of people say that they find they get better polyphony with ultra low buffer settings with HT off, and the opposite with higher buffer settings. It isn't a totally illogical idea either, since HT doesn't actually increase the amount of cores there are just the amount of threads that the hardware will run at once, but if one starts doing something the other has to wait. Good for making maximum use of the CPU's execution units but that isn't the problem at low latencies, at low latencies it is getting done with the task at hand and getting the data out to the card. So give that a shot, see if it helps at all. Don't worry about performance in Windows and games, your 6 actual cores are way more than enough you'll notice no difference. Only place HT would matter really is if you were doing something intense like video conversion or 3D rendering, then you'd want it back on for speed.

Also, not that you need or want a reason to spend money but... Cubase is on sale for a crossgrade right now. If you own another DAW program you can get it for like half price, which is not normal. They started it because of the Sonar implosion and I don't know how long it'll go on for. If you own Live, Logic, Pro Tools, Sonar, FL Studio, DP, Studio One, or Reason, you are eligible. When I ordered from Sweetwater all I had to do was talk to them on the phone and say I was crossgrading from Sonar and they sold it to me, no verification needed. Still $325 (plus an eLicenser) but a much lower than normal price. Worth considering, though as I said I'm sure you aren't looking for reasons to spend more right now .

Click to expand...

Hey Sycraft,

So I downloaded a trial of Cubase on your recommendation. Overall, other than the dongle which is a minor thing, I love it! It is always daunting learning a new DAW and this one is fairly complicated to me, but after a few hours I was able to figure out how to get it playing nicely with Dune, the RME interface, and my footpedal MIDI controllers. The footpedals (Keith McMillen Softsteps and 12-steps) have 2 different jobs: Selecting tracks for performance arming and controlling MIDIChords. The "Generic Remote" thing was fairly easy to setup once I figured out how it is supposed to work, which took an hour or two lol. I couldn't figure out how to get MIDIChords running in Cubase but actually it's OK because Cubase's Chorder MIDI effect does the same thing. In Logic X, the chorder app doesn't work correctly with any 3rd party .vsti's (the voices don't rotate correctly and triggered chord sequences drop a lot of notes) but Cubase's Chorder effect works perfectly. It's better to have all that type of stuff running "native" in the DAW anyway, less likely to have any conflicts, so I don't mind losing MIDIChords. Just have to re-enter all my chord sequences in Chorder but that won't be a big deal.

Am I crazy for thinking that it also sounds better than Reaper? I know there's a lot of debate about DAW's sounding different, but I always thought Reaper sounded a little more nasal than Logic or Usine Hollyhock. Cubase's summing sounds nice and warm to me.

Performance/latency-wise, it just seems to work better out of the box than Reaper. I had to tweak so much stuff in Reaper to get it running smoothly. I just let Cubase sync to the RME driver, ran everything at 44.1khz and 48 samples i/o, and it just worked. No problems. Multi-processing is enabled, ASIO-guard is set to "normal", audio priority is set to "normal", and I disabled any multi-threading that was checked "on" inside the .vsti's (like Dune for example which has this) just to make sure they aren't conflicting with Cubase's own multi-threading, and it is all running super smooth.

Do you have any tips for settings for .vsti performance? Anything I should make sure to do or change from stock settings?

Sweetwater has a deal for an option to crossgrade from PT/Logic/etc. at $325 and you can pay it off in 2 years at $14 a month. I think I'm gonna go for it. Seems really stable so far too, playing nicely with all .vst's tested so far.

MIDIBoss said:

Hey Sycraft,

So I downloaded a trial of Cubase on your recommendation. Overall, other than the dongle which is a minor thing, I love it! It is always daunting learning a new DAW and this one is fairly complicated to me, but after a few hours I was able to figure out how to get it playing nicely with Dune, the RME interface, and my footpedal MIDI controllers. The footpedals (Keith McMillen Softsteps and 12-steps) have 2 different jobs: Selecting tracks for performance arming and controlling MIDIChords. The "Generic Remote" thing was fairly easy to setup once I figured out how it is supposed to work, which took an hour or two lol. I couldn't figure out how to get MIDIChords running in Cubase but actually it's OK because Cubase's Chorder MIDI effect does the same thing. In Logic X, the chorder app doesn't work correctly with any 3rd party .vsti's (the voices don't rotate correctly and triggered chord sequences drop a lot of notes) but Cubase's Chorder effect works perfectly. It's better to have all that type of stuff running "native" in the DAW anyway, less likely to have any conflicts, so I don't mind losing MIDIChords. Just have to re-enter all my chord sequences in Chorder but that won't be a big deal.

Am I crazy for thinking that it also sounds better than Reaper? I know there's a lot of debate about DAW's sounding different, but I always thought Reaper sounded a little more nasal than Logic or Usine Hollyhock. Cubase's summing sounds nice and warm to me.

Performance/latency-wise, it just seems to work better out of the box than Reaper. I had to tweak so much stuff in Reaper to get it running smoothly. I just let Cubase sync to the RME driver, ran everything at 44.1khz and 48 samples i/o, and it just worked. No problems. Multi-processing is enabled, ASIO-guard is set to "normal", audio priority is set to "normal", and I disabled any multi-threading that was checked "on" inside the .vsti's (like Dune for example which has this) just to make sure they aren't conflicting with Cubase's own multi-threading, and it is all running super smooth.

Do you have any tips for settings for .vsti performance? Anything I should make sure to do or change from stock settings?

Sweetwater has a deal for an option to crossgrade from PT/Logic/etc. at $325 and you can pay it off in 2 years at $14 a month. I think I'm gonna go for it. Seems really stable so far too, playing nicely with all .vst's tested so far.

Click to expand...

Oh man, you are tempting me with this. I saw that crossgrade a while back and dismissed it over the dongle. But man, I may have to give it a fair shot.

Odd thing is ever since around the days of the AMD Athlon XP 2400 (which I ran at 3200 speeds), my audio performance has been a non issue. So, it is slightly perplexing to me that you required so much tweaking. I am afraid I cannot offer much in this regard, just rambling I guess.

As far as DAW sound quality, I have seen all of the debates that you have and frankly I don't know what to think. Trust your ears is the best I can offer there. Although, how many time have we all adjusted a setting and heard a difference only to later find that the setting was actually disabled.

MIDIBoss said:

Hey Sycraft,

So I downloaded a trial of Cubase on your recommendation. Overall, other than the dongle which is a minor thing, I love it! It is always daunting learning a new DAW and this one is fairly complicated to me, but after a few hours I was able to figure out how to get it playing nicely with Dune, the RME interface, and my footpedal MIDI controllers. The footpedals (Keith McMillen Softsteps and 12-steps) have 2 different jobs: Selecting tracks for performance arming and controlling MIDIChords. The "Generic Remote" thing was fairly easy to setup once I figured out how it is supposed to work, which took an hour or two lol. I couldn't figure out how to get MIDIChords running in Cubase but actually it's OK because Cubase's Chorder MIDI effect does the same thing. In Logic X, the chorder app doesn't work correctly with any 3rd party .vsti's (the voices don't rotate correctly and triggered chord sequences drop a lot of notes) but Cubase's Chorder effect works perfectly. It's better to have all that type of stuff running "native" in the DAW anyway, less likely to have any conflicts, so I don't mind losing MIDIChords. Just have to re-enter all my chord sequences in Chorder but that won't be a big deal.

Click to expand...

Ya I've found once I learned how to do shit in it, which doesn't take too long as the manual is quite good and up to date online, it is actually a very easy program to use. They may have their own way of doing things, but I think it is done that way for good reason. I really enjoy the interface and workflow. Also seems pretty adaptable to how you like things. There's also pretty good videos out there on it, put out by Steinberg themselves.

Am I crazy for thinking that it also sounds better than Reaper? I know there's a lot of debate about DAW's sounding different, but I always thought Reaper sounded a little more nasal than Logic or Usine Hollyhock. Cubase's summing sounds nice and warm to me.

Click to expand...

Probably, maybe, I dunno . What I mean is that in theory, all digital mixing should sound the same. It is all math, and quite well understood math at that. Also we are operating with precision well beyond what our DACs can handle, never mind out ears (our DACs are way better than our ears). So any two DAWs with completely equal settings should produce output that will digitally null when inverted. In all but extreme edge cases that should be true even if one mixes in 32-bit FP and another in 64-bit FP (Cubase will do 64-bit mixing, if you tell it to) as we are talking about levels of precision that don't matter.

On top of that we have to deal with the fact that our perception is heavily tainted by our biases. We can perceive things differently based on how we think we should. Hence the need for blind testing. There are tons and tons of studies that show people able to hear/taste/see/etc a clear difference between things when they are aware of what they are, but can't when they are hidden. So it is totally possible that it is just your brain doing it. You know that Cubase is more expensive, more professional, and it looks slicker and more pro, so maybe your brain goes "This should sound better, I think it does," even if there is no difference.

Now that said, there is always the possibility for difference. For one, maybe Reaper just fucked something up. You can make mistakes in your math implementations, it has happened in DAWs, plugins, outboard devices, etc. So maybe it does something wrong that accounts for an audible difference. Also could have to do with difference in how they choose to handle things like panning law, or possibly even issues with interfacing with ASIO. Could also be differences in the resampling engine, if any resampling is going on.

If you really want to go hard, you could set up test for it, but it is a pain because so many FX are things that aren't 100% repeatable, they have a random element so you have to carefully design what you use in a mix to make sure that the output will be the same in both DAWs, and then you bounce it, load the waves in to an editor, flip one, and see if they null. Personally I wouldn't bother, I'd choose your DAW off of what you like, don't worry about any difference in sound quality that might or might not exist. Just use what works best for you. After all, your skill as a musician and engineer will hugely outweigh any possibly minor differences.

Do you have any tips for settings for .vsti performance? Anything I should make sure to do or change from stock settings?

Click to expand...

Not really. I'm a relative newbie to Cubase. I was a Cakewalk Sonar fanboy for years and years, until Gibson suddenly up and killed it. All the other DAW makers jumped on that as a chance to get new customers and offered really good crossgrade deals. So I tried out a few, really liked Cubase and said "the hell with it" and switched. Only thing I can think of so far you may have to play with is ASIO Guard. That's basically a non-realtime audio path to eliminate lag spikes. Is something can be rendered ahead, Cubase moves it from the realtime ASIO path to the non-realtime guard path and renders and buffers it ahead of time. Neat idea but a potential issue if you are working with something where you are playing in realtime. It should know that is going on, and keep it on the realtime path, but could have issues. You may end up having to shut ASIO Guard down, or just tell it to exempt certain instruments/plugins from going on the guard path.

Also different people report different results. Some seem to think ASIO Guard causes them more trouble and it works better off, others say it is a life saver and lets them do more before overload/glitching. That aside, it was more designed for OS-X computers since Apple has a garbage process scheduler so it supposedly (according to Steinberg themselves) makes less difference either way on Windows. You may just want to play with it, see how it goes. There's plenty of docs on how to set it up and how to exempt specific plugins if needed.

Oh, and something else that might be of use to you is their Audio Performance Meter (press F12 to get it). It shows both average and peak load. Average is more or less just your normal CPU usage. Peak load though it a useful look at how stressed your system is handling realtime audio, regardless of total load. If it goes red, you are risking dropouts. It isn't something where hitting a red blip automatically means you are having a problem, but it is a useful tool to know if load is getting too high.

Sweetwater has a deal for an option to crossgrade from PT/Logic/etc. at $325 and you can pay it off in 2 years at $14 a month. I think I'm gonna go for it. Seems really stable so far too, playing nicely with all .vst's tested so far.

Click to expand...

It should work quite well with VSTs in general, since Steinberg invented the format and since they are a major player, probably #2 after Pro Tools. Everyone tests their stuff on Cubase and Nuendo because lots of people use them, and the kind of people that do are often the kind that spend a lot of money. So if your VST doesn't work on Cubase, you are probably doing something wrong .

Sycraft said:

Ya I've found once I learned how to do shit in it, which doesn't take too long as the manual is quite good and up to date online, it is actually a very easy program to use. They may have their own way of doing things, but I think it is done that way for good reason. I really enjoy the interface and workflow. Also seems pretty adaptable to how you like things. There's also pretty good videos out there on it, put out by Steinberg themselves.



Probably, maybe, I dunno . What I mean is that in theory, all digital mixing should sound the same. It is all math, and quite well understood math at that. Also we are operating with precision well beyond what our DACs can handle, never mind out ears (our DACs are way better than our ears). So any two DAWs with completely equal settings should produce output that will digitally null when inverted. In all but extreme edge cases that should be true even if one mixes in 32-bit FP and another in 64-bit FP (Cubase will do 64-bit mixing, if you tell it to) as we are talking about levels of precision that don't matter.

On top of that we have to deal with the fact that our perception is heavily tainted by our biases. We can perceive things differently based on how we think we should. Hence the need for blind testing. There are tons and tons of studies that show people able to hear/taste/see/etc a clear difference between things when they are aware of what they are, but can't when they are hidden. So it is totally possible that it is just your brain doing it. You know that Cubase is more expensive, more professional, and it looks slicker and more pro, so maybe your brain goes "This should sound better, I think it does," even if there is no difference.

Now that said, there is always the possibility for difference. For one, maybe Reaper just fucked something up. You can make mistakes in your math implementations, it has happened in DAWs, plugins, outboard devices, etc. So maybe it does something wrong that accounts for an audible difference. Also could have to do with difference in how they choose to handle things like panning law, or possibly even issues with interfacing with ASIO. Could also be differences in the resampling engine, if any resampling is going on.

If you really want to go hard, you could set up test for it, but it is a pain because so many FX are things that aren't 100% repeatable, they have a random element so you have to carefully design what you use in a mix to make sure that the output will be the same in both DAWs, and then you bounce it, load the waves in to an editor, flip one, and see if they null. Personally I wouldn't bother, I'd choose your DAW off of what you like, don't worry about any difference in sound quality that might or might not exist. Just use what works best for you. After all, your skill as a musician and engineer will hugely outweigh any possibly minor differences.



Not really. I'm a relative newbie to Cubase. I was a Cakewalk Sonar fanboy for years and years, until Gibson suddenly up and killed it. All the other DAW makers jumped on that as a chance to get new customers and offered really good crossgrade deals. So I tried out a few, really liked Cubase and said "the hell with it" and switched. Only thing I can think of so far you may have to play with is ASIO Guard. That's basically a non-realtime audio path to eliminate lag spikes. Is something can be rendered ahead, Cubase moves it from the realtime ASIO path to the non-realtime guard path and renders and buffers it ahead of time. Neat idea but a potential issue if you are working with something where you are playing in realtime. It should know that is going on, and keep it on the realtime path, but could have issues. You may end up having to shut ASIO Guard down, or just tell it to exempt certain instruments/plugins from going on the guard path.

Also different people report different results. Some seem to think ASIO Guard causes them more trouble and it works better off, others say it is a life saver and lets them do more before overload/glitching. That aside, it was more designed for OS-X computers since Apple has a garbage process scheduler so it supposedly (according to Steinberg themselves) makes less difference either way on Windows. You may just want to play with it, see how it goes. There's plenty of docs on how to set it up and how to exempt specific plugins if needed.

Oh, and something else that might be of use to you is their Audio Performance Meter (press F12 to get it). It shows both average and peak load. Average is more or less just your normal CPU usage. Peak load though it a useful look at how stressed your system is handling realtime audio, regardless of total load. If it goes red, you are risking dropouts. It isn't something where hitting a red blip automatically means you are having a problem, but it is a useful tool to know if load is getting too high.



It should work quite well with VSTs in general, since Steinberg invented the format and since they are a major player, probably #2 after Pro Tools. Everyone tests their stuff on Cubase and Nuendo because lots of people use them, and the kind of people that do are often the kind that spend a lot of money. So if your VST doesn't work on Cubase, you are probably doing something wrong .

Click to expand...

Cheers Sycraft, thanks a lot for your thoughts! I agree, the workflow works really well for everything I've tried to do with it so far. I did switch the mixing to 64-bit as you mentioned could be done.

Re: Sound quality, on the flipside, I went back and compared both programs (Cubase vs. Reaper) once I got my setup dialed in on both DAW's. In the end, I do not hear any difference in sound quality between them. It's something one of my best friends (and an amazing musician himself) is always trying to convince me of, but I do not hear it. I thought I did hear a sonic improvement when I first turned on Cubase, but when I actually went back and compared the two DAW's, I don't hear any differences. I would agree that we probably lead ourselves to believe certain things based on personal biases, and I'd also agree that in terms of 1's & 0's, there's probably not much room for interpretation so they must be doing the same thing!

That being said, I've not had a single crash so far in Cubase and the built-in FX are way more advanced and useable than what comes with Reaper. Reaper crashed a lot because of Soundtoys when I changed preferences and obviously that's not gonna happen in Cubase since it's supported. The stability alone is worth the upgrade. I like to use built-in ultitly plugins all the time for certain things (using a limiter last in the chain on the stereo out just to make sure nothing clips digitally for instance) and the quality of all said plugs is much higher than what comes with Reaper.

Really sucks about Sonar! I had heard so much about that DAW from one of my buddies who always uses it to write his video game music. I was planning to look into that one but sorry to hear it died! Maybe some other company will buy it and revive it. Sounded like a nice piece of gear.

The only thing I haven't totally figured out is MIDI-learning so far. I gained familiarity with the Generic Remote section of Cubase and programmed all my MIDI footswitch pedal stuff to work with it, which is does, but for controlling .vst parameters it doesn't seem to work. It seems you must use Track Quick Controls for controlling .vst parameters, which means you have to have the track you want to adjust selected to change anything on it. It's not the hugest deal in the world, but I have a unique plugin called TimeFreezer which I use sort of a like a sustain pedal for chords, then switch channels and improvise over the frozen chord with another sound. The "Freeze" function is controlled with a MIDI button. In Reaper I mapped it globally so it always turns on or off when I press the MIDI button. In Cubase it seems the only way I can control the "Freeze" function is if I "freeze" the chord on the channel the chord is played on, switch channels for soloing over the top, and then go back and select the channel the frozen chord was on again & then I can "unfreeze" the chord. Going back to said channel to unfreeze the chord is just one extra step I'll have to get used to, but who knows maybe there's a way around that. Will keep trying.

Cheers! Thanks for all the insight.

M

Ya the included plugins in Cubase are excellent. They put some serious work in to them. Their convolution reverb is so good I probably wouldn't have bought Waves IR-1 had I been using Cubase. All DAWs like to advertise how many included plugins they have and such but I think it is under appreciated how much the quality can differ. Repaer suffers from the problem of being a really small development team, and also being developed by computer geek types without a lot of audio engineer input. I've tried it a number of times and just never felt it was that good, and the included FX are certainly one downfall. Steinberg works hard on theirs and has the advantage of having access to Yamaha engineers in addition to their internal people (Yamaha owns Steinberg).

FYI with 64-bit mixing that could have an impact on CPU usage, and thus polyphony, either up or down. The reason I say either way is that some VST3 plugins like Steinberg's accept and process 64-bit data natively, and many others don't, they want 32-bit data. Cubase coverts no problem, but there is a tiny bit of overhead so in theory it can make a difference. If you find that things do run better with 32-bit mixing, don't feel like there's any reason not to use it, 64-bit mixing is far more a marketing thing than anything that is really useful.

I've had people try and convince me on strange things cause SQ differences as well. An audio engineer I know, who is really talented, 100% drinks the kool-aid for weird audio tweaks. He paints the edge of CDs green, has expensive cables, elevates them off the floor with supports and so on and so forth. I've never been able to hear a difference, there's no way to measure a difference on an oscilloscope, and double blind studies have shown this kind of thing doesn't do anything. However he believes. I'm pretty sure it is just him fooling himself... On the other hand he's about a million times better than me so... I figure I'm just not going to worry about it, even if there is some small difference, it has to be seriously small as we can't reliably hear or measure it so I'll worry about the big differences, the things I do, not the software .

If you want a great low latency host for real time/ live performance check out Bidule.
I use Omnisphere/Keyscape, Kontakt, UVI, PLAY, Zebra2 HZ and PianoTeq Pro6 Live.
I also run a Solaris hardware synth and Dual SE-02 modules through my interface.
Bidule allows Multiple Diva Filters (single core Zebra2 HZ) and max polyphony.
With Reaper and Cubase it can use medium polyphony which is really plenty.
But I want the least amount of IPS on my host for live work.

Built my son an FL Studio 12 / i7 7700k with the RME AIO too.
He’s in hog heaven.
I use an XITE-1 DSP Rack since I must route external hardware FX and Hardware synths into a project window with ASIO sends.
Bidule is a live performers dream.
12 years never once a crash and I run 4790/5775Cs on my racks, around 75% consistently.
4.6GHz is my sweet spot.
Otherwise my triple 22,000rpm fans kick on and scare the crap out of me.
Those suckers are loud.

FWIW I stopped upgrading Cubase after SX years ago.
I don’t need the plug ins, but Cubase workflow with MIDI is just the best.
Since I’m all about automation and sync I’m probably going to upgrade eventually.
But I export from Cubase to Bidule for gigs that require lots of automation.

Just talking real time live here.

MIDIBoss said:

...I'd also agree that in terms of 1's & 0's, there's probably not much room for interpretation so they must be doing the same thing!

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You could edit a track identically in both, then test with Audio Diffmaker.

jamesv said:

View attachment 53366 View attachment 53365 If you want a great low latency host for real time/ live performance check out Bidule.
I use Omnisphere/Keyscape, Kontakt, UVI, PLAY, Zebra2 HZ and PianoTeq Pro6 Live.
I also run a Solaris hardware synth and Dual SE-02 modules through my interface.
Bidule allows Multiple Diva Filters (single core Zebra2 HZ) and max polyphony.
With Reaper and Cubase it can use medium polyphony which is really plenty.
But I want the least amount of IPS on my host for live work.

Built my son an FL Studio 12 / i7 7700k with the RME AIO too.
He’s in hog heaven.
I use an XITE-1 DSP Rack since I must route external hardware FX and Hardware synths into a project window with ASIO sends.
Bidule is a live performers dream.
12 years never once a crash and I run 4790/5775Cs on my racks, around 75% consistently.
4.6GHz is my sweet spot.
Otherwise my triple 22,000rpm fans kick on and scare the crap out of me.
Those suckers are loud.

Click to expand...

Holy cow, what a setup! Thank you for sharing. Very very cool. I have never heard of Bidule. I'll check it out! That's impressive you're using hardware FX with your setup. I thought about buying a card that would allow for that, since there are just some things that Ihave never found a direct replacement for in the computer (Yamaha Magicstomp Allan Holdsworth settings for example), but I have stuff that is close enough that it didn't warrant the extra $$ and slog of running all that stuff for live setup. I enjoy the smallness and portability + bus powering options for the Babyface Pro. Great interface.

For now, I just bought Cubase on the competitive crossgrade and I've really found it to work out great for my live setup. All .vst's are cruising along, the Chorder midi effect works with all my synths (I play wind synth and sometimes I like to trigger polyphonic chords with a single note to "comp" for other musicians and need to use an effect like Chorder for that purpose since EWI is a monophonic instrument), and lastly Generic Remote, clunky as it is to setup, works great for all the on-the-fly MIDI CC# patch selections I like to dial into my footpedals. I like the fact that you can layer up to 4 Generic Remotes on a single project so you can assign multiple commands to a single MIDI CC# which is great for patch selection; Sometimes if you switch patches while the pitch bend is activated, for example, and then you switch back to the previous sound, the pitch will still be bent when you switch back. Instatiating a "MIDI Reset" command for each patch selection button resets all MIDI data when you switch patches which solves various issues such as that one. Regarding Chorder .vst's, Logic X's Chorder midi effect for example does not work correctly with all .vst synths. InsertPiz MIDIChords works great with everything, but seems to be a pain to setup in Cubase... Cubase Chorder works perfectly.

I like being able to mirror a similar setup as my more powerful PC on my Mac laptop in the same program for live situations that do not require as much sonic glory as the PC can dish out. It has to be tweaked a little bit (mainly removing the most CPU intensive patches and replacing them with something less CPU hungry) and I have to run it at higher latency like 192 samples i/o or higher, but Cubase works well on my Mac too. I do find that it does take a little more CPU than Hollyhock 3 which is the DAW I was using before, a Max-based DAW. So I can't do everything in Cubase on the Mac laptop, but a stripped down version of the setup still works great for gigs that are not quite as important as ones I'd take the portable Windows m-itx i7 8700K 5.0ghz machine out for.

M

Lots of folks like Mainstage live.
My XITE-1 is PC only so the only App£€ stuff I use is my iPad with some custom OSC apps.
I’m stuck in Micro$oft.
Too bad, I think Logics ESX24 is the best sampler ever made.

RME guys using Total MIX 2 say they can route hardware.
Haven’t seen it yet, but guys demanding high quality Reverb say it’s so.

FWIW a used TC Fireworx goes for 400 USD. Great editable Reverb algorithms.
I’m using one on keyboards. 2 cascaded for vocalists.
They do Vocoder, Harmonizer (Great on Guitar/synth) and so many other FX.
My favorite multi FX unit for years.