Anyone for analogue?

Cubase
1

Is it all smoke and mirrors or is it really worth putting an NLS channel on every track? or maybe a J37? which I tried to do but Cubase just maxed out at around 15 instances… :frowning:

any thoughts ?

best, Kevin :slight_smile: :slight_smile:

2

I’m sorry! I know you’re talking about Waves plugins. But you need to be a little more specific in your question?
If I understand correctly you tried to put NSL and/or J37 on every 15 channels?

If your system don’t hack this, it’s probably the limitation of your system.

I know, because I use Waves myself. Waves is not the most gentile on system resources.
So yes, you might run into issues when using 15 instances of NSL or J37 on an i7-2700?

3

Hi, thanks for your reply, I was mainly wondering if others thought it was worth doing…

4

Of course, it’s entirely dependent on what your ears are telling you. If your music is sounding cold and lifeless then you could try warming things up using these plug-ins. Many argue that an analogue sound is not possible using digital technology. IMO you can approximate analogue warmth but it is a very subtle effect and you have to take care to not overdo it.

Most tape simulation plug-ins are heavy on resources. You may want to use these on specific channels. If you direct some of your channels to groups try inserting these on the group channels instead to save resources. You can even try just one instance on your main stereo out channels.

If you want to try something across all channels which is less heavy on resources then you could try the onboard ‘tape saturation’ or ‘magneto II’ in the strip section.

Just to be clear. It’s not Cubase which maxes out, it’s your computer. The more resources your computer has the more plug-ins you can use.

5

NLS is designed to go on every channel and yes j37 is a bit of a cpu hog…

Think about the J37, the era it was created in and how it was used… that’ll give you a few clues as to how you might get the best out of it on your system… :wink:

6

Thanks for the info mate…interesting stuff…I have a fairly powerfull puter which I don’t think maxes out with 15 instances of the J37…particularly when Mixbus 3.4 and protools 12.5 handles them without a problem, the perormance meter is an ongoing problem…and not just for me…so why not use those DAW’a I hear yoy thinking…
Mixbus is nice but can’t handle a lot of my plugins and I don’t actually like pro tools much…but am trying to get used to it… :slight_smile: :slight_smile: was brought up on Cubase and moving to another DAW is hard on my brain… :slight_smile: :slight_smile:

7

Just out of interest, how many instances of J37 can you get in pro tools? Are you using the VST version of the plug-in in pro tools or is it another format?

But to be honest IMO more is not always better. Rather than numbers you might consider the idea that you may not need much tape saturation at all. Does it really improve your mix? And have you tried the supplied steinberg plug-ins instead? Some of those may do a better job or give the same result as a sophisticated plug-in. It’s once again probably a case of more is not always better and being selective might pay far more dividends than a blanket approach. Tape saturation is by nature a very subtle effect. You’re not meant to hear an obvious difference.

It may also be worth considering what tape saturation really is and how you imitate it digitally. It’s a mixture of saturation, wow and flutter, EQ, compression and aural excitement. You’re often doing a lot of this to your tracks anyway. Many users also suggest that if you want it to sound like it was recorded on analogue tape, then record it on analogue tape.

All just my opinion of course.

P.S. As for problems with the maxing out of cubase, I can’t really comment because I never put such a heavy load on the computer. Tend to use plug-ins which don’t use too many resources (SSL, Sonnox, PSP, Voxengo).

8

Hi mate…it’s your opinion I’m interested in, I thank you for taking the time to give it to me…been reading about this analogue emulation stuff and it seems to require a tape emulation on every channel to emulate an analogue desk…still looking into whether it’s worth it…may just be too subtle to even bother with…
however…while looking into why cubase could not handle so many instances of the J37 I came across info that explained why I should turn of hyper threading with an i7 system…so did that and my performance meter is now on around 10% instead of 80/90 and I have just ran 30 instances of the J37 with out it reaching 50%…( not that I need 30 though, just tried it ) so I’m very pleased I started to look into running so many instances for the analogue effect…
jury is still out on whether it’s worth it though…

cheers, Mate… :slight_smile: :slight_smile:

9

Wow! That’s a massive difference indeed! I’m wondering now if I should disable the Hyperthreading too…where did you find this info?

10

It’s on the Steinberg site …just came a cross it after googling about setting up my OS for audio production…

https://www.steinberg.net/nc/en/support/knowledgebase_new/show_details/kb_show/optimizing-windows-for-daws.html

worked for me …hope it works for you mate…

11

Which is why it was better to buy the fastest i5 that had 4 real cores. With the i7 you’d be turning the Hyper threading off and it’d be cheaper to speed ratio.

I thought cubase 8 worked with it nowadays.

  1. Disable Hyper-Threading if your CPU supports it (e.g. Intel i7) and you use older sequencer versions than Cubase 7 and Nuendo 6 (details).
12

That was how I understood it too!? The Cubase info says that the ASIO Guard together with HT should give the best performance. I will give it a try and see if disabling HT makes any difference though…with it enabled last time I managed about 56 tracks each with a Uhe Satin insert before things looked on the edge. I wish I could run that many Satin’s on sends and group channels though - the performance really drops off when routing tracks to FX/Group channels with plugs rather than inserts.

13

That makes no sense ?

14

How so?

EDIT: Your correct! I tried with Satins on FX tracks and was able to reach the same count :blush:

15

Ok, HT enabled gives me the best performance here just as is recommended by the Cubase info.

HT disabled and ASIO Guard on/off → 40 audio tracks with one instance of Satin each
HT enabled and ASIO Guard on/off → 58 audio tracks with one instance of Satin each

I did try with Satins on FX tracks and this seems to be the same performance as with inserts so I was wrong about this.

16

So it’s time for me to put to bed my Hyperthread hate. from those results they’ve clearly got it to work.

17

It’s definitely the case for my system. Doesn’t seem to be the case for shadowfax though! I wonder what the reason is!?

Best thing is to try both ways and check I guess.