I compose and produce the music about 12 years.
All last time i worry about sound quality which Cubase gives from itself.
My conclusions are:
the best sound quality was in SX 2.0. Clear nice full of life sound
the next versions of Cubase gives very very bad not natural, weakly panoramed, dirty sound on PC at least
I have the ears. I have the same project which i can playback in both Cubases. The difference is very
significant! Even my hardware synths like Virus TI and Virus Powercore sound very diffeently in SX and next versions 5|6|7. This other people hears too and not only me.
I’d be glad to use Cubase SX, but SX2 crashes when used system memory achieves 3 GB although Cubase 5 (32-bit) can use up to 4,5 GB in Windows 7 x64.
I don’t know what to do. I think about moving to Apple Logic Pro or Cubase 5 on Hackintosh.
But not sure Cubase 5 on mac has the same crystal sound as Cubase SX 2.0 on PC.
By the way. Bad sound quality on Win7 x64 not only Cubases 5|6|7 have. The same problem on PC also there is in Ableton, Studio One, perhaps in Reaper too. By the another hand Frutyloops and Reason have good sound quality though. This is very funny that such not serious DAWs as FL/Reason kill such monster DAW as Cubase 5 by its sound quality!!!
I’d like to work in Cubase 5 on PC, but it sounds very bad for me. I could work in Cubase SX, but it has 2 GB system memory limit problem. What solution? Cubase for Mac?
The next version of Cubase gives the same sound as SX 2.0, if all settings are the same. That is on PC and Mac.
If that´s not the case for you, then you´re doing something wrong.
As Mr. Cap said, there’s no difference on sound between Cubase versions. And this should apply all the way from SX1 to C7. And this is true even between different brands of DAWs using floating-point audio engine.
All project settings are the same. Difference in sound started from SX 2.2 update as i remember.
I don’t think so. Since cubase engine was changed. New engine has new program code. New code has new sound.
Recently i talked with a man who did arrangements for violin. He says he at first tried to work on pc cubase, but sound was bad as he tried. He moved then to mac cubase (with the same settings). And it was absolutely different sound! For now he said that would not never moved back to PC because of bad quality sound there.
This subject has been discussed at length over and over again during all cubase versions.
Your examples are not proof of anything I’m afraid.
The phasescope images mean nothing and your audio examples apart from being in compressed MP3 format does nothing to prove your case.
If you are getting major differences in sound between versions, it’s as Thinkingcap has already stated. You are doing something incorrect.
A lot of us have used versions from VST32, SX2, Cubase 4,5,6 etc and have not had any problems with “sound quality” when moving projects up versions, PC or Mac!
The basic 32bit core engine of Cubase has not changed over the SX/Cubase product cycle.
You may not be doing anything wrong in your setup but you may be experiencing an incompatibility problem with the different versions and your PC. Personally, I’ve been onboard since VST 5.0 and there is no difference in what I produce from version to version unless I engineer differently. I’m sure that the consensus will lean toward the positive in that regard. Whether it be hardware or soft, I believe you are having an incompatibility problem my friend.
This is strange since export audio on any DAW possible in theory even without audio interface.
But i had the same picture on several audio interfaces: ESI Julia, RME FF 800, Creamware Scope.
It’s funny, but Nuendo 4 also gives different sound from C5. The closest result with sound to SX2 i received from N4 exporting at 192 kHz/32 bit (project has 96 kHz).