There is something which should have been simple and straightforward which is bothering me.
When carefully listening to the monitored input while recording a track (when record is armed and the monitoring button is enabled) there is a sound quality difference between that and the playback of the recording.
This is not volume or pan law setting related as I have tried all possible settings. It is not a db related problem - the recording is different in terms of signal depth when compared to the monitored signal!
I cannot understand how a pro DAW like Nuendo could not exact match the input monitoring and the post recording - this is an essential part of tracking!
I am wondering if anyone noticed this?
*Note that on my experiments this does not happen to the same extent as in Pro Tools Ultimate.
My interface of choice is Apogee Symphony MkII under thunderbolt. The testing was done in 96k, 256 buffer size. No plugins! dry recording. Nothing on the master bus. Completely clean project.
Note also that from what I can tell, the Symphony drivers do not have an option of Asio Direct Monitoring (grayed out in devices).
Regardless of ASIO Direct Monitoring, does that interface have an âinternal mixerâ such that itâs also routing the input to the output its self? (IE can you definitely NOT hear the input signal at all when monitoring is OFF in Nuendo?)
Without getting into the detail of âdepthâ (which would be impossible to cover or describe in words), the recorded playback signal is not faithful to the original monitored signal - there is a a difference in sound. This can not happen.
You are welcome to try this yourselves, and see what you encounter.
For example: In Pro Tools Ultimate, Pyramid, Sequoia the monitored signal is faithful to the original.
I am trying to figure this out, as the whole idea of the recording is to be faithful to the original since one cannot really track properly if the monitored signal is different to the recording.
I am monitoring without internal mixer on the Apogee interface - that is, the signal monitoring is controlled solely by Nuendo. The reason I am doing this is to minimize to zero (which sadly does not happen) difference between the monitoring and the playback of the signal post recording. In theory, if the montoring is controlled by the DAW, then it should be able to output a monitored sound that is the same as post recording sound - this is a function that should be without saying, otherwise one cannot do proper tracking and sound optimization if the monitored signal does not reflect the recorded signal. This is a major flaw if this does not happen.
Hmm. All I can say is there is something going on with your particular config/setup that, without being able to actually hear or see anything, is difficult to debug.
I just loaded up some music tracks on an external Tascam recorder and hooked it up to my audio interface (Focusrite Scarlett 18i20), setup a stereo track in Nuendo, and hit record. Monitoring the track while recording sounds identical to when I stop and play back the recording just made.
For fun, set your sampling rate to 44.1kHz or jack up your buffers; do you then hear what is more obviously a delay when monitoring vs playback? If so, that would imply your interface (or something else in your setup â are you using an external mixer at all?) is mixing a low/no latency version of the input into the DAW output in hardware.
For instance, with my input channels potted up in the Scarlett Mix Control, which is basically doing an in-hardware mix independent of Nuendo (what you might call Direct Monitoring), on my setup at 96kHz the latency through the interface is only a few milliseconds - so when mixed together with the DAW output the sound changes more subtly; the stereo separation changes a little, you get a tiny bit of phasing such that it just sounds a bit thinner, etc. At 44.1kHz the latency difference between the hardware mix and the DAW output increases and is heard more obviously as a delay, and helps demonstrate that something else is going on with the signal path that is unclear
But there isnât any inherent âflawâ in Nuendo that is making the input monitor be different than playback. Something else is going on.
I have a pro studio with top notch equipment, and I am not a newbie at this - I have more than 25 years of experience as an artist and producer. I trust my ears. Also, this does not only happen in my setup but also in a colleagues whose interface is completely different - he uses Mirgin Anobis Pro.
There is an apparent difference in sound between monitored input and recorded output - they do not sound the same! So in my book and also in my colleagues book there is an apparent flaw in Nuendo, something that does not happen in the exact same configuration in other DAWâs like Pro Tools Ultimate, Sequoia and Pyramid from my testing.
Of course that if something like this happens itâs a clear flaw in the DAW - the whole idea of input monitoring is that it has to be transparent with the recorded signal - otherwise there is no point in this monitoring.
Obviously. And thatâs why something else must be going on.
There are lots of experienced users with excellent ears on this forum who donât experience what you do here. @ManChicken was trying to help you troubleshoot, but you seem pretty determined that this canât be fixed anyway because itâs all because of a flaw in Nuendo, so⌠There we are.
Well, I have been using Nuendo for quite some time until I noticed this.
As stated before, this has been experienced on another high-end studio that I know, so this is not a personal issue that stems from a specific setup.
I do not have any doubt regarding what I am experiencing - I am not trying to validate this as this, as stated, was validated not by me but by another technician in a completely different studio setup. This issue does not stem from a specific setup.
A person can say that he does not hear any difference - this could result in a low fidelity setup (i.e. focusrite sound cards that are no pro-sumer based), or as a result of mere wishful thinking - i.e. Since I bought Nuendo at such a high price point there could not possibly be anything inherently flawed with it. Another possibility is that he simply cannot hear a difference - and that I cannot change.
I did come forward with this to âbubbleâ this up and see if others have noticed this severe issue, or perhaps were not aware but now that I tell them that this issue exists, they can now hear it. I have also sent Steinberg an email regarding this.
I would love this to be a Nuendo settings problem, but I could not find any settings in Nuendo that changed this behavior.
You say you hear a difference but wonât explain what the words you use mean. You say it is already âvalidatedâ so you donât care about validating it.
I havenât noticed a difference.
I know others who havenât noticed a difference.
I do not need validation to know there is no difference.
Correct. The main outputs tab is disabled (i.e. no output assigned).
It is fully working and under playback the sound is completely ok - it is not a simple thing as that I am afraid.
I have a deep feeling itâs something a lot more deep than that, architecture wise in Nuendo. I have tried to change settings that seem relevant to monitoring - other than the fact that there arenât a lot of settings regarding monitoring, none of them actually affected the problem I am hearing. There are two basics settings - Pan law settings and the behavior of monitoring i.e. manual, machine style etc. This does not affect the quality of the signal.
As stated, this is not a problem you can hear in a second - you need very good ears and really good monitoring setups to understand the problem - as stated, there is a difference in sound between the monitored signal and the recorded signal and itâs not something you hear in a second - you really need to focus and listen closely to the detail of the sound, and you need to be open about it.
My intentions is to try to understand and resolve this but this could mean that there is a need for other users to come up and acknowledge this as well. As stated, I have sent an elaborate mail to Steinberg about it, and I am waiting to see how they respond to this - perhaps itâs an architectural limit, perhaps itâs a well known issue.
Kudos for everyone for trying to help, and I understand how one can doubt this.
I would try a test then. Something along the lines of;
Take a secondary DAW and output a moderately complex waveform via digital to your main interface. In Nuendo take that signal as your input. Both record and monitor it.
Take the monitored signal from your main interface and duplicate / send via digital to your secondary DAW and record that there.
You should now have three files to compare: Original, original recorded in Nuendo, monitored signal recorded in the secondary DAW from the Nuendo monitor output.
I have neither the time nor the setup handy to do that now. If I find time this weekend and am bored enough maybe Iâll try it.
To me thatâs a red flag.
I honestly mean no offense here, but if I got a dollar for every time Iâve read that someone has a lot of skill and experience and can hear a problem and it then turns out there was a procedural problem (i.e. hardware, routing etc.) rather than an actual problem with code - or there never was a problem in the first place which was verified via rigorous testing - Iâd never have to work again.
Iâve lost count over how many times I have âheardâ things myself that werenât there. Weâre human. Weâre biased. Me too, despite also having decades as an engineer and years of being a musician before that.
I totally agree with your statement - we are human, and as a direct result biased in some form or another. We are very much psychologically affected, and as a result sometimes make wrong judgments especially with regards to audio and listening. More so when itâs not something backed by actual measurements.
However, with all that being said, if it were just me who was noticing this then I would cross check myself (which in any case I always do) - this problem has been brought forward to me as well by one of the best audio engineers here in the country. It wasnât just me who noticed this, but also him - at a completely different studio environment altogether albeit on a Mac system as well.
I encourage you as well, and other people to try listen for themselves and see if they notice the difference. I sure do.
I agree with MattiasNYC about testing this theory with a file to make a recording that you can perform a null test with. Personally, and this is not a slight against the OP, I wouldnât make a public assertion of this nature without performing such a test first.
