I recall when reading up on the pro 9 improvements that the audio engine had been revamped and improved. I tend to scoff at claims such as that.
Today, for grins, I exported the same project from 7.5 and from 9, and totally unexpectedly the two mixes sounded significantly different!
The difference is primarily obvious in the way the kick drum sounds - it’s louder and deeper sounding in the Pro 9 render. I am not sure what to do with this information to tell you the truth. The 7.5 mixes are potentially final mixes for some clients, and if I decided to go with the 9 sound, I’d probably have to turn the kick down a little in all 12 songs.
I’m interested to see if other people hear this, and also would love to hear from anyone in the know as to what was changed and why.
Interesting! Out of curiosity I tried the same this morning with 8.5 vs. 9, and there was no discernible difference (they didn’t null completely because there are some irregular effects I have, etc., but they were sonically identical to my ear).
On another note, by “audio being revamped and improved” I had hoped that would mean it was more CPU efficient, which it is but only by a very tiny amount – it still needs a lot of improvement to compete with many other pro level DAWs, in my experience with Pro Tools and Reaper, both of which are strongly ahead of Cubase with CPU efficiency (Reaper using the exact same VSTs) in my experience here.
I seem to remember some kind of change in the hi/low pass filter slopes probably around Cubase 7/8. Could this explain the difference you are hearing? Were you using the filters on your kick drum? (Haven’t listened to the files yet).
No. I’m running 18 channels of external inserts plus stereo digital I/O to a Bricasti. Two of those channels are the 2 bus compressor. I just use real time rendering.
Since some plugs/VSTi’s process audio differently with each subsequent run through, I’d ask OP to render/bounce everything to audio then make the comparison again.
If there is still a difference, posting links to the .for files might be helpful inn figuring out whey they sound differently differently.
Analysing the files it looks like there is a 2db boost across the low end and there are peaks (probably the kick) that are over 3db up at 35Hz in the 9pro mix. The rest of the spectrum matches pretty closely.
This isn’t something that could be caused plugin irregularity and I’m sure it isn’t audio engine change, I’d guess there is something not translating between version in the levels being sent to the external hardware or something.
In the past couple of days I’ve continued to refine this album, working in 7.5. I’ll tell you what. I will pick a different song,render it twice in 7.5 and once in 9.
The two in 7.5 would give a baseline of how much variability the use of analog eqs and compressors introduces.
