This seems like a post that belongs on the iZotope forums.
Hey - I was just kicking the tires trying to get a feel for who is using what.
Not my fault that many admit they do not use Wavelabs tired ole sample converter plugins when much better options are available…
But - if you would feel better about a more “Wavelab” centric post - maybe PG will see this and actually do something about it?
On the speed issue - I have done a series of conversions this week using RX4 and they simply blow Crystal Resampler out of the water when converting 24/192 or 24/96 down to Redbook. RX4 is easily 5 times faster.
VP
I heard something about iZotope no longer licensing their SRC for use in other DAWs like in Sample Manager and Triumph by Audiofile Engineering so I wouldn’t expect to see iZotope SRC in a future version of Wavelab but I’d like to be proven wrong.
The problem with Crystal Resampler regardless of how it sounds, or how long it takes to process, is where it can be inserted in Wavelab.
I prefer to have the SRC happen before final limiter in my master chain, to avoid any peak level changes from the SRC. I prefer to only use the montage master for my master chain plugins because it saves and loads with the montage always. I do not care for the global master section except for some rare cases or doing some spot processing of iZotope RX4 on the edit side of WL. Needless to say, I do not ever have my final limiter in the global master section.
So, we really need a good SRC option in Wavelab that can be inserted in the montage master section or somehow be internally inserted before the montage master section.
The way that Triumph by Audiofile Engineering handles SRC is beautiful in my opinion. When I do projects in Triumph, I can load the files at their native sample rate. There is no specified sample rate for a project. If I render a DDP, or want to make 96k WAV files, the SRC happens before the master fader and is only applied to files that need it. They offer a few SRC choices (iZotope SRC, Goodhertz, Apple Standard etc.)
The great thing is I just have one project file no matter what the source or desired output sample rate is. In Wavelab, I end up recreating a montage for each desired sample rate of a project because of where the SRC happens in the audio montage, and also because I prefer the iZotope SRC so I do it in RX4 standalone app.
This makes for a lot of extra work.
I SRC the rendered file in Weiss Saracon and then dither to 16 bit using a WL batch processor (flat TPDF).
Makes sense. +1
I’ve never heard of a project without a fixed sample rate, but it might be great if it worked well. (I never had the patience to learn the layers concept of Wave Editor or Triumph, so never got that far.)
It’s nice that Wavelab now offers to SRC other rate files when you insert into a montage, but if you didn’t even need to do that, and could count on an intelligent SRC later with SRC options, and it worked well, that would be great. And maybe then it would give you the choice to use upsample or not before plugins, and whether to depend on the plugin’s upsample (or not). ? Maybe a small point but something to consider. ?
Yeah, it took a LONG time for Triumph to make any kind of sense to me but now I get.
It was odd that there is no project sample rate setting in Triumph. If your sound card is set to a different sample rate as any given audio file in the project, it performs SRC on the fly using the Apple SRC but I’m told they are going to move over to a better SRC soon. Not the iZotope though because that is just too CPU intense to run realtime which I can understand. When you actually render files, you have a choice of a few good SRC options that happen after the song layer but before the master layer, so your specific layer plugins get processed at a potentially higher sample rate, but the master layer is processed at the target file rate.
There are some things to be learned from Triumph for sure. I love the clean GUI and stability. Wavelab is better at creating output files with all the metadata and naming scheme more easily, and more thoroughly.
The things it does well is you can easily get from your native sample rate to 44.1k or any other sample rate all with the same project. The project tabs thing is great too.
As I’ve said, I just don’t care for the Crystal and I especially don’t care to manage a separate global master section just so I can insert Crystal Resampler. Given all the 3rd party plugins I have with Wavelab, I certainly don’t want to add any SRC to that mix.
I’m hoping with WL9 it’s easy to have a 44.1k montage and then move to the native sample rate, link to those files, and retain all markers/metadata and everything else.
My workflow is that usually provide a DDP for initial client approval so they can listen using the HOFA DDP Player and then create the hi-res masters and any other formats once the project is approved.
What is it you don´t like sonically about the Crystal resampler? I keep AB´ing tracks resampled with RX4 and Crystal and always feel the ones done with RX4 somehow feel a bit brighter compared to the ones done with Crystal. Crystal feels a bit more “relaxed” sounding to my ears, and I have no clue as to why.
What artifacts do you feel the Crystal Resampler bring that RX don´t? I´m just trying to make up my mind which one to use. I definitely prefer Crystal workflow wise. You can make small adjustment if needed to the songs when you hear them through Crystal Resampler compared to rendering, then resampling in RX and hearing the result.
I have spent very little time with Crystal Resampler because I much prefer to do all my plugin processing in the montage on clips/tracks and the montage master.
I do not like saving and reloading the global master section for each montage and the Crystal Resampler is only available in the global master section.
Also, given how buggy WL can be with 3rd party plugins, I prefer to minimize any processing that needs to happen when rendering a montage so I like to have the montage be at the intended output sample rate, which also makes for faster montage rendering.
Last, since my last posts in this thread, I now own the Weiss Saracon SRC and it sounds pretty incredible.
For now, I just recreate my montages at the native sample rate after the client approves the master, and it sounds like with WL9, it will be easier to do this because the CD track markers will not always be tied to the samples of the montage, but rather the absolute timeline.