WHY DOES TONE2'S GLADIATOR2 DISTORT INSERTS

Virtual instruments Virtual Effects and Add-ons
#1

:wink:1stly, Merry X-mas to the Steinberg family and user community.

:arrow_right: I would to know why Gladiotor 2 always distort my plugins (incoming signal) as inserts in the instrument channel in Cubase.

Gladiator is on a normal preset - 1/2 Master Volume, but my compressor (for example) indicates a disorted input in red. If I do not turn down the channel volune in Cubase it exceeds 0dB.

:question: Why is that? Is it “normal”? How does it affect? I cannot hear audible distortion though.

I will soon be starting to do my 1st real Mastering attempt, but have read everwhere that no instruments of plugins should distort or clip.

Your time and assistance would be appreciated.

#2

Well, I recieved this mail from Tone2, and that should b enough, tx:


:arrow_right: "Gladiator is very stable and works as expected.

The digtital, floating point basted mastering chain in Cubase is a LTI system. This means there it does act independently from the volume level and there exists no distortion or clipping as with an analog mixer. The information that too loud volume of VST intruments would distort or lower the sound quality is wrong.

If you want to do a professional mastering you should first render the song to a wav in 96 khz stereo and then postprocess it with Wavelab. Here you can normalize it to 0 db and and apply a multiband compressor with a softclip (around +4db depends on the material). But do this carefully, since compressors frequently distort, clip and destroy the audio material! That’s why i always keep a raw version of the song as a backup."