Hey, I'm fairly new to mixing and music production, my teacher uses Cubase and I've been using Reaper for over a year. He made the claim that Reaper runs so lightly on the CPU comparing to Cubase and other DAWs because its Audio Engine is not as strong... Personally I don't hear a difference between DAWs but since I know nothing about the subject, I had no response...
Do different DAWs sound better/worse?
I've seen both arguments around the internet, some claim that all DAWs are based around the same basic engine and there shouldn't be a difference between Ableton, Reaper, Pro Tools, etc...
but I've never seen a definite answer, backed by some... well, proof.
P.S: I'm quite new to the forums, and yea, I'm sick of the "Reaper vs [INSERT DAW HERE]"... I love Reaper, but I'd still like some kind of answer... To those of you who see these kind of posts on a daily basis, I apologize (:
So what would you consider proof that could possibly be posted in a forum response?
Honestly, I don't know... A Link to an article perhaps? A Detailed comparison?
Like I said, I know nothing about the subject, In some posts I've seen all DAWs use ASIO thus all DAWs sound the same, then again, cubase pride themselves with an "advanced audio engine", I don't even know what that means, since it all seems so vague on the internet...
I would say you have received bad info. I use REAPER for mastering and listen to it in very detailed room/playback system and there is no discernible difference in sound when play audio in REAPER vs. WaveLab or iZotope RX. I bounce between those 3 apps all day and REAPER is every bit as equal. Before REAPER I used Pro Tools and again, there is no difference in sound.
If anything, with REAPER having a 64-bit mix engine it could be argued that it has more precision and detail in some scenarios than some other DAWs using only 32-bit flatting point but we're talking about extreme hair splitting at that point.
Time for a new teacher and that isn't about Reaper, it's about the misunderstanding of digital recording by someone teaching digital recording. Of course if the teaching is about "how to do" things in a DAW, probably OK, explaining as he did about how they work though, not OK.
__________________ Music is what feelings sound like.
Consider all the various ways to render the finished track. That will make a difference to sound quality.
Consider confirmation bias. DAW A costs more than DAW B. Daw C has been around longer with more professional users than DAW D.......
Reaper is lean and mean efficient code suited to modern processors from the get go. It is relatively young, that is part of its CPU friendly performance. Lacking layers of old redundant code.
Reaper runs so lightly on the CPU comparing to Cubase and other DAWs because its Audio Engine is not as strong
Here are 4 ways people compare DAWs:
1. The audio engine refers to the way a program routes and mixes audio together. In a very basic sense, most DAWs do simple math to achieve this. 1.4 + 1.6 = 3. In these cases mixing together the same tracks results in identical (or near enough identical) results. There may be some differences based on random noise added at very low levels (dither). 1.4 + 1.6 = 3.0000000523. This added bit of noise may also slightly change the way the final result sounds, adding a bit more warm or color, but in most cases you can't tell the difference.
2. The other way people compare DAWs includes how the default way each one pans. This can skew results as one DAW may use different pan laws resulting in louder mixes which compared to quieter mixes sound "better". This can easily be missed when people compare DAWs, causing confusion and much debate.
3. The final thing is built-in plugins. This will most definitely have a much bigger difference and is a legitimate reason to choose one DAW over another. REAPER's built-in EQs are very efficient and clean, while something from Cubase, Logic, or any other DAW may require more processing power because it's trying to sound a bit more unique or coloured.
4. No doubt there are psychological reason we may prefer one DAW over another. Price plays a role as folks here have suggested. Really it's the over-all user experience though. To truly rules this out you really need to do double blind ABX tests. Do a little research on ABX tests. You'll find people, professionals, completely duped by their own emotions, thinking one thing is better than the other but then proved they can't really tell the difference in a blind test.
I forgot to mention other typical DAW features like time-stretching, frequency response translation (e.g.: going from 44.1kHz to 48kHz) built-in limiting
He made the claim that Reaper runs so lightly on the CPU comparing to Cubase and other DAWs because its Audio Engine is not as strong...
It rather worries me that somebody in a teaching position could be advancing ideas which have no scientific basis. There can well be perfectly good reasons, subjective or otherwise, why he could prefer to use Cubase (or Sonar, or Logic, or ....) in preference to anything else (including wanting to stick with the product he knows), but audio engine is not one of them.
Quote:
Originally Posted by ElyR
Personally I don't hear a difference between DAWs but since I know nothing about the subject...
Well there you are! You know more than you realise! Learn to trust your ears!
You should earn extra credit and offer to run a null test.
Ask him to render some tracks, any number (more is a better test of a summing engine I suppose). Then, dump both tracks into Cubase and Reaper. Don't touch panning (unless you match pan law settings), don't touch faders (unless you match settings), etc.
Export to the same lossless format, sample rate, bit depth, etc. Flip the polarity on one of the files, sum them together. That's the delta. I predict it will be -infinity dB across the board.
Pro tip: good teachers are intrigued when they are proved wrong; bad teachers get upset.
EDIT: Please post results here!
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@ElyR If I were you I would have asked the respected teacher why cubase engine is what he considers superior than reaper backed with a proof(s). I use Reaper and Cubase 9 Pro side by side. Please come back with his reasons to enlighten us or show him this thread. I'm seriously interested to get an educated version on the topic this time.
Hey, I'm fairly new to mixing and music production, my teacher uses Cubase and I've been using Reaper for over a year. He made the claim that Reaper runs so lightly on the CPU comparing to Cubase and other DAWs because its Audio Engine is not as strong... Personally I don't hear a difference between DAWs but since I know nothing about the subject, I had no response...
Do different DAWs sound better/worse?
I've seen both arguments around the internet, some claim that all DAWs are based around the same basic engine and there shouldn't be a difference between Ableton, Reaper, Pro Tools, etc...
but I've never seen a definite answer, backed by some... well, proof.
P.S: I'm quite new to the forums, and yea, I'm sick of the "Reaper vs [INSERT DAW HERE]"... I love Reaper, but I'd still like some kind of answer... To those of you who see these kind of posts on a daily basis, I apologize (:
Thank you!
To be fair, the myth of the better sounding DAW (because that's what we're talking about, a myth) is an historical accident and came from the mid 1990s. So please people correct me as this is an account that is probably very inaccurate (if not downright false), but I hope it conveys the idea. Beginning of the 1990s is around the time when ProTools appeared.
At the time, in digital pro audio on the computer there were already Cubase, Digital Performer and a few other competitors, but DAWs were still in their infancy compared to what they have become. They weren't even called DAWs at the time. In particular it's true that a lot of tools were working in 16 bits. Which is not surprising given the CD format was only 10 years old. And also because microprocessors were mostly manipulating 16 bits audio. When you have only 16 bits, it is pretty easy to lose a few bits of digital accuracy after a few treatments, as computation errors accumulate. So if you did a lot of digital processing, you could end up with only 14 bits available and you had introduced nasty digital noise that you had to correct with dithering. Then with 32 bits processors, came the possibility to process on 24 bits. But taking advantage of these wasn't an easy task and meant rewriting much of the core parts of the software. I suppose Digidesign ProTools moved to 24 and then 32 bits faster than the competition, which allowed their commercials to boast that its "sound engine" (whatever that is) was better than the others. Whether that was true or not was another matter but at least their claim had some technical merit. And I think that's where the myth of the "DAW sound" came from. Of course, as soon as everyone else moved to 32 bits, the point was completely moot, and today, it certainly has no technical basis at all.
Last edited by lolilol1975; 11-13-2017 at 09:16 AM.
I predict it will be -infinity dB across the board.
Pro tip: good teachers are intrigued when they are proved wrong; bad teachers get upset.
FYI not all meters that say -infinity are technically -infinity, but rather below a certain threshold. in REAPER for example you can boost a "-inf" signal... so if you want to prove a true null or -infinity you should probably use a file compare program to compare the bits absolutely
FYI not all meters that say -infinity are technically -infinity, but rather below a certain threshold. in REAPER for example you can boost a "-inf" signal... so if you want to prove a true null or -infinity you should probably use a file compare program to compare the bits absolutely
I am intrigued by your point, and I stand corrected!
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I am intrigued by your point, and I stand corrected!
I think reaper bottoms out around -120 or -144 dB maybe? I forget but either way... it's closer to infinity than any human ears alive can possibly hear.
__________________ Music is what feelings sound like.
I think reaper bottoms out around -120 or -144 dB maybe? I forget but either way... it's closer to infinity than any human ears alive can possibly hear.
I remember Justin saying that the 64 bits processing allowed more than 300dB of dynamics; can't remember if it's 320 or 360dB. Anyway, we're waaayyyyy beyond what any human or even dog ear can perceive.
To be fair, the myth of the better sounding DAW (because that's what we're talking about, a myth) is an historical accident and came from the mid 1990s. So please people correct me as this is an account that is probably very inaccurate (if not downright false), but I hope it conveys the idea. Beginning of the 1990s is around the time when ProTools appeared.
At the time, in digital pro audio on the computer there were already Cubase, Digital Performer and a few other competitors, but DAWs were still in their infancy compared to what they have become. They weren't even called DAWs at the time. In particular it's true that a lot of tools were working in 16 bits. Which is not surprising given the CD format was only 10 years old. And also because microprocessors were mostly manipulating 16 bits audio. When you have only 16 bits, it is pretty easy to lose a few bits of digital accuracy after a few treatments, as computation errors accumulate. So if you did a lot of digital processing, you could end up with only 14 bits available and you had introduced nasty digital noise that you had to correct with dithering. Then with 32 bits processors, came the possibility to process on 24 bits. But taking advantage of these wasn't an easy task and meant rewriting much of the core parts of the software. I suppose Digidesign ProTools moved to 24 and then 32 bits faster than the competition, which allowed their commercials to boast that its "sound engine" (whatever that is) was better than the others. Whether that was true or not was another matter but at least their claim had some technical merit. And I think that's where the myth of the "DAW sound" came from. Of course, as soon as everyone else moved to 32 bits, the point was completely moot, and today, it certainly has no technical basis at all.
Pro Tools had "double precision" 48 bit fixed integer summing. Avid were actually late to the game with floating point. Dithering did make a non-trivial difference in the days of fixed integer audio though.
Where it got weird was people arguing about which sounded better between 48 bit fixed-integer and 32 bit floating point processing. But in the days before native Pro Tools you have to take into account the hardware differences as well as the audio engine.
Yep Protools was the first to increase their audio engine resolution. They had 48 bit when everyone else was 32 bit. Then when everyone else caught up and surpassed that with the 64 bit fp audio engine, apparently internet forum posters missed that and kept repeating how Protools sounded better. Or something like that.
Assuming no one is straight out lying about their specs like a Worst Purchase product, a 64 bit floating point audio engine is just that. Pretty sure all the major DAW's are doing this now. I think even the bug riddled remains of what used to be Protools is limping along with a 64 bit fp mix engine now.
For an instructor to confuse an app installer's file size with the software's featured mix engine (or any other feature of the software) would be reason to drop the class and demand a refund. That's just a shocking lack of even a basic level of understanding.
Wait a minute... Wasn't Reaper the first 64 bit fp DAW? Followed by Presonus Studio One? If that's not right, Reaper was at least one of the first which makes that comment even more ridiculous.
I can express how much even seeing the term "Audio Engine" annoys me as I don't think I've ever seen that term and BS not be very close by.
I tried the free Windows version of Pro Tools, back when I had a two bit computer in the 90s. I was not very impressed with it then, and never pursued it again.
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Well there are all the other variables. Was the data path to and from the plugins also 48 bit (back in Protools)? Or 32 bit fp in the competition? How about the plugins one was using? Were all the data paths in the board the same? (Tracks vs. sends, etc)
I suspect running up against fixed point data paths when you assumed it was floating point was an unknown root cause for many cases. There are still the occasional plugins you have to watch your levels with. (OK, you always have to mind your levels... You know what I mean.)
But... we're talking about someone confusing the file size of the downloaded app installer with the resolution of their DAW mix engine. (Pretty strong way to out yourself as wholly unqualified!)
I tried Logic Audio Hell first back in the day. The part I didn't like was how you had one chance to edit any automation immediately after launching a session and if you didn't save immediately after doing it, all was lost in the following crash. I'm thinking the constant state of pissed off was the bigger distraction leading to shitty mixes. Pro Tools was all happiness and light next to that. You had to follow hardware directions to the letter. (Their eventual Windows version was like a heavily restricted demo.)
Not sure why all the hate for Protools of that era. There was no ITB mixing. PT had a magical hardware system that let you stretch virtual multitrack tape across a computer screen and get your hands on it. The ADAT transports that were being beaten into the ground with crude machine offset digital editing were breathing a sigh of relief!
Then a new era of true computer based DAW apps comes along. Now everyone is suddenly a Protools fan and they can never be beat?! OK...
But a teacher confusing an installer file's size with a parameter in a DAW app? Do they think when they do a ⌘C cut that it stores it in the mouse too? Call their computer tower a "hard drive" and their external hard drive a "modem"?
Location: Near Cambridge UK and Near Questembert, France
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Reality check:
He may be a dink, but as a teacher his is a dink with a paying job & was presumably hired by OTHER dinks who assumed he knew what he was talking about.
And they wonder why schools are turning out generations of under-educated semi-literate dunderheads who say they "cant find a job"....
This has been Ivan's Old Fart Rant o' the day for today, November 14th AD 2017
It strikes me as ironic that people are bothering to discuss the almost certainly imperceptible minutiae of 64bit processing vs 32 vs 48. The vast majority of people are using budget entry level monitors (commercial designs under £400 a pair), cheap headphones under £200 (typically way under).
They will use the speakers in sub optimal rooms (keeping the volume down so as not to annoy family and neighbours).
That is the minutiae to maybe consider when you have the luxury of high end wide bandwidth monitors with excellent controlled dispersion patterns in optimized acoustic environments. When you know that minimal undesirable resonances don't plague your loudspeaker drive units, that your amplifiers have more than adequate dynamic range for low colouration at realistic volumes, and that most importantly of all your recordings are as good as they possibly can be.
When you hear the gulf between a good playback system and a mediocre or poor one you will know that this is irrelevant and merely a technical footnote.
It strikes me as ironic that people are bothering to discuss the almost certainly imperceptible minutiae of 64bit processing vs 32 vs 48. The vast majority of people are using budget entry level monitors (commercial designs under £400 a pair), cheap headphones under £200 (typically way under).
They will use the speakers in sub optimal rooms (keeping the volume down so as not to annoy family and neighbours).
That is the minutiae to maybe consider when you have the luxury of high end wide bandwidth monitors with excellent controlled dispersion patterns in optimized acoustic environments. When you know that minimal undesirable resonances don't plague your loudspeaker drive units, that your amplifiers have more than adequate dynamic range for low colouration at realistic volumes, and that most importantly of all your recordings are as good as they possibly can be.
When you hear the gulf between a good playback system and a mediocre or poor one you will know that this is irrelevant and merely a technical footnote.
Some people's interest in audio is all about geek forum arguments, and nothing to do with recording music. Let them have their fun!
It strikes me as ironic that people are bothering to discuss the almost certainly imperceptible minutiae of 64bit processing vs 32 vs 48. The vast majority of people are using budget entry level monitors (under £400 a pair), cheap headphones under £200 (typically way under).
Agreed... It's because pontification is so easy and fun, while capturing well-played, well-recorded audio is really hard so let's blame everything else. My treated room and several sets of >$400 monitors (Adam, Dynaudio etc.) only make what I did wrong sound even more clear and noticeable.
__________________ Music is what feelings sound like.
Agreed... It's because pontification is so easy and fun, while capturing well-played, well-recorded audio is really hard so let's blame everything else. My treated room and several sets of >$400 monitors (Adam, Dynaudio etc.) only make what I did wrong sound even more clear and noticeable.
Well said.
Pontification is much cheaper!
Quote:
Originally Posted by Judders
Some people's interest in audio is all about geek forum arguments, and nothing to do with recording music. Let them have their fun!
Yeah sorry, don't won't to kill a thread with too much logic, it's mean spirited!
It strikes me as ironic that people are bothering to discuss the almost certainly imperceptible minutiae of 64bit processing vs 32 vs 48. The vast majority of people are using budget entry level monitors (commercial designs under £400 a pair), cheap headphones under £200 (typically way under).
They will use the speakers in sub optimal rooms (keeping the volume down so as not to annoy family and neighbours)...
Then they'll take the audio from the youtube video they downloaded and burn it to a CD. Then their friend rips that CD (unaware of their default settings to convert it to 96k mp3) and records his own vocals over it with his USB mic. (Side tech note: His DAW system clock is set to internal, not to sync off the incoming digital signal from that USB mic as is required. He doesn't notice the constant clicks and pops recorded in the audio from the clock mismatch.)
About now the conversation about how Protools is clearly better than any modern DAW takes place.
Then he goes back to class the next day where his teacher tells him the size of the downloaded installer file determines the mix engine resolution.
Hmmm... Must have been a scenario like me not being able to afford to even read a Sonic brochure or even keep a memory of their existence at the time. Oh well.