John Stafford wrote: I made a recording yesterday using Sonar (mainly because I'm familiar enough with it to know what to do when it crashes mid-concert!).

Begging the question, what does one do? ;)

I moved it into Samplitude for further processing, and was very pleased with the sound. When I put it on CD most of the detail was retained quite well, but there seemed to be a certain harshness on the sibilants that wasn't on the original recording.

Are you sure this was not the NT5's? I find them very sibilant and hard.

Sorry I re-read that these were not on the original recording.

Hi David
I'm a new Samplitude user, and I have yet to find the most stable configuration for recording. In Sonar I know the worst thing that will happen is that I lose half a minute's recording, as it never brings the computer down with it. I can't say the situation is any different with Samplitude, but I would be a little nervous as I've never seen what it does when it decides it doesn't like me.

I didn't want to use the NT5s for this recording because of that hardness, but I suppose the sound of the venue must have softened things out a little. That's not to say that the results were good enough that I would make these my first choice in future; but it was a pleasant surprise. There are other applications that I love the NT5s on though.

I think my first choice would be Sennheiser MKHs, but I have never used DPA or Schoeps in this setting.

John

I use POW-R dither in most of my work- usually POW-R #3 which seems pretty transparent. Samplitude's dither is pretty good too with the ability to specify exactly how much you want on it. Hint: Specify 16 bit drivers and you'll force the program to output your 16 bit master for listening to what will be on your CD. In Sequoia 8, that is an option to force 16 bit dither monitoring, but in Samp, you need to trick the program- otherwise you are listening to the full bit rate output.

--Ben

in Samp, you need to trick the program- otherwise you are listening to the full bit rate output.

Which, I guess, is why it ALWAYS used to sound better to me during the mixing and mastering than the CD (16/44) versions, until I got my act together with dithering, etc. You could hear it as SOON as you bounced it down to a 16/44 wav file.

POWr 3 dithering seems to work the best for me as well, and I also like the dither tracks from Cranesong. (You can get their CD and test drive it yourself, if you like....)

Thanks gentlemen.

I found that when I used POWr 3 the CD sounded quite good. Two of the singers sound very similar, and it was nice to be able to hear them separated in the soundstage when I listened to them on my hi-fi. I'm normally disappointed when I play my own CDs over the stereo at home.

John