bouncing quality

[hastoy]

Hi, I have a somewhat technical question. I use Kontakt 2 and Cubase SX3. I'm doing a polyphonic virtual instrument and when I bounce a recording the sound quality isn't very good. For example if I play a simple 4-note chord, then I bounce it. As a comparison I do that 4-note chord loading the samples in Audition (or any audio editing software) then I copy/mix paste the samples together to get the chord. When I compare the 2 files the Audition mixing is perfect (no quality loss on individual notes) and the bounced result is of much lower quality. The same test striking only a single note does not produce any difference between the Cubase bounced method and the Audition mixed method. So my question is: what's going on ?! Is it Kontakt or Cubase not bouncing well enough ? Thanks for any help.

Giom

[Hannes_F]

Are you bouncing with the same frequency as your project is (44.1 or 48 kHz)?

Also be aware that distortion can enter a bounced track if recorded too hot. Try if bouncing at - 20 dBfs changes anything.

[hastoy]

My project and bounce settings (samples files as well) are all in 44.1kHz. And I have no distortion problems.

[hastoy]

I've tried using Halion 3 with Cubase SX3 for bouncing my recordings in "full quality" mode and I must say the result is perfect (even in fast bounce). Each note preserves its full quality. There must be a way to do that with Kontakt. please help !!!

Giom

[teacue]

From your explanation it is not clear what happens with the sound quality.
Do you mean maybe something like: the length of the notes are not preserved?
If yes, try this: before bouncing, activate the "Offline bounce mode" in Kontakt 2.
You find it in the "Engine" menu of Kontakt.

There is/was a known problem with Kontakt 2 and Cubase 4, but I am not aware that this happened with SX3.

Best regards

[Hannes_F]

Perhaps try bouncing in realtime.

And which artefacts do you exactly hear if not distortion?

[kotori]

Hi Giom,
Make sure you have set Offline Interpolation Quality (for mixdown) to perfect. You find that setting in the Kontakt options under the Engine tab.

Nils

[Little Red King]

Or maybe the issue is a change in bit depth? The sequencer might be thinking in a higher bit depth than what you are rendering to and so some dithering is needed. Is the bit depth changing and if so, is there a dithering algorithm at the end of the chain? If there is one, perhaps it is not the best one for your program material and maybe changing to another algorithm is useful?

[germancomponist]

Perhaps try bouncing in realtime.

And which artefacts do you exactly hear if not distortion?

Hannes told an important thing:

Whenever you are bouncing or exporting an audiofile who uses diskstreaming, you must do it in the "realtime-mode", because Cubase can`t know what the sampler or sampleplayer has to stream....!

Gunther

[Daryl]

Hannes told an important thing:

Whenever you are bouncing or exporting an audiofile who uses diskstreaming, you must do it in the "realtime-mode", because Cubase can`t know what the sampler or sampleplayer has to stream....!

Gunther
No that's absolute rubbish I'm afraid. I only ever use real-time for final mixdown, and that's only because my engineer is a SlowTools man and is used to this.

D