DAW feedback

[cosmicdolphin]

It's the translation of audio that we believe will sound well on most systems

Exactly, which is why mix room acoustics are so important, otherwise those same issues you mentioned about recording of comb filtering , phase cancellation and basically indirect sound waves bouncing around and cancelling or reinforcing the direct sound can totally mislead you. There can be peaks and nulls of 15 - 20db in a typical small room but many people spend £££s on the latest gear & software without being willing to invest time & money addressing the far less sexy room issues.

Like I said YMMV depending on genre, if you make solo piano pieces with a high end VSTi then sure, it's not going to be a major deal breaker... but if you mix anything in the rock/pop/EDM genres with a full production sound then you need to know that what you're hearing is the best version of the truth or the mixes will be skewed.

As for recording, I've recorded in many things in many places from a 10 piece live band to mic'ing up an extraction fan for an ambient noise. I find for most instruments any unwanted reflections can be tamed cheaply and simply with a couple of duvets. The main caveat to this is recording live drums, something I am happy to avoid nowadays with these wonderful virtual kits.

Back to the OP though ! ....

[Len911]

My main point is still about budget-priority.

Acoustics would be priority one for mixing, if there wasn't respectable software for headphone mixing
and accurate analysis software, not only hearing sound, but seeing it as well. There is even EQ curve matching software, probably much less useful for various reasons,lol!

Then we come back to reference. If you have a reference track to compare to.

If someone was primarily doing or even did quite a bit of live recording, acoustics would be the place to start imo. It wouldn't be worth attempting to try and correct, if possible, all the acoustic problems on a recording. Of course the microphone, the polar pattern, and how close to the source, is an important factor of acoustics.

I don't think we really so much as disagree, I try to give value advice to people about how I approach purchases with a budget. Not always the cheapest. But hopefully "budget priority". I don't know how many times in the past I was burned by reviews that said, "sounds as good as ____ costing thousands more." It always seems to cost you more in the long run,lol!

[moony1]

Hey, thanks for the feedback - this is great and I take the point about the rest of the setup. At the moment I am using an old version of Cubase (5.5, I think) and have a digital mixing desk as I/O (Tascam). The problem I have experienced is around latency - even though I set latency to "0", there are still timing issues which require rework to correct. I figured that I might correct this with an upgrade to the PC and DAW. Also the MIDI functionality of the old version is limited and I do want to use more MIDI going forward as well as analogue instruments.
Thanks again - loads of food for thought. I will also look again at the recording environment and mics I use too.

All the best,
Moony

[Len911]

Latency. I direct monitor from my interface. If you need reverbs, guitar cabs... while monitoring, you might use an interface with dsp built in for monitoring.

http://www.steinberg.net/en/products/au ... ology.html

you get a DSP-powered version and a VST 3 version of Guitar Amp Classics. So you can record the dry signal with your favorite amp sound without any latency using the DSP version. Once you're done, you can re-amp the recorded track with the VST 3 version.

Also, the upgrade from version 4/5 is $299 per the website for a download.

[moony1]

Hi,
Starting to get to the bottom of this now - thanks again for your really helpful comments. Looks like part of the problem is the MIDI interface is not functioning properly due to an incompatible driver with the older version of Cubase. Looks like it's time for a serious upgrade.
Thanks again.

[TheElement]

I'm using Cubase 8.5 PRO. Its the boss!

easy to use and such a great quality DAW. I'm still in love with it since I got Cubase LE 4.

what it isnt good for is loops. but then shouldnt we be writing and not using loops?