Donald Fagan; Nuendo; ProTools; Sound on Sound

[wedge]

So, I'm reading the latest Sound on Sound, and there's an interview/story 'bout Donald Fagan's latest, and about his love of analog. Fair enough. His engineer, however, although sharing Fagan's love of analog, uses Nuendo, and at the same time, beats up on PTs, saying that according to a blind listening test conducted by a friend of his, Nuendo sounds MUCH BETTER than ProTools. I use PTs, and like it, mostly for it's ridiculously excellent editing capabilities, but I'm wondering, now... What say thee?

[Everybody's X]

I think it sounds better

Even stuff tracked in pt and played back through nuendo

so you can add one anonymous internet guy to the list

[MT]

Edit:

[John Jeffers]

FWIW, Fagen's engineer is not the first one to say that Nuendo sounds better than PT. I believe I recall Fletcher saying something about Nuendo being the only DAW he's heard that sounded halfway decent. I know that Mercenary was carrying Nuendo for a while, but I don't see it there anymore.

To my ears, both sound fine. But I'm just not as picky as some people, I guess. I use Nuendo because I like the way it works, not because I think it sounds better.

[UXB]

There have been exhaustive posts and test on the matter. Many prefer Samplitude and Sequoia when it comes to high end stuff.

I was an early lover of Nuendo, but jumped ship when the software got too bugy and Steinberg went through many bad changes.

I wonder how Yamaha is doing with it...

Best,
H

[runrunrun]

is anyone able to explain how one can sound better than the other? im not doubting it, im just curious.

[carlsaff]

I wonder how Yamaha is doing with it...

Better. 3.x is very solid. I love the app and have no desire to switch.

[Everybody's X]

is anyone able to explain how one can sound better than the other? im not doubting it, im just curious.

I CAN'T explain it, it doesn't make any sense, but I can definitely HEAR it.

[Spark]

I supose its possible that Nuendo uses better math to combine wave files... or they could be using superior D->A when monitoring Nuendo if they werent using the same Digi gear.

[alex matson]

Slightly off topic, but...what makes a Radar sound so good? Or that old Ensoniq Paris setup people still talk about? As far as Cubase, I remember Larry mentioning in an interview with someone how they were agreeing with each other about Cubase sounding good. Surely the different companies have a lot of choices regarding how audio is precessed and routed. I'm surprised no one's tried to do whatever they're doing at a lower price. I mean, it's been years since they were designed, haven't the parts gotten cheaper?

[Spark]

RADAR has vastly superior clocking and AD/DA converters to almost anything on the market. It doesnt do any summing. It just acts as a tape machine replacement.

All summing has to be done by a console, not by math in a program. Console quality might be a factor, but most people seem to like the mixing out of the box sound better than in the box.

[alex matson]

So do those expensive wordclocks get one in the ballpark of a Radar?

[Spark]

Probably. But then you still have to deal with converter quality.

[hammertime]

I used to think Nuendo sounded better than Sonar a few years ago. But then I noticed that Nuendo had a lower nominal level, so it "sounded" different. Basically, I was flexing the shitty little Mackie amps when I switched to Sonar, and running out of headroom. (Also, the Fletcher-Munson effect would cause programs at different levels to "sound" different). That's the first thing I'd check out, but it probably wouldn't be such an issue with an expensive console. As far as the "math" debate, summing algorithms are pretty standardized -- there's no digital voodoo at work. I read an article on the Steinberg website, where one of Nuendo's software engineers denied the rumor that one of his new audio engines "sounded better," and said, basically, "no," it's just math. I could see, though how if the software ran at a higher internal bit rate it would sound better. For instance, Terry Howard ( Ray Charles's engineer) swears that Sonar's 64-bit audio engine sounds better than other 32 bit engines. This would make sense, because you have fewer truncated word lenghts.

[theBaldfather]

I use nuendo and am a big fan of it. The only real thing I can say from experience is when I did rough preproduction demos on it for our band and took it to a much bigger studio in CA, the engineer asked what I did it on and if it was ITB. When I said it was he said that his protools rig couldn't make it sound like that. He was basically using it as a tape machine, and mixing everything on the neve console. which of course trumped my sad little nuendo rig all over again, but I guess I would have considered his opinion qualified on the ITB comparison. I've never had a chance to do a head to head comparison myself though..