DAW distortion

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megatron667
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DAW distortion

Post by megatron667 » Thu Oct 07, 2004 9:14 am

I've heard mixing and boucing files within a DAW can cause distotion with the file. I have a/b with a bounce file and one that was recorded out of the convertors and back in and heard a difference in the tracks. I'm not sure the differnce that I heard was just the convertors. Does anyone know if this is true or not and if it is why?

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Re: DAW distortion

Post by MichaelAlan » Thu Oct 07, 2004 9:50 am

I would think that you would get a different signal going back IN the DAW because it is being sampled again, and being converted from digital, to analog, and back to digital. I could be wrong. bouncing within the DAW keeps it digital, so it is an exact copy of both tracks. Someone tell me if I sound retarted. I just want to learn too.

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Re: DAW distortion

Post by Auxillary » Thu Oct 07, 2004 9:55 am

Yes, any ad/da causes distortion.

If you do anything in the digital realm there will be distortion.

Keep in mind that in the analog realm there is a lot more distortion... and at a very hearable level. the distortions that occur in the digital realm are minor and generally a matter of feel, not outright hearing.
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megatron667
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Re: DAW distortion

Post by megatron667 » Thu Oct 07, 2004 10:36 am

The track that i recorded back in sounded true to itself distortion free.
the track that was bounced had noticalbe distortion.
I heard this from someone who worked for Digi. I didn't have time to go into detail as to why this happens. I need ammo for home recordist.

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Re: DAW distortion

Post by andyg666 » Thu Oct 07, 2004 10:55 am

well, when you bounce down a bunch of tracks into one stereo 16 bit track, you're going to end up with a lot of distortion--but it's not the type of distortion you might have trained your ears to expect when someone says "distortion." it's truncation distortion.

let me try to think of an analogy for this... ok

you have a box of crayons with 64 colors. you draw 10 different pictures and then you want to combine them all so they're all on the same page. well, in certainly places, the pictures are going to overlap and the colors are going to mix. you're going to end up with combinations of colors that were not in your original box of 64. problem is, the final product can only be made up of those original 64 colors, so any new colors that are created just get thrown away and the closest available color is substituted.

in audio terms, a 16 bit sample can have about 64,000 different values to represent an analog voltage. if you combine a whole bunch of 16 bit signals, you're going to end up with some values that fall in between numbers. since the numbers don't exist in the 16 bit world, they just get rounded to the nearest number that does. so instead of having a value of 15.5, it'll just be 16. and that will make it sound a bit different. when you add it all up, you end up with something that sounds more or less like all of the tracks mixed together, but you're going to be missing some detail and resolution. it won't sound distorted, but things like stereo imaging, fine detail in quiet passages, reverb tails, etc., will be less defined.

in a lot of cases, you're starting out with a 24 bit recording, and then bouncing down to a 16 bit file. that's like taking the big-ass 256 color crayon box and then mixing your pictures down and re-drawing it with the 64 color box. you're going to lose a lot of detail. that's where dither comes in, but that's really a whole other story... hope i didn't just make that a whole lot more confusing.

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Re: DAW distortion

Post by MoreSpaceEcho » Thu Oct 07, 2004 11:55 am

megatron667 wrote:The track that i recorded back in sounded true to itself distortion free.
the track that was bounced had noticalbe distortion.
I heard this from someone who worked for Digi. I didn't have time to go into detail as to why this happens. I need ammo for home recordist.
if the distortion is noticeable it sounds like you maybe were clipping the master fader? truncation distortion is really low level, and, while nasty, not the sort of thing that would jump out at you as 'distortion'.

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Re: DAW distortion

Post by vvv » Thu Oct 07, 2004 1:06 pm

andyg666 has a nice analogy going above, except I do not believe that that is where dither comes in. "But that's really a whole other story... "
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Re: DAW distortion

Post by Auxillary » Thu Oct 07, 2004 2:04 pm

most dither methods actually add distortion. (randimization of lsb). but it's distortion that sounds slightly nicer than quantization noise.
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Re: DAW distortion

Post by dynomike » Thu Oct 07, 2004 2:46 pm

megatron667 wrote:The track that i recorded back in sounded true to itself distortion free.
the track that was bounced had noticalbe distortion.
I heard this from someone who worked for Digi. I didn't have time to go into detail as to why this happens. I need ammo for home recordist.
Well if thats the problem, run an adat cable out then back in and record your mix in wavelab, etc.
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Re: DAW distortion

Post by rimbaud234 » Thu Oct 07, 2004 4:57 pm

[quote="megatron667"]The track that i recorded back in sounded true to itself distortion free.
the track that was bounced had noticalbe distortion.
I heard this from someone who worked for Digi. I didn't have time to go into detail as to why this happens. I need ammo for home recordist.[/quote]

Hmmm, something sounds very fishy here. Make sure you're not clipping the internal digital mixer when you render internally.
Also check whether your DA/AD has a soft-clipping feature.

If you are in fact clipping the mix in the computer on the digtial buss, when you render the file and check it, you will hear distortion from the clipping.
However, in this same scenario, if you run the mix through a D/A and then back to the computer with an A/D and there is a soft-clipping feature in either of them it will tame your clipping and overs and "sound" less distorted.

If you have a good mix (non-clipping) and render it to file and compare it to the same mix played through a good D/A and A/D back to file the differences may be apparent (depending on how good your ears are), but I would doubt that one would be distorto and the other supreme.

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Re: DAW distortion

Post by wedge » Thu Oct 07, 2004 7:36 pm

andyg666 wrote:let me try to think of an analogy for this... ok
Excellent Analogy :D

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