32 bit Float question for Magic Dave

[Shooshie]

For Magic Dave or anyone else, really. If you know the answers, I'd appreciate the info.
As you may know, I took time off from music and DP last year. A version or two of DP were released during that time, and I did not get to know them. I came back, updated DP and immediately [DP 9.13 (72359)] started working on an album for [IMO] a great songwriter. I decided to try something I'd never actually done on a large scale: record, mix, and master the whole thing at 32 bit FP.

There's something happening that I have not seen before: I'm getting serious clipping issues in the busses. Previously, in other versions of DP, and at 24 bits, I could go over a little and not worry about it. As long as my final two-track didn't reach 0 dB, everything was fine. Everything that stays in the box has plenty of headroom. But now I'm getting serious distortion with even the slightest overage. Furthermore, Waves L2 and L3 Multimaximizer don't seem to really stop the problem. Instead, when they start drawing down on the threshold, I start hearing distortion in them, too. I can get away with a little limiting, but not a lot. Further, brick-wall limiters aren't always brick. I sometimes see track clipping even when the L3 is at the end of the chain. I haven't tried the Masterworks Limiter there. Maybe I should.

Is this a 32 bit FP issue? Is it actually possible that when your actual audio files are 32 bit FP WAV files, it can't change the mantissa of the exponent in real time? (or something like that... I haven't spoken that language in a long time!) Maybe the right terminology would be "float the decimal" in real time? Or, alternatively, does DP 9.13 (72359) have issues with clipping in the busses? Or maybe it's an OS X thing?

And one other thing: The Masterworks Leveler, which sounds wonderful, seems to be all over the place in volume. It's not grabbing that saved T4 cell memory, or something. Even if it is, sometimes the volume is low, then after doing some other things (not related to volume in the chain) I can come back to it and it will be speaker-bustlingly high. What could be up with that?

The fix, of course, has been careful mixing, but I can get it perfect, quit DP, reopen it, and now it's clipping. I just don't get what's happening.

One thing that might also be related: Sometimes I'll be bebopping along, and maybe brush a key or something, and DP seems to jump, and suddenly I'm back to a state from maybe 10 minutes ago. I go to the Undo History, and there's no place to go. It's as if those 10 minutes didn't happen. It's rare, but it's happening at least once a day. When that happens, I immediately restart. Sometimes DP crashes on shutdown. Never had that before. Well... not in a long, long time. It's all intermittent stuff; I haven't captured anything.

Any ideas? Suggestions? I've got to keep plodding away at these mixes. Ten songs. Deadline coming up soon, and the album release venue is already booked, so I don't have a lot of time for experimentation. If I can get through this project, I may then be able to experiment some more.

Shooshie

[FMiguelez]

I've been working with 24 bit files for the regular audio tracks, and with 32 bFP for their printed stems for more than a year now, with DP 9.02, and I have NOT seen the issues you're describing, Shoosh. Waves' compressors and limiters operate fine, as does DP's MW compressor (its saved cells seem to be recalled always correctly).

For what I can tell, the DP vesion you're using (9.13) is as bad as DP 6 was. There are too many bugs and nasty surprises to be found. It's not ready for prime time, IMO.
I'd go back to 9.02 if I were you... It is, to me, DP's latest best version, and unless I don't remember well, there's nothing there that isn't in 9.02, except for crashes, instability and a couple of removed features

Regarding the 32 bFP audio files: I'm just using them to capture the lowest noise floor, but there's no improvement of any kind in the resulting mix. It's just nice to have the stems at 32 bFP and not worrying about dither.

[Shooshie]

I've done it that way, too, Fernando, and that was sometimes my normal way of working in the past. This is the first time I've actually recorded every audio track at 32bfp. I thought there might be some difference if there were no 24 bit files structure being moved around by decimal placement within that 32 bit framework.

It's probably something to do with my computer. I DID have to replace a ram DIMM last week. I'm sure it caused issues before it went out. Maybe it's time to Load my chunks into a new file. Maybe I've just got some kind of corruption building up in this file, and this is the canary-in-the-coal-mine warning. I think I'll try that, actually.

Shooshie

[Shooshie]

I just thought of another issue that's been going on with this file: in one of the chunks, in one track, the automation keeps disappearing. I've replaced it about 5 times. It's an aux track, being used as a controller for the audio track. Suddenly that track starts overpowering the mix, and I'll check, and sure enough, the automation has disappeared! It's almost like I have a key that's been bound to the "revert to saved" command, or the "delete" command. Hmm... maybe I should check those!

Shoosh

[James Steele]

For what I can tell, the DP vesion you're using (9.13) is as bad as DP 6 was.

I must respectfully disagree. Having used both, IMHO, NOTHING is as bad as DP6 was.

[mikehalloran]

For what I can tell, the DP vesion you're using (9.13) is as bad as DP 6 was.

I must respectfully disagree. Having used both, IMHO, NOTHING is as bad as DP6 was.

Amen.

Love 9.13 but I keep 9.02 installed in case I run into problems (haven't) and need to open a project in it as a workaround.

I'm interested in the answer as I have no idea what advantage there could be to Recording in 32bit float.

That bad RAM can corrupt the process is possible. There are two symptoms that tell me when I have bad RAM and one is Bounce to Disk failures — the question is not if there's bad RAM; it's which stick. The other symptom is clone failures (not 100% as it could also be Disk and network failure). In OS 9 and earlier, Norton Utilities and Rebuild Desktop failures were 100% reliable as bad RAM indicators.

[Gravity Jim]

9.13 runs great on my rig. Nary a hiccup.

One of the ongoing problems with any user forum, whether it's about DAWs, motorcycles, guitars or whatever, is that problems one single user (or two or five or a couple of dozen users) is experiencing get canonized... frozen forever on the board, waiting to infect new members with the Bad Common Knowledge bug. Before long, some conflict that someone is experiencing (because they insist on running some third-party drive encrypting or file management or I/O driver) becomes Bad Common Knowledge., Everybody knows that DP 9.13 is riddled with problems, right? Well, that's what the experts at MOTUNation.com say.

As I've said before, most of my technical posts here are telling someone that the deal-breaker they're posting about isn't happening on my rig. Because I haven't encrypted my drives, I don't use anything but Apple Disk Utility to format or clone a drive, my input devices are all made by Apple (although my Logitech mouse never caused any problems), I just don't cloud my system with junk because, like many of you, I'm a working songwriter/composer and not a computer hobbyist who just enjoys tweaking my Mac.

Anyway... no, it's not generally accepted that 9.13 is bad, bad, very bad, nearly as bad as DP 6. I mean, c'mon already... in DP 6 the metronome didn't work. At all. When you've got a computer program that does practically nothing but keep time and the time-keeper is busted, then you've screwed the pooch.

[guitardood]

9.13 runs great on my rig. Nary a hiccup.

One of the ongoing problems with any user forum, whether it's about DAWs, motorcycles, guitars or whatever, is that problems one single user (or two or five or a couple of dozen users) is experiencing get canonized... frozen forever on the board, waiting to infect new members with the Bad Common Knowledge bug. Before long, some conflict that someone is experiencing (because they insist on running some third-party drive encrypting or file management or I/O driver) becomes Bad Common Knowledge., Everybody knows that DP 9.13 is riddled with problems, right? Well, that's what the experts at MOTUNation.com say.

Conversely, it's very disheartening when a user is experiencing a ton of problems and they're discounted off as being "that user" rather than legitimate issues and/or get the "let me rub it in your face" response of "mine runs great".

I've been having so many problems with 9.13 (6 was before my time) that I've made a switch (hopefully temporarily) to Pro Tools. I hate it. Editing sucks, MIDI sucks, automation editing sucks. One thing it does do is run, non-stop, and allows me to create music rather than putting on my computer nerd hat and troubleshooting or even worse, watching paint dry as I have to continually reload my project due to crashing. MOTU has been about as helpful as a heart attack at this point.

MOTU hardware with MOTU software on a 12-core box, with 64gb, shouldn't be in the red on a 60 track mix at the max buffer of 1024 (yes I provided a copy of the project to MOTU, weeks ago). Mixing the same track in Pro Tools 12 runs flawlessly with my PCIe-424 buffer set to 128. I don't get it. Not to mention the issue of the 424 just stops outputting anything...go into hardware config, hit enter and it's back. While a simple enough workaround, it is all about time and the time it takes for DP to unload all the plug-ins, do whatever voodoo it does to the 424 and reload all plugins, tends to put a big damper on the creative process.

Further, I've been having a problem loading Falcon, which shouldn't cause DP to just blink out to a crash screen. I've contacted both MOTU and UVI about this and they're both playing the finger-pointing game. If I blast Falcons prefs prior to loading a session it loads. As soon as I exit and reload project with Falcon enabled, crash city. The work-around of blasting prefs works, but sucks big time.

As for the OP, Shooshie's issues, I've noticed quite a bit of distortion/saturation/compression on stem busses with everything at nominal levels of about -18db. I've actually dropped my track levels to -30db to attempt to overcome this issue. I will say, I've never tied the distortion to 32-bitFP, but interesting that it is the mode I've always operated in DP since I switched to DP from Windows/Sonar. I know I'm kind of ranting and don't mean to... Just really frustrated at the problems and lack of help from MOTU. I'm hoping the next release will be much more resilient as other than stability, Pro Tools sucks, both feature-wise and from a workflow standpoint.

Sorry for ranting. Peace out!

[Shooshie]

So, Guitardood, I'm gathering that you also work 100% in 32bfp, which I'm doing for the first time in this album, and you're also getting distortion at low levels. That's what's happening here, and I've never been the victim of distortion before. I've always known how to keep it at bay. Now, my techniques aren't working. That's all I can say for now. I don't know if it's DP, 32bfp, my OS, or a corrupted file.

Interestingly, yesterday I spent the day working on another song whose bare audio is louder than any of the other songs, and not a drop of distortion all day. They're all chunks in the same file. I don't get it.

Oh... another possibility: working long, continuous hours with infrequent breaks, maybe my hearing had gone crazy, but that's usually just like a dull filter, not distortion. I know I shouldn't stress it so much, but I'm working on general stuff: comping, just getting relative levels set, stacking tracks from the baseline up, or from the vocal down, whichever works, choosing plugins. I'm not in the final mastering stage where perfect hearing is so critical. Then I'll be sure my ears are rested, but I'm up against an immovable deadline. And hearing doesn't explain the bizarre snap-back to a 10 minutes ago version.

Gravity Jim, don't worry; I'm not much susceptible to hyperbole. DP 9.13 is the only version I have installed right now, and I have no intentions of going backward. I'll figure out either the problem or a workaround before this is done, I promise you. It may just mean I have to be ultra careful about levels, and not depend on any limiters at all.

As for my technical problems getting canonized into some 9.13 mythology, I've been careful not to make any accusations, and DP is not really my highest suspect. I'm just looking for clues. The only time I actually got out the lifeboats and prepared to abandon ship was after DP 6. I spent a year learning Logic, while still working mostly in DP. Even then, my only fear was that MOTU would run out of money before they got it fixed. Ultimately didn't have to go there. Thankfully!!! I'd just about rather quit than use Logic, which at its best felt like I was trying to perform a concerto on stage before an audience, playing on a plastic toy instrument. I probably would have gone to Pro Tools.

Shooshie

[Shooshie]

Speaking of DP 6, and the fears of DP's demise afterward, that was about the time that Amplidood came up with his fabulous themes, which MOTU soon adopted as a feature — an incredible move of taking a 3rd party's work and incorporating it into DP, and one that I've never seen before or since. If you all recall, people flooded into the forum wanting a piece of the theme action. Where do you get them? How do you install them? etc.

This is my opinion only, but I credit Ampldood's themes with helping to salvage DP during that stressful time. HELPING to. I didn't say single-handedly. I'm just saying that it appeared that our user base grew over the themes. Since then he's gone on to win two Grammy's that I know of. I hope he'll have the time to keep them updated in the future, but Grammy's can sure make you a busy musician. I've only ever had the honor of being in projects that were nominated; never won. My congratulations to Andy for the great work, but also I offer my appreciation for the themes, the answer to a dream I had always had for DP. I used to surround my workspace with beautiful pictures, art prints, illustrations, sculptures — anything to soften the glare from DP's brilliant white! I had asked for themes several times, so I was ready when Andy created those. Since then, I have not had to surround myself with distractions for the eyes.

Ok, I'll try not to hijack my own thread again! Just had to say that. Not a day goes by that I don't think about it, and I still change themes periodically for variation. Oxidized, Gotham, Mellow Gold, and others. Just beautiful!

Shooshie

[FMiguelez]

That's all I can say for now. I don't know if it's DP, 32bfp, my OS, or a corrupted file.

It is definitely NOT a 32 bFP thing, that's for sure.

This is a very bad anomaly.... When your mixing technique is fine, but the software gives you distortion at low levels at 32 bFP, that is a terrible issue.... I mean, it's not exactly the kind of thing that fills one with confidence and trust in the program.

It seems it is a DP 9.13 bug. I use 32 bFP all the time, and it seems fine with a slightly oldeer version.
But looking at the bright side, you will save on distortion plugins, since it now comes 'native' in DP! (Terrible joke, I know)

I hope you figure this one out Shoosh. If anyone can do it, that would be you.

[waxman]

After recently switching to 100% ITB I am finding ALL levels, Master, Sums, Channels, Auxes, Aux sends and inserts are much less forgiving. I had to start over from scratch on every mix that I had been using with my Neve 8816 summing box.

Now that I've settled in I highly suggest the Slate Everything Bundle at $14.95 per month to accomplish your goal. I use the Trim plug on almost every channel along with, Virtual Channel. I find I need to set levels for each channel and it varies from instrument to instrument. I am using 32 Floating Point and 24bit.

I cut tracks at -12 or lower. The front end input stage is still the same. Focusrite, API and UAD Pre's. Once the tracks are cut I am finding the Slate plugs seem to work better then anything else ITB. Waves, UAD and MOTU plugs seem so be more sensitive distortion. Latest DP and Latest OS. Everything is stable and has been since a few months ago after a clean install and switching to EVO SSD's.

[Don T]

Hello,
I'm having issues like yours, sort of. I recently opened the last project I was working on and the output level was real low. All the meters read normally so I fiddled with the mix a bit bypassing plugs soloing etc. trying to find the culprit. Finally I restarted the Mac and re-opened the project and the output levels were normal. I had no time to pursue this anomaly. Maybe next time.

[oshtakuta]

Hello,
I'm having issues like yours, sort of. I recently opened the last project I was working on and the output level was real low. All the meters read normally so I fiddled with the mix a bit bypassing plugs soloing etc. trying to find the culprit. Finally I restarted the Mac and re-opened the project and the output levels were normal. I had no time to pursue this anomaly. Maybe next time.

Culprit pregen2, I do not speak English, but already tried to warn all of you earlier,DP807 work great!

[Gravity Jim]

Now that I've settled in I highly suggest the Slate Everything Bundle at $14.95 per month to accomplish your goal. I use the Trim plug on almost every channel along with, Virtual Channel. I find I need to set levels for each channel and it varies from instrument to instrument. I am using 32 Floating Point and 24bit.

I cut tracks at -12 or lower. The front end input stage is still the same. Focusrite, API and UAD Pre's. Once the tracks are cut I am finding the Slate plugs seem to work better then anything else ITB. Waves, UAD and MOTU plugs seem so be more sensitive distortion. Latest DP and Latest OS. Everything is stable and has been since a few months ago after a clean install and switching to EVO SSD's.

I'm not quite as worshipful as waxman about Slate products: they're good, but not so massively better than my Everything Bundle sub made me stop using the Waves or UAD plugs. I've got Slate plugs on every mix, though.

But he is certainly correct that when you're working at these high resolutions, you don't want to be cutting tracks as close to "0" as you can get them, like we were all taught in the lean, mean 16-bit days. We've made massive advances in digital audio software and hardware (the ADCs in your phone are probably about as good as a high-end convertor was 15 years ago), and the old approaches are no longer "best practice."

I'm running things the same as waxman, and I record individual tracks below -12db. Mixing is much easier, and the noise floor so low that it's not an issue.