LiquidMix Cubase 7 and offline mixing

[dpolcino]

Wondering if any Liquid Mix users on Cubase 7 Windows are able to do non-realtime mixdowns? I can do real time fine but on an offline mixdown, the Liquid Mix goes out of sync. I also have a hardware SSL Duende, and that handles offline mixing fine. Any ideas? Focusrite says it works (at least back in 2010!)

[vinark]

I will check if I have the time. But since liquidmix always renders in real time there is no speed advantage to using offline, It will take just as long.

[dpolcino]

Right, the reason for offline render is because I have some hefty plugins that render in better resolution when done in non-realtime.

[mroekalea]

LiquidMix can only render in realtime, just like uad plugins or the old Creamware XTC mode.

By the way are you running windows 7 32 bit or 64 bit?

[dpolcino]

Cubase 7, Windows 7 64x. It works great but only in realtime, their site says it can do non-realtime fyi...

[vinark]

On Win7 I could only get LM to work reliably with the legacy firewire driver. Did you try different buffer sizes? Asio guard on and off?
And what exactly is happening in offline mode?

[dpolcino]

All the LM tracks are way delayed. It's not looking good, too bad, I really like tweaking my LM knobs and it sounds great. Tried it as a Jbridge and non-jbridge, tried big buffers, tried switching firewire ports. Tried it in Studio One, no luck. I think I'm about out of ideas. I have the legacy drivers installed as well.
It's too bad, the SSL Duende adjusts to non-realtime perfectly, another nice defunct product.

[vinark]

Confirmed but with some hope. C7 64 is indeed delayed but, C7 32 on win7 64 not (That is the way I work; Cubase 32 bit with Big VSTi´s like Kontakt etc bridged to 64 with Jbridge). So it is something that goes wrong in the bridging from 64 to 32. The maker of Jbridge might be able to fix this or Steinberg.....But LM is ok.

[dpolcino]

Thanks for looking into that on your end, really appreciate it!
Hah, so finally all my plugins are 64-bit and I might have to go back to 32.
Will look into seeing what J of jBridge says about it

[vinark]

What about as a temp solution, render the tracks using LM. In my case it is only a few tracks most of the time. Since LM is ok when just working on a project, there are several solutions thinkable for the final off line render, which will take a little more thinking and time, but get the job done.

[dpolcino]

Yes that would work, and real-time rendering on smaller projects is fine too. I'm really just doing my new-year studio tweaking and fine-tuning and ran across that problem, so not a giant issue.

Do you find any drawbacks in using jBridged 64bit plugins and working in 32bit Cubase?

Thanks,
D

[vinark]

No not at all, here it works 100% ok and in reality only a few plugs use enough ram to warrent using them in 64 bit.

But I have another idea. http://www.voxengo.com/product/latencydelay/ this plugin can be used for delay compensation if the plugin fails to report it. If the delay of the LM is fixed or related to buffer settings, it would be easy to insert this with the final offline render.

But thank you for reporting it too, it saves me a nasty suprise as I was contemplating going full 64 bit, except that I also have 2 UAD1´s which will never gain 64 bit drivers.

[dpolcino]

Nice find! I'll check that out!

[Sloid]

I too am unable to use Liquid Mix in Cubase 64 bit, both C6 64 & C764. In C6 I get the delay. In C7 I got a bunch of pops and crackles. I contacted João from jBridge and he sent me a little utility program that confirmed there was nothing wrong with the LM dll.

Long story short, I gave up on trying to render LM in Cubase 64 bit. LM seems to open & run properly but won't export without serious issues. João suggested I jBridge my larger sample VSTs to address the ram separately allowing more use of my ram that doesn't conflict with Cubase 32 bit.

So I jBridged my 32 bit versions of Addictive Drums, Steven Slate Drums & Groove Agent 3 to jBridge 32 versions. I don't really understand the advantage or disadvantage of jBridging 64 to 32 rather than 32 to 32.

Maybe someone could explain that?

[vinark]

There are no advantages or disadvantages, only different ram usage limits. On a 64 bit OS anything 32 has a limit of 4gb. And anything 64 has no limit practically. I use C32 with my largest plugins (Kontakt) bridged to 64. So Kontakt has no limit except that I only have 8gb of ram. If I would bridge to 32 then every Kontakt instance would have a limit of 4gb. Which would probably be enough too.
So if it works it´s good.....
If all plugs are 64 bit and you are running C64 then there would be no bridging which might be more stable in theory, but my C32 and 64 plugs is also 100% stable thanks to Jbridge.

[dpolcino]

Just wanted to post some findings/results:

On further testing I found that it really isn't a reliable solution (LiquidMix in 64x with offline bounce). When playing with the delay plugin I got a little more complicated with my mix (as opposed to one instance of LM in mono) and it's not only delayed but all garbled and unusable. Also its timing delay is not consistent unfortunately, so you can't use a nice calculation to figure it out across the board. Also talked to J of JBridge and he confirms there's nothing his software can do about it.

I'll try the reverse 32-64-32 trick next when I have time.

[dpolcino]

Just wanted to update this for anyone wishing to use their Liquid Mix in a 64-bit environment in Cubase on Windows.

I tried the reverse-install (32bit Cubase and 64bit bridged plugins), it certainly works for Liquid Mix offline bouncing, but I had way too many plugins acting finicky, so not a solution for me.

After A TON of research, I think I've found the solution! An old shareware program/plug-in called "Console" from Japan. It's a VST host that can be used as a plugin in Cubase. Load the LM plugins into Console and they lock onto an offline bounce with precise syncing! I had real low CPU usage as well while testing it. It works fantastic! And since with LM you can access all the current instances of it from its hardware interface, i don't have to re-open Console to tweak parameters. Just tried 6 mono and 2 stereo channels in 88khz 32bit and it works flawlessly. So there you have it, a solution!

[Sloid]

dpolcino are you saying used Console in Windows 64 bit running Cubase 64 bit and Liquid Mix rendered successfully?

[dpolcino]

that's what I'm saying! 32bit Console plugin, seems to work fine in Cubase 7 64x without any special bridging. Then it seems to report latency delay accurately, which is LM's big problem. So it seems to take care of it.