Was Nuendo Ten Premature?

Happy with 10 so far, given the normal kinds of bugs that every big app has. It’s been very stable – I think I’ve had only one crash working on a feature film for countless hours of solid stability hammering the system with no problems (I had fortunately saved a few minutes before it crashed, so nothing problematic in this case), and I’m not sure about the crash culprit – probably a third party plugin misbehaving. Anyway, 10 has been excellent so far, but I am honestly looking forward to one more bugfix patch to solidify it even more and give me even greater confidence. But as for it being premature, I’d say NO… this has been a decent (if not very good) launch overall for Steinberg, and I just hope they continue on a solid path, and most importantly, stay in contact with the users. As always, YMMV.

What exactly?

OK, so let’s make it clear and simple : N10 is the best Nuendo version ever. I love it !

Well, that’s a loaded question, and goes to a long-time gripe I have with many developers that never seem to finish a particular feature the way I wish they would. YMMV of course, and it’s all dependent on your own unique needs and workflow, but IMO Steinberg has been guilty (again, along with many other developers!) of releasing half-baked features at times, and taking quite a long time to make those features robust enough that I trust them for hard core production.

For example, DOP is still not great. I have been complaining about DOP for a long time, and it’s only now that it’s basically usable. But I still don’t trust it completely for harder-core work. My gripe with Steinberg was the sloppy condition in which they originally released it, and the insanely long time in refining it. Keep in mind, they also made the mistake of replacing a previous functionality and workflow when they first introduced DOP. That was disruptive to workflow and should never have been launched the way they did it. Of course it’s much better now, thank goodness, but still doesn’t feel totally trustworthy enough to hammer it the way I truly like to work, with lots of slicing and dicing and adding more processing even after the initial processing is done. I can still make it buckle. But DOP is at least now good enough for basic and some intermediate tasks. Might be just fine for many other people with different workflows.

Another example is ARA support. Congrats to Steinberg for finally jumping in with ARA, and it is basically usable right now, but could use several improvements. It’s already had one good patch which gave me a little confidence boost. Refer to the many threads about it. I am thrilled they introduced it, but it still has a ways to go.

Another example is the new video engine, which has been a work in progress for years, since the the demise of the Quicktime-based video engine. Again, big kudos to Steinberg for continuing to refine the new video engine, which is taking FOREVER, and which just got video rendering support in 10.2, thankfully. However, this feature is still very limited and forces a re-render to specific codec and settings, and needs to be much more flexible. Ultimately, it needs to be able to “replace” audio without re-rendering the video, with far better codec and settings support. So for my use, it’s only partially useful, not to mention not that solid yet for me. Again, I’m happy it has finally reached this point, but still has a ways to go, not just in features but in reliability too.

There are many examples, but those above are just a few… where I am hoping for and frankly expecting more bugfixes and refinements. Each release gives me more confidence to use those new(-ish) features. Hope that makes sense.

Overall, though, this needs to be taken in the context of comparable DAWs and apps of this level of depth and complexity. Again, I want to be clear that I think N10 is definitely mature and one of the best releases from Steinberg in a long time, a real professional powerhouse in the DAW market, but nothing is ever perfect. Just trying to be realistic and honest. When I compare to Avid, for example, Steinberg has been on a good roll lately and sometimes Avid looks positively inept and neanderlithic, but Steinberg still has a lot more to do. They need to keep their standards high and not allow features to be released before they are ready. But again, overall, 10 is very good and I say jump in with your eyes wide open, and still hope for and push for refinements. And truly, nothing out there really matches N10 anyway, but I just hope that Steinberg doesn’t ever get a big head and allow that to lower their standards. YMMV.

You sound like T.C. Add a few more pixels to the camera and, “This is the best my-phone ever.” Of course1! The camera has a few more pixels than the previous my-phone. Meanwhile, Sams-phone always had more pixels, and my-phone is trying to catch up. :laughing:

I have had nothing but a very good experience with N10, with the 64 bit ARA problem, that has been fixed in 10.2, I’m pleased with N10

OMG ! The infamous internet forum disease strikes again !

Of course, I am a brainless fanboy or even worse, I work for Steinberg and earn a ton of money by making positive comment. But happily, your very very smart comparison between Nuendo and an iPhone is so helpful and so useful, it demonstrates how brilliant and clever you are. :laughing:

I have no time for this. Have a fun life.

Certainly. Every single DAW I’ve ever used, and most full releases of them, has sounded different in one way or another, be it SAW Studio, Audition, Pro Tools, Pyramix, Quartz, and so on. I can’t really remember how Nuendo 2 and 3 sounded anymore, and I didn’t even know Cubase had gotten a sibling at first release, but the first thing I reacted to when I upgraded to Nuendo 4 was how incredibly much better everything sounded, and how much easier it got to get to where I wanted. This has been true for every single release since then, and this time the level of detail and resolution totally blew me away.
I did however notice that things sounded less heavy and brighter right off the bat when imported into Nuendo 10 than how things had sounded before, and not least when comparing to the original files, as my first gig on Nuendo 10 was a clean-up mastering-gig where I was alternating between Nuendo 10 and Izotope Spectral Repair, and both Wavelab LE (have to prioritize things right now) and (especially) Sound Forge complicated things had I done that there.
This worried me that my mixes would suffer from it, but now, a few weeks in as a happy Nuendo 10 user, I can say that that was no problem! I have to deal a bit differently with EQ and filtering in N10 than I did in previous versions, but from what I can tell right now, things produced here seems to work much better on older versions of Nuendo than the other way around, which means it’s a very good thing by the looks of it right now. The jury’s still out, but right now WIH (What I Hear) when I work seems to be WIG (What I Get) when I render.

:open_mouth: Are you sure about this? Have you tried any null tests? I work a lot between Logic, Nuendo and RX and have never really noticed anything like this. Has anyone else experienced this?

Thank you!

Very comprehensive, and detailed! :slight_smile:

Aahh! Now I get you!

This reminds me of when I moved from Sonar to Sequoia. Sequoia had a different sound. As time went by I realised, that it was showing me more of the mid-range detail; which was a good thing.

Thanx for the explanation!

This worried me that my mixes would suffer from it, but now, a few weeks in as a happy Nuendo 10 user, I can say that that was no problem!

Oh Kaayy …

I have to deal a bit differently with EQ and filtering in N10 than I did in previous versions,

…understandably …

but from what I can tell right now, things produced here seems to work much better on older versions of Nuendo than the other way around, which means it’s a very good thing by the looks of it right now.

This part is a bit confusing, though.

To my knowledge there has been exactly 1 issue between versions, and it was how the EQ behaved. It was essentially a bug that could come back and ‘bite you’ when moving between versions (bug vs fixed bug) if you were unaware of it.

However, this talk about DAWs some how sounding fundamentally different as if the signal processing (not plugins) was different I find to be mythological nonsense. Heck, even most plugins act exactly the same way between versions unless clearly specified.

So I don’t believe this talk about a version sounding better than the other. Do a null test on the basic features and see for yourself.

Aye, I actually used that for effect some years ago when making strange noise-effects. The best results at that time was combining my then Nuendo 7 with Cubase SE 3. By using a short less than a frame long square-wave clip for sample-perfect sync before both renderings, and looping back into Wavelab (nothing ever sounded the same after rendering as it had during mix, and I wanted the full effect…), I got a lovely and extreme phasing usable for many weird things.
Here though, I don’t really need to null things to make sure. It’s an extremely tangible effect already on its own - as it has been every single time - and jumping back and forth between Nuendo and RX when clearing up these lavs only made that effect so much more obvious. The things I I actually did like in the sound - the firm low-mid - simply wasn’t there in Nuendo. Things are sure getting closer and closer to true transparency in Nuendo, but it’s not there yet. I remember Pyramix did, but it’s mostly hardware-based, so it makes sense (and that level of fidelity doesn’t come free), and both Wavelab and Sound Forge plays back raw files perfectly, which I actually can see visually as everything I record is coded in something that is called Verifile, which - simply put - is a way to hardware-code error detection directly into every single sample of the sound (transparently, of course), making my Titan cards light up like a Christmas-tree if there’s a dropout or something.

I’ve never actually got clear answers regarding this, but until someone who actually codes these engines can tell me differently, I’m convinced that this is an artifact from making the multi-track software-based DAWs being able to deal with downright insane amounts of data the same way for instance 3D FPS-games uses (used?) a very simplified and truncating form of calculations with total respect for the fact that CPU’s simply can’t do some calculations very effectively to be even remotely playable on regular PC’s. Which also would explain why Pyramix and Wavelab are totally transparent.
10 years ago I did a full feature-film on my old Core2Duo. 650 tracks a reel, with EQ and compressor on every track, plus several instances of full 5.1 surround Altiverb, automation, and a lot of design effects to boot. By the time, it was the heaviest project I’ve ever done (pretty tame compared to some stuff I’ve done now though), but that math doesn’t add up on its own.

Aahh! Now I get you!

This reminds me of when I moved from Sonar to Sequoia. Sequoia had a different sound. As time went by I realised, that it was showing me more of the mid-range detail; which was a good thing.

Thanx for the explanation!


but from what I can tell right now, things produced here seems to work much better on older versions of Nuendo than the other way around, which means it’s a very good thing by the looks of it right now.

This part is a bit confusing, though.
[/quote]

Regarding Sequoia: Totally hear you.

The confusing bits: Seeing as I have absolutely no influence over the development of these programs, and I can’t really change anything from my side, I’ve never actually dug deeper into this. I only try to find the way that best gets me where I want with the least work required, and build on stuff from there, but to cut a long story short I’ve gotten the impression that the colouration of the sound mainly is an artifact of the realtime playout first and foremost. Might be wrong of course, but that kinda makes sense when things I couldn’t hear in Nuendo 8 now sounds clear as day, meaning that EQ optimized for Nuendo 8 now sounds a wee bit weird on Nuendo 10, but EQ adapted for the much more high-resolution Nuendo 10 only makes an impression comparable to, say, jumping between the PSI-speakers and my old Yamaha when loading the very same project one step back. One can reach a whole new level of precision here that easily transfers backward even if you can’t hear the exact mechanics in the old version, the same way a great mix sounds good no matter if played on a $10.000 audiophile-system or a $1 transistor radio.

+1

Doing some null tests before to give those kinds of remarks is absolutely mandatory.

For me it’s mythological nonsense too.


There are many discussions like this inside forums, but i’ve never seen proofs with null tests.


Seriously…

Too much people are loosing there time in trying to reach some kind of mythological sound quality Nirvana.

This time could be used to learn better mix technics and learn how digital audio behaves at the sampling and processing level.

This is what i will describe as the platinum or diamond ears syndrome.

I think that a mix is better and fastly done with normal ears than with platinum or diamond ears.

This syndrome was not so widespread until digital audio and computing started to deeply change our work.

It is driving a full market of expensive gear, softwares and plugins and is consuming a lot of user time.

There’s so much to say about all this, but I neither have the time nor the patience, so I’ll settle with this:
Bad hearing will lead to bad mixes, and fast doesn’t very often mean good. There is no such thing as “diamond ears”, only more or less well-trained ears. Even people with damaged hearing can often compensate in their monitoring to some degree, reaching great results by knowing what they do and why.
Regarding the quality of gear though- spending too much time on anything for no good reason is not good either, and where I’ve historically spent an insane amount of time and energy working on cheaper consumer-friendly stuff to reach results that transfer well everywhere years before, things virtually mix themselves now that I only use a much smaller but much more reliable and well-sounding collection of software and hardware.
And this is why I love Nuendo - it has always been at least one step ahead of the competition, always evolving tremendously each release. Making work much easier and reducing tweak-time a lot.
Higher sound quality=less time spent working reaching higher results than physically possible using crabby tools.

And yes - when I started out in the early/mid 90’s there were a lot of discussions among sound-people regarding the quality of stuff, pros and cons. At that time you couldn’t even really use a BASF tape on a reel-to-reel machine calibrated for AMPEX without a world of problems, but everyone knew that because if you didn’t know what tape-bias was no studio would hire you. Actually, most of us even tried as far as possible to only work with tapes from the exact same batch because every batch was slightly but still apparently different by nature. That’s the analogue way. Much easier to calibrate to a new batch than to calibrate to a new brand though when the old one ran out. Myself, it was AMPEX 456 that ran through our reels, both 2" 24ch and 1/4" 2 ch.

“The good old days.” :slight_smile:

What year is this? These discussions were worn out long ago.

In the early years, some DAWs used to sound slightly different. Due to either implementation of proprietary hardware (Pyramix, Paris, Fairlight) or poor coding or hardware design practices (mostly early Pro Tools). For instance, Pro Tools "Mix24 " was broken from the beginning with 56 bit internal processing linked in hardware by 24 bit interconnect stages that could cascade to exceed 0dBFS when levels should have remained below clipping in theory. There are other examples of variations in DAW results for various reasons. Google the “Awesome DAWsum” test just for fun.

Those days have passed. There may be some DAW or other that has flaws in it but as a rule, they all sound the same. The ease and intelligence of the workflow design has more to do with results now than any other factor. And one size does not fit all there.

Our great American poet, Michael McDonald said it best long ago: What a fool believes, he sees, no wise man has the power to reason away…

I like Nuendo. Because of the workflow.

Hahaha, yeah :slight_smile:
I was pretty young then and not very experienced yet, but I remember how people were talking about the digital revolution as something that would save us from all the problems of analogue gear. I don’t know who you are and have no clue if you maybe even was doing audio in the 90’s yourself, but suffice it to say we in the studio I was working at spent essentially as much time fixing the beep electronics as recording bands. For instance, I had a lot more fun when we changed every single pot of a huge 32 channel D&R console than my boss did, who had done that before…
Didn’t quite pan out that way though, we were changing one set of problems for a totally new set.
Still, there’s no denying things are way more painless and efficient now, and the things I do on a daily basis now as a movies sound designer and re-dubbing mixer was pure science fiction just a few years ago :slight_smile:

Obviously. There’s a lot of defensiveness about how people wants things to be, but we live in a world of limitations, and that means having to work with the limitations and doing the best out of it. It’s not flaws or bad programming, it’s a compromise between performance and intended use. Until someone invents quantum, computing you can’t really have both on a large project. This is very very obvious in the world of games that can perform much more impressive stuff than the actual computer could ever do itself with regular algorithms, that’s why we got games like Wolfenstein, Doom, and Quake, working on regular PCs the first place.Same here.
What makes these discussions so painful is that the defensive people refuses to use their ears and only cites sources that agrees with them. That is really really annoying and non-constructive.
Myself I did choose Nuendo when I changed from music to movies because it was hands down the best at what it did without me having to spend the cash of a new car. And I remained with Nuendo because it is genuinely a really good program no matter price-range, and the difference between hardware-based DAWs and pure software is slowly fading out. But we’re not there yet.