I was deeply involved with hands on testing of the audio/summing engines of every DAW then available about 15 years ago. It was done in a public forum and subject to scrutiny by pretty much everyone on the internet.
I used my ears. Apparently they work pretty well. I could spot both Pyramix end EMU Paris 10 out of 10 times in listening tests but everything else sounded the same, being fully software-based. The two I could spot, coincidentally, were the only two that were proprietary DSP based. That seemed to make my ability to spot them seem much more logical. Not everyone could hear the difference but some of us could in controlled testing.
So here is an opportunity for your ear usage.I’m going to print the same mix in both Nuendo 8 and Nuendo 10, after muting any variable effects like reverb, etc. I will mute the vocals since this will have been a commercially released project. I will then post a link to them both as full WAV files and you can tell us which one sounds like Nuendo 8 and which one sounds like Nuendo 10. It shouldn’t be hard to spot, given the difference in the bass, midrange and high frequencies due to Steinberg apparently making covert changes in the audio engine.
I’ll get to that in the next couple of days. Unless Steinberg shuts this down first which would not surprise me. However, I hope they don’t because I’m feeling strangely invigorated by getting into my first pencil head internet audio debate in years. Surprisingly, it’s kind of fun! And I’m not mad at all I just find this fascinating in a retro sort of way.
Peace.