Cubase SX mix good, audio mixdown bad but..

[E.D.]

Hello all, my first post.

I scanned the forum and found several references to this problem: the song sounds good (EQ'd, mixed) in CubaseSX, but the exported mixdown sounds boomy and bad. Brandon asked these posters if it sounded good in Cubase but not in WMP. This is exactly the situation we have.

A twist: the mixdown sounds ok (in Windows Media Player or in VLC media player) if Cubase remains open. However, when we close Cubase and reopen the mixed down .wav in WMP or VLC, it sounds bad. Not a pitch change, just boomy, like too much bass and reverb, and muffled.

(OK here's where I admit my husband is the musician and I am just helping with the cptr stuff because he...is not that way inclined).

He has a Toshiba laptop running XP Pro SP2, 1.7 MHz with 1.5 GB RAM. The soundcard is a Realtek HighDefinition Audio.

I checked the sample rate. Project setup shows it is 44.1 kHz sample rate and 16 bit. That is how it was exported - as a wav (PCM/uncompressed wav), Stereo interleaved, 16 bit, 44.1. We turned off antivirus and wireless prior to mixdown..

Any thoughts?
Your site and the forums are really informative. Thanks!Edie

[richiebee]

Sounds like it might be a driver issue with your Realtek card. It could be that Cubase is using an ASIO driver and WMP isn't... unless there's already an ASIO driver open (which would be the case if Cubase is open).

Not sure if this is the case, but its the only thing I can think of. What happens if you burn your project ot a CD and play it on a CD player? Good or bad?

[magno]

I've found that if not carefull, especially with large track counts, you can be overloading a compressor somewhere. It will sound ok during mixing but once printed it stands out horribly.
Try checking/unchecking "Real-Time Export" and see if that changes things?

[E.D.]

thank you both for your quick help

Richiebee, I think that's the answer. Makes sense. If I play the same .wav file on my PC over the network, it sounds fine. It sounds good on the laptop ONLY if Cubase is open, even if it is played in WMP.

SO, now my question is: how do I tell the laptop (and other media players) to default to the ASIO driver? (Is this what I should be attempting?)

Thanks again,
Edie

[richiebee]

can't seem to find anything on changing the drivers to ASIO in WMP or any other media player for that matter. I wonder then, instead, whether if you have the option for EQ or other effects in your sound card's control panel, whether straightening everything out there would have the same effect. My office computer has like a SoundMAX card or something. It gives me the option to choose the type of speakers I am using. This probably has an effect of EQing them accordingly... possibly setting some kind of spacial DSP too. I've seen simillar control panels that actually have a paragraphic EQ. If yours has this, flattening everything will hopefully give you the same kind of frequency response as the ASIO driver does.

I wonder if the issue is because you're using an ASIO driver that isn't specific to your sound card... so there isn't a match between the ASIO driver and whatever the computer uses when the ASIO driver isn't open.

Really not too sure about this. The easy answer is to upgrade to a professional audio interface that has matching ASIO and MME(?) drivers, but I'm guessing you'd rather not do this just for this purpose.

Are you using ASIO4ALL as the ASIO driver?

[E.D.]

richiebee...

In answer to your question about the ASIO, I'm not entirely sure how to investigate the ASIO driver.

• Windows Device Manager shows the Realtek HighDefinition Audio; the driver is listed for the soundcard but no mention of "ASIO".

• In Cubase>device setup>VST Multitrack>ASIO Driver, it shows "ASIO multimedia driver" (other options on that drop down are "ASIO DirectX Full Duplex Driver" and "Presonus ASIO Driver (Firebox)".

My PC has an Audigy2 soundcard and that is where we would burn any CDs anyway, so I agree we are unlikely to upgrade the laptop system. But, the laptop is handy to move around and use with the Firebox to record the band.

Thanks again for taking the time to help us through this.
Edie

[magno]

I would either disable the realtek and monitor through the firebox, or unplug the firebox when you want to use the onboard(realtek) soundcard.
In cubase you should have it pointing to you presonus asio device.

[richiebee]

Aha... so, like Magno suggests... disable the realtek card altogether and use the Firebox all the time. This is your pro-audio interface. If you still have the problem, then its probably not the whole driver thing.

[E.D.]

Excellent!

Thankyou Magno and richiebee.. I guess I didn't understand that "proaudio interface" meant Firebox; we can hook up to that for mixing.

Edie

[brandondrury]

I've found that if not carefull, especially with large track counts, you can be overloading a compressor somewhere. It will sound ok during mixing but once printed it stands out horribly

Just curious. Wouldn't the compressor be overloaded while hitting play on the mix, too? I'm confused why there would be a difference between rendering and hitting play.

Brandon