Question on Final Mixing Quality

[nishanthmani]

Hi-

I'm a beginner to Home based music composing. I use Cubase on the PC and Korg Triton. Most of my tracks are VST based and my triton is nowadays used mainly for MIDI data entry.

I have invested on some good VSTs like STYLUS RMX, Edirol Orchestra, VSTs of Steinberg, Garriton etc. I do not normally have any mic recorded audio tracks. However, the output from these VSTs doesn't sound all that good (near professional) in the final mix of the tracks.

The question - is this because I'm using a built-in sound card? I have installed asio4all asio driver. Since I'm not recording audio to my tracks and using only VSTi on all tracks, do I really need a good sound card like M-Audio to get a decent output mix? Or is this a ' good mixing tips' question?

I want to know whether its a problem with poor mixing or poor sound card that I'm unable to get good quality output from these VSTi tracks.

Cheers,
Nish.

[brandondrury]

I have invested on some good VSTs like STYLUS RMX, Edirol Orchestra, VSTs of Steinberg, Garriton etc. I do not normally have any mic recorded audio tracks. However, the output from these VSTs doesn't sound all that good (near professional) in the final mix of the tracks.

The final mix should sound EXACTLY like it does immediately before you hit the export button. So if you immediately open your mix in Windows Media Player, does it sound exactly like it does when you were finished mixing? If not, you have a problem.

Or is the problem in your mixing abilities?

After we define the problem, I can give specific advice.

Brandon

[jdaug]

I can see the soundcard affecting the performance of the VST's (like how many you can run at one time, latency, etc) but not necessarily the sound quality. Brandon asked the correct question: if your mix sounds bad before you mixdown, thats one thing, but if it sounds good before mixdown then sounds crappy as an MP3 or wav on the same system with the same monitors, thats something else.

do the vst's sound bad when you are soloing them in cubase?

[richiebee]

VI's like Garritan Personal Orchestra, and probably even more so the Edirol Orchestra, need a lot of work to make them sound good. You have to consider phrasing and dynamics probably more than you'd expect.