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Quality loss when resampling?

Posted: Mon Aug 27, 2012 12:02 am
by Nyyx
Ok so for example, lets say I had a snare right? Its constructed from like 3 samples, compressed together, bounced, and bam, I have myself a nice new snare that cracks so hard you'll fill your pants. Ok so I was comparing said snare with the original and what did I find? It's ever so subtly tamer than the original... What is going on here? When I resampled it, it was capping out right at 0 db. And when playing the new sample, I've got all the levels set at 0 db, (and the sample itself) but yet it just doesn't have the same ferocity as its original blend. I'm confused. It should in my mind sound EXACTLY the same. Is this the cost of resampling? Granted it is minor, but it DOES make a difference.

Re: Quality loss when resampling?

Posted: Mon Aug 27, 2012 12:03 am
by Kilo Graham
Nyyx wrote:Ok so for example, lets say I had a snare right? Its constructed from like 3 samples, compressed together, bounced, and bam, I have myself a nice new snare that cracks so hard you'll fill your pants. Ok so I was comparing said snare with the original and what did I find? It's ever so subtly tamer than the original... What is going on here? When I resampled it, it was capping out right at 0 db. And when playing the new sample, I've got all the levels set at 0 db, (and the sample itself) but yet it just doesn't have the same ferocity as its original blend. I'm confused. It should in my mind sound EXACTLY the same. Is this the cost of resampling? Granted it is minor, but it DOES make a difference.
Are you going to .wav? Do you bounce down in real time?

Re: Quality loss when resampling?

Posted: Mon Aug 27, 2012 12:19 am
by Nyyx
Yeah, bounced to .wav. I don't even know what you mean by real time....

Re: Quality loss when resampling?

Posted: Mon Aug 27, 2012 12:23 am
by Kilo Graham
Nyyx wrote:Yeah, bounced to .wav. I don't even know what you mean by real time....
Which DAW? maybe other DAWs don't have this distinction

Re: Quality loss when resampling?

Posted: Mon Aug 27, 2012 12:31 am
by Nyyx
Ableton. I'm pretty sure I did everything correctly.

Re: Quality loss when resampling?

Posted: Mon Aug 27, 2012 12:37 am
by Kilo Graham
Nyyx wrote:Ableton. I'm pretty sure I did everything correctly.
Looks like ableton doesn't have the feature, but people want them to have it. At any rate, it sounds like the bouncing/exporting/resampling isn't capturing every nuance of the played sound. when you use realtime exporting it's supposed to do it directly. Shrug!

As far as your problem goes, yeah I have no idea. That's what I would do in my DAW, I don't know what to suggest for you but I'm bumping the post so hopefully someone else will.

Re: Quality loss when resampling?

Posted: Mon Aug 27, 2012 12:50 am
by Nyyx
Damn. Alright well thanks for your help anyway man.

Re: Quality loss when resampling?

Posted: Mon Aug 27, 2012 1:07 am
by Kilo Graham
Hey I did some digging for you. Found this gem on ableton's forum, looks like a way to cheat and do realtime "exporting" (really just recording the master).

"When bouncing offline, some strange things can happen with calculations (plugin with an oversampling feature and such...). Try bouncing in real time: -> add track -> set your in's to resampling -> set monitor to off -> arm track -> record. Now your recorded master's output should sound exactly the same."

Let us know if that sounds right to you.

Re: Quality loss when resampling?

Posted: Mon Aug 27, 2012 2:52 am
by Nyyx
Unless I'm doing it wrong, the samples are actually sounding way quieter now using that method.

Re: Quality loss when resampling?

Posted: Mon Aug 27, 2012 7:13 am
by Efrafa11
Nyyx wrote:Ok so for example, lets say I had a snare right? Its constructed from like 3 samples, compressed together, bounced, and bam, I have myself a nice new snare that cracks so hard you'll fill your pants. Ok so I was comparing said snare with the original and what did I find? It's ever so subtly tamer than the original... What is going on here? When I resampled it, it was capping out right at 0 db. And when playing the new sample, I've got all the levels set at 0 db, (and the sample itself) but yet it just doesn't have the same ferocity as its original blend. I'm confused. It should in my mind sound EXACTLY the same. Is this the cost of resampling? Granted it is minor, but it DOES make a difference.
Your probably clipping a bit, You should try not to bounce your snare so hot, bounce it a good few db below 0db and compare to the original at the same reduced level. Also, how hot are you running the rest of the mix? Are you comparing the snares with in the mix? What are your compressor settings like? You can easily kill the punch of a snare with shoddy compression usage, or maybe your samples might need a bit of eqing to sit together nicely. If you turned you snare down and it still isn't where you want you could try a transient shaper.

Re: Quality loss when resampling?

Posted: Mon Aug 27, 2012 8:40 am
by RandoRando
ive always resampled by making a new audio track and setting its input to reasampling. I didnt know there was any other way lol. Well i know about the freezing than dragging into an audio lane but that seemed unnecessary for just record one snare .

Re: Quality loss when resampling?

Posted: Mon Aug 27, 2012 3:27 pm
by Nyyx
Nah man, I got my compression on LOCK. ;-) The samples are sublime and everything meshes wonderfully. So basically, I just bumped up the bounced sample by 1 db and it sounds exactly the same... Who knows....Workssss for me.

Re: Quality loss when resampling?

Posted: Mon Aug 27, 2012 8:01 pm
by Efrafa11
So wait, you were peaking at 0db and you turned it up? Image
Were you at 0db on your mixer channel or just the bounced wav?
Did you normalize to get them to 0db out of curiosity?

Re: Quality loss when resampling?

Posted: Wed Aug 29, 2012 4:28 am
by MasterShake 239
Quick question? do you sample them in the key of the track your working or do you put it in a sampler vst? this shit has been bugging me for ages. i don't know what come first.

Re: Quality loss when resampling?

Posted: Wed Aug 29, 2012 6:59 am
by Nyyx
Yes, it was peaking at 0 db before I bumped it up by 1 db on the mixer channel. I know pushing it above that is a "no no", but I was more so just testing to see if that quality could match that of the original. It sound exactly identical that way. Not that I would leave it like that in a mix or anything. And MasterShake, that question plagued me forever. Honestly? If you're talking about synths, I don't even bother resampling until I know for sure what I want as far as programming notes, automations, etc etc. I am constantly tweaking, so I feel I would just be unhappy with a bounced down copy. Granted, you can take it even further with a resampled note, but hopefully you get what I'm getting at. As far as drums though... Well a proper library of that shit is very ideal. And that's the bulk of my resampling.