Weird Cubase Problem

Z

zadfz

New member
With my band, we play in the garage each with a pair of earphone (question not wake the kids).

Each instrument is on an individual track, each with EQ, Compressor, etc ...

My electronic drum, I have a vst (addictive drum).
We play live (recording at the same time) with all the effects, the sound is really perfect.


The problem where we listen to the record we just made. The sound is really bad.
The bass is almost gone, I have difficult to hear the kick of the drum and the bass track.
Either with headphones or the sound system.


Even if I transfer recording WAVE or MP3, the problem is still present.

I don't understand why there is such a difference of sound from the "live performance" vs What it recorded.

What can cause this?
 
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Are you mixing the rehearsals? Can't you just turn up the bassand kick, or EQ them to get more low end?

There could be a couple things happening:

1. The headphone mix seems better because you are playing and things can feel better than they actually are while you are performing.

2. You need less kick and bass in your headphones for everyone to hear what is going on. If that is the mix that you are making a cd of, it won't sound great. The stage monitor mix at a live show doesnt sound like the main mix, because they serve two different purposes.

3. You may not be remixing the performance. You need to act like it is a record and use EQ and compression to make it sound like a record.
 
Even if I adjust the EQ the sound is really poor.

I Made a test to put my earphone and let someone else play the drum in the same time of the bass, the sound is good (live performance), I'm sure it's not an issues of feeling things better than they are !

How the "stage monitor mix" and "main mix" can be adjust to have the same results ?
 
It depends on how you are monitoring. What are you listening to? What is different between the headphone mix and what you have in cubase?

Can you just record the headphone mix into cubase?
 
Farview said:
It depends on how you are monitoring. What are you listening to? What is different between the headphone mix and what you have in cubase?

Can you just record the headphone mix into cubase?
Click to expand...

I'm new to music software/recording and not very good in english. I'm not used to the term of "Headphone mix".
I Will try to explain how I work with cubase, you'll probably have answer to your question.

So got my PC with CuBase 5
my interface is a Presonus Firebox.

1 guitar in input 1/mono
1 guitar in input 1/mono
1 bass in input 3/mono (on the back, so it's not pre-amplified)
1 drum in midi input/stereo with the vst Toontrack DrumKitFromHell

Each track have it's own vst (eq, compressor, etc...).
The track "Stereo Out" also have vst (eq, compressor, etc...)

When we play, I click on the "speaker button" and "record button" of each track.
When the "speaker button" is highlight, we can hear us play in our headphone.

Then I only press the 'main' record button (where you can find the rewind, foward, stop, pause and play).

We play while it's recording. In our headset the sound is very good (while playing).
After the song, I stop, then rewind. I remove the highlight of the "speaker button" and "record button" of each track and then press play to ear the mix.

The result is very different with the sound we heard while playing.
 
Could it be that you are recording through the plugins and then playing back through the plugins? In other words, is the audio going through the plugins twice?
 
You would have to figure out if you are recording the output of the plugins, or if you are recording the raw signal.

If you are recording the output of the plugins, then sending that signal through the plugins again when you are listening back, it could make it sound bad.

The easiest way to check is to turn off all the plugins when you listen back. If it sounds like what you are used to hearing, then that is your problem.
 
if you're tracking in a good signal between -10 thru -4. disable master plugins. disable channel plugins.
check your vst connections, if you're mixing itb make sure the control room section is enabled and routed correctly. I've notice when I had routed the signal directly to some outs before setting this up I had this issue with their studio/live board. on the firestudio mobile had the same thing but I also had to make sure the driver switched itself into "DAW Control only" mode. I had to update drivers and firmware to fix the firestudio mode switching issue.

once you got the system routed correctly,

one by one set up on each channel, your plugins.
the master should be last.

also if you're recording "hot" (above -6) you'll need to select all of the channels, group them then bring them down 60% (mine range usually around -20 to -12 on the mixer) so you get black (headroom) back into master meter. I would switch master to "nordic" meter mode and bring the levels to peak at around "T" then adjust your monitor amp to your listening level. Never use the master fader for the monitor volume control, it should be at 0 db.

also, your input sliders should be at 0db. I could never understand why cuebase and nuendo did that input mixer. but I noticed one time when I updated cuebase, it set them to -infinity and disabled all of my resize windows and had to resetup the system. I also noticed that some of the advanced funtions are not in the options menu but I wouldn't recommend poking around in the xml files unless you know what you're doing.
 
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