Another little thing that I edited out because the video was too long but still worth discussing. Is it it possible with the effects of audible aliasing that we end up over possibly over eq'ing to regain what we've possibly lost due to the aliasing. Could it be argued that you may require less eq with an oversampled plugin or a plugin that doesn't alias a lot. Is it maybe a reason why we see more plugin chains to maintain that punch and clarity that we desire. Do we end up adding more plugins subconsciously because we aren't possibly correlating that we've instantly lost a bit of clarity just running through an audibly aliasing plugin. Very very subjective thought but one that came to me randomly whilst filming the video Not wanting to start heated debates but thought I'd include as the idea interests me 🤓
It's certainly possible. But this is not just aliasing.. that's anything really. And I'll take the chance to once again advertise my approach to mixing: One of the reasons I like my plugins (with the exception of tape and sound-designy-plugins) to be one trick-poneys, mostly, is this: I don't want to introduce ANYTHING apart from what I'm using the plugin for. Because chances are whatever else I introduce is something I will have to work against at a later point.. and if I have to work against it with a plugin that introduces a new thing apart from fixing the first thing, chances are I'll need another one.. etc. etc. Stuff stacks up. Problems stack up. You want to fix as little as possible and thus you have to be very concious of what you add. The number of times I've been happy with a production and fucked it up in mixing is simply too high. Overmixing is a problem. Spamming analogue emulations on tracks is a problem (unless you know your chain very, very, very well). I'm sure aliasing is one of the problems one can introduce. Wether you know it's aliasing or not is a whole other topic.
100% agree with this. My chains are becoming smaller and actually cleaner with every mix. That's a good way to put it in terms of stacking chains of plugins. A plug may give you one thing that you want it to do but affects negatively in another way and instead of fixing the negative you just carry on with the positive and before you know it you have lots of stuff you want but left scratching your head why other problems have arisen. Very true and something I'm learning more and more with every mix I do 🤓
Yes, definitely! Speaking as a novice mixer, I over eq. It just happened to be I’m using almost exclusively Waves plugs- NLS every channel w/ buss on master, as well as SSL E channel on every single channel too. So your above comment sums up a heck of a lot in my situation. Going to explore oversampling options after having watched your videos now, Paul 👍 Very much appreciated.
"Could it be argued that you may require less eq with an oversampled plugin or a plugin that doesn't alias a lot. Is it maybe a reason why we see more plugin chains to maintain that punch and clarity that we desire. Do we end up adding more plugins subconsciously because we aren't possibly correlating that we've instantly lost a bit of clarity just running through an audibly aliasing plugin." YES! I just posted a (too long) comment touching this actually, didn't notice you already raised discussion about it... I have a feeling that this exact phenomenon is very much more common than one might think, and I'm pretty sure it's exactly what has happened to me. If you go like "yeah I slam this Lindell here, these three old modeling comps here aaa whadda vocal chain uuuh" - and end up putting a Soothe or a dynamic eq in the chain later down the road to deal with a lot of extra harmonics or whistles or whatnot irritations, you can be pretty much sure that unless someone recorded the track with a lot of processing or you f'd up the gain staging, you should just delete that chain and start over on another day with fresh ears and add no plugin by default. Happened to me, and not too long ago. You can get enamoured by saturation and regret later!
Mate, I can hear the difference on my phone. That's exactly why I really hate aliasing. BUT what you said is right not all things in a mix have to sound like that. If your computer can not handle high sample rates just pick the most important tracks in a song and oversample only those plugins. Plus busses because you can ruin a group of great tracks with a shitty plugin on a buss. My rule is main vocal, lead, snare, overheads and busses and that is for pop music. Great video and I am happy to be here.
Thanks for all your good explanations about aliasing. In the end, it is always good to know about this, because, the worst scenario would be that you have a problem and you don't know it.
Power to you for not giving up on spreading awareness of this very digital "challenge". I was one of those 80s guys who sold almost all my analogue gear when digital took hold... many moons later I work "hybrid" specifically because of digital aliasing. I think you've wrapped the "plugins aliasing" in a box and put a bow on it! Next topic..? Aliasing in virtual synths!! ;-)
Have to say the back and forth between you and Dan, and your videos has helped me understand when it's worth worrying about, and when it's not. I use Waves Guitar amp as a parallel distortion channel sometimes and with that high gain, turning on 'HD' or oversampling does make an audible difference, however with less full on subtle saturation it isnt worth worrying about aliasing in a lot of cases
Yeah man it's all about context. When it comes to guitars I'm considering just buying a few pedals for drive instead of using plugin fx. I know neural dsp and stuff utilise oversampling and from what I've been told they do quite a good job so I'm considering maybe buying the Cory wong clean amp sim and printing drives via pedals. I may try a few of their amps as well. As a guitarist I can sometimes use a lot of guitars so I have to be wary that I don't get that build up which can occur very quickly with amp sim distortion
@@PaulThird Ah I see. I'm not using it for Guitar, I make drum and bass and using in Parallel to give a top end edge to basses, synths, and even drums sometimes, those style of drums have a ridiculous amount of high frequencies so are a prime target for creating aliasing. On the Parallel channel I use a high pass using a linear phase EQ, something I also learnt from the UA-cam Audio community ha
Thanks Paul for the perspective. This video was very helpful. All your points about aliasing earlier are valid 1) It's best to avoid it if you can, 2) Its good to be aware that it exists and 3) Epecially in lower sample rates.
When judging the accuracy of analogue emulations, aliasing is a critical factor. When trying to bridge the gap between digital workflow and analogue sound, aliasing is a critical factor. People are so eager to get lost in the "magic" of analogue emulation, the thing is- they actually could if they just paid attention to what's under the fucking hood.
Another interesting one, well put....to my mind it is indeed understanding these things may affect one's sound that's the most important thing. My old ears aren't as good as yours at hearing these things so I was surprised that I could pick out the the non-OS one in those blind tests at the end. Your description of losing some of the transient is what gets comes across for me.....more than any saturation as I couldn't definitely tell the 4xOS from the dry. This was just on my good for what they are PC speakers. Shall try again with some better monitoring later.
i was able to hear the difference though it was extremely subtle. i heard the aliasing as an mp3-like smearing in the hi-mids. the OS had more clarity to it. i'm curious what You are hearing that allows you to discern the difference. thanks for another good one. cheers
Punch and feel for me as well a wee bit more clarity. The aliasing sits back for me with like this cloudy sheen over it (basically the smearing you are referring to) where the os is the most forward. Dry sits in the middle. Still subtle but will be even more through YT. It's a quick easy test though so my hope is that those who struggle through YT would maybe do the test themselves. In the daw it's enough to pick out and that's gain staged at - 18dbfs, thd 3/4 so probs best case scenario. Hit it at - 6 or something like that it's a lot more identifiable. However its still subjective
charts. look into your favorite song and try and emulate it in the box. pual And others get me thinking. they run through a desk maybe or even ADC/ DAC that are never turnt off? so how can we truly have that sound. sage audio has good stuff on top of this that made me stop crying over my mixing skills lol
Probably doesn't need a video tbh. Thd is short for total harmonic distortion. Harmonic distortion means that the distortion is musically related to the fundamental so a 1khz tone would have harmonic overtones (so they exceed the fundamental) which are essentially octaves so if you imagine playing an open A note on a guitar and then playing the octave up which would be an A on the 2nd fret of the G string. That would be your first order harmonic I.e. That's how you make a harmonised guitar Solo by playing the same note but in different octaves. They are in harmony with one another So in plugin doctor at 1k you can see overtones at 2,3,4,5,6,7k, 2k would have harmonics at 4,6,8,10k etc. Harmonics are just overtones that are octaves of the fundamental. Distortion that doesn't have any 'octave' relevence to the fundamental would be classed as in-harmonic and non musical. That's the best I can describe THD with what I know 🤓
Paul, this is a great video on the subject - again. Thanks! Good for me, because I deal with saturation in the box every day. It's essential to the way I produce and mix - at least when there wasn't analog saturation available when recording. Some years back, I didn't know aliasing as a phenomenon at all, and it might be the reason behind a couple of old mixes going sour. Thankfully those mixes ended up sounding "OK" (ish), but had I known about the cause, I wouldn't have had to go through a massive amount of work dealing with those artefacts! Talk about climbing ass forward... I also get you on the feeling of having difficulties in explaining things... Everyday life to me. But luckily some people have patience to listen thoroughly. You know, so that your way to present your ideas doesn't harm in the end, actually the opposite: it can become your strength because you really try to dig in instead of oversimplifying. And react. Like in your previous video's discussion, I kinda thought we disagreed on a detail or two, but you corrected this in the comments! The comment section is a fantastic additional tool for this, although I bet most don't spend their precious time reading it (I know I should do it less...) Anyway. The matter of subjectivity is possibly a bit underrated in the field of music production, especially the "technical end" of it (mix/master). Good thing you bring that up. It's a fact that no technical inferiority really matters unless it's detrimental to the end product's effect in how the listener feels while listening to it. What a sentence! :D Aliasing, sounding like analog/hardware or not... Whether all that matters? Subjective. Sometimes it does - or should I say CAN. But usually not for the listener. As long as the song and performance comes through and touches at least the most potential "fans" of the sort of music in question, the mix is a success... BUT, when we put the Mixing Engineer hat on, it's good we KNOW all the reasons why the mix CAN go crappy - but we shouldn't let it chain our creativity! You have a more thorough way of explaining than many, and I like it that someone takes the risk of being misunderstood by being themselves. It gives me hope I guess. :D
The subjectivity stuff is tough I'm not gonna lie cause we all have our own opinions but I think as long as I have that in the back of my mind and I try and put other hats on when thinking about what I say I should be fine haha I'll always run into issues and misinterpretations here and there, and also just completely misunderstand something myself but I'd much rather others learn from my mistakes and have an open platform to discuss rather than believing everything that's rammed down our throats on youtube and not feeling that we can debate or ask questions. I'll always get people who jump down my throat about certain things cause they just don't like me but as long as I know I'm doing the right thing I couldn't really care. If I'm wrong I'll try and correct it if I'm not then i'll argue my corner but still with the understanding I may be proved wrong by somebody else with a different perspective UA-cam is a very fine balance especially when you've not got a few grammys or a big studio with tons of gear behind you haha 😜
@@PaulThird Yeah. You got it there just perfectly IMO. And I can relate to that so well, although as a UA-camr I'm just starting out so no experience of that sorta hatred. I actually wish there was at least some trolls or haters commenting, as long as someone even looked at the damn videos one day! :D I think some people have lost the ability or the courage to publicly change their minds when they're proven wrong, and it may reflect as their hastiness in jumping at throats when someone dares to take the risk and set oneself out there raising questions on public, especially when it's about "generally accepted truths". Maybe jealousy or feeling threatened in a way? Dunno really. I know and you know, that often the thought behind all the questioning is more philosophical and/or intended as a provocation to make people think about some interesting detail in depth for themselves, rather than sayin "all the superhero producers with their oversimplified advice are wrong". But it's extremely hard to get accross right to many people. School-bully mentality is another one: if they spot a "weakness" (which is in reality often courage to just be yourself) they jump on it, and well... if you're an easy goal, you're an easy goal, and the reason can be something completely pointless.
UA-cam is something that you have to learn. To grow you have to give the algorithm what it wants first. In the early stages you are in the hards of the algorithm. I tried the whole songwriting thing on youtube and it bombed. You need to look into what youtube wants to promote in your field and look for fresh ideas at the start. Then you can start to do what you want. You need to think about how to rank high in your titles, a lot about thumbnails, good descriptions. There's a lot that goes into it. You've got to always think 'what value am I adding to this video that they won't already know' Some times you've gotta think click baity but still deliver. In songwriting you could do things like 'how to write an Ed sheeran style song like a pro producer' click baity titles with click baity thumbnails but still deliver what you claimer. Show a teaser of the finished song at the very start of the video to stop them from moving on. You've got to study others that do what you want to do on youtube and see what works and what you could do differently. Look for what people want to watch. You've got to see youtube as a shop window and you've got to entice people with what your selling or nobody will ever click. Then once they've clicked you've got to keep them engaged. Short, snappy, to the point. Get to the action as quick as possible and keep them engaged at all times. Never drop the ball. Always delivering at every second. Ditch the pauses, the stuff that doesn't need to be there and just keep hitting them with as much information as possible. I'm always happy to help others when it comes to youtube but it all depends if you want to really grow. Once you make friends with the algorithm and you build a fanbase it's just about consistency and not getting lazy. Always keep improving and ensure that your audience knows for sure that there is new content to subscribe for every week. Honestly man every video you make counts as you may have only one shot in front of them. They swipe or leave early, the algorithm won't show you again unless you have a video that's doing well. UA-cam is a very hard grind but you just need to know how it works and what's required if you want to get an engaged audience
@@PaulThird Jeez man, million thanks for this! I'm amazed that someone spends all that time to give a hand and precious advice to some random dude from the north pole. Yeah, I know I got a lot to learn in not dropping the ball. The videos thus far aren't exactly successful youtube material and I know that I kinda made a mistake not to hone the craft more first. But I just had to "just start" (finally) and start uploading content. And while creating the content and getting it out there even if it wasn't all that perfect, I intend to develop in all these areas. I kinda see UA-cam as a way to unload all that's piled up into the desk drawer and maybe give something to someone while doing so. But I think I need to re-evaluate my strategy a bit now that I got your advice. So it won't go to waste. The videos I've uploaded thus far actually represent a quite hasty start also because I've been contemplating starting this for years and came to a "now or never situation"... I think I could do better if I just think (and script..) a bit more. I actually knew some of those things on your list, but there's this stupid idealist inside me that keeps jarring all the clickbait stuff.. I'm not looking at UA-cam with the intention that it becomes a full time job in itself - unless it leads to that naturally - but more like an extension of promoting my doings in music and adding to teaching songwriting and producing face to face. Kinda "something to show to potential customers IRL" u know. Of course, hugging the algorithm would help that just as well, and it's absolutely on my agenda to develop in this. In the end of course I would love to succeed out here too, but I'm not expecting anything. But if I do, it will be in my style, which may or may not work and so be it. Being a musician, songwriter and producer IRL comes first to me anyway. :) (not to piss on youtubing at all!) Thanks for your super valuable advice, Paul. I'll go through it with thought at a better time. You got my sincere appreciation. Peace.
One more point i want to add considering internal oversampling in plugins: sound of it often depends on the type of antialiasing filter used to filter out high frequencies before downsampling: minimum phase, mixed or linear phase. Some developers are worried that you may use oversampled plugin in a parralel chain, so they use either linear or mixed phase filter, and because this filter is super steep, as a result even though it's located above 20khz, you still can hear pre-ringing, and often it may sound good and fool you into believing it's the sound of no aliasing. Cytomic The Glue provides options of antialiasing filters to choose from, and yeah, linear phase filter sounds very different, while with minimum phase i can barely hear any difference between oversampling and no oversampling.
See this is all the stuff I'm planning to dive into as the more comments i see regarding oversampling mention different tonal impacts dependent on the oversampling used by the developer. I do not know enough yet in regards to oversampling but my hope is to ask around and hopefully be able to make a video in the near future regarding oversampling with some tests and some background info but I'll admit I'm not there yet to make a video
Hey Paul, I came back around to this video to see if you've tested any of the Plugin Alliance BX plugins for aliasing. I've stayed away from them because of this (no obvious oversampling option). I recently commented on a Plugin Alliance Facebook post selling their SSL 4000 G, which is on sale. I said that I liked the plugin a lot, but was gun shy on their products due to the lack of oversampling (I'm using almost all exclusively Acustica Audio at this point). This was their reply and I'd love your take or insight: "All analog modeled plugins “made by BX” apply oversampling internally whenever it is necessary, in a really clever way. We are typically not simply oversampling the whole plugin, as this would increase the CPU/DSP load unnecessarily in most cases. Especially on DSP systems, where a plugin always has to “reserve” the worst case DSP load this wouldn’t be great. The same would be true for plugins like our SSL console emulations, which get used on dozens of channels in many mixes. CPU/DSP efficiency is key here. The way our system works is that we basically make sure that any crucial part of analog modeled circuits run with a sample rate of at least 176Khz internally. Our Upsampling Settings, depending on your session settings: - Below 50kHz (for example 44.1 and 48): 4x - Below 100kHz (for example 88.2 and 96): 2x - Above 100kHz (176.4 and 192): 1x We don’t offer these Upsampling modes to be selectable or switchable by the user, because we believe they are highly optimized for each circuit and application the way we have integrated our Upsampling".
Tbh they do internally oversample but that still doesn't mean it's enough in their heavier saturation plugins (spl iron, vsm3 etc) But tbh they are pretty decent on the most part but really cause they don't need it in most cases. Aliasing is only important when it's audible so ssl for example. You'd need to hit that thing stupidly hard to get audible aliasing out of it. You need to look at the levels of aliasing before considering if oversampling is important. If it's got aliasing at -90/100.. What are you worried about. Nobody can hear it. Doctor makes everything look worse cause it goes down so low to like -140db. But they do internally oversample. That's not BS. I know cause of the anti aliasing filters
@@PaulThird thanks Paul! Now I feel beter about using their plugins. In this day and age aliasing should never be an issue. I get it about aliasing being in the audible range with one insert, but when you have lots of plugins going on a mix, with compression, saturation, etc..you get that cloudy build up of aliasing. My mixes are night and day better now since Ive learned all of this.
Carful, Dan's watching 😆😁 Anyway, just want to thank you for the correct way of using the Sonimus plugins (Satson n Britson) in one of your videos. For years I was using them wrong. 🤜🏾🤛🏻
I think he'll agree with this one haha And I'm still glad I looked into the sonimus stuff. I use Britson on everything I do. The routing and grouping is essential for me. Has a sound I really love 🤓
The "bass" on Kiss by Prince is made with aliasing :P Just noticed today they put it on the radio while I was driving, the kick drum I'm pretty sure is pitched down with an old sampler, I think Prince had the Oberheim drum machine and he loved pitching down drums with it, the elongated kick drum serves as the bass for the song and you can hear very well all the nasty downsampling artifacts generated by the old OB.
@@PaulThird ah, i forgot... he's not completely in the box, he still uses his widening chain Eventide H3000 + SRS, but they are digital boxes and they may alias internally, so... No analog outboard when mixing though.
Analog modeling plugins cannot compare to the actual hardware in terms of quality (and of course authenticity). Many linear plugins have their place for sure, but not for accurately replicating the real hardware (imho).
I'd say it's subjective and depends on the gear and the dev. I've had some shootouts where your just not justifying any difference. Some sound even subjectively identical and some even sound better to many. Many variables
At some point I stopped testing for aliasing with test tones and switched to doing blind testing with actual music. I pretty much stopped worrying about the issue from then on.
Interesting. Just as every blind test I've done on it has made me worry more as I could pick it out everytime and I know I didn't like it but if it doesn't bother you then it's nothing to worry about 🤓
Great video! I stumbled on it while working on some neural guitar effect plugin projects. Since I'm doing a lot of high gain amp modeling, aliasing is going to be a certainty. Because of your video, I'm likely looking at a 2x-4x oversampling option for 44.1kHz and 48kHz sampling rates in my plugin. Not sure I can make the code run fast enough to support anything higher than that but 4x oversampling at 48kHz should be sufficient I think.
Another point about stacking analog emulations is the difference between OS plugins and running at higher sample rate. OS plugins are generally a better choice for this reason -- ie, when you stack analog at high sample rate (no OS), the higher harmonics from earlier stages feed later stages causing even worse aliasing. With oversampling there's always a LPF to cut out things above Nyquist. So stacks of oversampled plugins will run cleaner than stacks at same equivalent sample rate, assuming you do not manually insert LPFs between every stage to replicate the filtering. So if all plugs I use support oversampling, then I'd always choose OS instead of running at higher sample rate.
It's definitely something I'll need to look into because a few people are commenting about the artifacts of oversampling, some are commenting about higher sample rates. I'll need to dig into it at some point haha but yeah I agree, I have seen some plugs at even like 192 which still has some audible aliasing due to the amount of distortion made
@@PaulThird yup, there's probably some amount of artifacts just from the up/down sampling process itself (different amount of interpolation -- REAPER has options for this), and the LPF is going to induce some phase distortion no doubt. EQ isn't free in that sense. For 192k not being enough, I personally don't worry about it unless I'm intentionally driving something really hard like with guitar FX. Of course all this feeds the analog v digital debate.
Paul what's up my brother , brother that argument that a lot of Hit records have been recorded with Aliasing is irrelevant , if some on is selling you something and is not what they say it is is simple ( is fraud ) no mater what it is if Aliasing hamburgers honey or beer . and the thing Developers did not expect that people were going to caught up , so because they are ignorant you can sell them a Toyota and make them believe is a Ferrari, and this happens and not only in music at all levels it happens every were . there is nothing wrong with educating our selfs the more we know the more power we have , and wen it comes to music if we learn how to play and instrument how to use a plugin how the plugin really works etc the more we can know the better because we can make more accurate decisions wen it comes to work flow or buying software or hardware , and this is only going to push developers to step up there game and the mediocre ones that were just getting your hard working money hope they get better or go out of business so the ones that are really working to take things to there next level can have more resources coming from us , because is hard even for the good developers now in days because they have to compite with a lot of mediocracy and the music industry is super saturated in all areas, You Paul are helping change the game because you are educating people big time, so I thank you for that
I agree man. Hopefully as a community we can influence change over time. If more people start checking under the hood and understanding their tools devs will change tactics. Whether if it's more honesty or more innovation, at least the consumer and the developers are on the same page. Sonnox claro for example. That was made purely for consumers. A tool made for making your workflow quicker. No colour, nothing analog about it. Just a mixing tool made specifically for the benefit of the engineer. Every function well thought out and no BS. What you see is what you get. Very transparent and a thinking man's plugin. Not meant to be flashy and exciting. It's like a tiler buying a new tile cutter. Not as flashy as a brand new pimped out van to turn up to jobs but still a well made tool that helps you earn your living. Any van can get you to the job but a good tool can make or break how fast you complete as well as impact the quality of your work. I am a man of many on the spot made up metaphors 😂
@@PaulThird yea bro Claro what and awesome tool I love the tweek and the Mix tool I wish it had side chain for the individual bands . Hey is good to dream lol. Yea totally agree with you . Hope you are having a great day and thanks again my brother 🙏🏽🙏🏽
You can't be wrong. I have come to this exact same conclusion almost a year ago. I also have been messaging waves and slate asking for more oversampling options. (Slate has no oversampling for their Vbc or VTM plugins?) Like I don't get it I would happily pay for a waves update that included oversapling options hey why not hook us up and even include HPF and LPF on every plugin.
I think waves are waiting till the WUP cripples them to the point where they really need to actually make a big change haha they really know how to scrape the barrel 😂
Aliasing also happens from D/A and A/D. If someone is doing analog saturation or soft clipping on outbound gear they should probably test that gear just like a plugin.
@@PaulThird Lol. I didn't know that's how the Scottish accent sounds like. It's kind of cool. Hey Paul, BTW, I'd love to see you reviewing and testing Black Rooster plugins. 🙏🏻 Thanks a lot for your great work!!
Well I looked away from the screen when while you were switching thru the three, and I could not tell when you switched between the tracks. My internet machines speaker setup is a pair of Sonarworks corrected Behringer Truth B2O31A' speakers. Maybe is my 67 year old ears? Who knows. Thanks for the video.
Don't worry. I looked (and thus knew when a change was coming) and still got it wrong the second time around (I suceeded on the first and third blindtest - maybe luck?). And my ears are considerably younger than yours. I don't think I'd conciously notice a change fast enough, if I didn't know when the change is coming. This was too subtle of an example for this - in my opinion. Maybe there are engineers that get the heebie-jeebies instantly without looking - I'm not one of them. (Was listening on my non-corrected, but deerly trusted 30 Buck Logitech Speakers (Sub included, but irrelevant for that example).. if I can't hear something on them, for me, it doesn't exist)
I could still tell differences in the car driving back from work but it was really hard due to the horrible bass in the speakers drowning a lot of the detail. I kept on getting the Lindell x4 PA right but had to listen harder for the dry and aliasing to the point I actually had to redo it with the engine off haha helped a lot but still difficult. With these tests I find it's all about knowing where differences are. As soon as I know where they lie I know where to look so I don't get distracted by other things, especially doing 3 files, it's easy to get thrown off. I had to do it 3 times more to prove to myself haha
Could be the YT codec but with these simple tests I always advise to try out for yourself so you are listening to the files as they are in the daw. Just as it wouldn't take long at all to set up. Don't get me wrong it's subtle but it came down to feel for me on this. That's where I could tell the differences. I looked for the beat on this and I could hear and feel the dry and no OS not carrying the beat of the track as much as the 0S x4. Almost as if that extra saturation from the Lindell was just giving the record a bit more girth and weight and slight more punch in the transients. All subtle but enough for me to pick out
@@PaulThird I refuse. I don't believe the UA-cam-codec will significantly impact saturation or aliasing.. that simply makes no sense to me. I understand that it can mess with transients (or even distort if you leave youtube no headroom) because of compression, but not much else. But then again I don't know a lot about codecs and such.. that's just how I experience it. *edit* it was brought to my attention, that UA-cam does not compress/limit audio (in the common sense) at all. When an audio sounds distorted, that is due to the uploader, not due to youtube. Goes to show how easy it is to make false assumptions.
If it makes a lot of high order harmonic distortion and has no oversampling, it will alias. If it doesn't make any harmonic distortion then no aliasing. Tbh instead of going back to hardware, think about why proq3 has been an industry staple for years. Completely clean, no harmonics, does what you need it to do without colouring the source. That's what SSL was trying to achieve with their consoles, complete transparency
I first discovered Aliasing when sampling with my Casio sk-1 while sampling audio at 78 rpm at a sample rate of 8 bit (2.5 seconds) it was horrid. If at any time I detect it, I change EQ settings and increase the sample rate until artifacts are no longer evident. Sometimes certain audio is just too brittle to digitize. Of course nowadays I have no trouble with artifacts. I've never experienced it in FL Studio, any Akai mpc or my Ensoniq samplers.
Paul. Would you then recommend we start recording at 24 96? Just in case we need it for Aliasing control? I got an M1 mac, so power is really a breeze there.
If you've got the power then it makes sense but it depends on your recording chain. If you are using plugins on the way in then 96k would be a good choice so you aren't printing aliasing on your tracks but if you are applying plugins after recording you can get away with oversampling via metaplugin and stuff at 44.1/48k. Depends on the individual plugins you are using but in my setup I do all my premixing at 96k (clean up & compression), commit & export processed stems into a 48khz session for mixing
Another great video Paul! Question for you… No doubt running higher sample rates cuts back on aliasing. However, I’ve been told that if your sample rates are too high, you can introduce artifacts, which are non-aliasing related. Are these high sample rate artifacts due to the fact that some peoples computers can’t handle the processing power to run the high sample rate, and therefore the artifacts are showing up? Just trying to pinpoint where and how this is happening. That being said, perhaps there’s a sweet spot, Where the sample rate is high enough to not introduced aliasing, but low enough to not introduced additional artifacts? Any thoughts?…
I don't know tbh. An engineer friend of mine nulled a 44.1 track with a 192k track so I can't say for sure if there are artifacts but my gut says doubt it in terms of daw sample rate. I can see oversampling possibly causing artifacts and that is something that I look to test in the future as artifacts in oversampling in certain plugins have been mentioned before 🤓
@@PaulThird thanks! This makes sense! I personally have never heard any artifacts when running my sessions native at 96K. But then again I have a pretty robust computer. Anyways, if you end up releasing a video that tests potential artifacts at higher sample rates, I would certainly be curious!
@@colonelw.g.sparkman6931 it can be accuracy based as you guessed, but it's also harmonics from above 20K coming back down into the audible range and causing distortion/artefacts etc,
I have this father ted image of you sitting in front of waves HQ. a mannequin holding an 'aliasing' sign and you holding a 'down with this sort of thing' sign. sorry my dude but i had to share.. too funny hehehe. great video as usual though my dude!
Paul...what if you took all your digital audio tracks & reprint them with hardware i.e. 1073, G bus, SSL fusion and mix with those! Would that in turn.make a diff?
Not really if the aliasing is inaudible in the plugin. It can build up over tracks but if you keep it below - 90/-100dfs i can't see it building up over a mix. It's like noise in analog, it's there and sometimes at the same level or louder than a lot of inaudible aliasing but you don't really hear it in a 90's/00's analog mix when all the gear is summed. Put it this way. The aliasing is managed at 96k in waves pye comp and when I brought multiple instances together as a mix and compared to hardware.. Over 70% of people couldnt tell the difference and the other half of what was left failed it. I think only like 12% got it right. When aliasing is audible its an issue in my personal opinion but when it's not audible.. Analog doesn't really have anything else to offer vs. Good plugin emulation
All of them to me 🤣 loss of transients so less punch, less width and almost like a foggy sheen over the top where the detail isn't as clear. That's what I hear anyway
You should analye the new SSL EV2 Channel from waves and compare it with the original one from waves to find out if it is snake oil or if there's really a new algorithm working in the background. Or if it is just a reskin.
Hi Paul great video!!! If you plug your hardware compressor as I/O insert it get convert to digital (A/D) in that stage it's like a Digital plugin you get Nyquist ALIASING if you working on 44.1 or 48 or am I missing something? whats the different between hybrid and Plugins? I don't get it... Should I use Airwindows Ultrasonic plugin to avoid ALIASING?
With analog to digital you need an A/D converter. That itself will have its own sample rate but my understanding is that it'll cut off everything after niquist. So if its your interface and its at 48k it'll cut off EVERYTHING past 24k. Frequency AND harmonic content. You'll notice your daw and interface/converter need to work at the same sample rate so when it gets to into the digital domain there is actually no information past nuquist for the computer to process. Thus you'll never get aliasing as the converter has chopped off all of the information past its sample rate, which ties into the DAW's sample rate as well. Hypothetically speaking if your converter was able to work at a higher sample rate (96k) than your daw (44.1) in real time then it's possible as its giving the computer numbers it can't process but your daw and interface always work together and are synced at the same sample rate. If you record at 96k and import the files into a 44.1 session then the files are converted to 44.1 and the high end information that would cause aliasing is removed. I've been told that ultrasonic isn't for removing aliasing which is confusing me haha it doesn't remove aliasing. Well nothing I tried worked anyway.
thanks for responding great channel and this is a Big Topic ! when you do analog insert it's a round trip 2 times convert happening (D/A) -> (A/D) any degrade to the sound quality ? also if i put plugin like EQ after the analog i/O what is the result with aliasing? so many question to trace this complicated processing. @@PaulThird
Thank you for such a great video, very important information! Im wondering, if I export a 48k project to 96k does that make the aliasing less or do I need to work in 96k from start. Since your videos about this topic Im very careful before I buy a new plugin. Have you tried Analog obsessions plugins, they sound good, look good, have oversampling and are all free.
Aliasing has to be corrected at the source so on the plugin itself. Once you've got aliasing on a track it's on the track so you have to deal with it there and then
I use metaplugin for oversampling every so often but it's not always the answer as your oversampling depends on the plugins supported sample rate. If a waves plugin is only supported to 96k and you try and oversample it at 96k or x4 at 48k it will reduce aliasing but also start to multiply frequencies which isn't what you want. You have to be very careful to stay within the parameters of the Plugin
Yes. Aliasing needs to be fixed at the source. I've seen some saturation plugins still aliasing at 5-7k haha you've got to remember that just cause you've cut off frequencies at like 18-20k doesn't mean that 8-18k won't be making lots of orders of harmonics that go past 22k. That's why I do aliasing tests at 10k so I can really see how bad it is. Once the plugin makes aliasing the damage is done so you need to control the aliasing as its actually happening
Hey Paul! Thanks for the follow up video! Can you answer this for me? Let's say I have 4 tracks, is there a difference if I put oversampling on each track vs on the bus or master?
Gotta be on the plugin itself as the damage is already done when it reaches the bus or master. I really wish it was that simple cause that would be awesome!! Haha Think of aliasing as something that you need to deal with there and then.
what if you have a noise floor in your daw lol i think -96 db or so with a trick ITB into dither and the cross talk from satson before processing lol there’s movement ITB
@@PaulThird i be learning so much lol i’m working on a template that’s killer, i put a vu meter on the send from the input and it drops like -2db and such 🤨 everything sums to 0 and i have pre fader stuff to look into but i have 13 or more busses with a single plugin or 3 using the sends, no out puts and for my master bus(es) but the normal 2 bus is to make it all cohesive. lol “we mix to send to a master” but when i can master my ITB! shall do what you do and inform the people seen the video of the guy who came at you on topics such as these lol why bother when you dropping gems and using a different method to find aliasing he has good stuff as well! but the best is “using your ears”
I never tested them for aliasing tbh but I don't think they oversample as far as I'm aware. Maybe internally but I couldn't answer that unless I got the slate sub
@@PaulThird There is an option for 2x oversampling in the mix rack. I think they still alias a little bit regardless. Not sure if i'm even testing correctly though and they sound solid enough regardless. Ive been testing everything I have after seeing vids on aliasing. More out of curiosity than anything really. Was curious on Arturia plugins too.
A lot of emulation plugs do if you go in really hot. If you gain stage normally it's OK but I oversample the Arturia 1176 x2 via metaplugin if I'm using it for a heavy compressed saturated parallel.
I cant tell any difference lol feels like the cymbals were different in one of them so deductively assumed that was the aliased one which i was right but really and genuinely on my headphones very little difference, i can imagine though how this aliasing could build up over a mix so as to be very noticeable thanks 👍
I wish that I knew about this 4 or so years ago and the plug-in companies had been honest about it. I was prepping a release and couldn’t work out what that weird brittle sound was. Ended up hiring a Grammy winning mixing engineer and he couldn’t figure it out either. 🤦🏽♂️
I must say that when I do the test here in my DAW, is much more audible than in a compressed YT vídeo... When I hear your test, is sounds almost the same to my ears. The diference is so tiny... So I started to think I'm getting old and loosing my hearing... or maybe I am, because reading the other comments here, looks like everybody hears but me...
Plugins doesn't work correctly on a highest sample rate. Just put Saturn 2 by Fabfilter and turn the Drive knob. On 44100 you can hear aliasing. On 96000 you can hear aliasing too. Only oversampling can protect us. But it's doesn't important with instrumental music, when you compressing or eqing on 3-5db. It's more important on dubstep or drum and bass or another electronic genres. When you make music with all this high peaks filters and extremely distortions and processing. It's more important on mastering. Because we have more complicated sound on master bus and we wants to be louder. But most of the cases we don't need worry about aliasing. UPD: Disclosure works on 44100 and rendering as is. Most of all clubs and concert halls and festivals works with digital consoles with 44100 sample rate. Today we can see more and more trashy lo-fi tape cassete VHS emulations because "it's sound from the past". Children who listen music today can say tomorrow: "this aliasing it's a magic thing! It's sound from the past!"
Thats why it's valuable to have the option but being honest more and more plugin are becoming internally oversampled so the option of aliasing is taken away from you which makes sense though as if an analog emulation is done right it shouldn't have any audible aliasing at any sample rate
That is interesting indeed! Literally yesterday I was trying to find out what rate do Disclosure and Calvin Harris work at XD Could you please share the source where you heard of Disclosure working at 44.1k? Was it one of their streams? (Is there a chance that you remember which one? haha) Cheers 🏄
@@levladomusic Most of electronic producers works in 44.1Hz. This is absolutely true. They have some arguments. 1. You can works anywhere with a laptop. 2. When you need some aggressive distortion you can use oversampling. 3. Don't pushing your limiters so hard. 4. Some producers don't do master mixes themselves.
Nope, can’t hear it. But to be quite honest, I can barely hear compression and when I started I couldn’t hear it at all. You need to train your ears to listen for this stuff, I believe that you can hear it. I was totally amazed as I started hearing things in mixes I could not hear before. I’m still pretty fresh in this whole thing. Funny though that someone would attack you for this. This is just technical information, if it has aliasing it has aliasing. No discussion. More information is always a good thing, because it helps making informed decisions. People get too attached to their tools.
Achhh it's just youtube. It happens and one forum post turns into another and before you know it lots of people believe that you run a chain of Internet cafes which pays 10 year olds less than minimum wage so that acustica audio can sell cracked copies of Waves plugins for under developed music schools who are funded by the Holy trinity of CLA, Greg wells and Bob Clearmountain.. You know.. The Internets a scary place these days haha
I can still hear it but it's not as easy after youtube codec on the TV, in the car slightly (but it's a lot harder) but it's probably cause I know what I'm looking for. For whatever reason it's way more apparent on my phone via UA-cam. Dunno why but the X4 OS is way easier to pick out 🤷♂️ Either way it's a very quick test to do in the daw. Would take like 2 minutes to set up
@@PaulThird nope, I've already moved from analog modelling plugins to clean EQs and oversampling compressors & saturators so I dont get paranoid after watching your videos lol.
If plug-in developers would spend less money on graphic design for the GUI and more money on audiophile coding we’d be better off, but sales would probably go down.
I know but I think I was being interpreted by some in the community as somebody who thought all aliasing had to be removed and any aliasing on an analyser was a no go so it was best to address that for people who hadn't watched all my videos. I always forget that some people may have only seen 1 or 2 of my videos so it was probably best to try and clarify everything and tie into the video i made a few weeks back. Well I hope its cleared stuff up anyway haha
Thanks man. I think the plan is to do more with Warren but ill leave that till I get another 'hi Paul, hope your doing marvellously well." and ill get working again 😂
There has always been this discussion about what samplerate to work in. And wether you hear a difference between 48k and 96K. I never understood the whole 96K thing. Understanding aliasing helps me get it - finally. The discussions (I had) were never about aliasing. It was simply about: Here is this file in 48k, here is this file in 96K.. is it worth it? To me it wasn't and isn't. However.. with aliasing this starts to make sense and I feel a bit like a fool. They've been right all along - unless I oversample. I think this is a valuable video and you should make a playlist with "Paul Third explains audio-terms". Next video: "non-linear what does it mean and what can it mean?" just kidding, not about the playlist though.
That's why I'm so picky about plugins cause I refuse to mix at 96k haha I can just internally oversample where possible but I may start to limit any form of saturation to like 1 per track. Honestly I used the least amount of colour and analog emulations I've ever used on my most recent single. Asked a mastering engineer what he thought and he said 'you do like your colour do you' haha I think I need to trim the fat a little 🤣
@@PaulThird That may just be me, but I don't like the "FAT" button on the Britson. It really depends on the genre how hard I drive it. But even if I pin it 10 dB beyond red on a bass I prefer doing it without the FAT. It's not just "more" saturation. To me it sounds like different saturation. To me it sounds like it makes sounds take a lot more place in the mix (even in places where I don't want them to take place) when I hit the FAT. Just a thought, maybe you give it a shot! Just use the fader and oversample. Live a little! Faders are fun. I still remember your advice to "live a little" and oversample plugins instead of being my hardheaded self that expects plugins to be perfect and have oversampling integrated. I'm kind of using it as a mantra now.. "live a little" is a very handy mantra for people like me (outside audio too). I used to live "too much" and I've embraced the polar opposite.. I need to settle for a middle ground sooner or later. Baby Steps: I oversample now, without feeling like betraying my principles :P. I've noticed that there's nothing that ever benefits from more than 4x OS (to my ears).
Trust me. I know it's not easy. I'm Autistic.. I despise change but I've learned over time that you don't how far you can go unless you try actually going further. If you sit in the same lane you'll always arrive at the same destination which is important as you need levels of consistency in life but sometimes if it's safe and you've nowhere else to go and you've got time, jump in the other lane and see if it gives you something different. If it gets you to the same destination but quicker then maybe start using that lane more often but least you know you have the option of the first lane if it's closed or you need be on time quicker etc Give yourself options or you'll always be stuck in the same place. You might be happy to sit in the same lane but still handy to know you don't have to✌️
@@PaulThird Yeah, it surely would improve the intelligibility. I mean, being Scottish doesn't help it one bit. 😆 Love your vids, man, keep'em comin'! 💪😎
Hey Paul , TALK ABOUT ALIASING AS MUCH AS YOU WANT 😁 DOESN'T BOTHER ME A BIT. If people dont like it TURN THE BLOODY CHANNEL. Thanks for watching out for us!
I'd guarantee if you had a black box that could magically take away all the aliasing in a mix with the flick of a switch guys would pay thousands for it and call it analog magic haha To me aliasing is the "extra 2-3%" and its basically free to fix and you don't have to pay thousands in gear for that "extra squeeze in quality"
People who tell you not to pay attention to detal in your own music are either too lazy or too deaf to justify the same attention to detail in theirs. They would rather de-legitimise your effort than match it. Don't justify your methods to those who have none of their own.
Totally I always go with what my ear wants to hear. That's what makes engineering so amazing is that 5 different engineers can give you 5 different interpretations of your song. If we all followed the same path we'd all roughly sound the same 🤓
Aliasing is awful, there are still developers around like Airwindows telling that oversampling sounds bad in comparison to their terrible aliasing plugins... Oversampling option On/Off - Render On/off should be a standard on all plugins. Developers are just lazy to implement this, it´s ridicoulous. I never buy one plugin again without this feature.
I tried his ultrasonic which was his solution to not using oversampling but it didn't work for me. Dunno if it's cause I use metaplugin as a vst wrapper in protools but it didn't do anything haha
@@PaulThird The guy is living in his own bubble, that´s the problem with developers that have never done a record in their life or how know how to use a DAW for final production.
well, I think aliasing should always be a choice.. an option. I've had oversample options in plugins that I used to use. For example on the Saturator-X. Now mind you: That was before I knew what aliasing is. And being a good little engineer I simply tried clicking the buttons and picked what my ears favored. Now maybe you guessed it.. sometimes I preferred no oversampling. Crazy, I know.
@@akagerhard Aliasing is terrible, especially with transient heavy music. For me it never worked well, it´s night and day. i started back then with tape, midi sequencing, big console studio environment. Aliasing was not exsisting, i made the analog to digital transformation from day one, knowing both worlds in & out. At the end it´s a personal preference & taste. I like clear precices transient behavour and a wider soundstage. That´s only happening on my material without Aliasing
Another little thing that I edited out because the video was too long but still worth discussing.
Is it it possible with the effects of audible aliasing that we end up over possibly over eq'ing to regain what we've possibly lost due to the aliasing. Could it be argued that you may require less eq with an oversampled plugin or a plugin that doesn't alias a lot.
Is it maybe a reason why we see more plugin chains to maintain that punch and clarity that we desire. Do we end up adding more plugins subconsciously because we aren't possibly correlating that we've instantly lost a bit of clarity just running through an audibly aliasing plugin.
Very very subjective thought but one that came to me randomly whilst filming the video
Not wanting to start heated debates but thought I'd include as the idea interests me 🤓
It's certainly possible. But this is not just aliasing.. that's anything really. And I'll take the chance to once again advertise my approach to mixing:
One of the reasons I like my plugins (with the exception of tape and sound-designy-plugins) to be one trick-poneys, mostly, is this: I don't want to introduce ANYTHING apart from what I'm using the plugin for. Because chances are whatever else I introduce is something I will have to work against at a later point.. and if I have to work against it with a plugin that introduces a new thing apart from fixing the first thing, chances are I'll need another one.. etc. etc. Stuff stacks up. Problems stack up. You want to fix as little as possible and thus you have to be very concious of what you add.
The number of times I've been happy with a production and fucked it up in mixing is simply too high. Overmixing is a problem. Spamming analogue emulations on tracks is a problem (unless you know your chain very, very, very well). I'm sure aliasing is one of the problems one can introduce. Wether you know it's aliasing or not is a whole other topic.
100% agree with this. My chains are becoming smaller and actually cleaner with every mix. That's a good way to put it in terms of stacking chains of plugins. A plug may give you one thing that you want it to do but affects negatively in another way and instead of fixing the negative you just carry on with the positive and before you know it you have lots of stuff you want but left scratching your head why other problems have arisen. Very true and something I'm learning more and more with every mix I do 🤓
Metaplugin does that 🤓
Yes, definitely! Speaking as a novice mixer, I over eq. It just happened to be I’m using almost exclusively Waves plugs- NLS every channel w/ buss on master, as well as SSL E channel on every single channel too. So your above comment sums up a heck of a lot in my situation.
Going to explore oversampling options after having watched your videos now, Paul 👍 Very much appreciated.
"Could it be argued that you may require less eq with an oversampled plugin or a plugin that doesn't alias a lot.
Is it maybe a reason why we see more plugin chains to maintain that punch and clarity that we desire. Do we end up adding more plugins subconsciously because we aren't possibly correlating that we've instantly lost a bit of clarity just running through an audibly aliasing plugin."
YES! I just posted a (too long) comment touching this actually, didn't notice you already raised discussion about it...
I have a feeling that this exact phenomenon is very much more common than one might think, and I'm pretty sure it's exactly what has happened to me. If you go like "yeah I slam this Lindell here, these three old modeling comps here aaa whadda vocal chain uuuh" - and end up putting a Soothe or a dynamic eq in the chain later down the road to deal with a lot of extra harmonics or whistles or whatnot irritations, you can be pretty much sure that unless someone recorded the track with a lot of processing or you f'd up the gain staging, you should just delete that chain and start over on another day with fresh ears and add no plugin by default.
Happened to me, and not too long ago. You can get enamoured by saturation and regret later!
Your channel is criminally underrated. Wow.
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Mate, I can hear the difference on my phone. That's exactly why I really hate aliasing. BUT what you said is right not all things in a mix have to sound like that. If your computer can not handle high sample rates just pick the most important tracks in a song and oversample only those plugins. Plus busses because you can ruin a group of great tracks with a shitty plugin on a buss. My rule is main vocal, lead, snare, overheads and busses and that is for pop music. Great video and I am happy to be here.
Happy to have you 🤜🤛
Thanks for all your good explanations about aliasing. In the end, it is always good to know about this, because, the worst scenario would be that you have a problem and you don't know it.
Totally agree 🤓🤓
Power to you for not giving up on spreading awareness of this very digital "challenge". I was one of those 80s guys who sold almost all my analogue gear when digital took hold... many moons later I work "hybrid" specifically because of digital aliasing. I think you've wrapped the "plugins aliasing" in a box and put a bow on it! Next topic..? Aliasing in virtual synths!! ;-)
I think if I do another video dedicated to aliasing I'll start receiving actual hand written hate mail 😂
@@PaulThird more likely letters cut and pasted from magazines on a scrap of paper 😁
"nOBoDY WaNts YOU oR Ur ChAnNeL.. lEaVE mY pLuGiNs aLoNE!!! “
😂😂
@@PaulThird LuV wAves, bABY oddio, d3nis3 odDio + tHe R3st oF tHe gaNg (wE no wHoo we iS) 😜
@@PaulThird LMAO
Have to say the back and forth between you and Dan, and your videos has helped me understand when it's worth worrying about, and when it's not. I use Waves Guitar amp as a parallel distortion channel sometimes and with that high gain, turning on 'HD' or oversampling does make an audible difference, however with less full on subtle saturation it isnt worth worrying about aliasing in a lot of cases
Yeah man it's all about context. When it comes to guitars I'm considering just buying a few pedals for drive instead of using plugin fx. I know neural dsp and stuff utilise oversampling and from what I've been told they do quite a good job so I'm considering maybe buying the Cory wong clean amp sim and printing drives via pedals. I may try a few of their amps as well. As a guitarist I can sometimes use a lot of guitars so I have to be wary that I don't get that build up which can occur very quickly with amp sim distortion
it is lol. look at the #1s on the chart and what they are doing to tickle are ears. those unwanted frequencies turns people off
@@PaulThird Ah I see. I'm not using it for Guitar, I make drum and bass and using in Parallel to give a top end edge to basses, synths, and even drums sometimes, those style of drums have a ridiculous amount of high frequencies so are a prime target for creating aliasing. On the Parallel channel I use a high pass using a linear phase EQ, something I also learnt from the UA-cam Audio community ha
Thanks Paul for the perspective. This video was very helpful. All your points about aliasing earlier are valid 1) It's best to avoid it if you can, 2) Its good to be aware that it exists and 3) Epecially in lower sample rates.
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When judging the accuracy of analogue emulations, aliasing is a critical factor. When trying to bridge the gap between digital workflow and analogue sound, aliasing is a critical factor. People are so eager to get lost in the "magic" of analogue emulation, the thing is- they actually could if they just paid attention to what's under the fucking hood.
We should give you a megaphone and preach to the people brother haha
@@PaulThird will the megaphone have oversampling?
Nah.. Its fully analog 😂
Another interesting one, well put....to my mind it is indeed understanding these things may affect one's sound that's the most important thing.
My old ears aren't as good as yours at hearing these things so I was surprised that I could pick out the the non-OS one in those blind tests at the end. Your description of losing some of the transient is what gets comes across for me.....more than any saturation as I couldn't definitely tell the 4xOS from the dry. This was just on my good for what they are PC speakers. Shall try again with some better monitoring later.
For some reason on youtube i hear it really well on my phone haha dunno why
i was able to hear the difference though it was extremely subtle. i heard the aliasing as an mp3-like smearing in the hi-mids. the OS had more clarity to it. i'm curious what You are hearing that allows you to discern the difference. thanks for another good one. cheers
Punch and feel for me as well a wee bit more clarity. The aliasing sits back for me with like this cloudy sheen over it (basically the smearing you are referring to) where the os is the most forward. Dry sits in the middle. Still subtle but will be even more through YT. It's a quick easy test though so my hope is that those who struggle through YT would maybe do the test themselves.
In the daw it's enough to pick out and that's gain staged at - 18dbfs, thd 3/4 so probs best case scenario. Hit it at - 6 or something like that it's a lot more identifiable.
However its still subjective
charts. look into your favorite song and try and emulate it in the box. pual And others get me thinking. they run through a desk maybe or even ADC/ DAC that are never turnt off? so how can we truly have that sound. sage audio has good stuff on top of this that made me stop crying over my mixing skills lol
Think analog you'll get closer to analog. Think digital you'll get more digital. That's how I think anyway haha
So much valuable information in this video
Thanks Paul 👍🏾
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Hey Paul I would love if you can do a video explaining what THD is
Probably doesn't need a video tbh. Thd is short for total harmonic distortion. Harmonic distortion means that the distortion is musically related to the fundamental so a 1khz tone would have harmonic overtones (so they exceed the fundamental) which are essentially octaves so if you imagine playing an open A note on a guitar and then playing the octave up which would be an A on the 2nd fret of the G string. That would be your first order harmonic I.e. That's how you make a harmonised guitar Solo by playing the same note but in different octaves. They are in harmony with one another
So in plugin doctor at 1k you can see overtones at 2,3,4,5,6,7k, 2k would have harmonics at 4,6,8,10k etc. Harmonics are just overtones that are octaves of the fundamental. Distortion that doesn't have any 'octave' relevence to the fundamental would be classed as in-harmonic and non musical.
That's the best I can describe THD with what I know 🤓
@@PaulThird Thats more than enough information. Thanks for the reply. Your a true gem 🙏🏾✌🏾
Paul, this is a great video on the subject - again. Thanks! Good for me, because I deal with saturation in the box every day. It's essential to the way I produce and mix - at least when there wasn't analog saturation available when recording. Some years back, I didn't know aliasing as a phenomenon at all, and it might be the reason behind a couple of old mixes going sour. Thankfully those mixes ended up sounding "OK" (ish), but had I known about the cause, I wouldn't have had to go through a massive amount of work dealing with those artefacts! Talk about climbing ass forward...
I also get you on the feeling of having difficulties in explaining things... Everyday life to me. But luckily some people have patience to listen thoroughly. You know, so that your way to present your ideas doesn't harm in the end, actually the opposite: it can become your strength because you really try to dig in instead of oversimplifying. And react. Like in your previous video's discussion, I kinda thought we disagreed on a detail or two, but you corrected this in the comments! The comment section is a fantastic additional tool for this, although I bet most don't spend their precious time reading it (I know I should do it less...)
Anyway. The matter of subjectivity is possibly a bit underrated in the field of music production, especially the "technical end" of it (mix/master). Good thing you bring that up.
It's a fact that no technical inferiority really matters unless it's detrimental to the end product's effect in how the listener feels while listening to it. What a sentence! :D Aliasing, sounding like analog/hardware or not... Whether all that matters? Subjective. Sometimes it does - or should I say CAN. But usually not for the listener. As long as the song and performance comes through and touches at least the most potential "fans" of the sort of music in question, the mix is a success... BUT, when we put the Mixing Engineer hat on, it's good we KNOW all the reasons why the mix CAN go crappy - but we shouldn't let it chain our creativity! You have a more thorough way of explaining than many, and I like it that someone takes the risk of being misunderstood by being themselves. It gives me hope I guess. :D
The subjectivity stuff is tough I'm not gonna lie cause we all have our own opinions but I think as long as I have that in the back of my mind and I try and put other hats on when thinking about what I say I should be fine haha I'll always run into issues and misinterpretations here and there, and also just completely misunderstand something myself but I'd much rather others learn from my mistakes and have an open platform to discuss rather than believing everything that's rammed down our throats on youtube and not feeling that we can debate or ask questions. I'll always get people who jump down my throat about certain things cause they just don't like me but as long as I know I'm doing the right thing I couldn't really care. If I'm wrong I'll try and correct it if I'm not then i'll argue my corner but still with the understanding I may be proved wrong by somebody else with a different perspective
UA-cam is a very fine balance especially when you've not got a few grammys or a big studio with tons of gear behind you haha 😜
@@PaulThird Yeah. You got it there just perfectly IMO. And I can relate to that so well, although as a UA-camr I'm just starting out so no experience of that sorta hatred. I actually wish there was at least some trolls or haters commenting, as long as someone even looked at the damn videos one day! :D
I think some people have lost the ability or the courage to publicly change their minds when they're proven wrong, and it may reflect as their hastiness in jumping at throats when someone dares to take the risk and set oneself out there raising questions on public, especially when it's about "generally accepted truths". Maybe jealousy or feeling threatened in a way? Dunno really. I know and you know, that often the thought behind all the questioning is more philosophical and/or intended as a provocation to make people think about some interesting detail in depth for themselves, rather than sayin "all the superhero producers with their oversimplified advice are wrong". But it's extremely hard to get accross right to many people.
School-bully mentality is another one: if they spot a "weakness" (which is in reality often courage to just be yourself) they jump on it, and well... if you're an easy goal, you're an easy goal, and the reason can be something completely pointless.
UA-cam is something that you have to learn. To grow you have to give the algorithm what it wants first. In the early stages you are in the hards of the algorithm. I tried the whole songwriting thing on youtube and it bombed. You need to look into what youtube wants to promote in your field and look for fresh ideas at the start. Then you can start to do what you want. You need to think about how to rank high in your titles, a lot about thumbnails, good descriptions. There's a lot that goes into it.
You've got to always think
'what value am I adding to this video that they won't already know'
Some times you've gotta think click baity but still deliver.
In songwriting you could do things like 'how to write an Ed sheeran style song like a pro producer' click baity titles with click baity thumbnails but still deliver what you claimer. Show a teaser of the finished song at the very start of the video to stop them from moving on.
You've got to study others that do what you want to do on youtube and see what works and what you could do differently. Look for what people want to watch.
You've got to see youtube as a shop window and you've got to entice people with what your selling or nobody will ever click.
Then once they've clicked you've got to keep them engaged. Short, snappy, to the point. Get to the action as quick as possible and keep them engaged at all times. Never drop the ball. Always delivering at every second. Ditch the pauses, the stuff that doesn't need to be there and just keep hitting them with as much information as possible.
I'm always happy to help others when it comes to youtube but it all depends if you want to really grow. Once you make friends with the algorithm and you build a fanbase it's just about consistency and not getting lazy. Always keep improving and ensure that your audience knows for sure that there is new content to subscribe for every week. Honestly man every video you make counts as you may have only one shot in front of them. They swipe or leave early, the algorithm won't show you again unless you have a video that's doing well.
UA-cam is a very hard grind but you just need to know how it works and what's required if you want to get an engaged audience
@@PaulThird Jeez man, million thanks for this! I'm amazed that someone spends all that time to give a hand and precious advice to some random dude from the north pole.
Yeah, I know I got a lot to learn in not dropping the ball. The videos thus far aren't exactly successful youtube material and I know that I kinda made a mistake not to hone the craft more first. But I just had to "just start" (finally) and start uploading content. And while creating the content and getting it out there even if it wasn't all that perfect, I intend to develop in all these areas. I kinda see UA-cam as a way to unload all that's piled up into the desk drawer and maybe give something to someone while doing so. But I think I need to re-evaluate my strategy a bit now that I got your advice. So it won't go to waste. The videos I've uploaded thus far actually represent a quite hasty start also because I've been contemplating starting this for years and came to a "now or never situation"... I think I could do better if I just think (and script..) a bit more.
I actually knew some of those things on your list, but there's this stupid idealist inside me that keeps jarring all the clickbait stuff.. I'm not looking at UA-cam with the intention that it becomes a full time job in itself - unless it leads to that naturally - but more like an extension of promoting my doings in music and adding to teaching songwriting and producing face to face. Kinda "something to show to potential customers IRL" u know. Of course, hugging the algorithm would help that just as well, and it's absolutely on my agenda to develop in this. In the end of course I would love to succeed out here too, but I'm not expecting anything. But if I do, it will be in my style, which may or may not work and so be it. Being a musician, songwriter and producer IRL comes first to me anyway. :) (not to piss on youtubing at all!)
Thanks for your super valuable advice, Paul. I'll go through it with thought at a better time. You got my sincere appreciation. Peace.
One more point i want to add considering internal oversampling in plugins: sound of it often depends on the type of antialiasing filter used to filter out high frequencies before downsampling: minimum phase, mixed or linear phase. Some developers are worried that you may use oversampled plugin in a parralel chain, so they use either linear or mixed phase filter, and because this filter is super steep, as a result even though it's located above 20khz, you still can hear pre-ringing, and often it may sound good and fool you into believing it's the sound of no aliasing. Cytomic The Glue provides options of antialiasing filters to choose from, and yeah, linear phase filter sounds very different, while with minimum phase i can barely hear any difference between oversampling and no oversampling.
See this is all the stuff I'm planning to dive into as the more comments i see regarding oversampling mention different tonal impacts dependent on the oversampling used by the developer. I do not know enough yet in regards to oversampling but my hope is to ask around and hopefully be able to make a video in the near future regarding oversampling with some tests and some background info but I'll admit I'm not there yet to make a video
It's measurable
Hey Paul, I came back around to this video to see if you've tested any of the Plugin Alliance BX plugins for aliasing. I've stayed away from them because of this (no obvious oversampling option). I recently commented on a Plugin Alliance Facebook post selling their SSL 4000 G, which is on sale. I said that I liked the plugin a lot, but was gun shy on their products due to the lack of oversampling (I'm using almost all exclusively Acustica Audio at this point). This was their reply and I'd love your take or insight: "All analog modeled plugins “made by BX” apply oversampling internally whenever it is necessary, in a really clever way. We are typically not simply oversampling the whole plugin, as this would increase the CPU/DSP load unnecessarily in most cases. Especially on DSP systems, where a plugin always has to “reserve” the worst case DSP load this wouldn’t be great. The same would be true for plugins like our SSL console emulations, which get used on dozens of channels in many mixes. CPU/DSP efficiency is key here. The way our system works is that we basically make sure that any crucial part of analog modeled circuits run with a sample rate of at least 176Khz internally. Our Upsampling Settings, depending on your session settings: - Below 50kHz (for example 44.1 and 48): 4x - Below 100kHz (for example 88.2 and 96): 2x - Above 100kHz (176.4 and 192): 1x We don’t offer these Upsampling modes to be selectable or switchable by the user, because we believe they are highly optimized for each circuit and application the way we have integrated our Upsampling".
Tbh they do internally oversample but that still doesn't mean it's enough in their heavier saturation plugins (spl iron, vsm3 etc)
But tbh they are pretty decent on the most part but really cause they don't need it in most cases. Aliasing is only important when it's audible so ssl for example. You'd need to hit that thing stupidly hard to get audible aliasing out of it. You need to look at the levels of aliasing before considering if oversampling is important. If it's got aliasing at -90/100.. What are you worried about. Nobody can hear it. Doctor makes everything look worse cause it goes down so low to like -140db.
But they do internally oversample. That's not BS. I know cause of the anti aliasing filters
@@PaulThird thanks Paul! Now I feel beter about using their plugins. In this day and age aliasing should never be an issue. I get it about aliasing being in the audible range with one insert, but when you have lots of plugins going on a mix, with compression, saturation, etc..you get that cloudy build up of aliasing. My mixes are night and day better now since Ive learned all of this.
Carful, Dan's watching 😆😁
Anyway, just want to thank you for the correct way of using the Sonimus plugins (Satson n Britson) in one of your videos.
For years I was using them wrong.
🤜🏾🤛🏻
I think he'll agree with this one haha
And I'm still glad I looked into the sonimus stuff. I use Britson on everything I do. The routing and grouping is essential for me. Has a sound I really love 🤓
The "bass" on Kiss by Prince is made with aliasing :P Just noticed today they put it on the radio while I was driving, the kick drum I'm pretty sure is pitched down with an old sampler, I think Prince had the Oberheim drum machine and he loved pitching down drums with it, the elongated kick drum serves as the bass for the song and you can hear very well all the nasty downsampling artifacts generated by the old OB.
That's why i think understanding it is a good idea as it's something you can start to pick out and then you are in control 😎
Good video!
Fun fact: pretty much every mix done by Tchad Blake in the last 20 years are full of aliasing. And they sound awesome!
(He works at 48k and uses a lot of Soundtoys, Waves and Avid stuff)
As well as agressive Inflator on the master wich doesn't have oversampling as well
Don't... Your giving me panic attacks 🤣🤣 does he not use a lot of guitar pedals as well though?
@@PaulThird not anymore, he is completely in the box for the last 20 years (maybe 15 years). He may use them during tracking though
@@PaulThird ah, i forgot... he's not completely in the box, he still uses his widening chain Eventide H3000 + SRS, but they are digital boxes and they may alias internally, so... No analog outboard when mixing though.
Plugin developers don't have to care about aliasing if they forgot to model the harmonics to begin with:)
"forgot"... 😂
Analog modeling plugins cannot compare to the actual hardware in terms of quality (and of course authenticity). Many linear plugins have their place for sure, but not for accurately replicating the real hardware (imho).
I'd say it's subjective and depends on the gear and the dev. I've had some shootouts where your just not justifying any difference. Some sound even subjectively identical and some even sound better to many. Many variables
@@PaulThird Point taken
At some point I stopped testing for aliasing with test tones and switched to doing blind testing with actual music. I pretty much stopped worrying about the issue from then on.
Interesting. Just as every blind test I've done on it has made me worry more as I could pick it out everytime and I know I didn't like it but if it doesn't bother you then it's nothing to worry about 🤓
Great video! I stumbled on it while working on some neural guitar effect plugin projects.
Since I'm doing a lot of high gain amp modeling, aliasing is going to be a certainty. Because of your video, I'm likely looking at a 2x-4x oversampling option for 44.1kHz and 48kHz sampling rates in my plugin. Not sure I can make the code run fast enough to support anything higher than that but 4x oversampling at 48kHz should be sufficient I think.
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Paul, I'd like to see you do a full mix. Do you have a video of you mixing in the box?
MIXING SESSION WITH PAUL THIRD: ua-cam.com/play/PLmcBOB8VmXMLNCUisz1ixeHBQb5j9AD6m.html
That's the closest you'll get really
Appreciate your thoughts Paul :)
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Another point about stacking analog emulations is the difference between OS plugins and running at higher sample rate. OS plugins are generally a better choice for this reason -- ie, when you stack analog at high sample rate (no OS), the higher harmonics from earlier stages feed later stages causing even worse aliasing. With oversampling there's always a LPF to cut out things above Nyquist. So stacks of oversampled plugins will run cleaner than stacks at same equivalent sample rate, assuming you do not manually insert LPFs between every stage to replicate the filtering.
So if all plugs I use support oversampling, then I'd always choose OS instead of running at higher sample rate.
It's definitely something I'll need to look into because a few people are commenting about the artifacts of oversampling, some are commenting about higher sample rates. I'll need to dig into it at some point haha but yeah I agree, I have seen some plugs at even like 192 which still has some audible aliasing due to the amount of distortion made
@@PaulThird yup, there's probably some amount of artifacts just from the up/down sampling process itself (different amount of interpolation -- REAPER has options for this), and the LPF is going to induce some phase distortion no doubt. EQ isn't free in that sense.
For 192k not being enough, I personally don't worry about it unless I'm intentionally driving something really hard like with guitar FX.
Of course all this feeds the analog v digital debate.
Paul what's up my brother , brother that argument that a lot of Hit records have been recorded with Aliasing is irrelevant , if some on is selling you something and is not what they say it is is simple ( is fraud ) no mater what it is if Aliasing hamburgers honey or beer . and the thing Developers did not expect that people were going to caught up , so because they are ignorant you can sell them a Toyota and make them believe is a Ferrari, and this happens and not only in music at all levels it happens every were . there is nothing wrong with educating our selfs the more we know the more power we have , and wen it comes to music if we learn how to play and instrument how to use a plugin how the plugin really works etc the more we can know the better because we can make more accurate decisions wen it comes to work flow or buying software or hardware , and this is only going to push developers to step up there game and the mediocre ones that were just getting your hard working money hope they get better or go out of business so the ones that are really working to take things to there next level can have more resources coming from us , because is hard even for the good developers now in days because they have to compite with a lot of mediocracy and the music industry is super saturated in all areas, You Paul are helping change the game because you are educating people big time, so I thank you for that
I agree man. Hopefully as a community we can influence change over time. If more people start checking under the hood and understanding their tools devs will change tactics. Whether if it's more honesty or more innovation, at least the consumer and the developers are on the same page.
Sonnox claro for example. That was made purely for consumers. A tool made for making your workflow quicker. No colour, nothing analog about it. Just a mixing tool made specifically for the benefit of the engineer. Every function well thought out and no BS. What you see is what you get. Very transparent and a thinking man's plugin. Not meant to be flashy and exciting. It's like a tiler buying a new tile cutter. Not as flashy as a brand new pimped out van to turn up to jobs but still a well made tool that helps you earn your living. Any van can get you to the job but a good tool can make or break how fast you complete as well as impact the quality of your work.
I am a man of many on the spot made up metaphors 😂
@@PaulThird yea bro Claro what and awesome tool I love the tweek and the Mix tool I wish it had side chain for the individual bands . Hey is good to dream lol. Yea totally agree with you . Hope you are having a great day and thanks again my brother 🙏🏽🙏🏽
You can't be wrong. I have come to this exact same conclusion almost a year ago. I also have been messaging waves and slate asking for more oversampling options. (Slate has no oversampling for their Vbc or VTM plugins?) Like I don't get it I would happily pay for a waves update that included oversapling options hey why not hook us up and even include HPF and LPF on every plugin.
I think waves are waiting till the WUP cripples them to the point where they really need to actually make a big change haha they really know how to scrape the barrel 😂
Aliasing also happens from D/A and A/D. If someone is doing analog saturation or soft clipping on outbound gear they should probably test that gear just like a plugin.
True
As I get used to your accent, I enjoy your videos more and more! Love your channel. I'm just curious, why you talk like a Russian guy? lol
Do you mean "why do I talk like a Scottish guy?".. Cause thats an easy answer.. I'm Scottish 😜
@@PaulThird Lol. I didn't know that's how the Scottish accent sounds like. It's kind of cool. Hey Paul, BTW, I'd love to see you reviewing and testing Black Rooster plugins. 🙏🏻 Thanks a lot for your great work!!
Well I looked away from the screen when while you were switching thru the three, and I could not tell when you switched between the tracks. My internet machines speaker setup is a pair of Sonarworks corrected Behringer Truth B2O31A' speakers. Maybe is my 67 year old ears? Who knows. Thanks for the video.
Don't worry. I looked (and thus knew when a change was coming) and still got it wrong the second time around (I suceeded on the first and third blindtest - maybe luck?). And my ears are considerably younger than yours. I don't think I'd conciously notice a change fast enough, if I didn't know when the change is coming. This was too subtle of an example for this - in my opinion. Maybe there are engineers that get the heebie-jeebies instantly without looking - I'm not one of them. (Was listening on my non-corrected, but deerly trusted 30 Buck Logitech Speakers (Sub included, but irrelevant for that example).. if I can't hear something on them, for me, it doesn't exist)
I could still tell differences in the car driving back from work but it was really hard due to the horrible bass in the speakers drowning a lot of the detail. I kept on getting the Lindell x4 PA right but had to listen harder for the dry and aliasing to the point I actually had to redo it with the engine off haha helped a lot but still difficult.
With these tests I find it's all about knowing where differences are. As soon as I know where they lie I know where to look so I don't get distracted by other things, especially doing 3 files, it's easy to get thrown off. I had to do it 3 times more to prove to myself haha
@@PaulThird stop showing off, you'll get yourself killed.. listening for aliasing while driving.. you're nuts!
Could be the YT codec but with these simple tests I always advise to try out for yourself so you are listening to the files as they are in the daw. Just as it wouldn't take long at all to set up.
Don't get me wrong it's subtle but it came down to feel for me on this. That's where I could tell the differences. I looked for the beat on this and I could hear and feel the dry and no OS not carrying the beat of the track as much as the 0S x4. Almost as if that extra saturation from the Lindell was just giving the record a bit more girth and weight and slight more punch in the transients. All subtle but enough for me to pick out
@@PaulThird I refuse. I don't believe the UA-cam-codec will significantly impact saturation or aliasing.. that simply makes no sense to me. I understand that it can mess with transients (or even distort if you leave youtube no headroom) because of compression, but not much else. But then again I don't know a lot about codecs and such.. that's just how I experience it.
*edit* it was brought to my attention, that UA-cam does not compress/limit audio (in the common sense) at all. When an audio sounds distorted, that is due to the uploader, not due to youtube. Goes to show how easy it is to make false assumptions.
You are SO right! What about non sampled software and vsts? Like korg software/ Roland software? Is there aliasing vs its hardware conterpart?
If it makes a lot of high order harmonic distortion and has no oversampling, it will alias.
If it doesn't make any harmonic distortion then no aliasing.
Tbh instead of going back to hardware, think about why proq3 has been an industry staple for years. Completely clean, no harmonics, does what you need it to do without colouring the source. That's what SSL was trying to achieve with their consoles, complete transparency
I first discovered Aliasing when sampling with my Casio sk-1 while sampling audio at 78 rpm at a sample rate of 8 bit (2.5 seconds) it was horrid. If at any time I detect it, I change EQ settings and increase the sample rate until artifacts are no longer evident. Sometimes certain audio is just too brittle to digitize. Of course nowadays I have no trouble with artifacts. I've never experienced it in FL Studio, any Akai mpc or my Ensoniq samplers.
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Paul. Would you then recommend we start recording at 24 96? Just in case we need it for Aliasing control?
I got an M1 mac, so power is really a breeze there.
If you've got the power then it makes sense but it depends on your recording chain. If you are using plugins on the way in then 96k would be a good choice so you aren't printing aliasing on your tracks but if you are applying plugins after recording you can get away with oversampling via metaplugin and stuff at 44.1/48k.
Depends on the individual plugins you are using but in my setup I do all my premixing at 96k (clean up & compression), commit & export processed stems into a 48khz session for mixing
Another great video Paul! Question for you… No doubt running higher sample rates cuts back on aliasing. However, I’ve been told that if your sample rates are too high, you can introduce artifacts, which are non-aliasing related. Are these high sample rate artifacts due to the fact that some peoples computers can’t handle the processing power to run the high sample rate, and therefore the artifacts are showing up? Just trying to pinpoint where and how this is happening. That being said, perhaps there’s a sweet spot, Where the sample rate is high enough to not introduced aliasing, but low enough to not introduced additional artifacts? Any thoughts?…
I don't know tbh. An engineer friend of mine nulled a 44.1 track with a 192k track so I can't say for sure if there are artifacts but my gut says doubt it in terms of daw sample rate. I can see oversampling possibly causing artifacts and that is something that I look to test in the future as artifacts in oversampling in certain plugins have been mentioned before 🤓
@@PaulThird thanks! This makes sense! I personally have never heard any artifacts when running my sessions native at 96K. But then again I have a pretty robust computer. Anyways, if you end up releasing a video that tests potential artifacts at higher sample rates, I would certainly be curious!
@@colonelw.g.sparkman6931 it can be accuracy based as you guessed, but it's also harmonics from above 20K coming back down into the audible range and causing distortion/artefacts etc,
This is the exact reason why i may go back to hardware. Can you give some good non aliasing vsts/plugins that you know of ?
Mostly anything that has oversampling but tbh you can oversample what you like with ddmf metaplugin.
I have this father ted image of you sitting in front of waves HQ. a mannequin holding an 'aliasing' sign and you holding a 'down with this sort of thing' sign. sorry my dude but i had to share.. too funny hehehe. great video as usual though my dude!
Hahahaha too funny man 🤣
Paul...what if you took all your digital audio tracks & reprint them with hardware i.e. 1073, G bus, SSL fusion and mix with those! Would that in turn.make a diff?
Not really if the aliasing is inaudible in the plugin. It can build up over tracks but if you keep it below - 90/-100dfs i can't see it building up over a mix. It's like noise in analog, it's there and sometimes at the same level or louder than a lot of inaudible aliasing but you don't really hear it in a 90's/00's analog mix when all the gear is summed.
Put it this way. The aliasing is managed at 96k in waves pye comp and when I brought multiple instances together as a mix and compared to hardware.. Over 70% of people couldnt tell the difference and the other half of what was left failed it. I think only like 12% got it right.
When aliasing is audible its an issue in my personal opinion but when it's not audible.. Analog doesn't really have anything else to offer vs. Good plugin emulation
What does it sound like? like a loss of detail? resolution? clarity?
All of them to me 🤣 loss of transients so less punch, less width and almost like a foggy sheen over the top where the detail isn't as clear. That's what I hear anyway
You should analye the new SSL EV2 Channel from waves and compare it with the original one from waves to find out if it is snake oil or if there's really a new algorithm working in the background. Or if it is just a reskin.
Done it today 🤓
Hi Paul great video!!!
If you plug your hardware compressor as I/O insert it get convert to digital
(A/D) in that stage it's like a Digital plugin you get Nyquist ALIASING if you working on 44.1 or 48 or am I missing something? whats the different between hybrid and Plugins? I don't get it...
Should I use Airwindows Ultrasonic plugin to avoid ALIASING?
With analog to digital you need an A/D converter. That itself will have its own sample rate but my understanding is that it'll cut off everything after niquist. So if its your interface and its at 48k it'll cut off EVERYTHING past 24k. Frequency AND harmonic content. You'll notice your daw and interface/converter need to work at the same sample rate so when it gets to into the digital domain there is actually no information past nuquist for the computer to process.
Thus you'll never get aliasing as the converter has chopped off all of the information past its sample rate, which ties into the DAW's sample rate as well.
Hypothetically speaking if your converter was able to work at a higher sample rate (96k) than your daw (44.1) in real time then it's possible as its giving the computer numbers it can't process but your daw and interface always work together and are synced at the same sample rate.
If you record at 96k and import the files into a 44.1 session then the files are converted to 44.1 and the high end information that would cause aliasing is removed.
I've been told that ultrasonic isn't for removing aliasing which is confusing me haha it doesn't remove aliasing. Well nothing I tried worked anyway.
thanks for responding great channel and this is a Big Topic ! when you do analog insert it's a round trip 2 times convert happening (D/A) -> (A/D) any degrade to the sound quality ? also if i put plugin like EQ after the analog i/O what is the result with aliasing? so many question to trace this complicated processing. @@PaulThird
Thank you for such a great video, very important information! Im wondering, if I export a 48k project to 96k does that make the aliasing less or do I need to work in 96k from start. Since your videos about this topic Im very careful before I buy a new plugin. Have you tried Analog obsessions plugins, they sound good, look good, have oversampling and are all free.
Aliasing has to be corrected at the source so on the plugin itself. Once you've got aliasing on a track it's on the track so you have to deal with it there and then
@@PaulThird aha okay. I read about Ddmf plugin and its only 40 dollars to get rid of aliasing on every plugin. Thank you for your response 😊👍
I use metaplugin for oversampling every so often but it's not always the answer as your oversampling depends on the plugins supported sample rate. If a waves plugin is only supported to 96k and you try and oversample it at 96k or x4 at 48k it will reduce aliasing but also start to multiply frequencies which isn't what you want.
You have to be very careful to stay within the parameters of the Plugin
@@PaulThird great advice! I will keep that in mind 🍻
Do I understand it right that this Metapluginfixes this issue? So you can put it on tracks that don’t have oversampling plugin features on them?
Yes. Unless it involves certain forms of convolution or certain types of machine learning. It should work with mostly all algorithmic plugins
Hey Paul, if i mix at 44.1khz and then export it with a high pass, will my output still have aliasing?
Yes. Aliasing needs to be fixed at the source. I've seen some saturation plugins still aliasing at 5-7k haha you've got to remember that just cause you've cut off frequencies at like 18-20k doesn't mean that 8-18k won't be making lots of orders of harmonics that go past 22k. That's why I do aliasing tests at 10k so I can really see how bad it is.
Once the plugin makes aliasing the damage is done so you need to control the aliasing as its actually happening
Hey Paul! Thanks for the follow up video! Can you answer this for me? Let's say I have 4 tracks, is there a difference if I put oversampling on each track vs on the bus or master?
Gotta be on the plugin itself as the damage is already done when it reaches the bus or master. I really wish it was that simple cause that would be awesome!! Haha
Think of aliasing as something that you need to deal with there and then.
@@PaulThird lol yeah makes sense. I was pretty stoked that cherry audio added it to all their synths based on user feedback.
what if you have a noise floor in your daw lol i think -96 db or so with a trick ITB into dither and the cross talk from satson before processing lol there’s movement ITB
Why do I feel like I'm commenting on an entirely different video 😂
@@PaulThird i be learning so much lol i’m working on a template that’s killer, i put a vu meter on the send from the input and it drops like -2db and such 🤨 everything sums to 0 and i have pre fader stuff to look into but i have 13 or more busses with a single plugin or 3 using the sends, no out puts and for my master bus(es) but the normal 2 bus is to make it all cohesive. lol “we mix to send to a master” but when i can master my ITB! shall do what you do and inform the people seen the video of the guy who came at you on topics such as these lol why bother when you dropping gems and using a different method to find aliasing he has good stuff as well! but the best is “using your ears”
Whats your thoughts on slate plugins and aliasing?
I never tested them for aliasing tbh but I don't think they oversample as far as I'm aware. Maybe internally but I couldn't answer that unless I got the slate sub
@@PaulThird There is an option for 2x oversampling in the mix rack. I think they still alias a little bit regardless. Not sure if i'm even testing correctly though and they sound solid enough regardless. Ive been testing everything I have after seeing vids on aliasing. More out of curiosity than anything really. Was curious on Arturia plugins too.
A lot of emulation plugs do if you go in really hot. If you gain stage normally it's OK but I oversample the Arturia 1176 x2 via metaplugin if I'm using it for a heavy compressed saturated parallel.
I cant tell any difference lol feels like the cymbals were different in one of them so deductively assumed that was the aliased one which i was right but really and genuinely on my headphones very little difference, i can imagine though how this aliasing could build up over a mix so as to be very noticeable thanks 👍
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Lol I got an Acustica preroll ad before this 😂
Just got the same one again mid-roll 😅
I got it as well at the start. 2 and a half bloody minutes!!! Haha
I wish that I knew about this 4 or so years ago and the plug-in companies had been honest about it. I was prepping a release and couldn’t work out what that weird brittle sound was. Ended up hiring a Grammy winning mixing engineer and he couldn’t figure it out either. 🤦🏽♂️
Tbh if you aren't aware i wouldn't imagine the idea of it would cross your mind haha
Which engineer did you work with?
@@blvkqmusicgroup do you know the famous mixing book called “Mixing with Your Mind: Closely Guarded Secrets of Sound Balance Engineering”?
@@Nathankaye no I haven’t heard of that
Mike Stavrou 🤷♂️
I must say that when I do the test here in my DAW, is much more audible than in a compressed YT vídeo...
When I hear your test, is sounds almost the same to my ears. The diference is so tiny... So I started to think I'm getting old and loosing my hearing... or maybe I am, because reading the other comments here, looks like everybody hears but me...
If you hear it in your daw that's the most important test anyway 🤓
@@PaulThird Yep! Thanks for sharing!
Plugins doesn't work correctly on a highest sample rate. Just put Saturn 2 by Fabfilter and turn the Drive knob. On 44100 you can hear aliasing. On 96000 you can hear aliasing too. Only oversampling can protect us. But it's doesn't important with instrumental music, when you compressing or eqing on 3-5db. It's more important on dubstep or drum and bass or another electronic genres. When you make music with all this high peaks filters and extremely distortions and processing. It's more important on mastering. Because we have more complicated sound on master bus and we wants to be louder. But most of the cases we don't need worry about aliasing.
UPD: Disclosure works on 44100 and rendering as is. Most of all clubs and concert halls and festivals works with digital consoles with 44100 sample rate.
Today we can see more and more trashy lo-fi tape cassete VHS emulations because "it's sound from the past". Children who listen music today can say tomorrow: "this aliasing it's a magic thing! It's sound from the past!"
Thats why it's valuable to have the option but being honest more and more plugin are becoming internally oversampled so the option of aliasing is taken away from you which makes sense though as if an analog emulation is done right it shouldn't have any audible aliasing at any sample rate
That is interesting indeed! Literally yesterday I was trying to find out what rate do Disclosure and Calvin Harris work at XD
Could you please share the source where you heard of Disclosure working at 44.1k? Was it one of their streams? (Is there a chance that you remember which one? haha) Cheers 🏄
@@levladomusic It was on twitch. On Disclosure's streams.
@@SergeFlashMan Thanks. You're like 100% they've mentioned 44100? 😝
@@levladomusic Most of electronic producers works in 44.1Hz. This is absolutely true. They have some arguments. 1. You can works anywhere with a laptop. 2. When you need some aggressive distortion you can use oversampling. 3. Don't pushing your limiters so hard. 4. Some producers don't do master mixes themselves.
Sir Paul Third.Thankyou.
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Nope, can’t hear it. But to be quite honest, I can barely hear compression and when I started I couldn’t hear it at all. You need to train your ears to listen for this stuff, I believe that you can hear it. I was totally amazed as I started hearing things in mixes I could not hear before. I’m still pretty fresh in this whole thing.
Funny though that someone would attack you for this. This is just technical information, if it has aliasing it has aliasing. No discussion. More information is always a good thing, because it helps making informed decisions. People get too attached to their tools.
Achhh it's just youtube. It happens and one forum post turns into another and before you know it lots of people believe that you run a chain of Internet cafes which pays 10 year olds less than minimum wage so that acustica audio can sell cracked copies of Waves plugins for under developed music schools who are funded by the Holy trinity of CLA, Greg wells and Bob Clearmountain..
You know.. The Internets a scary place these days haha
cant hear it either. Sounds the same to me. I figured it was youtube downsampling everything.
I can still hear it but it's not as easy after youtube codec on the TV, in the car slightly (but it's a lot harder) but it's probably cause I know what I'm looking for. For whatever reason it's way more apparent on my phone via UA-cam. Dunno why but the X4 OS is way easier to pick out 🤷♂️
Either way it's a very quick test to do in the daw. Would take like 2 minutes to set up
@@PaulThird nope, I've already moved from analog modelling plugins to clean EQs and oversampling compressors & saturators so I dont get paranoid after watching your videos lol.
I could hear a difference on my phone speakers, but not on my Beyerdynamic dt770 headphones.
Not sure what to listen for...
If plug-in developers would spend less money on graphic design for the GUI and more money on audiophile coding we’d be better off, but sales would probably go down.
Gui is king 🤣
yeah that's what we've telling peoples for years Paul aliasing if under -100 db doesn't matter
I know but I think I was being interpreted by some in the community as somebody who thought all aliasing had to be removed and any aliasing on an analyser was a no go so it was best to address that for people who hadn't watched all my videos. I always forget that some people may have only seen 1 or 2 of my videos so it was probably best to try and clarify everything and tie into the video i made a few weeks back.
Well I hope its cleared stuff up anyway haha
@@PaulThird hahahaha it did and i saw the vid over at production expert i am proud of you man for getting to the top.
Thanks man. I think the plan is to do more with Warren but ill leave that till I get another 'hi Paul, hope your doing marvellously well." and ill get working again 😂
@@PaulThird 😂😂😂😂😂😂
I love this
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There has always been this discussion about what samplerate to work in. And wether you hear a difference between 48k and 96K. I never understood the whole 96K thing. Understanding aliasing helps me get it - finally. The discussions (I had) were never about aliasing. It was simply about: Here is this file in 48k, here is this file in 96K.. is it worth it? To me it wasn't and isn't. However.. with aliasing this starts to make sense and I feel a bit like a fool. They've been right all along - unless I oversample.
I think this is a valuable video and you should make a playlist with "Paul Third explains audio-terms". Next video: "non-linear what does it mean and what can it mean?" just kidding, not about the playlist though.
That's why I'm so picky about plugins cause I refuse to mix at 96k haha I can just internally oversample where possible but I may start to limit any form of saturation to like 1 per track. Honestly I used the least amount of colour and analog emulations I've ever used on my most recent single. Asked a mastering engineer what he thought and he said 'you do like your colour do you' haha I think I need to trim the fat a little 🤣
@@PaulThird That may just be me, but I don't like the "FAT" button on the Britson. It really depends on the genre how hard I drive it. But even if I pin it 10 dB beyond red on a bass I prefer doing it without the FAT. It's not just "more" saturation. To me it sounds like different saturation. To me it sounds like it makes sounds take a lot more place in the mix (even in places where I don't want them to take place) when I hit the FAT. Just a thought, maybe you give it a shot! Just use the fader and oversample. Live a little! Faders are fun.
I still remember your advice to "live a little" and oversample plugins instead of being my hardheaded self that expects plugins to be perfect and have oversampling integrated. I'm kind of using it as a mantra now.. "live a little" is a very handy mantra for people like me (outside audio too). I used to live "too much" and I've embraced the polar opposite.. I need to settle for a middle ground sooner or later. Baby Steps: I oversample now, without feeling like betraying my principles :P. I've noticed that there's nothing that ever benefits from more than 4x OS (to my ears).
Trust me. I know it's not easy. I'm Autistic.. I despise change but I've learned over time that you don't how far you can go unless you try actually going further. If you sit in the same lane you'll always arrive at the same destination which is important as you need levels of consistency in life but sometimes if it's safe and you've nowhere else to go and you've got time, jump in the other lane and see if it gives you something different. If it gets you to the same destination but quicker then maybe start using that lane more often but least you know you have the option of the first lane if it's closed or you need be on time quicker etc
Give yourself options or you'll always be stuck in the same place. You might be happy to sit in the same lane but still handy to know you don't have to✌️
Aliasing is not an issue most of the time as it is inaudible except in some extreme cases, but not having an option to choose is unacceptable.
The song in the demo at the end... Obviously its only tiny clip but isnt it just a rendition of santa baby with sneaky lyric changes? Lol
Paul, please turn that NR off. :)
I'll try toning it down next time but my room does sound pretty awful haha
@@PaulThird Yeah, it surely would improve the intelligibility. I mean, being Scottish doesn't help it one bit. 😆
Love your vids, man, keep'em comin'! 💪😎
I'll try taking off spl deverb all together next week and see if that helps 🤓
Your middle name wouldn't happen to be The would it?
Many have given me this middle name but unfortunately in reality it is completely fictional haha
You think “accumulatively” is hard.. try “purple burglar alarm”!
I did it on a live stream 🤣 didn't get it first but after that it was easy haha
Hey Paul , TALK ABOUT ALIASING AS MUCH AS YOU WANT 😁 DOESN'T BOTHER ME A BIT. If people dont like it TURN THE BLOODY CHANNEL. Thanks for watching out for us!
It's not that noticeable in the context of a full mix (for the most part). If anything... I'm more worried about intermodulation.
I'd guarantee if you had a black box that could magically take away all the aliasing in a mix with the flick of a switch guys would pay thousands for it and call it analog magic haha
To me aliasing is the "extra 2-3%" and its basically free to fix and you don't have to pay thousands in gear for that "extra squeeze in quality"
@@PaulThird As long as you’re not adding a ton of saturation in the high frequencies… because that’s one thing that most analog guys didn’t even do…
Man, is it the noise gate or is it the accent 😂😂 joking,, keep giong on ... cheers 🥂
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That's why I using 88.2khz ;)
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@@PaulThird Real thing, then I converting in 44.1khz. It's very amazing working like that. Next level of sound!
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Remember to check out my autism channel if you want to learn more about my life 🤓🤓
People who tell you not to pay attention to detal in your own music are either too lazy or too deaf to justify the same attention to detail in theirs. They would rather de-legitimise your effort than match it. Don't justify your methods to those who have none of their own.
Totally I always go with what my ear wants to hear. That's what makes engineering so amazing is that 5 different engineers can give you 5 different interpretations of your song. If we all followed the same path we'd all roughly sound the same 🤓
Aliasing is awful, there are still developers around like Airwindows telling that oversampling sounds bad in comparison to their terrible aliasing plugins...
Oversampling option On/Off - Render On/off should be a standard on all plugins. Developers are just lazy to implement this, it´s ridicoulous. I never buy one plugin again without this feature.
I tried his ultrasonic which was his solution to not using oversampling but it didn't work for me. Dunno if it's cause I use metaplugin as a vst wrapper in protools but it didn't do anything haha
@@PaulThird The guy is living in his own bubble, that´s the problem with developers that have never done a record in their life or how know how to use a DAW for final production.
well, I think aliasing should always be a choice.. an option. I've had oversample options in plugins that I used to use. For example on the Saturator-X. Now mind you: That was before I knew what aliasing is. And being a good little engineer I simply tried clicking the buttons and picked what my ears favored. Now maybe you guessed it.. sometimes I preferred no oversampling. Crazy, I know.
@@akagerhard Aliasing is terrible, especially with transient heavy music. For me it never worked well, it´s night and day. i started back then with tape, midi sequencing, big console studio environment. Aliasing was not exsisting, i made the analog to digital transformation from day one, knowing both worlds in & out. At the end it´s a personal preference & taste. I like clear precices transient behavour and a wider soundstage. That´s only happening on my material without Aliasing
@@PaulThird dude... The ultrasonic plugin is specifically for filtering out ultrasonic frequencies when you ARE oversampling...
Try accumulate next time 😉
Now I can say that! Haha