Oh dear, face-palm central! Shows how sensitive my ears are! Anyway, done the business again and edited previous post, now I can’t really hear any difference… 
The test is here.
http://www.divshare.com/download/12723314-337
I really can hear the difference between native renoise sampler and battery.
Renoise is a bit blurry/dull compared to clean/sharp/bright Battery 3. Isn`t it???
p.s. btw, i think there is no much differences between interpolation methods (off/on/standart/hq etc.). Sometimes it works ok (like most of times on drums), sometimes its not (noisy, grainy). So as Dblue mentioned - “So much of this stuff appears to come down to personal preference.”
Checking them out now.
One thing I notice immediately is that the highhat pattern itself has a rather different feeling in Renoise vs Battery. There appear to be more volume accents in the Battery pattern, while the Renoise version is more flat and constant. This also appears to be happening with the clap sound as well, so that certain claps in the Battery sound are more accented than their Renoise equivalent. These boosted highhats and claps could be responsible for a lot of the differences in tone that you’re hearing, because those higher frequency sounds are simply boosted to higher levels.
I do agree that there is a difference in tone here, but since the characteristics of the accented hits are so obviously different, I don’t really think this is a valid comparison yet. You would need to set it up so that both Renoise and Battery are producing exactly the same loop with exactly the same characteristics. Remove any accents and things like that, so that Battery is just outputting the samples as flat as possible.
Yeah, i mentioned this too. But there is no accents or stuff like that, checked twice.
Ill try to check ADSR stuff or something that could affect batterys sound.
Are you using your own samples or a kit / cell presets from the Battery 3 library?
Don’t forget that Battery 3 also has articulations which add accents and humanized variations like timing, pitch, decay, velocity, etc even if the notes entered in the sequencer are at constant velocity and meter.
It also has velocity mapping and cross-fades between velocity mapped samples, which will obviously not translate fairly if you are using the plug-in grabber to render the samples from Battery 3 at a set velocity.
Well there’s definitely something going on, because I can actually see the accented hits in the waveform itself.
It looks like this:
Renoise:
…
Battery:
^…^.^…^^.^…^^^.^.^…^^.^…
It becomes easier to notice if you apply a steep highpass filter to isolate only the highhat frequencies.
Here the green waveform represents the highhats (and some snare) from the Renoise loop with its steady hits, while the red waveform represent the accented hits in the Battery loop that have different velocities.
- Samples grabbed from VST by plugin grabber. Drums are Nepheton, bass is FM8, strings is U-NO62. All as is, nothing touched.
- By default all this shit is OFF in battery. If not, i did manually.
Yes, it looks like, but its not was related to velocity or stuff.
Problem was in battery output routing. All samples was routed to master channel, so there was an “accent” effect or better say, some kind of compression and stuff. So, i routed all samples to their proper separate channels and here is the result…
- native sampler, interpolation cubic, render arguru 44/24
- battery sampler, interpolation perfect, render arguru 44/24
http://www.divshare.com/download/12723627-8b2
Nearly i cant hear the difference now. Daaaaaaaam…
Anyone?
Dysamoria?
It’s pretty much case closed as far as I’m concerned. Thanks dblue for taking the time to look into this and providing some proper analysis and reassurance. Time to catch some zzzzzzzzzz’s…
Yeah, thanks to Dblue. The next time i would like to discuss some things about how mixer really works in renoise. Some things drives me crazy.
2 Dysamoria > I think the same shit happens with other samplers, players and stuff. Pretty sure that Kontakt have this master channel “summing/accent/compression” things going on.
Anyway, any more tests/analysis welcome.
Aha! Well, good to know you got to the bottom of that issue at least. 
As with the other tests, there are some tiny differences that you can observe with a high resolution frequency analysis and things like that, but they’re so insignificant that it’s not really worth considering them.
I’ve spotted a few other really small things as well, but they appear to have nothing to do with resampling, and are probably to do with very slight differences in how Renoise and Battery handle the timing of each note. Nothing to worry about in terms of the overall sound.
No problem, guys. I don’t mind taking the time out to investigate stuff like this. I only hope that it helps to give others a better understanding of what is going on and how certain things work.
Truth
But it’s also important to make the distinction between placebo and actual, tangible differences.
yes i was. sorry i’ve been away from this conversation (i did start it after all) 
this is definitely an issue i experience. it’s a trade-off. some things sound fine with resampling. some sound dark and muddy. there have been times where i’ve turned off the resampling in trackers because of this, depending on the character of the samples i wanted to maintain. still, this shouldn’t matter with anything other than old 8-bit, low sampling rate samples, should it??
still… the thing that i initially started this conversation about is something i perceive even when simply playing the sample from a Tracker’s sample editor, at its root pitch (supposedly not resampled). it seems to get resampled by the audio engine anyway.(??)
the most dramatic difference for me, still, with Renoise was comparing Kontakt3’s pizzicato as plugin and as Renoise-saved samples. the Renoise samples played back dark and without clarity while the plugin itself sounded beautiful. what’s the technical issue there? i don’t understand it. 16-bit samples. 44.1KHz. multisampled so as to not require much resampling for pitch changes… yet it sounded… terrible as Renoise-rendered instrument samples.
i know you’re winking, but i have to say that the perceived differences i am inquiring about actually STOP me from making music. it’s a strong psychological negative when i work on a sample in, say, Sound Forge, get it exactly how i want it, bring it into Renoise and … wait… that’s not how i left it. it’s… “dim.” i had this problem with a bass drum/kick/effect mix sample and a pizzicato string instrument. i messed with it many times in many ways without success. i even used EQ in Renoise to try helping the problem. i ended up just moving my whole song into Reason/Record (note, the pizzicato in the Orkester Sound Bank sucks) because i was tired of fiddling with things in Renoise. this situation jammed up my creative process for over a day because the tool wasn’t doing what it seemed to me it ought to do. i’m not abandoning Renoise, but i’m less enthusiastic about working in it now. i know mixing and mastering is a necessary evil with audio production, but the problem i’m experiencing happens notably before even that stage is relevant. so… it’s a creative block.
thanks, everyone, for the really good discussion. i’m so glad this didn’t turn into a flamewar or pissing contest. i’m very appreciative of everyone’s efforts at looking at this topic seriously and especially thankful for dblue’s data.
dblue said: “As with the other tests, there are some tiny differences that you can observe with a high resolution frequency analysis and things like that, but they’re so insignificant that it’s not really worth considering them.”
here’s where it gets subjective. everyone’s hearing is slightly different. i’m particularly sensitive to high frequencies (all extreme frequencies, really, high or low). dunno if it’s autism neurology or what, but i hear things many people don’t hear that SHOULD be outside of human hearing range. as i age, i expect this will decrease, but so far it hasn’t (i’m almost 35). i was a happy user of MiniDisc for ages, and after a long time of listening to just my minidisc copies, i listened to my CD originals and i noted a considerable difference. the idea of the compression is psychoacoustic; it’s supposed to eliminate frequencies human hearing tends not to pay attention to. apparently my hearing system DOES pay attention to them, though 
sorry for my big pile of replies back to back!! i was away
Before we get any further into this, can I just ask if you listened to the example files I provided in my earlier post? I’ll repost it here for convenience:
Download: sawtooth_110hz_test.zip
Files:
- sawtooth_110hz_original.wav - Original sound generated with Sound Forge.
- sawtooth_110hz_voxengo.wav - Captured live from Renoise using Voxengo Recorder.
- sawtooth_110hz_renoise_cubic.wav - Rendered from Renoise using cubic interpolation.
- sawtooth_110hz_renoise_sinc.wav - Rendered from Renoise using sinc interpolation.
Please listen to each of these files in Sound Forge (or your preferred listening environment) and tell me if you notice any difference between them.
If you can ignore the psychological influence of knowing which one is which (by their filename), and you can honestly hear differences between them, then I will gladly provide more blind listening tests to see if we can really get to the bottom of this. If what you are hearing is so clear and obvious to you, then it should be no problem to identify a ‘good’ vs ‘bad’ sound in a blind listening test. Do you agree?
reading through all of this, without listening to the samples (edit: did not listen because i know i fucked up my hearing already to hear much of a difference, so my input in that would be useless), i got two points i think are relevant to the discussion.
- i believe it would be possible for dysamoria to hear subtle differences in certain frequencies that most people do not hear, simply because his autism (as he states himself) seems to have a focus on that sort of thing. in that sense it might be an endless debate, because the basis for this will be extremely subjective, in the sense that most people do not hear the differences but dysamoria does. he will be (almost) on his own in this, due to the way his brain is wired, so to speak.
- if there is indeed a difference in the way Renoise reproduces the samples, or maybe in the way Kontakt or Sound Forge produce the samples, for whatever reason that might be, it seems to me this is not so different from (as mentioned before) the sound-quality of for example the MPC. in other words: analog gear is always hailed for having a certain ‘sound’… isn’t it ‘fair’ for software to have its own sound as well? or should it reproduce exactly as is?
it’s an interesting discussion in any way, and i really enjoy reading about stuff like dysamoria being autistic and hearing stuff differently. this interests me to no limit.
In the modern world where everything is designed to systematically rob you of your last penny, it immediately rouses suspicion when something is simultaneously excellent at what it does and ludicrously cheap compared to other products of its kind. I freely admit that I am no better than the next man and often suffer delusions of relative ‘quality’ inflicted by a ruthlessly capitalistic world.
I act on this by episodically sitting in front of Logic and a suite of NI plug-ins (which I have paid top-dollar for full licensed versions of ) trying to thrash out some ideas for hour upon frustrating hour before I inevitably, constantly return to Renoise and get the job done in five minutes and sounding the absolute bollocks to boot!
Let’s be honest, I think a lot of other users associate cost with quality which is clearly not proportional where Renoise is concerned. I found an interesting quote on the Reaper website (from one of the UK’s leading music technology magazines) which I think is equally applicable to Renoise:
PS. Hope this does not compromise any copyright shenanigans - just trying to make a point!
Word, yeah dude every component in a system has subtle variables and affects the sound / output to some degree and the zeros and ones that make up a host / DAW should be no different to subtle effects of the wood that makes a guitar or the cartridge in a turntable. TBH, Renoise is the first tracker I have ever used and I don’t even regard it is a such, I cut my teeth on an Akai MPC2000 and a Korg prophecy before going all software, I simply regard it as a brilliant intergated sequencer / sampler / etc.
On the subject of the romanticism often bestowed upon the MPC, remember Renoise only constitutes the equivalent of an O/S on such a hardware sequencer/sampler as the MPC or Ensoniq ASR-X. A lot of the ‘sound’ of these things - which operated at 44.1 kHz is due to the fact that you had to put sounds into them through an external source and then route them out to record them via cables / mixer / soundcard. So before the signal even hits the computer or hard disk recorder (remember those?) it’s been through at least two D/A to A/D processes at the point of sampling the source material and then being routed out of the machine itself.
Even Renoise poster-boy Venetian Snare says he 'puts everything through a mixer" to make sure ‘it sounds right’ in the interview D/L in this post (cheers again Bantai!):
I think Richard D James / Aphex Twin summed it up pretty well*:
"some people bought the analogue equipment when it was unfashionable and very cheap though.
some of us are over 30 you know!
anyone remember when 303`s were £50? and coke was 16p a tin? crisps 5p
also you have overlooked A LOT of other points because its not all about the overall frequency response of the recording system its how the sound gets there in the first place.
here are some things which you can`t get from a plugin,they are often emulated but due to their hugely complex nature are always pretty crass approximations…
the sound of analogue equipment including EQ, changes very noticably over even a few hours due to temperature changes within a circuit.
Anyone who has tried to make tracks on a few analogue synths and make them stay in tune can tell you this, you leave a track running for a few hours come back and think I’m sure I didn’t fucking write that, I must be going mental!
this affects all the components in a synth/EQ in an almost infinite amount of tiny ways.
and the amount differs from circuit to circuit depending on the design.
the interaction of different channels and their respective signals with an analogue mixer are very complex,EQ,dynamics…
any fx, analogue or digital that are plugged into it all have their own special complex characteristics and all interact with each other differently and change depending on their routing.
Nobody that i’ve heard of has even begun to start emulating analogue mixer circuitry in software,just the aesthetics,it will come but i’m sure it will be a crap half hearted effort like most pretend synth plugins are.
they should be called PST synths, P for pretend not virtual.
Every piece of outboard gear has its own sound , reverbs,modulation effects etc
real room reverb, this in itself companies have spent decades trying to emulate and not even got close in my opinion, even the best attempts like Quantec and EMT only scratch the surface.
analogue EQ is currently impossible in theory to be emulated digitally, quite intense maths shit invovled in this if you’re really that interested,you could look it up…good luck.
your soundcard will always make things sound like its come from THAT soundcard…they ALL impose their different sound characteristics onto whatever comes out of them they are far from being totally neutral devices.
all the components of a circuit like resistors and capacitors subtly differ from each other depending on their quality but even the most high quality military spec ones are never EXACTLY the same.
no two analogue synths can ever be built exactly the same,there are tiny human/automated errors in building the circuits,tweaking the trimpots for example which is usually done manually in a lot of analogue shit.
just compare the sound of 2 808 drum machines next to each other and you will see what I mean,you always thought an 808 was an 808 right?
same goes for 303`s they all sound sublty different,different voltage scaling of the oscillator is usually quite noticeable.
VST plugins are restricted by a finite number of calculations per second these factors are WAY beyond their CURRENT capability.
Then there is the question of the physicality of the instrument this affects the way a human will emotionally interact with it and therefore affect what they will actually do with it! often overlooked from the maths heads,this is probably the biggest factor I think.
for example the smell of analogue stuff as well as the look of it puts you in a certain mental state which is very different from looking at a computer screen.
then there is analogue tape…ah this really could go on forever…
I’m quite drunk cant be bothered to type anymore…’
so yeah,whatever, you obviously don’t have to have analogue equipment to make good music in case that’s the impression I’m giving,EVERYTHING has its uses .And not all analogue equipment is expensive you can still get bargains like old high end military audio devices,tape machines fx etc just go for the unfashionable stuff.
Richard."
*Original thread has now been 404’d on planet-mu forum
shit, that last post made me wanna post:-)