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Anyone using Vegas for multi-track audio these days?
I hope this isn’t out of place here….. I couldn’t find a more appropriate forum.
I started a multi-track audio project in Reaper and then as an experiment duplicated some of the mixes in Vegas to compare features and workflow. Vegas was actually pretty good. But I was very surprised to notice that the Reaper playback sounds significantly better than the identical mix in Vegas. Cleaner, better definition, smoother…. stuff like that.
The levels are also different between the two, with Reaper seeming to produce levels that agree with the displayed waveform peaks. Vegas plays everything back about 3dB hotter for some reason. For example, Vegas plays a peak that is clearly displayed by both apps at about -2 to -3 at somewhere around +2 (and yes, all faders are at zero). I suspect something is sub-optimal in the playback section of Vegas but I’ll be darned if I can figure it out. Anyone have any ideas why Reaper would sound so much better? Does Vegas play back at reduced resolution (like it does for video)??
Paul
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7 Replies
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In Vegas there are effects running on each track as default. I don’t know how much effect they have, but they are running.
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No, I removed the default effects long ago.
After much hair pulling, someone on the Reaper forum suggested it might be the pan laws. And danged if that wasn’t what the problem was. Reaper and Vegas were both set to 0dB at center but Vegas was set to “add channels” and Reaper was not. I don’t know exactly what the difference is….. perhaps it changed the stereo mix? But it made all the difference.
Paul
Paul Goelz
Rochester Hills, MI USA
paul at pgoelz dot com -
Paul,
This same question came up years ago comparing Vegas to other DAW’s, and the same answer was found. And I’m embarrassed to say I’d forgotten about the summing. Glad you figured it out.
If the two apps are using the same A>D, then they have to be recording the same, but the way the playback is set up…Douglas Spotted Eagle
VASSTCertified Sony Vegas Trainer
Aerial Camera/Instructor -
Well, all I can say is that after I changed the pan laws the two DAWs sound very similar. I’m not sure they are exactly the same, but it is difficult to A/B compare the two.
I’m finding I much prefer the Reaper GUI but Vegas does a couple things better than Reaper. The most obvious is embedded projects.
Is there an easy way to make audio clips space themselves on the timeline automatically? I placed a bunch of audio projects on the timeline and need them to NOT touch each other in a controlled way. If they touch, the CD generation routine doesn’t see the transition from one item to the next. Then again, I’m not sure if the space between items is important or not, since the CD generation routine places start and stop events at the clip boundaries. I have not yet burned a CD to fid out and I didn’t find anyting useful in the help.
Paul
Paul Goelz
Rochester Hills, MI USA
paul at pgoelz dot com -
Hi,
So what would be the best setting for this kind of situation? Balance 0db;balance-3db; balance -6db; constant power or film? Is there anything in Douglas Spotted Eagle’s Vegas Pro Editing Workshop books explaining the differences? Thanks for any info on this. -
Well, I think balance 0dB sounds pretty good. WAY better than “add channels” or whatever it was called. I haven’t experimented with the other settings yet.
Paul
Paul Goelz
Rochester Hills, MI USA
paul at pgoelz dot com -
Thanks. I found explanations for all of the panning modes in the Vegas help section under “Audio Panning Modes”.
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