Does Amadeus Meet Highest Standards for Audio Quality

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rsweet
Posts: 1
Joined: Tue Sep 23, 2008 12:48 pm

Does Amadeus Meet Highest Standards for Audio Quality

Post by rsweet »

I'm looking for Amadeus opinions from any professional engineers who record very pristine audio: classical, intimate jazz and vocals, using top-end gear. Does Amadeus preserve pristine audio quality while massaging audio as well as something like ProTools, Digital Performer, SoundForge, etc? Thanks in advance for any feedback.

This is not a criticism of distorted rock music - if I could still get good AC/DC tickets, I would! But a distorted musical source would obviously mask minor editor software-generated noise and other artifacts that could be unacceptable when processing very clean audio.

Thanks again!
Ron Sweet

CDJonah_alt
Posts: 379
Joined: Thu Mar 15, 2007 3:57 pm

Does Amadeus Meet Highest Standards for Audio Quality

Post by CDJonah_alt »

I suspect that any differences would come down to the plug-ins that one
uses for signal processing; it seems likely that the cheap/free au/vst
plugins will not be as good. It would seem to be unlikely that the
simple processes in AP would degrade the audio, we are dealing with
operations in the digital domain.

While I do far from high-end audio, because it is primarily live and so
the background is not as low as one would like, I do only classical and
I have yet to find artifacts that give me problems.

If the au plugins the Apple gives are the same as Logic, I would think
you would be fine. Amadeus doesn't do all the things that ProTools or
Logic Pro does, it is an audio editor.

Chuck

rsweet wrote:
I'm looking for Amadeus opinions from any professional engineers who record very pristine audio: classical, intimate jazz and vocals, using top-end gear. Does Amadeus preserve pristine audio quality while massaging audio as well as something like ProTools, Digital Performer, SoundForge, etc? Thanks in advance for any feedback.

This is not a criticism of distorted rock music - if I could still get good AC/DC tickets, I would! But a distorted musical source would obviously mask minor editor software-generated noise and other artifacts that could be unacceptable when processing very clean audio.

Thanks again!

------------------------
Ron Sweet




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JEGG
Posts: 122
Joined: Sat Feb 24, 2007 6:33 pm

Re: Does Amadeus Meet Highest Standards for Audio Quality

Post by JEGG »

rsweet wrote:I'm looking for Amadeus opinions from any professional engineers who record very pristine audio: classical, intimate jazz and vocals, using top-end gear. Does Amadeus preserve pristine audio quality while massaging audio as well as something like ProTools, Digital Performer, SoundForge, etc? Thanks in advance for any feedback.
As a generality, the audio quality is fine. Some caveats:

1. Quality of plugins will, of course, vary. OTH, if you're interested in doing classical, generally only tiny amounts of EQ are used-you should get the recording right from the get go. With well chosen mic's put in the right place, you should not need to do much "massaging." Spend your money on microphones, not EQ.

2. Sample rate conversion may be better with other software. Note "may." You may not need sample rate conversion.

3. Dither is too large of an area to get into here. If you're using more than 16 bit depth, you need to bring your own dither, if you're going to 16 bit. Let's avoid for the moment the whole question of dither and classical music venues, factors to consider when applying various sorts of fades, etc. There is a free MDA dither plugin.

(Lots of other free MDA stuff too, like "Image." Very useful for classical stuff, whether or not you to MS recording.)

4. The one big negative with Amadeus Pro doesn't have anything to do with quality-rather there's a large feature missing. If you're doing relatively detailed editing, AP doesn't really have a way of precisely locating an edit point. If you plan on edits where you take an inhalation from one take and use the vowel of another take, you'll have a very difficult time in AP. It's scrubbing is poorly implemented-or not implemented at all. AP is not something you'd want to use to assemble a movement with a few different takes.

OTH, if you're just cleaning things up or doing basic assembly work, such as omitting a movement, omitting noise between movements, assembling a recording from different complete takes, AP is perfect: very efficient and simple. It's also a great way to assemble a CD(R) on the fly.

Other good things: AP handles both AU and VST plugins.

It has analytical functions that seem to come only with much higher priced software, and-again-saves a lot of time with assembly chores.

BTW: With AP, plugins appear much more "Mac like." You'd be surprised at what you see when you open the same MDA plugin in Peak (LE) compared to AP.

Since AP comes with a free trial period, why not try it?

anechoic
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Joined: Sat Nov 01, 2008 9:39 pm
Location: San Francisco

Post by anechoic »

the free MDA Dither plug does not open in AP but does in Peak
error message:
'Unable to open this VST Plugin
One possible cause is that you are trying to run a PowerPC plug-in on an Intel Mac. Another possible cause is that the plug-in uses a too old format.'

also, while AP recognizes AU and VST plugs neither of them work in real time like they do in Peak
and you'd be surprised how Cycling 74's Pluggo plugins behave in AP -- it is not pretty!
AP still has a little way to go to becoming a serious editing tool
:)

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Martin Hairer
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Does Amadeus Meet Highest Standards for Audio Quality

Post by Martin Hairer »

the free MDA Dither plug does not open in AP but does in Peak
Just tried it, works fine for me. Have you downloaded the latest
version from <http://www.hairersoft.com/Downloads/VSTEffects.zip>?
Regards,

Martin

HairerSoft
http://www.hairersoft.com/


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anechoic
Posts: 60
Joined: Sat Nov 01, 2008 9:39 pm
Location: San Francisco

mda

Post by anechoic »

will DL the new versions and try again
thanks!

===

worked like a charm! :)
now I just need VST/AU plugs to be real-time and I'll make the switch from Peak
;)

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