I am guessing that this is happening on Windows machines, because it does not match my experience on the 2.8-GHz 8-core Mac Pro running OS X 10.6.5 (Snow Leopard) . . .
In great contrast, I find that the audio quality in Notion 3 is
stellar both in terms of frequency response and signal strength, so I am using Notion 3 for what I call the "basic rhythm section" of a song rather than a few tracks of reference tones and kick drum "clicks", which is what I was doing previously in Digital Performer . . .
Another reason that I am guessing this is happening on Windows machines is the reference to "sound card", which is not something about which one is concerned on the Mac, since Apple includes everything in the total design of their computers, where everything is the highest quality, hence works with no problems . . .
I augment and enhance the system with a MOTU 828mkII Firewire audio interface for getting the various real instruments (bass guitar, guitar, keyboard) and microphones digitized, and it also works nicely with Digital Performer (MOTU) to offload some of the audio processing . . .
This is the current
DISCO song I am doing, which is almost ready for doing the real lead guitar solos, and all the instruments are done in Notion 3 using the London Symphony Orchestra VSTi samples that come with Notion 3 for the strings but using various drumkit and synthesizer VSTI samples from Sample Tank 2.5 (IK Multimedia) and some of the Sample Tank XT add-on VSTi libraries . . .
http://surfwhammys.com/Im-Going-Goo-Goo-Over-Ga-Ga-11-28-2010-2-DP7.mp3Presuming everything is working correctly on your machine, it is more likely that you have discovered the first clue to the fact that George Martin did a lot more for the Beatles than most folks imagine, which is a roundabout way of explaining that composing and performing is entirely different and separate from producing, mixing, and mastering, which tends to be something that composers and musicians do not always understand so clearly . . .
Getting good levels is very important, and my experience so far with Notion 3 is that I use a lot of forte stuff ("f", "ff", "fff", and in some instances "ffff") to get sufficiently strong levels, which in part is due to my current focus on
DISCO songs, where everything is loud . . .
Basically, I had everything working nicely decades ago when the universe was analog, but once I switched to the digital universe about 10 years ago, I started discovering that the rules are very different, but I did not focus on making sense of the rules until about two years ago, when I realized that while the songs I was doing were good in terms of the instruments, there were problems with levels, singing, and so forth . . .
Hence, I decided that it was time to discover precisely what George Martin and his audio engineers actually did for the Beatles--even though they did it in the vacuum tube, analog magnetic tape, and vinyl record universe--and after focusing on this for two years, I am making a bit of progress, for sure . . .
For sure! I added Notion 3 to the set of tools about six months ago, in part to be able to explore the composing aspects of what George Martin did for the Beatles, and this also is coming along nicely, since as noted in a few of my other posts to this FORUM, I have known enough about music notation and music theory for a long time to make it very easy to do music composition with Notion 3, which is fabulous . . .
Fabulous! For reference, instead of using WAV files, I use DIgital Performer to control Notion 3 via ReWire, and I record the Notion 3 instrument tracks in Digital Performer as "soundbites", so each instrument track in Notion 3 becomes a soundbite in Digital Performer, including whatever I decide to do regarding using the Notion 3 busses, which is a handy way to combine a set of related instruments into a stereo "group" track, which is important because as explained in some of my other posts to this FORUM I use a lot of instrument tracks to create motion for what I call "sparkles", which is a key element of currently popular
DISCO songs like "Bad Romance" (Lady Gaga) and the European Single for "Who Owns My Heart" (Miley Cyrus) . . .
There might be a way to do stuff with other types of DAW software, but my general view is that using professional quality hardware and software for home studio work tends to be the best strategy over the long run, although there is more to it than just the hardware and software, which is where the focus shifts to
producing, mixing, and mastering . . .
For example, this is a Surf Whammys song that was mixed around the time I did the first album several years ago, although it is not the album version of the song . . .
http://www.surfwhammys.com/music/05_All_I_Want_To_Do.mp3At the time, I thought it was great, but after listening to it every once in a while over a year or two, I realized that it is
not a very good mix, although the instruments and everything else is there in the recorded tracks . . .
So, listen to "All I Want To Do" (The Surf Whammys) while wearing studio-quality headphones like the SONY MDR-7506, and then listen to "I'm Going Goo-Goo Over Ga-Ga" (The Surf Whammys), where I think you should hear a huge difference . . .
Some of the differences are the result of the IK Multimedia VSTi samples having better levels and TONE than the real studio drumkit that was used for "All I Want To Do", but another key difference is that there is a lot more signal processing being done on "I'm Going Goo-Goo Over Ga-Ga", which focuses everything . . .
My primary instruments are electric bass and electric guitar, but I play drums and keyboards, except that with the microphones and other equipment I have in the sound isolation studio, the reality is that I get better drumkit and keyboard sounds when I do the work in Notion 3, although there are times when I use the real drumkit and the KORG Triton Music Workstation (88-keys) . . .
As best as I have been able to determine, Notion 3 outputs at 16-bits and 44.1-KHz, which is standard CD quality, so if you try to force the output to 24-bits or 32-bits, then all you are doing is adding a lot of background noise, hiss, and static . . .
The only way it makes sense to use 24-bits is when you have good microphones and instruments and a professional quality digital audio interface that can do the digitizing, but even then when you create an MP3 everything is compressed and so forth, because for example a typical AIFF file might be 100MB, while the high-quality MP3 of the same song will be perhaps 10MB . . .
Setting the levels of individual, group, and master tracks is very important, and as a general rule 0db is the highest any track should be set, but even then it helps significantly to use mastering software like T-RackS 3 Deluxe (IK Multimedia) on the master output, as well as various components of it on individual tracks when the dynamic range is too great, at least for genres like
DISCO,
Flamenco,
Heavy Metal, and
Rock and Roll . . .
Regarding getting good bass TONE, my solution is to use a set of bass instruments, which includes bowed string bass, electric bass, and keyboard synthesizer bass, which works nicely . . .
If you are using a real electric bass guitar, then you can pump and blur it with the T-RackS 3 Deluxe programmable vintage equalizer and brick wall limiter, but it also helps to run it through Ampeg SVX (IK Multimedia), and there are a few other techniques that work nicely . . .
This is part of the signal processing I did for the electric bass guitar in the new mix for "I'm In The Mood For Christmas" (The Surf Whammys) over the past few days, where all the instruments are real and were recorded around this time last year, so have pretty good but not great levels, hence I had to do a lot of signal processing work, but so what . . .
http://www.surfwhammys.com/Im-In-The-Mood-For-Xmas-12-5-2010-2-DP7.mp3So what! The various IK Multimedia products work in Windows and OS X, although I have no experience with them in the Windows universe . . .
I really like T-RackS 3 Deluxe, since it has some very useful signal processors, and it also has a very useful metering component, which makes it possible to see the output levels, phasing, headphone and stereo image correlation, frequency spectrum in real-time, and so forth and so on, including suggested "perceived loudness" ranges for various genres . . .
http://www.ikmultimedia.com/t-racks/moreinfo/moreinfo9.phpSUMMARYAs you might be able to infer by my posts, I work on this stuff 12 to 18 hours a day, seven days a week, and it takes a while to make sense of everything, but if you work at it, then you get better over time, which from my perspective is what is important . . .
If you want your songs to sound like songs done by major studios for star musical artists, then one of the realities is that one microphone in a major studio probably costs more than everything in your sound isolation studio, even when you have state-of-the-art home studio computers, hardware, software, instruments and so forth and so on . . .
My perspective continues to be that it is possible to compete with major studios and star musical artists, but it requires a lot of work and there are no guarantees that this strategy ever will be successful, but so what . . .
So what! There are books on producing, mixing, and mastering, and some of them probably are pretty good, but you can use your ears and intuition, as well . . .
Regarding Windows vs. Mac, I have been doing Windows software development since the first version of Windows, and I tried for quite a few years to get music stuff to work on Windows machines but eventually stopped messing with it and switched to the Mac, where it is so easy and straightforward that it is almost mind-boggling . . .
Mind-boggling! I did a quick experiment with Notion 3 SLE for Miroslav Philharmonik using a short piece for strings, where I exported the audio in WAV format using all default settings for everything, including the default Notion 3 SLE mixer settings, which has all the tracks set to 0db and full panning . . .
Then I played the piece in Notion 3 SLE for Miroslav Philharmonik and did a screen and native computer audio capture with Screenflow, which is an excellent screen recording and editing application for the Mac, and I exported the screen capture in Windows Media Video format, which has reasonably good audio quality but does 50 percent compression on the video to keep the file size reasonable . . .
This is the Windows Media Video (WMV, 422K, approximately 19 seconds) version of "Melancholy Strings" (The Surf Whammys) . . .
http://www.surfwhammys.com/Melancholy-Strings-December-2010.wmvAnd this is the exported audio (WAV, 3.8MB, approximately 22 seconds), which is a few seconds longer, since there are empty measures after the playing stops, which I cropped in the video . . .
http://www.surfwhammys.com/Melancholy-Strings.wavThese sound pretty much the same to me, and I think the levels are good using the default settings, but when there are more instruments the rules change, since everything is more complex . . .
[
NOTE: I use the full version of Notion 3, but for this example I used Notion 3 SLE for Miroslav Philharmonik . . . ]
For reference, nearly all the accents, dynamics, and other stuff that one does in music notation actually are what I call "producing, mixing, and mastering" from a composer's perspective, although for performing the conductor does some of the work . . .
In other words, instead of raising the level of an instrument by moving a track slider upward, as a composer you might use forte or whatever, which essentially does the same thing, but since Notion 3 has a mixer with track sliders, panning, and so forth, you need to work with both of these techniques . . .
Yet, with respect to the master output, ultimately what matters is what happens in the Notion 3 mixer, so for example while you might have wonderful dynamics and so forth in the music notation, if the track levels are not set correctly, then the master output will not be so good . . .
If you are doing this on a Windows machine, then another possibility is that the specific sound card and its respective driver are not so great, so everything could be fine with Notion 3 but the problem is caused by the sound card and its driver, which is one of the things that happens in the Windows universe . . .
On this bit of nonsense, which is what it is really, a bit prior to the release of Windows Vista, Microsoft started making all the specifications available to third-party developers and hardware manufactures, so I studied everything for a while, since it was obvious by that time that Microsoft was trying to move Windows to the level that it at least could attempt to compete with the Mac, and there were virtual festivals of highly detailed specifications and requirements for audio, which appeared to be great, except that actually satisfying all the specifications and requirements mapped to hardware manufacturers having to do a lot of work, so what happened is that all the hardware folks complained so much that Microsoft essentially made everything optional, even for Windows Vista Premium logo compliance, with the result that while the potential was there for high-quality audio, few Windows computers have it, because it costs too much when the total retail price for a Windows computer is $500 or whatever . . .
Whatever! At least in theory, it is possible to build a custom Windows machine that should be somewhere in the same general category as a Mac, but by the time you ensure that all the hardware and software is the highest quality, such a custom Windows machine will cost more than a Mac but will not be so good as a Mac, if only because it is running Windows . . .
You can run some versions of Windows on a Mac, so that is another possibility, but I have no idea how the Windows versions of plug-ins and so forth work when running in Boot Camp . . .
I have done advanced software development in Windows for over two decades, and my perspective is that it is so much easier to do graphic design, music, and video on the Mac that there is no reason to mess with trying to do it on a Windows machine, which is a lesson I learned the hard way at considerably cost with respect to building high-end custom Windows machines and doing a lot of experiments . . .
At some point, after messing with hardware, sound cards, drivers, annoying pop-up messages that make no sense, and so forth, one eventually realizes that there must be a better solution, which is around the time one discovers the Mac and decides to switch . . .
So, my advice is to do the best you can with what you have but to plan on doing something better with respect to computing platforms in the future . . .
And everything matters, since something so apparently simple as changing the level of a track by 1db on a violin can cause a string bass to fall into the background or to pop into the foreground, since everything interacts and making what might appear to be a simple change can affect other instruments, for sure . . .
For sure!