# I've been diggin'... - Site: Analog Industries - Author: Chris Randall - Date: 2006-07-31 - URL: https://analogindustries.com/2006/07/ive-been-diggin/ ...in no particular order... **Mose Allison.** I saw him a couple times during his residency at Fat Tuesday's in NYC. It took a little while for his voice to grow on me, but now I can't get enough of that shit. "If You're Goin' To The City" has got to be one of the all-time great jump blues tracks. **Gibson Special Alloy Humbucker Guitar Strings**. These strings don't suck. They actually sound pretty damned good. They don't break. I've been endorsed by Ernie Ball for years (yeah, if you look on the back of the green package, you'll see my name somewhere in that list) but I've given up on them. Their quality has gone way downhill, and now that I'm not touring any more, I don't need to buy 700 packs of strings a year, and I can spend a little more. I'm sure there's better strings than the Gibsons out there, but I tried 'em on a whim, and find them servicable. **Nuendo.** Nothing changes. I have to have pretty much every Windows and OSX DAW installed, and no matter how much I deal with the others, I still love Nuendo. I don't know how those people that say one DAW sounds better than another come to that conclusion, but as far as workflow goes, Nuendo wins hands down, for me anyways. **Preset #257 on the Eventide Eclipse.** Named "EMT Plate," it bears little resemblance to its namesake, but is an excellent thick reverb. It is currently my main reverb, but is soon to be replaced in that regard. (Ho, ho, ho...) **Plogue Bidule**. The more I play with this bad boy, the more I like it. As far as bricks-n-wires environments go, it'll get the job done, and doesn't suck as much as most of the others. That's it for now. I think the world needs more stream-of-consciousness blogging, and I've just done my part. ## Comments (14) **Lindon** (2006-07-31): Do you have Tracktion installed? I'd be interested in an off-the-cuff impression. It changed the way I work in terms of AMOUNT of stuff I produce, like doubling it...of course we all have our own way so working etc. etc. **Chris Randall** (2006-07-31): I have Tracktion. Don't like it at all, sorry to say. It is incredibly lacking in several key features which I use all the time. Its handling of groups, sends, and external effects is more or less a joke. Not my cup of tea at all. Plus, mixing in Tracktion blows because, well, there's no mixer. -CR **Lindon** (2006-07-31): Yeah I can see what yuou sayt, still it really freed me from all those concepts...horse for courses of course... **lemmy** (2006-08-01): Is Nuendo much better than Cubase SX? I've been with SX for a while now (2.2) and am looking for some new inspiration. I am enjoying Reaper so far, though it is still early days there. **leaftoe** (2006-08-01): I was a long time Pro Tools LE user and I developed a conspiracy theory that it intentionally sounds bad for the same reason its required hardware lacks key features. I have since switched to Nuendo and the interface alone has made my bulge larger. But what the fuck do I care? I"ve got Wade Fucking Alin mixing my tracks! **Chris Randall** (2006-08-01): Yeah, I agree with you there. It's not so much that LE sounds bad as the hardware you're stuck with does. To Lemmy: I think you'll see a much greater improvement going from SX2 to SX3 than you will switching to Nuendo. There's a lot of nice features in the 3-series Steinberg products over their 2-series bretheren. There is not a really big difference between Cubase and Nuendo in the handling of audio. Nuendo has some nice features for surround (who cares?) and video (more important to me) but the audio engine is the same in both. -CR **musicmachinemaker** (2006-08-01): I think the main reason why another daw sounds better is just how it lets you deal with it. Better enviroment , faster workflow... less thought... it's the person controlling the soft that has gotten better because he feels motivated more. That's why i actually get better sound results in Logic mixing than ProTools. and different and better plugins. **dm** (2006-08-01): Has anyone been diggin' their new Avantone Mics? I haven't btohered to hook miune up yet -d **dm** (2006-08-01): egh, what an aweful set of fist fingers I have. My appologies for the atrocious typos. **studio nebula** (2006-08-01): If you use hardware synths and FX, it's definitely worth moving from SX2 to SX3. There are other things in version 3 which are nice, but those features made the whole system work better for me. On the flip side, Steinberg needs to be turned over someone's knee and spanked for the sorry state of the custom MIDI control panel feature. SX still doesn't offer the functionality of Cubase VST's MIDI mixer stuff, and what functionality is present in SX is quite buggy. Recently I was trying to set up a simple panel to fire specific control-change messages at my Nord G2e, and eventually gave up in disgust after first discovering that there was next to no documentation on the topic, then discovering that it didn't seem to work right anyway, and then reading on the Steinberg forums that other people have been complaining about this issue for quite awhile. That aside, I'm happy with SX3. Someday maybe I'll be able to afford Nuendo, but currently I don't think that there is enough of a difference between the two to make it worth the change. There are very real reasons why one DAW app might sound better than another, but I agree that the psychological issues are probably more significant. It doesn't matter how good a tool sounds if you don't like using it. --Adam **cebec** (2006-08-01): Try REAPER for a DAW (free while in beta). I'm ditching Sonar 6 and Live in it's favor since it does everything right that the other two don't. **penzoil washington** (2006-08-01): They say that mixes ITB sound different from DAW to DAW, but I wouldn't know as I'm OTB. Adam, do you think that beyond the summing engine there'd be a difference? **kL** (2006-08-01): As someone who went pro tools > vegas and was clam happy until sony screwed the pooch, I second the reaper props. Vegas simplicity and the routing of doom. Very good work. But I also like Tracktion for, well, track creation. Fast and efficient. I mix elsewhere. Lot of people I know in LA love Nuendo; the bugfest that was Cubase VST back in the day put me off Steinberg so I admit I never gave it much of a chance. Someday. **studio nebula** (2006-08-02): I'm not sure what you mean by "beyond the summing engine" since that's what a DAW mixer is, at its core. It sums a bunch of numbers together. In any case, there are a number of reasons that one DAW could sound different than another when both are used strictly ITB. They could do their math differently, in short. They could have different fader curves, or different panning curves. (Note that SX/Nuendo offers several different panning curves itself.) Their built-in EQs could behave wildly differently, if those are part of the test. Etc. Which one sounds the best, well, I don't really have any opinions on that. I haven't heard of Reaper; I'll check it out. I don't really think of Live as a DAW because it's missing so many features that I can't do without. OTOH it's great for testing plug-ins during development. I happen to have it running this cool reverb right now... --Adam