Cubase 5.0; JXsynth

Can you identify a file with 10 percent added second harmonic distortion from the original every time? Find out with the ABX Comparator.

This month Martin Walker improves his aural skills and reports on progress with Cubase 5.0.

I'm sure we've all chuckled when hearing about record company hangers‑on being allowed to alter the controls of an unused mixer channel to add their 'creative contribution' to the final mix. It's weird to think that someone can be fooled in this way, but psychology can be a powerful audio tool in the right circumstances. Unfortunately it can also affect our own judgements, since it's perfectly possible to convince yourself that altering a setting improves the sound when the change is actually inaudible.

Comparisons of audio gear also face the same set of problems. You can be certain that you prefer the sound of one amplifier or mixer over another when listening to them one after the other, but be swayed by the fact that one has a more impressive front panel or is more expensive. It's far safer in these circumstances to perform a blind test, where someone else switches between the two without telling you which one you are listening to. However, even this can be flawed if the person doing the switching has any bias. The safest way to compare is to perform a double‑blind test, where neither the listener nor switcher knows which product is being auditioned.

Blind Faith

If you fancy trying out the new JXsynth VST Instrument, a demo is available from the web site. It's fully functional, but with a burst of white noise every ten seconds or so to encourage you to register.

The reason I've explained this double‑blind procedure is that this month, during my Internet travels, I came across a PC utility designed to give this facility to soundcard playback. The ABX Comparator was developed by Arny Krueger, whose excellent soundcard performance test site is already visited by many surfers, and it uses these double‑blind techniques to help train your ears to discern different audio faults and limitations. You load in your choice of A and B sounds in WAV format, and then start the test. There are three main buttons labelled A, B, and X, which play back the sound files, and your task is to choose whether the randomly selected X sound is actually A or B by clicking on either the 'X is A' or X is B' buttons. Each choice constitutes a Trial, and you are encouraged to run at least five and preferably more trials before clicking on the 'Test Over, Check Answers' button to find out how reliable your choices were.

There is a wide selection of tests available. 'Types of Audible Difference' help you discern things like Tone Quality, Loudness, Noise and Distortion, while the 'Dips, Pips, and Tips' selection train your ears to learn the audible effects of changes in frequency response due to boosts or cuts, shelving responses, and comb filtering. All have reference files and a selection of treated files labelled Very Easy, Easy, Harder, Difficult, and Might be Impossible. Once you can reliably get a 99 percent confidence rating on an easier test, the idea is to move on down the range until your ears can discern smaller changes.

After last month's PC Musician feature covering Valve and Tape plug‑ins, I was particularly interested in the Distortion tests, which use a short section of acoustic piano with 30 percent 5th harmonic distortion, 10 percent 5th, 10 percent 3rd, 10 percent 2nd, and finally one percent 2nd harmonic distortion. By the time you get to the Difficult test of 10 percent 2nd harmonic the difference is really extremely subtle. For those who want to hone their aural perception more finely, there are also files available with various levels of jitter, polarity inversion, and various product tests including a selection of MP3 encoders, and soundcards like the SB Live!

Although the test files are nearly all in 16‑bit/44.1kHz format, and quite a few are therefore about one megabyte each to download, the ABX Comparator is still an excellent way to help train your ears to hear problems in the mix. Best of all, it's freeware. Well done Arny! (www.pcabx.com/getting_started.htm).

Cubase 5.0 Update

Steinberg have now posted a 5.01 update for VST on their web site. I haven't bothered to download this 1.7Mb file myself as it only adds Japanese language support, extended and improved French support, as well as the latest Rocket Client from Rocket Networks (for more information about Rocket Networks see the box in the Cubase VST 5.0 review SOS September 2000). Far more interesting is the news that the 5.02 update is already under way, and the list of bugs that this will cure has been posted by Dave Nicholson on the www.cubase.net forums. They include cures for the current crashes with the Merge Audio Segments function and the Get Layout function of the Score Editor, as well as when double‑clicking or dragging MIDI files into the Arrangements to load them.

ReWire activation states will be correctly remembered in 5.02, version 3.7 songs will have their Master and Send FX correctly converted, and the problems converting a MIDI track to a drum track from an imported 3.7 song will be sorted out. More serious, some soundcards apparently don't currently produce any audio file when recording in 32‑bit mode, and this will be dealt with too. In all, there are 23 known bugs that will be addressed in version 5.02, and the estimated timescale for their eradication is about six weeks from the list being finalised at the end of August (around now).

Personally, I'm encouraged by the way these bugs were collected — Steinberg maintain close contact with the Cubase.net forums, and encouraged experienced users to provide postings describing in detail any problems they found, so that Steinberg developers could properly confirm them. All too often a flurry of posts by inexperienced users can confuse the real issues, while this approach let Steinberg track down the 'ones that got away' far more quickly and reliably. While some musicians will consider this getting the users to beta test, in fact Steinberg have responded quickly to confirm the real bugs, and can now concentrate on eradicating them for all our benefits.

Sadly, Steinberg have also got some disgruntled users who, after upgrading to Cubase 5.0, discovered that the new dongle wouldn't co‑exist with their MIDI interface. Readers have emailed me to report problems with the Midiman Portman 2x4, which effectively disappears once plugged in to the far side of the dongle. However, the majority of reported problems have been with the Opcode 8port/SE interface, and this conflict has been confirmed by Steinberg who say that the problem is caused by the 8port/SE driver. Apparently the 8Port/SE driver assumes it's the only active device on the printer port, and although the Cubase 5.0 dongle will 'immediately free the port when requested to do so', no request ever comes. The dongle releases the port immediately after its security checks, but the problem comes when a MIDI interface tries to access the port during these checks, and ignores the possibility of any other device being active.

Until (and if) this driver is updated, the suggested solution is not to go to the expense of replacing your MIDI interface, but to purchase an ISA parallel port expander, so that you can attach the dongle to its own dedicated parallel port. I bought one of these some years ago, for about £10, to provide me with a total of three parallel ports. Although easy to fit they are mostly pre‑ Plug and Play, and therefore ideally need a suitable IRQ reserving from the BIOS.

This really is dark ages stuff as far as PCs are concerned, and also assumes that you have a spare ISA slot available. Microsoft are desperate to get rid of ISA expansion slots — many modern motherboards have none at all, while most others only have one or two. Although USA parallel port expanders are cheaper, you can also buy more modern versions that use the PCI buss. Some users have problems getting the dongle to work properly with these, but the solution here is to leave the dongle on your motherboard parallel port, and run the MIDI interface from the PCI expander port.