(video transcript)

Hey, what’s going on my friends? Chris here from Mixdown Online. Now the other day I made a video on how you can bounce and export your mix in Cubase. We looked at three different ways to do so. Now in this video we’re going to talk about the difference between offline export and real-time export and is there a difference in quality? Which one sounds better? Now I made some testing on this and I want to share that with you, but first the intro.

All right, so no if you’re new here on this channel, feel free to subscribe to the channel, to click notification bell, so you stay informed every time I upload a video. And if you enjoy this video, share and like. That actually helps me a lot. All right, so now let’s jump in. Let me show you what I have here. I have a, first it was an empty session, where I imported some different mixes, okay, mixing versions. One is a offline export, one is a realtime export. The other one is a print version, a print export. Okay, so now let’s go and listen to a on-process rough mix, okay? On-process meaning that there’s no plugins whatsoever and this is something very important and you’ll understand why right away.

So first I’m going to have you listen to the offline exports.

(singing).

Okay, so let’s listen to the real-time exports.

(singing).

Okay, pretty much the same. Now to make sure that they are the same, actually, a very good test is to solo them both and reverse the phase on one of the tracks and if everything nulls out, okay, meaning that there is no sound, okay, that means that there are exactly the same. So let’s have a quick listen to that. So I’m going to open my channel settings window and make sure that one of the channel is phase reversed. And I think this one is, there you go, now going to have a quick listen before and after.

(singing).

Very simple.

(singing).

The minute I switch the phase, no more sound. Guess what that means? Those two tracks are exactly the same. Okay, now let’s compare the real-time one with the print version. Again, there is no plugins. All right, so now let’s go back to my channel settings window.

(singing).

Okay, now we can hear there’s a slight difference here between the print version and the real-time export, and it’s going to be the same with the offline export because there are both the same.

(singing).

Okay, same thing. So okay, let’s put that on pause and look at a full-mix version and we’ll get back to this right after. Okay, now we’re going to listen to a full mix with plugins to see if there’s a difference between the offline export and the real time export to start with. We’re going to solo them both and I’m going to reverse the phase on one of them.

Interesting. Okay, now we have a difference so they’re not exactly the same. Okay, now if we do the same again with the real-time and the print version, making sure that the polarity is switched.

Interesting. Okay, so again, now we have a difference between the two files. Okay, so let me explain to you what’s happening here. Now, the reason why I did a test with plugins and without plugins is because at first I did it with the plugins and the full mix version and I noticed the difference, of course, and I was wondering if it was a Cubase problem, if Cubase was exporting differently between the offline and real-time option, if there were a difference there. So that’s why I had to try the same test without any plugins, with the straight recording. This way I knew that Cubase, the mathematical calculation that were done while exporting in real time and offline were the same, okay? So Cubase is not the issue as far as the offline and real time works.

Now the print version, without any plugins, with a raw recording, there’s a difference. And we’ll actually going to compare all of those versions right after this. We’ll listen if there’s inaudible differences between those three methods, okay? But the way I see things as far as the print version goes, and I’m not like 100% sure about that, but from the way I see it, I think there’s a mathematical calculation difference between the real-time and offline option versus the print version versus when you’re recording directly in Cubase. So there’s probably something different under the hood of Cubase while exporting opposed to recording directly in the session, and this is why we’re getting those differences.

Now the reason why we have a difference with the full mix version with plugins, it’s because some of the plugins will use randomization, and this is often going to happen with reverbs, phasing effects, saturation effects, that will use randomization. So that means that those plugins might behave differently every time around. So those plugins are responsible for the differences we have between those versions. Is that a problem? We’ll get to that afterwards.

So if in fact those plugins are responsible for those differences because of their randomization, that means that if you bounce the same mix using the same method twice, you’re still going to have those differences, and this is what I also did. So what’s in green is actually a second version of the same section of the song, the same bounce basically. So if we listen to offline export one compared to offline export two, same part of the song, same thing, the same export basically but done twice in a row using the offline method and this is what we get. So let me get back to my channel settings window and I’m going to make sure that one of those two tracks has the phase reversed.

Yep, same thing, and again, I did that for all of those methods and same for the export, same for the real-time method.

Again, the print one.

So now I know that the cause of this are the plugins and not all of them but again mainly reverbs, the phasers, saturation plugins and stuff like that that will use randomization. I noticed that Cubase plugins don’t tend to use randomization much, so I don’t tend to have that problem, if I can call that a problem, with the stock plugins out of Cubase.

But now let’s check the difference in the audio quality of each. What I did here, I did a kind of a mixed of all those different versions because we have, let me go back here, okay. So I made like a blend of those three versions. Let’s listen to them briefly, one at a time.

All right, next.

And the print one.

Now let’s have a quick listen on the mix-up of all those versions all together with the screen off.

Let’s listen to that again.

Honestly, I don’t hear much of a difference. Actually, I don’t even know if I hear a difference, to be honest, and I made the switch more than seven times, okay, that we went from one version to another. So my conclusion on this, I don’t think that affects the sound quality, whatever method you’re using, so it doesn’t matter much. From what I’m hearing right now, I think the difference is mainly a slight timing randomization difference caused by those plugins, which on their own doesn’t affect the sound whatsoever from what I can hear anyways.

So basically I would say if you want to just print your mix, print your mix, you want to export it with the real time-option, do it. If you want to export it with the offline option, all of the above are good. They’re all going to sound pretty good. So if you were worried about that, there is no worries whatsoever. Whatever method you’re using is good, so it’s mainly up to you to decide which one is more practical for you to use. That’s it.

So, all right, my friends, so I hope that was helpful. If so, share and like, and if you want to leave your comments on that topic, please do so. Leave your comments down below and if you want to add up to it or if you think you have more information on this that I didn’t cover, okay, just please add that up in the comments section down below. All right, my friends take care and I’m going to see you next time. Ciao.