Plug-in oversampling on bounce/freeze/export

Some plug-ins can produce unwanted artifacts when running at lower sample rates. This typically applies to plug-ins and virtual instruments that don’t oversample internally. Amp sims and synths are affected the most, but so are dynamics processors and some reverbs.

While you can work around these problems by using higher project sample rates like 88.2 kHz or 96 kHz, doing so can also add CPU load to the project due to the higher data bandwidth.

Cakewalk provides another solution, which lets you specify whether a VST or DirectX plug-in effect or instrument should be resampled at 2x, 4x, 8, or 16x the project sample rate when bouncing, rendering, freezing, exporting, etc., or during playback. This allows you to gain the benefits of running at a higher sample rate in a standard 44.1KHz project. This process happens automatically and behind the scenes.

To globally enable/disable oversampling for a plug-in, click the VST2/VST3 drop-down menu in the VST plug-in toolbar and point to Oversampling, then select Enable for Render or Enable for Playback. These options globally persists for all instances of the plug-in in all projects, so it only needs to be set once per plug-in.

When hovering over a plug-in name in an FX rack, the tooltip shows the current rate if oversampling is enabled. This allows you to quickly verify if a plug-in is being oversampled.

When enabled, Sonar will upsample the incoming audio to 2x, 4x, 8x, or 16x the project sample rate, process the plug-in at the new rate, and downsample the resulting output to the project sample rate.

Oversampling provides several benefits:

Allows plug-ins to process the source material at a higher level of precision.

Drastically reduces the likelihood of intersample clipping when you maximize the level.

Undesirable digital artifacts are shifted much further outside the range of human hearing.

Phase shift is drastically reduced.

Benefit from high sample rate processing without the hard disk and CPU strain that recording at high sample rates produce.

Non-linear processors, such as EQ and compressors, benefit from oversampling to lessen aliasing of high frequency components.

 

Caution: Sample rates higher than 192 kHz may have compatibility issues with certain plug-ins.

To globally bypass plug-in oversampling

To globally enable/disable plug-in oversampling for plug-ins that already have oversampling enabled, click the Enable/Bypass Plugin Oversampling button in the Control Bar’s Mix module. Oversampling is enabled when the button is lit.

Figure 405. The Mix module.

Oversampling precision

Plugin oversampling uses very high quality resampling which may be overkill for playback and is a bit CPU intensive. To reduce the CPU load, the Precision submenu allows you to set multipliers for the resampling sinc size, which results in more efficient playback:

Low: The bandwidth is limited to 1/8 of the selected sample rate (for example, 6 KHz @48000). Low mode allows for significant CPU savings.

Medium (default): The bandwidth is limited to 1/4 of the selected sample rate, which is more than enough for playback.

High: The bandwidth is limited to 1/2 of the selected sample rate.

Highest: Full bandwidth. The Highest' quality mode improves audio precision with higher-order windowed- sine resampling of waveforms and noise-shaped dithering.

 

See:

Effects parameters

How to use real-time effects

Applying audio effects

Applying MIDI effects

Bypassing effects globally

Using the Plug-in Browser

Effects chains