I used to watch a lot of videos about aliasing and clean digital distortion (the need for oversampling in saturation/distortion plugins)
Now I just use whatever plugin sounds good, and don't care anymore about oversampling.
Do you care at all?
I think it's grossly overrated. Sweetwater demonstrated synth aliasing nicely in one of their videos. It was an old cheap/low powered classic DSP hardware synthesizer, much more prone to aliasing than the best software, or more modern hardware. The demonstrator nonetheless had to use the highest key pitch, then use pitch bend up to demonstrate obvious aliasing. Outside that extreme range the synth sounds fine, it effectively wasn't there most of the time. It's even pointed out that people like and seek that colouration, or character!
If I hear a tiring gritty quality to the sound I will push the aliasing/quality settings up in a virtual instrument if it's got that option. Usually it's unrelated.
OTOH you can certainly drop those quality settings and hear no difference at all, especially with multiple tracks but it frees up CPU cycles.
Much like pushing the noise floor to complain about normally inaudible sound to noise it's probably overrated, but not to be completely ignored.
I still try to use higher quality settings when the CPU allows. Chasing phantoms mostly.
I turn oversampling on and off and pick whichever I prefer. If I can't hear a difference, which is most of the time, it's basically a coin toss depending on my mood and if I'm stressing my system with a ton of other plugins or not.
As a general rule of thumb I tend to avoid oversampling drums, to avoid linear phase filtering messing with the transients, but I'm more likely to use it on sustained instruments and voices.
A lack of oversampling doesn't put me off using a plugin, but I run at 96kHz so it's less of a worry anyway.
It's a "biggie" because users spend too much time on forums and YT. After watching 10 videos about 30 different compressors we MUST find that big thing that completely changes the landscape of audio production...
The simple fact is that much much better sound, than what most of us are able to do, is done with tools vastly inferior to what we have all have in our toolbox today. Sure it can "better something", but in approx 100 out of 100 cases it's NOT the issue of something sounding bad. The longer time one spends in this game the more obvious it is; all tools are great and unless you're running a huge commercial studio, the very basics is more than enough to create a superb sounding track. It's all about the skills and a proper room and not this tiny tiny stuff.
So, does it matter? Not really. Does it mean it's a hoax? No, it is something a plugin developer needs to find a solution for, but if you care about creating tracks (and not audio development) then ignore it and go back to your instrument.
I can definitely hear differences in the attack response of compressors using oversampling or not, and I tend to go with oversampling most of the time, since it just feels "tighter" and "cleaner" to me, most of the time.
However, with certain plug-ins it can be quite obvious so sometimes oversampling is a necessary evil. It's usually not the aliasing itself that's the annoying part, but rather the intermodulation distortion it causes that can be quite obvious. As long as the aliasing is below -100dB you shouldn't have any problems at all though.
If I use OS when mixing I don't use anything beyond 4x. You shouldn't have to use more than that for removing aliasing as long as the plug-in is decently made and you are using it correctly. You might need higher OS when mastering, but 2-4x should be more than enough when mixing.
Most of the time I keep (or turn) OS off because I can’t hear an effect and as a rule of thumb if I don’t hear an effect I go with the less ressource intensive option.
In some cases I do hear an effect, like for example when I use extreme distortion. But even in those cases I mostly keep it off because switching it on makes the distortion sound dull, lacking that high end sizzle that comes when you push it and diminishes the aggressiveness which I am after anyway when applying extreme distortion. And for light distortion where I only need a bit of “color” the aliasing is barely (if at all) audible anyway.
I used to watch a lot of videos about aliasing and clean digital distortion (the need for oversampling in saturation/distortion plugins)
Now I just use whatever plugin sounds good, and don't care anymore about oversampling.
Do you care at all?
You don't have to oversample all the things. Just get familiar with how aliasing sounds and how oversampling works + when to use it and when not to use it. Once in a while you'll find fx or an instrument which sounds dramatically different, smoother, "less digital" when upsampled. But that may not even be the sound you're going for.
I think plugins like Voxengo Tube Amp are brillant, with the option of automatic oversampling. Just for rendering.
I mean, if the plug has it, use it.
What I don't do anymore is to stop using a plugin just because it doesn't have it.
I think plugins like Voxengo Tube Amp are brillant, with the option of automatic oversampling. Just for rendering.
I mean, if the plug has it, use it.
What I don't do anymore is to stop using a plugin just because it doesn't have it.
Yeah, D16 plugins do the same, it's really handy. Apparently Live doesn't report online/offline which is one reason more plugins don't do it.
Honestly I’ve never worried too much about oversampling, but then I’ve never used synth plugins. If I was using synth plugins I’d probably always oversample just to be on the safe side, but then again some “dirty” synths sound really cool.
If you’re running at 96kHz then I’d never worry about is since technically you are already oversampling 2x your final delivery format at 48khz, and even if you’re releasing at 96kHz the aliasing should be out of the range of human hearing.
Plugins that do benefit from oversampling are distortion plugins like Fabfilter’s Saturn 2, but then it still depends because you might want that dirty aliased sound vs. a smoother “clean” distorted sound.
The largest differences come from the recording techniques themselves. Garbage in, garbage out as they say. No amount of CPU power will compensate for a sub-standard capture of the original source.
Now with the reaper update you’ll be able to use r8brain to upsample any plugin, so now there’s truly no plugin you can’t upsample, which is fantastic!
In a dense mix, aliasing is almost indistinguishable\buried if any such harmonics generating plugins are\were used.
It might get annoying when use don simple synth sounds, sinewave or such. As soon as you add other instruments, forget about being able to hear the aliasing. It might muddy the mix but you will EQ anyway.
Most likely you would be able to hear aliasing effect from about 3kHz down to 300Hz (by that low point the aliasing amplitude would be lower significantly) so more audible at about 3kHz [±2kHz] (humans most sensitive range).
Oversampling is good thing. If you record\mix at 24b\96kHz and above, it (the OvSamp) would be a bit placebo.
Aliasing: do you care?
Linear Mode
