I’m fairly new to using Cantabile as my guitar rig system. One thing I’ve recently noticed was that the output volume was lower than when using the amp sim in standalone mode, despite the levels on the amp sim itself showing the same output. Here’s a few things I’ve tried:
I tried this with both SGear and Nembrini Live Rig to make sure it wasn’t from a specific plugin.
I inserted just the amp sim on a new song in Cantabile, no other effects. Just a connection from Microphone to amp and output to main speakers.
Master gain on connections and Master are all set to 0dB.
Microphone and Main Speaker Port mix is set to 100%
The funny part is that when I add the the Media Player with a MP3 backing track, the track is quite loud. To match the outputs, I normally need to take out 12-15dB of the track.
I must be surely be missing something or is it normal that the plugin running on different hosts will have much different volumes?
I play guitar thru Cantabile. You didn’t provide how you are getting guitar into Cantabile, so I will tell you what I do. I am using a Focusrite as my connection. Understand, there are several points in the chain where volume can be adjusted. There are gains in my Focusrite software, as well as hardware pre-amp gains on the unit. Cantabile also has gain points throughout it’s routing. It is extremely important to set the pre-amp level, then use gain staging throughout the routing points. The amp sim should also have in/out gain points to adjust.
Your differing levels are probably (just guessing) determined by what you are using to interface with the standalone, and maybe something different interfacing with Cantabile, like different drivers.
I’m with all Corky said but thought I’d add that Cantabile has a built in limiter / saturator to prevent clipping during live work. It defults as ON and set to 80% threshold. Also the real tell is the S-Gear meters, if they are the same in the Standalone as in Cantabile then what Corky said about the signal chain is right on. You said 12 to 15 db which is a bunch of loudness so the built in limiter may not be the difference but worth a look. FWIW I leave it off and use my favorite brick wall VST on the main out instead. I’m curious how hard the VST out is hitting the meters on the plugin slot to see if it’s pushing that peak limiter in (meters go orange and orange outline appears at clip stage). Anyway just wondering … it would be nice to figure this out …
I’m using an SSL 2 audio interface to connect my guitar with their dedicated ASIO drivers both to Cantabile and the standalone amp sim. The drivers don’t have any additional settings and the interface is configured the same for both Cantabile and the standalone sim amp (I’m sampling both at 96KHz with 512 buffer size).
Good call on the limiter but it was indeed off. However, I found the culprit - the main speaker gain on the Monitor tab. I missed this one as I thought clicking on the mains speakers on the outputs would be the same thing.
it would be nice to figure this out …