Respect Your Oversampling Settings

Warning! 

More is not necessarily better, it’s just more!

A while back I approached oversampling as many say this will make compressors, distortion plugins, saturators and colour boxes sound better.

I was on an Intel Mac and could not get my buss processors above 2x times oversampling before my overtaxed computer ground to a halt. It seems the oversampling process uses a ton of CPU power. As an example of DSP usage, some plugins have their pull down menu labelled as 2x, 4x, 8x, 16x (CPU-intensive) and 32x (Very CPU-Intensive)

When I upgraded to an Apple Silicon M3 Mac my whole world changed. "Now I can crank the oversampling and my mix will sound so polished", I thought! On one of the final mastering plug-ins I was able to bump up the oversampling from 8x during playback to 256x if I clicked a series of buttons quickly before rendering the final Pro Tools bounce.

The problem was, the next day the artist or producer would say that the mix didn’t sound like what we had  just spent four hours working towards. "Nah, that can’t be", I reasoned. Maybe they were tired, but each of them working separately in their own homes on their own computer via Audiomovers had the same comments. I had to look into this and went down the rabbit hole of Googling “oversampling”.

I was thinking I’m getting shiny, polished mixes because I was selecting higher oversampling settings. I was wrong, in some cases extreme oversampling can make a clean mix dull sounding as if the quality had diminished. In an attempt to produce a better mix/master I actually did something detrimental to the song.

Now I must admit that after working on something for 4 hours I was confident to commit to the render BUT I made the mistake of not listening to the bounce immediately.

FAQ

Q In layman's terms, why do some plugins offer oversampling?

A Oversampling is a method used to reduce or eliminate aliasing artifacts which appear over a set frequency (search “Nyquist”) After 20kHz aliasing will appear and similar to harmonics, reappear at a set interval above and below Nyquist. Sometimes aliasing may not be heard but often times it can appear as a bright, shrill artifact or a sizzle sound.

Selecting 2x oversampling on a 48k session has the same effect as having your session sample rate at 96k.

This is plenty to reduce aliasing but feel free to try 4x or even 8X. Listen to what the settings do to your instrument/song.

Of course if your session sample rate is at 96k there is little chance of aliasing

happening anyway.

Q Can you use oversampling on every instrument?

A Yes, but oversampling is not available in all plugins. My estimate would be 25% of my plugins have an option to oversample

Q What instruments benefit from oversampling?

A In my experience anything with a high quality eq or compressor that would be pushed beyond normal operating conditions, think “Drum Squash”. Saturators and distortion plugins would greatly benefit from oversampling. Mix buss and instrument busses would also be my suggestion.

Q Can I have more than one plugin with oversampling on a Buss or Master Buss?

A Yes, but the first plugins should have a lower oversampling setting such as 0=off, 2x or 4x.

If there is a saturation plugin just before the final level gainer, try 4x or even 8x to hear if it produces a better quality.

Then I would also use 8x on Fab Filter L2 to finish the mix/master chain.

Q What's a good tip before I render my mix/master?

A Listen, Listen, Listen.

Try different oversampling settings.

Try bypassing each plugin one at a time, then bypass them all.

If at anytime you question yourself on the sound after a plugin is bypassed, go ahead and do a tweak …lol... as balances will change, your snare should not be twice as loud as the rest of the mix! Feel free to adjust as you go, after all your mix should sound decent without a handful of finishing plugins. Also check your overall  levels by bringing the master mix volume up and down to hear if a cleaner sound is better or maybe a lil more heat is what the mix needs.