Live for traditional recording/mixing - An experiment

[Sepp Ultura]

Hi everybody!

I'm currently tracking 5 songs with a funk/rock/pop band. I'm doing the whole production in Live. I'm also recording the whole thing in Live as I've decided that I wanted to do a full production in Live since I love the work flow and the features.

I must say that, up to now, it's a charm. Compared to recording bands with Logic its brilliant. The only thing I miss is a way to get rid of mis-recorded takes quickly and easily (in Logic, if you delete freshly recorded regions they will end up in the trash bin, if you want). On a regular basis, I have to go to "Manage Project" (I made one Project per song, not a project for the whole thing and then sets for the individual songs) and get the list of unused samples in the Live project in order to delete them. If you don't do this on a regular basis, the computer's memory gets overloaded and recordings will be misplaced/out of sync.

That's the only thing..oh no, hang on..if you have 13 drum tracks running and you want to record 6 bass tracks simultaneously, the bass player will experience dropouts on the pilot-track, which, during a recording session is not a good thing. What I did for the Guitar recordings is that I rendered the pilot to a mono track and just created a new live set and did the recordings there. After this it's easy to merge the Sets via the browser.

Of course, the hardware I'm using is also a factor. I'm working on a 2007 Black MacBook (not Pro), 2.16 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo, 2 GB RAM, Mac OS 10.6.6. But these problems are not an issue in Logic on the same machine. Nevertheless, those two issues are the only things that could be improved in order to really improve the work flow in Live.

I'll get you posted as soon as I'm a bit into the mix.

Cheerio,
Matt

[Sepp Ultura]

Right, here's the update. I did'nt find the time to post properly earlier.

Fact is, I've finished the mix now and here's my experience:

My machine just wasn't strong enough to handle the load, so I starte to get hickups after mixing the drums and wanting to mix the bass tracks. What I did then is, I rendered the drums an mixed the bass seperately, in another Live Set. Same with the guitars and the vocals. I then rendered the stems (drums, drums, drums reverb, each guitar take on its own and each voice, including doublings) and created a "Final Mix" project where I did the final mixing and applied group fx like eq, group comp, delay, etc. All these stems were rendered out in 32 bit wav files, although recordings were done in 24 bit. See the audio facts sheet about dithering for the reason.

I must admit that at first this stem mixing an moving around projects can be a drag. But in the end I'd say that it also adds air to the process since you're then only confronted with, e.g, one guitar track instead of six.

Of course, with a more powerful computer this necessity would be limited, but for now I have to live with this an I will definitely do it again. I'm very pleased with the result.

As concerns sound quality, I personally feel that I produce more transparent and balanced mixes than in Logic. No traces of the brown henke dither or the muffled sound some of the forum members complain about.

I'll post some snippets as soon as the band gives the ok.

Cheers,
Matt

[milosh]

great news Matt
I still do the live band mixes in Reaper. Maybe it will change.
cheers

[Sepp Ultura]

Right, for those interested, I've uploaded one of the five tracks onto my soundcloud.

http://soundcloud.com/mwmprod/trace-tracing-tracks

To sum up, I've recorded and mixed the whole project in Ableton Live. See above to read about my experiences. I'll definitely do it again (I'm tracking my own band's album in Live at the moment). I've then mastered the whole thing in Logic Waveburner.

Plugins involved:

Third Party:
The complete Waves API Collection
Waves C4
Waves Eddie Kramer MPX
NI Guitar Rig
ApulSoft apQualizr (as my main EQ)
LiquidSonic Reverberate (as main reverb on vox and drums)

Live Plugins:
Compressor
Multiband Dynamics
Filter Delay
PingPong Delay
Utility


As an aside, it's the first time that I've mastered myself. The band and me were, however, so happy with the result that we decided to use my master.

Enjoy. And let me know what you think!

Cheers,
Matt

[Sepp Ultura]

I have now, after tracking the drums for our album in Live, decided to switch back to Logic. I have never had a DAW that was so prone to tracking errors. Clicks and pops all over the recordings were the result. In addition, as I have to use aggregate devices in Mac OS X, one of the soundcards kept disappearing or producing nosiy signals.

I'm not saying that Live is a bad DAW, it's just that it's not suited for tracking and mixing huge projects on a not-so-fast computer. I'm sure, with a better computer these effects would be minimised.

I'm now mixing the full songs in Logic with about 130 tracks running. No issues. Of course, intensive use of plugins stops the project, but I can freeze them and keep working. This would not be possible in Live with the same computer.

To sum up, Live is just a power and CPU intensive DAW. It needs a lot more power to do the same things in other DAWs.

For sound design it will remain my first choice, however.

[simpli.cissimus]

Yes I agree...

I did test a song with only vst's in Live and in Studio One with exact same set.

StudioOne runs the same song at half CPU.
50% is more then a lot and very unexpected, ...but the reality.

[tigali]

+1 I would never have bothered learning to use another DAW if this wasn't the case. I am currently working with Harrison Mixbus for recording and mixing as the pops, clicks, and dropouts in Live become more infuriating the more complex the project gets.

I also get soundcard buzzing (apogee one) for no good reason after one or two takes that requires restarts.

I suppose we shouldn't be surprised that a DAW that was never designed for traditional recording and mixing is not particularly good at it. As said above, Live is still my go-to DAW for everything else (sound design, sketching ideas, live work, experimenting and more basic projects) as I love the simplicity and speed of the workflow but full on recording/mixing projects require something a little more reliable and less power hungry.

[hec]

+1 I would never have bothered learning to use another DAW if this wasn't the case. I am currently working with Harrison Mixbus for recording and mixing as the pops, clicks, and dropouts in Live become more infuriating the more complex the project gets.

I also get soundcard buzzing (apogee one) for no good reason after one or two takes that requires restarts.

I suppose we shouldn't be surprised that a DAW that was never designed for traditional recording and mixing is not particularly good at it. As said above, Live is still my go-to DAW for everything else (sound design, sketching ideas, live work, experimenting and more basic projects) as I love the simplicity and speed of the workflow but full on recording/mixing projects require something a little more reliable and less power hungry.

Agreed. For getting ideas down, experimentation and ultimate flexibility Live is the go to. But it just doesn't have that rich feature set needed for editing or recording audio like say Pro Tools.

I dream of the day I don't have to open Pro Tools again but unfortunately Ableton's total neglect and disrespect of audio editing and recording workflows is keeping the old Avid beast alive.

[alpertt]

if you have 13 drum tracks running and you want to record 6 bass tracks simultaneously, the bass player will experience dropouts on the pilot-track, which, during a recording session is not a good thing.

Using an external 7200 RPM HDD may avoid dropouts.