All this about sound quality

[simmerdown]

i think there could be something to this question, if so many people are saying it? like.. Bigfoot

but this thread?...better to start another, with a completely different..eh...mindset

[banned]

[nopattern]

unless someone is willing to spend the time to actually make the same song in two daw's we'll never have a any real proof. one reason it doesn't happen is because no one wants to post something that sounds bad. you think someone who believes Live sounds grainy is going to share work of theirs that they don't stand behind to prove a point? Unless someone is willing to maybe make a 20 channel track with midi and 3rd party stuff and exactly copy all midi, automation data, plugin settings over into multiple hosts and render it out, nothing is going to change. shit if i did that i and found out what i wanted to i'd almost not want to share the information because it was such a pain in the ass to do it...

[HeadrickProductions]

Ableton has made a generation of lazy producers and IMHO the quality of electronic music in general has degraded because of it.

Speaking the truth!

[simmerdown]

did it make a generation, or did its marketers discover a genearation that were already sitting in front of their computers?...i lean toward the latter

maybe there should be a study, a scientific study!

[Coupe70]

unless someone is willing to spend the time to actually make the same song in two daw's we'll never have a any real proof.

Well, someone must have done this.
Otherwise there can't be anyone who can seriously
tell that Live sounds worse than other DAWs...

Bring on the blind tests !

[pencilrocket]

unless someone is willing to spend the time to actually make the same song in two daw's we'll never have a any real proof.

Well, someone must have done this.
Otherwise there can't be anyone who can seriously
tell that Live sounds worse than other DAWs...

Bring on the blind tests !

Haven't those pros who said Live doesn't process sound transparently tested while their production?

[stringtapper]

pencilrocket = 1 – English language = 0

[pencilrocket]

stringtapper = 1 – arithmetic = -100

[stringtapper]

No trust me, the English language loses every time you post.

[Palmer Eldritch]

Could you describe the difference which I should hear in terms of quality please?

Very simple...
It is cleaner/less fuzzy in low end and more detailed in high frequency.
Distortion is smoother and not close to the grainy export from Live.

I don't know what monitors you use, but I use Yamaha HS80's and they are very precise,
especially in higher frequency range. They are very detailed...

If you can, please take the mix-downs to a friend with Adam's, DynAudio or Yamaha monitors if possible.
Let me know how they sounded there and what your friend thinks.

Cheers

Checked your files with the following monitors: geithain RL 906 and Yamaha HS 50m (if I find the time I may double-check the files with the bigger geithains).

Result: Did not hear any qualitative difference in the clarity or fuzzyness of the low end and did not notice more details in the high frequency band of one export against the other. Also I am not aware of the grainyness in one vs. a smooth distortion in the other.

I asked some colleagues about their impressions but they also could not find qualitative differences here.

But If you try to find subtle differences between (hopefully) same mix-downs of different DAWs then It would be better to resign free running modulation effects. Also do not use any effects with randomizing values. Check pan laws, levels and timing issues carefully and be careful with your test-scenario in general.
Also a null test could help to reveal mistakes in your test scenario.

Keep cool and have fun

Cheers, palmer

[JuanSOLO]

Ableton has made a generation of lazy producers and IMHO the quality of electronic music in general has degraded because of it.

Speaking the truth!

right.......it's Ableton's fault people are lazy.

[JuanSOLO]

late 50's soul, and early funk records were recorded in what todays "standards" would consider low quality, but they still seem to sound better to me than most of the music produced by todays "standards."

[pencilrocket]

No trust me, the English language loses every time you post.

I know you lose in every thread because of giving up sticking with the topic. You lost again noob.

I will borrow your phrases on Thu Dec 15, 2011 2:37 am

You're in the wrong section of the forum. This is the Music and Audio Production. You want to be here:

http://forum.ableton.com/viewforum.php?f=40

[nopattern]

Ableton has made a generation of lazy producers and IMHO the quality of electronic music in general has degraded because of it.

Speaking the truth!

it's not Ableton's fault though, just the people using it because it's so easy to get sound out of it right away. I'm an avid user of FL studio and SonarX1 along with live and i forced myself to learn to make songs in all of them and i learned alot by doing so, but it took far more work in the other apps to do anything!! ableton allowed me to make music within 30 minutes of the first time using the program (before it had midi). it took me months to make my first track in FL studio, and i mean an actual track, making loops in FL is probably the easiest ever

The interesting thing is after spending time with other programs I actually found that they were just as if not faster to work with than Live, it was just coming from a Live background that it seemed hardly intuitive but once i figured out the workflow i almost work faster in FL or Sonar. If I'm ever a fanboy of any software it's Fl Studio, that program is sheer genius. For instance every vst you load or sample has a little window with all kinds of modulation options and LFO for volume, filter, pitch, delay, etc... right on one single window. if i want that in live i have to load at least 3-4 effects, going to the browser, dragging clicking. in fl those fundamentally useful things are there by default on anything you load. there's even a plugin of an asian girl that dances to your music as you make it! what better way to make good beats than watch a girl dance!!!! SonarX1 I use for mixing just because i have eq, filters, and nice sounding compression on every channel just by default, i dont have to look through my plugin folder and worry about which of the 200 compressor plugins i own to use, i spend more time focusing on the sound. not only that but i have to actually STOP the music which i think is great. I love that live is so flexible but stopping the music is good for your ears to reset and interpret what you're doing as a point A to point B kind of thing. I can only wish i recorded the whole length of all my sessions in live tweaking, there would be enough to edit where i could quit music forever and put out a record a month for a decade.

I feel like no one ever tested making tracks in both because once you actually do it (alot of people have made tracks in every program) it becomes irrelevant. There are features and sonic imprints that are unique to each software, not the audio engine but the workflow, toolset in said program, etc... i say take the best of everything you have access too. if anything you will sound different and that's usually good

something that may be an issue for sound is that in other software there is an option for playback interpolation quality. by default in most apps it's set to 64sinc with options to go higher at the expense of cpu. some of the manuals in my software clearly explain that a render is going to be "higher quality" than what you hear in real time. obviously live wants to sound best it can in real time cause it's LIVE!! But i wonder if people are trying to push the sound in ways that don't cooperate with what is heard in real time vs. what is rendered out. i always noticed when i render in ableton that i can hear more detail in sounds like field recordings and im always like whoaaa. but maybe people make bad mix decisions because they want to sound like a record before they record

its funny music has become more disposable but the loop library industry is flourishing no doubt to live, those guys probably make a hell of alot more money selling those than records... what does that mean?