All this about sound quality

[twinstates]

Is clearly coming from other sequencer manufacturers. There's gonna be a new live pretty soon and so lets populate the forums with a load of rubbish to put people off and hope they'll buy our sequencer instead.

It's almost as obvious as the people from Universal Audio posting on the UAD forums all the time.

[twinstates]

Apart from the post from Robert Henke obviously

[newboss]

bullshit.. its clearly coming from users experiancing such and from ableton that havent taken enough care to indicate the activation of realtime SR . Very slow reaktion time on reported audio engine bugs and so on..

Up to version 8.2 there was scenarios wher SR was on when it was supposed to be of..check the changelogs..


The actual state? i am getting pissed about the ignorance and will give it one more time a test when my studio is running.. maybe the actual version is transparent..


I am constantly asking the electronic producers i know about theire opinion about ableton lives sound quality.. And sofar its still a plain 100% that state that the sound quality is screwed..

i could list here now an impressive list of known names.. But we dont know to which version of live they are referring too.

Also one intersting thing to note. Ableton states that they never had any audio problems and that even their 64 bit mix bus upgrade is just for promotional reasons..

while Steinberg statetd that they have improoved their audio quality during the last years..

Is that a promotional lie?

In any case we find better sounding internal plugs in other daws.

However.. new test are probably necessary.. maybe they work in abletons favor..

Because its a fact that the bigger part of the music production scene thinks that the ableton sound is flawed.

But.. most of them are probably referring to older versions of live..

[simmerdown]

you seem to have a lot of anger about this whole issue newboss

i thought monolake was very generous and tolerant with you, i would have told to PO on page 2 of that other thread..

what answer would satisfy you? an admission of some kind it seems, dont hold your breath (or do)...just listen for yourself, if you like another daw better, use it

for me its about the workflow and functionality, great things can be done in Live as in any other, dont forget about the music, creating something that will evoke a feeling in you and others, which has little or nothing to do with these nuances

[JuanSOLO]

1.....i could list here now an impressive list of known names..

2.....In any case we find better sounding internal plugs in other daws.

3.....Because its a fact that the bigger part of the music production scene thinks that the ableton sound is flawed.

And what would that prove? If they aren't gonna post it themselves, then your just blowing smoke.

Operator sounds pretty fucking amazing and unique.

So you're representing the bigger part of the music production scene here?



You sound delusional.

[jlgrimes]

Ableton don't sound any different than any other DAWs as far as audio/VST playback and mixing.


Ableton mentioned things in the manual that affects the sound quality, the biggest culprit is if you use the warping engine.

To my ears though using the Complex algorithm sounds fine when I need to use it.

If I am not using loops though, Live sounds pretty much the same as any other DAW.


What do people refer to when they mean sound quality?

1. The playback quality of wav files (via clip view or even VST samplers)
2. VSTi playback quality
3. VST playback quality
4. Mixing bus resolution (I believe Abelton is 64 bit double precision)
5. Plug-in processing resolution (I believe Ableton is 32 bit floating point).
6. Bad panning law
7. Bad dithering algorithm
8. Pops and clicks (not really sound quality but bugginess and stability)
9. Midi timing tightness (again not really sound quality).


I'd say 8 and 9 could probably definitely be issues for some people but I would consider than more of a performance/bugginess issue than sound quality..

[newboss]

you seem to have a lot of anger about this whole issue newboss

i thought monolake was very generous and tolerant wit you, i would have told to PO on page 2 of that other thread..

what answer would satisfy you? an admission of some kind it seems, dont hold your breath (or do)...just listen for yourself, if you like another daw better, use it

for me its about the workflow and functionality, great things can be done in Live as in any other, dont forget about the music, creating something that will evoke a feeling in you and others, which has little or nothing to do with these nuances

Generous?
do you work for ableton? These workflow phrases get a bit stereotype.. especially under the aspect that live has´nt seen any real workflow improvements since version 2. And a lot of the implementations are a bit shaky and timeconsuming. Not really a workflow optimized daw.. Its patern based.. thats the big deal...

Beside that audio issues can damage projects and interupt your workflow badly.
Can be session or mood killers.
Especially when these problems are bug related and pop up from one day to the other.. Or appear in certain hardware configurations and dont show up in others.. what makes these bugs difficult to prove and track.
Stability is also performance quality stability.. its not enough that a program dont crashes.. It has to perform as specified and is not allowed to behave erratic because thats irritating. You can work around everything but not unstable behaviour.

However.. i ve new laptop now.. had 3 crashes with L8.27 the first day i launched it.. but hope never the less that i am now on the less bug plaqued side of the ableton world..
Somehow ableton managed it that their bugs was sometimes computer model related.. thats not very typical for apple computers but as it looks ableton was able to achieve that.

What winds me up a bit is that with such a background and recent bug history people are so 100% confident that anybody experiencing problems must do something wrong...

Actually with L8 you safe much time when you question the daw and not your sanity.. Sofar all strange behaviour was earlier or later indentified as a well hidden bugs

We had how many solved bugs in L8? 500? 1000? and how many of them touched the audio engine? 3?

Possible that there are some more maybe? Or..can you really exclude that possibility?

Anyway. i will watch it.. but keep the fingers crossed and hope that a macbook pro is a ticket for less trouble..

[djadonis206]

I know what it's like to feel scared, alone, and frustrated. I sympathize with you Newboss.

Life is hard enough, right?

There is help out there. There are self help groups, books, and religious organizations.

Or better yet, join a gym.

I think I can speak for the whole Ableton community when I say, "we've all been there."

Trust me, someone, somewhere is listening. His name is Jesus. Bless you

[Angstrom]

One thing I have noticed ...
My guitar playing sounds really terrible in Ableton!!!

I'm not sure if its the warping or the summing, but everything I play sounds cliched and derivative. Almost as if a sausage fingered buffoon were playing it!!!
Ableton sort this out immediately !
etc.


also, upvote Adonis

[newboss]

I know what it's like to feel scared, alone, and frustrated. I sympathize with you Newboss.

Life is hard enough, right?

There is help out there. There are self help groups, books, and religious organizations.

Or better yet, join a gym.

I think I can speak for the whole Ableton community when I say, "we've all been there."

Trust me, someone, somewhere is listening. His name is Jesus. Bless you

no brain no pain? i envy you

[newboss]

One thing I have noticed ...
My guitar playing sounds really terrible in Ableton!!!

I'm not sure if its the warping or the summing, but everything I play sounds cliched and derivative. Almost as if a sausage fingered buffoon were playing it!!!
Ableton sort this out immediately !
etc.


also, upvote Adonis

the sausage fingred buffoon wasnt ableton... and when i interpretate the links in your signature right.. i suggest to abandon all hope

[Angstrom]

erm. Ever heard of self-deprecating humor? I thought not. Anyways ... good to see you are still rocking the weak insults.
Try this joke, see if you can "get" it.


- Knock knock!

- who's there?

- This doorbell is summing not as well as my yamaha dmc 1000 which can apply 100 channels of doorbell all at the same time with no detectable loss of quality AS IS to be expected by a pro door access mechanism in this day and age on 192 k recordings you might see some stuff above 50 k you really dont like to feet your mix engine with.. ermmm... wrong. Actually, it's the lower sampling rates that cause high-freq (higher than audible) noise to distort your audio in the audible range, it's called aliasing. doorbell fanboy!! If nobody else can noticve that they cannot get into the door then they are not as pro as me. That is ....

(continues)

[newboss]

erm. well done on the humour comprehension. Good to see you are still rocking the weak insults.
Try this one.


- Knock knock!

- who's there?

- This doorbell is summing not as well as my yamaha dmc 1000 which can apply 100 channels of doorbell all at the same time with no detectable loss of quality AS IS to be expected by a pro door access mechanism in this day and age on 192 k recordings you might see some stuff above 50 k you really dont like to feet your mix engine with.. ermmm... wrong. Actually, it's the lower sampling rates that cause high-freq (higher than audible) noise to distort your audio in the audible range, it's called aliasing. doorbell fanboy!! If nobody else can noticve that they cannot get into the door then they are not as pro as me. That is ....

(continues)

ha ha rofl rofl boffle ... that was sooo funny.. can we leave that now and get back on topic?

the op sugested that everybody that questions abletons lives audio quality works for the competitors..

i suggest that the main issue are audio engine bugs..

you suggest that everybody that has no problems with ableton live is a buffoon..

so we all have our opinions and live happily ever after.

[3dot...]

. especially under the aspect that live has´nt seen any real workflow improvements since version 2.

off the top of my head :
midi support..
vst support...
RACKS...
ext. audio devices...
groups...
control surfaces...
overhauled warp markers...
Live Pax..
'grooves'...
clip colours...
GUI zoom..
dedicated controllers..
Max 4 Live...
open Python API ...
etc. etc. etc...
so...mmm..yeah... no workflow improvements whatsoever...

oh .. and yes...many bugs introduced in v7/8..
a natural side-effect of any growing software..
(personally... not so much now...hadn't experienced a crash since 8.2.2)

btw.. if you find a good alternative to Live... let us know...

[simmerdown]

i hear audacity is very stable

Footshooting 101, thx for the lesson nb