Question about consolidating audio clips

Nephew · Post by **Nephew** » Mon Apr 23, 2012 3:09 am

Do you lose any audio quality when consolidating audio clips?

For example, I have a two bar loop that I cut up and edit to make it fit and groove the way I want to, but then I consolidate it back into a two bar clip so it's easier to manage. But am I losing any audio quality by doing that instead of just leaving it as is after chopping it up?

Tarekith · Post by **Tarekith** » Mon Apr 23, 2012 3:13 am

Technically, yes. When you consolidate, Live automatically normalizes the resulting clip, and then sets the Clip Volume to offset this.

Realisically? You'd have to do this many, many times before it even barely became audible. If you're only doing it a few times per clip, I wouldn't worry about. I use consolidate all the time and really don't think it affects the overall quality of my songs at all.

Nephew · Post by **Nephew** » Mon Apr 23, 2012 3:23 am

Thanks mate, much appreciated. I use all the time when it comes to arranging, but I just started working with a mate recently and he swears that it ruins the audio quality.

Tarekith · Post by **Tarekith** » Mon Apr 23, 2012 4:15 am

After you consiolidate, just make sure you turn off warping for that clip. It's already at the right tempo after consolidate, no need to warp it. That CAN lead to audio loss in some cases.

Nephew · Post by **Nephew** » Mon Apr 23, 2012 5:03 am

Thanks for the tip

mholloway · Post by **mholloway** » Mon Apr 23, 2012 5:18 am

Audible or not, the notion of Live normalizing material when I didn't ask it to is a bit concerning. Overall this seems like another good reason for the inclusion of "container clips" in future versions of Live. E.g. a way to take multiple clips -- like a bunch of mini-clips that were created from cutting / splicing a single audio clip -- and 'group' them into a container clip that can be moved around as a single unit (and even better yet, have its own envelopes, etc). In Cubase they call it an "Audio Part" which then contains multiple audio files inside it.

mharris · Post by **mharris** » Mon Apr 23, 2012 8:05 am

When you consolidate clips, Live renders out the new clip with your default sample and bit rate settings from preferences.
If your preferences are set to a lower rate than the original clips then you will be loosing quality.

Have a read of Chapter 31 of the Live manual, specifically the section relating to Consolidate. This chapter lists all the operations in Live that do and don't affect audio quality.

Tarekith · Post by **Tarekith** » Mon Apr 23, 2012 1:24 pm

Good point on the sample rate issue, I forgot about that one.

Nephew · Post by **Nephew** » Mon Apr 23, 2012 7:58 pm

mharris wrote:When you consolidate clips, Live renders out the new clip with your default sample and bit rate settings from preferences.
If your preferences are set to a lower rate than the original clips then you will be loosing quality.

Have a read of Chapter 31 of the Live manual, specifically the section relating to Consolidate. This chapter lists all the operations in Live that do and don't affect audio quality.

Will do, thanks for the insight

Question about consolidating audio clips

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