Ableton & Logic sound (yes I know...)

[Tone Deft]

ah gotcha, thanks.

[H20nly]

so if you rewire Live into Logic does:

A. Logic fix the Live sound
B. Live ruin the Logic sound
C. A new hybrid sound become manifest
D. A wormhole open

[kev herb]

In simplest terms.

With Live you really have to know what you’re doing.

With Logic you really don’t (for the most part).

Great tracks can come out of either but with Live you’re just going to have to put out more effort in micromanaging.

Classic bit of trolling there

[ze2be]

If the track elements are lo-fi and otherwise a dirty and a non-clean production, Live is fine for that. *)

*) The whole idea with Live is clip synchronization, i.e. warping and warping always introduces artifacts.

Having more complex options might introduce "artifacts", if not used right. Doesnt make the DAW
sound lo-fi. Its all up to the user. There is a few elements here that Live users need to understand.


Warping:
If you dont change the tempo, the warping will do nothing to the sound. It will not degrade at all,
exept if using Complex and Complex Pro warp modes. If you add a 90 bpm loop to a 70 bpm project,
or record a loop in some bpm, then change the project bpm, warping/time streatching will sound
degraded in any daw. Because time streatching is easy in Live doesnt make it more of a lo-fi DAW.


Plugin Latency Compensation:
Lives channel routing is more flexible then Logic, Cubase and Protools, and doing stuf like parallel and
serial chains of effects on sends and tracks, the user can possibly degrade the sound if one do not
know 100% what actually happens to the signal. Keep effect chains simple on sends if you want as cleen
sound as possible: dont use synced time based effects like beat repeat, or autofilter with bpm synced lfo,
or parallel racks on sends. PDC doesnt always work on sends like it does on tracks, and thus complex
racks and chains on sends can "muddy" the sound, because of latency. The backside of having more
options is having possibly more user errors.

Be aware that some plugs create more latency then others. It can be confusing if there are long chains
of plugs in a track. PDC takes care of it for the most part, but in some situations it does not. Like if a time
synced effect like Beat Repeat is behind a plug in a Send that creates latency, PDC might not be able to
correct it, and because of the very audible chopping sound of beat repeat, it might sound muddy when
mixed with the source signal.


Midi Automation:
There is also posibility of creating latency with midi automation. Say you record a parameter from a
plug that is after a high latency plug that PDC cant correct, then remove that high latency plug,
the midi automation will not compensate the new loss in latency, and thus the automation might now
sound to late. Lesson: learn your plugs latency. Workflow tip: Record to audio as often as possible.


Clip Fades:
Tip: Turn of clip fades on drum loops, because it adds a few milliseconds fade if on.

[Tarekith]

If you dont change the tempo, the warping will do nothing to the sound. It will not degrade at all.

Just a note that this is not true with Complex and Complex Pro warp modes.

[kent_sandvik]

If you dont change the tempo, the warping will do nothing to the sound. It will not degrade at all.

Just a note that this is not true with Complex and Complex Pro warp modes.

Yep. Any warping introduces artifacts, especially if you speed down wave forms. Ripping out bits is seldom a good thing sound-wise.

And yes you could turn of any warping and just lock yourself down to a fixed BPM. And I even had to do this with one project with tons of complex waveforms that started to sound icky with warping. Then again this was before the Complex Pro time and maybe tweaking the pro settings would have helped the situation.

The Ableton mix engine is just fine. In many times someone complains about the sound they use for example the default beat warp mode for non-drums and hear wacko things in the final mix. But any kind of warping introduces a special 'Ableton sound' which might be fine (lo-fi) or not fine (very ambient and otherwise fine-tuned dynamic music.)

[Tone Deft]

unique warping sound?

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[ze2be]

Tarekith: thanks, I have edited it.

kent sandvik: there is no "Live sound". Warping sounds bad in any DAW. And like Tone Deft says, its very often the same warp algorithm going on. Its easier to change the tempo in Live then in most other DAWs. And so it might be more tempting to try to do it in Live then in other DAWs. However it is you that creates this sound, not Ableton. What you do with the tools is up to you. If you do the same in other daws it most likely will sound equally muddy.

[kent_sandvik]

A large part of the Elastik customer app list were non-DAWs but hey it's a list. It's really up to each DAW how they use the algorithms, I don't think all of them have the Complex Pro. Complex was not even used in Logic until later versions.

Me thinks Live is even unique concerning the warping system in that it's usually enabled by default and you have to go in and turn things off if needed. Some users might not even know about this and use warping for loops that have the same BPM original value as the project. Then again maybe that's good in case they change their BPM settings along the way.

I still think most of the bad rep Ableton got about their audio engine has nothing to do with the audio engine, instead warping introduced artifacts.

[Tone Deft]

I think a lot of the bad rep is this forum.

agreed on the other points. it's pretty common for new users to ask about warp.

[ze2be]

I still think most of the bad rep Ableton got about their audio engine has nothing to do with the audio engine, instead warping introduced artifacts.

Exactly, and btw its just one click in the preferences menu to turn off auto warping new clips, and it stays like that for all projects untill you chose to switch it back on. You can still switch it back on, on individual clips, down at the clips warp menu.

[Tarekith]

There's been discussion on why do people keep on bringing up this whole Live sound quality thing, and I think a large part of it IS that so much gets enabled by default. Warping, Fades, beats warp mode, not defaulting to high SR or plug in antialiasing, etc.

[leisuremuffin]

plus you can just drag in any audio file you want and won't be warned about conversion.

.lm.

[perehj]

There's been discussion on why do people keep on bringing up this whole Live sound quality thing, and I think a large part of it IS that so much gets enabled by default. Warping, Fades, beats warp mode, not defaulting to high SR or plug in antialiasing, etc.

I can certainly see now that all of these factors make a big difference, but annoyingly I still find myself wanting to switch to Logic permanently because every time I open it and hit play, the sound is fuller, richer and louder (without clipping as quickly as Ableton does).

I can't be fucked to post an example right now, but I put a couple of 808's in impulse (Goldbaby tape 808 which is high quality), the clicking and weird artifacts on them were just ridiculous. I hadn't sent them to any compressors or effects and they were left completely dry. Contrasting that with an exs24 full of 808's with no effects... it's a no brainer.

It's a shame because I really love Ableton. I find it so much fun manipulating samples in it compared to Logic

[ttilberg]

I'm truly being sincere when I say this because it seems to me like for the majority of people producing, it should be a non issue, unless your production revolves strictly around using loops...?

Obviously everyone uses the software differently, and I can see adverse affects if a) you are using a lot of pre-looped content instead of programming your own drum patterns, and B) if you are doing tempo changes.

Beyond that though, anything new that you record in Live, is recorded at the project tempo, so no warping is taking place unless you are using Complex/Pro. But this is true for all DAWs right? So how is Live different?

Like I said, I'm sincerely not trying to troll -- just trying to understand people better.

Kent's point about warping artifacts causing a lot of issues with people's perception of sound quality is spot on I think. Probably also in that: people probably see the word "PRO" in one of the warping algorithm and think "Oh that's what I should use."

In general though, the default algorithm is Beats mode, which is non destructive until you change the tempo-- which is the same case in any DAW right?