Lets Talk Tuner ... and then a lot about M4L

[TomViolenz]

Altiverb and such cost three times that, though to my ears that's mostly brand name markup)

At the end of the day, after everyone reverse engineered plug ins like Altiverb, the convolution algorithms are going to be roughly similar for sure, but you're not paying for just the plug in itself. Audio Ease spent hundreds if not thousands of hours flying around the world taking hundreds of high quality impulse responses of various spaces, this is the huge advantage of Altiverb, high quality proprietary impulse responses. That is why I think about getting Altiverb, branding has nothing to do with it.

You are almost certainly right and yet I don't think I should care.
It would for my needs/interests just not be prudent to care if this space really sounds like the Cathedral of Santiago De Chile or rather like the Kölner Dom.
To people to whom that difference matters the tripple price will be more than worth it. To me it shouldn't!

To everyone like me saving several hundreds of euros for almost the same thing probably takes precedence.

And it's not like you couldn't buy these IRs to import them into either of them.

[Machinesworking]

Altiverb and such cost three times that, though to my ears that's mostly brand name markup)

At the end of the day, after everyone reverse engineered plug ins like Altiverb, the convolution algorithms are going to be roughly similar for sure, but you're not paying for just the plug in itself. Audio Ease spent hundreds if not thousands of hours flying around the world taking hundreds of high quality impulse responses of various spaces, this is the huge advantage of Altiverb, high quality proprietary impulse responses. That is why I think about getting Altiverb, branding has nothing to do with it.

You are almost certainly right and yet I don't think I should care.
It would for my needs/interests just not be prudent to care if this space really sounds like the Cathedral of Santiago De Chile or rather like the Kölner Dom.
To people to whom that difference matters the tripple price will be more than worth it. To me it shouldn't!

To everyone like me saving several hundreds of euros for almost the same thing probably takes precedence.

And it's not like you couldn't buy these IRs to import them into either of them.

Uhmm, no you can't buy and import them. Audio Ease justifiably so after spending thousands on each recording encrypted them to work only in Altiverb.

I'm not exactly sure what the point of convolution reverbs are for you if you aren't interested in modeling real spaces? Are you saying all natural reverbs sound alike? <-- Rhetorical, but your argument against high quality impulse response makes no sense, why bother with the technology in the first place if you think all caverns sound the same or that all concert halls sound the same? The M4L convolution reverb would be good enough for you if this was the case.. .

They are fun to abuse, but a simple convolution reverb is just a tool, and including Live I have access to a few already. There's one in Kontakt, Machfive, DP8 etc. the main thing that I think about is libraries of impulse responses. As a sound design type musician I simply don't see how you can look with disdain or lack of interest on the Audio Ease library??

IMO I'm either buying Altiverb or getting some third party impulse response libraries for the convolution reverbs I have right now. The rest are more or less a waste of money. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-HCdFpXeksk

[re:dream]

And Machines is not saying you should buy the thing, Tom. He's just saying that they have a reason for their price.

[Machinesworking]

And Machines is not saying you should buy the thing, Tom. He's just saying that they have a reason for their price.

Exactly!
If you're looking for amazing sounding real spaces IMO none of them beat Altiverb in sound or shear amount of good usable IR's.
If you're more likely to want to make your own impulse responses or to use it as an FX device then almost any convolution reverb will do.. Not that Altiverb isn't top of the class in that category either, an example, watch the last part of the Altiverb 7 video here, it should start at around 7:17:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EpzNgP8uThs#t=435

[ze2be]

Great posts Angstrom! However I agree with H20nly about the topic title.

[TomViolenz]

And Machines is not saying you should buy the thing, Tom. He's just saying that they have a reason for their price.

And where did I give the impression that I don't understand that?!

Look if you are in TV post production and your action flic has a scene in the Kölner Dom you will probably want an IR from exactly there. So you get the right tool for your (well paying) job.

For most others a big church from somewhere that can be nicely adjusted in decay times and frequency responses etc. is most likely just as good.

So why even use a convo reverb that is not Altiverb?!
Is that really the question he wants to argue with me?!


This discussion started with me pointing out that Lives convo reverb is nothing special and for not much money you can avoid using M4L. Which is a big plus in my book.

The rest is just Maschinesworking being his usual self...

[re:dream]

Tom, you made a statement that implied Altiverb's high price was just brand exploitation.

Machines pointed out that developing Altiverb had actually cost them a lot of money, and that is another reason why their reverb is so expensive.

I really don't see why this needs to become another huge argument

[TomViolenz]

Tom, you made a statement that implied Altiverb's high price was just brand exploitation.

Machines pointed out that developing Altiverb had actually cost them a lot of money, and that is another reason why their reverb is so expensive.

Which I agreed with and gave my reasons why not to everyone that aspect needs to matter.
But he couldn't leave it at that.

I really don't see why this needs to become another huge argument

Me neither, but Machines seems to think differently.

[re:dream]

Ummm... so an interesting question got asked a page or two ago. Can you tune a kick drum with this thing?

Tuner, I mean, not Altiverb

[Angstrom]

Ummm... so an interesting question got asked a page or two ago. Can you tune a kick drum with this thing?

Tuner, I mean, not Altiverb

yes,
here I'm using the histogram view, but you could use the other one.
I see that Ableton's 808 kick wasn't actually in tune and because the Pitch Macro is semitones that's no help ... so I used Simpler's Detune -26cents to put it in tune.

You can see in the first picture its default tuning.

[pinkpaint]

awesome thanks for sharing angstrom been wondering this since beta release going to download now and play with this as it seems amazing.

[Wavemonk]

I think the thing that really doesn't make any sense is how they pretty much abandoned all their UI standards when they decided to add more or less an object oriented programming language to their super simple intuitive user interface™.

I really have no idea how this pairing made any sense in terms of their original selling point VS the big dinosaur DAWs like Logic, Cubase, DP, Sonar etc. ??

So now the selling point is something like, "You can get started right away making loops and writing melodies in Session View, and if you want to delve deeper into the program, take a course in Max/MSP and after a year you can write a basic synth as powerful as the original VSTs from 1996!"

Seriously there's an uncanny valley between Live's original intuitive interface and Max 4 Live. Compare this to some relatively simple problems you might run into in DP, Logic, Cubase etc. To get up and running learning 90% of what Cubase, DP, Logic do would take you about a year, in Live, you can get the basic program in a couple months, but to use Max 4 Live at 90% will take you several years. I see how it appeals to certain people, but not all of us are programmers.

I agree 100% and I spend all day programming for a dayjob, so it's not like I can't extend a class or figure out variable scope. It offends me because its so wrong.

The problem comes when people who love Max can't understand the problem of putting an IDE in a music app. They think the naysayers are too daft to program, and so just want "simple" so say "well here's an LFO we made", and "here's a Midi echo device". They can't see it. Cannot grasp it. It's invisible to them. "But look at BEAP, or maxforcats, they made a modular inside the app inside the app! Isn't that good" . No. It is not good. It is ludicrous.

Live is a modular synth, it has audio generators, modulation sources, filters, resonators, delays, waveshapers. Live has all the components of a massively modular synth programmed by experts to have the best audio quality and CPU usage. In Live you can stack and route audio sources and processors, and route inputs to outputs.
However you cant do sub-device routing of those modulators, and audio. You cant use Operator's envelope on the ringmod, you can't run the resonators through Operator. As a massively intuitive polyphonic modular environment it nearly, nearly works. All it needs is a mod-out button. An "audio from". All it needs is a parameter routing facility. Mod-out to destination. It was nearly nearly there! They brought in macros and the routing panel. But then ....

So what do Ableton do? they say "throw all that away, forget everything you have learned about our interface and our instruments and easy intuitive creation, if you want to send operator LFO to the ringmod now you must make your own operator, and your own ringmod, and try to connect the ports, good luck sucker."

Bitwig got it right, Ableton got it wrong.
Sure M4L is powerful, but did that effort pay off for 80% of the users wanting to connect A to B to C to A?
Nope. M4L was a mistake. It was an un-needed side road. A distraction.
That is unless you are one of the 200 people loving making buffershufflers and controller scripts, or selling packs. Just loving their IDE.

This! Pretty much.

I just wrote a long rant on the forum about M4L devices not preserving states and mentioned OSCiLLOT, which I think is great. But I never thought about Live like this, and this is so true!

[Machinesworking]

Tom, you made a statement that implied Altiverb's high price was just brand exploitation.

Machines pointed out that developing Altiverb had actually cost them a lot of money, and that is another reason why their reverb is so expensive.

Which I agreed with and gave my reasons why not to everyone that aspect needs to matter.
But he couldn't leave it at that.

I really don't see why this needs to become another huge argument

Me neither, but Machines seems to think differently.

The failure to be civil here is all you. There isn't anything you can say ad hominem wise to change that.

Again, all convolution reverbs are pretty much the same on some levels, so my point was and is that the impulse response they come with are a huge factor in their worth. I wouldn't replace a convolution reverb with one that doesn't do anything more than what I have already. All you had to do to remain civil was reply that your main reason is not liking M4L.... or some other reply that does't involve personal attacks.

I like how this is now an argument? really? You simply must be carrying bad feelings around from other threads if that's the case.

[pinkpaint]

The max performance certainly seems to be a lot a lot better in 9.2 I just hope at this point that there are a lot more max packs developed for free and for purchase from Ableton.

[Stromkraft]

Has someone been able to quantify how much extra CPU burden an M4L device adds, as opposed to a native device?

That's easy to test no?!

Just put 10 or 20 of these LFOs in your set and compare just the non running LFOs numbers to before.

Now do the same with Utilities or SimpleDelays etc.

The differences are staggering even on a i7 MBP.

I did a very simple testing of Convolution Reverb vs Waves IR1 in november with third party IRs and to my surprise they seemed to tax my CPU about the same. What can surprise me a bit is that MFL device CPU requirements varies much more than what VST plugins do. I have to assume then that it is a sliding scale depending on actual processing.