Questions About Consolidating Tracks

[SortofVague]

Hi everyone,

I've been working on a DJ set and have been slicing and chopping the songs that I'm going to play to better suit the flow of my performance. Problem is once I started consolidating the sliced songs back together it seems that the consolidation process has had a destructive affect on the quality of the audio.

When I first imported all the of the tracks into Live I warped them in complex mode. After chopping and consolidating (still in complex mode) I noticed that the gain of the consolidated tracks was drastically changed because the consolidation process normalizes that audio. However, I did an experiment and noticed that if I changed the sliced tracks back into beats mode and then consolidated them the resulting tracks had much less gain compensation and resembled the original tracks much more closely.

I decided to change all of my sliced/chopped tracks back into beats mode and then consolidate each one at its original tempo. Now that I have done this and am listening through the consolidated tracks I can't help but think that the quality of the audio is slightly worse and sounds somewhat warped. Am I just imagining this?

Any thoughts/ideas are appreciated!

[Stromkraft]

After chopping and consolidating (still in complex mode) I noticed that the gain of the consolidated tracks was drastically changed because the consolidation process normalizes that audio. :

As far as I can tell this is not what is happening. You're doing something more than what you say here. I just consolidated 2 Complex Pro tracks in Arrangement and there was no normalization.

Any thoughts/ideas are appreciated! :idea:

I just use Traktor and lossless audio. Unless the objective is to do Live remixing together with your own material I fail to see the point of doing DJ mixing in Live given the alternatives. I do admire the live remixing aspect.

IMHO what Live does when you misuse it is mangling your source music in different ways. Anything lossy, i e AAC, MP3, WMA and so on, was not made to be processed. If you push it too far artefacts will be noticeable. Lossless formats like FLAC, ALAC, AIFF and WAV can be pushed further, but everything has a limit.

Of the different Warp modes Beats has some advantage and Repitch is another if you can work with the tonal change Vinyl-style. I'd be careful with Complex Pro for complete productions. Personally I use Beats for everything until I need something specific.

[Tarekith]

Anything you consolidate is always normalized in Live, regardless of the warp mode FWIW.

[Stromkraft]

Anything you consolidate is always normalized in Live, regardless of the warp mode FWIW.

OK, but not towards 0dBFS which is how I understand normalization in this case. What do you mean with normalization here?

[dafeda]

You've probably already read this, but here's section 31.3.7 from the manual:

"Consolidating clips (page 104) in the Arrangement View creates new audio files, which are
non-neutral in comparison to the original audio data. Specifically, the new files will be normalized,
with their clip volumes adjusted to play back at the same volume as heard prior to consolidation.
Normalization is a gain change, which is a non-neutral operation. Also, the new files will
be created at the sample rate and bit depth set in Live‘s Preferences window, which may differ
from those in the original audio files."

Another section that might be of interest is 31.3.1 Playback in Complex and Complex Pro Mode:

"The algorithms used in the Complex (page 151) and Complex Pro (page 152) Warp modes
use an entirely different technology from the algorithms behind Beats, Tones, Texture and RePitch modes.
Although the Complex modes may sound better, particularly when used with mixed
sound files containing many different kinds of audio material, they are never neutral — not even
at the original tempo. Because of this, and because of the increased CPU demands of these
algorithms, we recommend using them only in cases where the other Warp modes don‘t produce
sufficient results."

I guess we need to be careful with what our track-volume is before consolidating.

[Stromkraft]

I did a quick test with some older Complex Pro vocals.

Track A:

Peaking at -10.23

Track B:

Peaking at -6.02

Consolidated both

Peaking at -6.02

As the manual says this is still a non-neutral operation where some normalization could be taking place in order to "play back at the same volume as heard prior to consolidation". Thanks for that relevant observation dafeda and Tarekith. The relevant part here is the non neutral nature of the operation, not that 0dB isn't targeted.

[malenko]

A little tip for this I saw on you tube from James of the Freemason's, stick a utility on the track your consolidating and Live won't normalize it.

[Stromkraft]

A little tip for this I saw on you tube from James of the Freemason's, stick a utility on the track your consolidating and Live won't normalize it.

Interesting and doesn't make sense to me. Maybe this is unintended. I'm at loss over how to analyse there has been normalization, except making duplicate tracks and do a null test. But a non-null would only prove something had happened, not what it was.

[dafeda]

I decided to change all of my sliced/chopped tracks back into beats mode and then consolidate each one at its original tempo. Now that I have done this and am listening through the consolidated tracks I can't help but think that the quality of the audio is slightly worse and sounds somewhat warped. Am I just imagining this?
Any thoughts/ideas are appreciated!

According to section 31.2.3 playback of unstretched warped clips using beats/tones/texture/re-pitch is a neutral operation. That is, it should have not effect the audio. Have you tried doing a cancellation test?

Here's the section from the manual:
If the tempo of a Clip is the same as the tempo of the Set, that clip will play back unstretched. In
this case, if the Warp mode (page 149) of the Clip is set to Beats, Tones, Texture or Re-Pitch
(but not Complex or Complex Pro), playback will be neutral. Any Warping caused by changing
the Set’s tempo is non-permanent, and audio that plays back unwarped at a given tempo
will always play back unwarped at that tempo, even if the tempo is changed and then changed
back. For example, if you’ve recorded some tracks at 120 BPM, but then decide you’d like to
slow the tempo down to record a particularly difficult solo passage, the original tracks will play
back neutrally again after returning the tempo to 120 BPM. Only the recording made at the
slower tempo will be stretched. Please note that grooves (page 177) work by modifying the
positions of Warp markers. This means that playback of audio clips with groove applied will be
non-neutral even at the original tempo.
The neutrality of unstretched clip playback is verified by performing cancellation tests on rendered
output.

[Stromkraft]

"The neutrality of unstretched clip playback is verified by performing cancellation tests on rendered output."

I redid a duplicate of the same original track above and consolidated the duplicate, then reversed polarity (phase) on it. The tracks did not cancel out even if peaking at the same level. Which indicates the consolidate operation was not neutral.

I then reverted, flattened and unwarped the original track before redoing duplication and reverse polarity. The tracks did cancel out. Of course at this stage any Complex Pro artefacts were already part of the resulting unwarped file, but had I done this on an unwarped original consolidation would be neutral also in that case. I assume Beats and Repitch likely would give the same result if tempo isn't changed.