Any Improvements In The Audio Engine Of Ableton Live 10?

Discuss music production with Ableton Live.
Amythofficial
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Any Improvements In The Audio Engine Of Ableton Live 10?

Post by Amythofficial » Wed Nov 08, 2017 5:38 am

I used Logic Pro to write my music for quite a few years. But two years back I moved to Ableton Live 9. I use Ableton to write, mix and master my tracks just like I used to on Logic Pro X. I did find a change in Ableton’s sound engine vs Logic’s.I just want to know from the Ableton Live Beta testers if there’s any change in the audio engine of Ableton 10 from Ableton 9 ?

Stromkraft
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Re: Any Improvements In The Audio Engine Of Ableton Live 10?

Post by Stromkraft » Wed Nov 08, 2017 8:30 am

Amythofficial wrote:I did find a change in Ableton’s sound engine vs Logic’s.
What change? Qualitative or resource use?
Amythofficial wrote:I just want to know from the Ableton Live Beta testers if there’s any change in the audio engine of Ableton 10 from Ableton 9 ?
Change in what way? I haven't started with Live 10 yet but will test performance.
Make some music!

Street Spirit
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Re: Any Improvements In The Audio Engine Of Ableton Live 10?

Post by Street Spirit » Wed Nov 08, 2017 7:46 pm

Id say it does. You can defiantly tell with audio clips.
I think they mentioned it in the beta release notes.
After 10 years of producing, you tend to pick up on sound changes.
Could defiantly tell with 8 to 9.
Lets say iam not going back to 9, after they fix some thing in the beta.

8E
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Re: Any Improvements In The Audio Engine Of Ableton Live 10?

Post by 8E » Wed Nov 08, 2017 9:05 pm

I can say this: I set up a fresh new document in AL9 and LPX.
One MIDI track.
One inatrument (pianoteq).
I load the same clean MIDI snippet in both.

AL9 uses sometimes CPU at 30-40% while LPX about 15%.

That is a difference as far as I am concerned.
I would love AL to be more efficient.
I have just got the Beta tester link, but I need to upgrade my OS X Yosemite first.
MacOS Mojave MacBook Pro (15", Mid 2015), 2,5 GHz i7, 16GB RAM
Live Suite 10-latest + Push 1
U-PHORIA UMC204HD

Stromkraft
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Re: Any Improvements In The Audio Engine Of Ableton Live 10?

Post by Stromkraft » Wed Nov 08, 2017 10:34 pm

8E wrote:
AL9 uses sometimes CPU at 30-40% while LPX about 15%.
OK, but couldn't this just be that the machine were doing something else in the background, unbeknownst to you, when you made the first read? And what read is it? Is it the Live audio engine or an actual CPU meter? Which one? Did you watch it for a length of time, like a few minutes at least?
Make some music!

8E
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Re: Any Improvements In The Audio Engine Of Ableton Live 10?

Post by 8E » Wed Nov 08, 2017 10:44 pm

Stromkraft wrote:
8E wrote:
AL9 uses sometimes CPU at 30-40% while LPX about 15%.
OK, but couldn't this just be that the machine were doing something else in the background, unbeknownst to you, when you made the first read? And what read is it? Is it the Live audio engine or an actual CPU meter? Which one? Did you watch it for a length of time, like a few minutes at least?
It is the OSX CPU meter.
Yes I watch for a while.
And I put on loop to see how the same phrase performs.
MacOS Mojave MacBook Pro (15", Mid 2015), 2,5 GHz i7, 16GB RAM
Live Suite 10-latest + Push 1
U-PHORIA UMC204HD

yur2die4
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Re: Any Improvements In The Audio Engine Of Ableton Live 10?

Post by yur2die4 » Thu Nov 09, 2017 2:55 am

Just so people are not confused, I think what the poster and some of the replies in this thread are relating to is audio quality and differences in the rendered sound output. Not the performance or CPU.

And I'd be interested to see people's tests on this, probably the only way is to use the same vsts at the same volumes with the same render settings.

And possibly an audio clip to also test phase cancellation (since it'd be difficult to do a legit phase cancellation test on vsts with a high amount of variables)

Stromkraft
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Re: Any Improvements In The Audio Engine Of Ableton Live 10?

Post by Stromkraft » Thu Nov 09, 2017 7:14 am

yur2die4 wrote:Just so people are not confused, I think what the poster and some of the replies in this thread are relating to is audio quality and differences in the rendered sound output. Not the performance or CPU.
Please elaborate. I've missed this discussion.
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yur2die4
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Re: Any Improvements In The Audio Engine Of Ableton Live 10?

Post by yur2die4 » Thu Nov 09, 2017 7:35 am

Well that's what they're asking about. The 'audio engine'.

It is my understanding that there shouldn't be a difference. But people always claim to think different programs have a different sound to them. In some cases these speculations do turn out to be legitimate. In the case of Live, I think they've kind of nipped that issue as of late Live 8.

Stromkraft
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Re: Any Improvements In The Audio Engine Of Ableton Live 10?

Post by Stromkraft » Thu Nov 09, 2017 7:41 am

yur2die4 wrote:Well that's what they're asking about. The 'audio engine'.

It is my understanding that there shouldn't be a difference. But people always claim to think different programs have a different sound to them. In some cases these speculations do turn out to be legitimate. In the case of Live, I think they've kind of nipped that issue as of late Live 8.
Ohhh. Well, there isn't a problem I know of with the Ableton Live 9 audio engine when it comes to the quality of rendered files, nor in Live 10 I'd expect. That is as long as you know what you're doing. There's seems to be a plethora of cases made by people that quite often don't. Hard to say if Ableton could communicate better in this area. I think they should try.

A common way to get into trouble is to flatten and change the tempo, or if you use one of the warp modes that do affect sound.
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Machinesworking
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Re: Any Improvements In The Audio Engine Of Ableton Live 10?

Post by Machinesworking » Thu Nov 09, 2017 7:53 am

yur2die4 wrote:Well that's what they're asking about. The 'audio engine'.

It is my understanding that there shouldn't be a difference. But people always claim to think different programs have a different sound to them. In some cases these speculations do turn out to be legitimate. In the case of Live, I think they've kind of nipped that issue as of late Live 8.
None of it is legitimate. The math for summing, and recording audio doesn't change for any DAW really. The biggest differences you can "hear" between DAWs have to do with things that aren't sound quality issues. Pan law is different for different DAWs, some DAWs like Logic used to be anyway, allowed you to change the pan law of the mixer, most DAWs have set pan laws. These could be perceived along with perceived differences in loudness as "quality" differences, they are not. Mastered and properly mixed in the DAW there is no difference. When tracks are reverse phased they sum to silence.

It's snake oil. that's all. I could fall for it too if I wanted to, whatever Digital Performer does VS Live in terms of panning and volume levels on the Master out etc. It sounds "better" when I've been in Live for a while, but here's the funny part, DP is still 32 bit summing, because they've never been accused of having a bad summing bus by internet forum peeps.

Machinesworking
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Re: Any Improvements In The Audio Engine Of Ableton Live 10?

Post by Machinesworking » Thu Nov 09, 2017 7:58 am

8E wrote:I can say this: I set up a fresh new document in AL9 and LPX.
One MIDI track.
One inatrument (pianoteq).
I load the same clean MIDI snippet in both.

AL9 uses sometimes CPU at 30-40% while LPX about 15%.

That is a difference as far as I am concerned.
I would love AL to be more efficient.
I have just got the Beta tester link, but I need to upgrade my OS X Yosemite first.
Logic only polls it's armed tracks for changes in automation etc. it's not and never has been a live performance oriented DAW.
Live was one to start with and became peoples choice for mostly electronic music production.

Live and Bitwig are the two most CPU consuming DAWs I've used. Logic and Reaper, followed by DP and Cubase all do a good job of managing CPU.
Live getting 40-60% of the CPU power that Logic gets has been that way forever.. I think it was 2006 when I first ran a test between the two with similar results.

yur2die4
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Re: Any Improvements In The Audio Engine Of Ableton Live 10?

Post by yur2die4 » Thu Nov 09, 2017 8:15 am

http://src.infinitewave.ca

If you compare Live 7 with Live 9.11 there is quite a dramatic improvement.

Machinesworking
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Re: Any Improvements In The Audio Engine Of Ableton Live 10?

Post by Machinesworking » Fri Nov 10, 2017 4:48 am

yur2die4 wrote:http://src.infinitewave.ca

If you compare Live 7 with Live 9.11 there is quite a dramatic improvement.
SRC stands for sample rate conversion. That's not the mixing bus or the difference between a 32 bit bus and 64, it's Live's audio conversion algorithms, totally separate issue, which got improved for sure, but not because of the summing bus... Live 7 did not have worse summing than 8.

Martin Gifford
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Re: Any Improvements In The Audio Engine Of Ableton Live 10?

Post by Martin Gifford » Fri Nov 10, 2017 9:06 am

Amythofficial wrote:I did find a change in Ableton’s sound engine vs Logic’s.
The anticipation is killing me! What was the change that you noticed?

Most people talk about "audio engine" in terms of sound quality. That's not a real thing. A wav file is a wave file, etc.

The issue is normally due to using the wrong warp algorithm or using the wrong settings in preferences. Those are easily fixed with about 4 mouse clicks. :D

The other sound quality issue is the Ableton synth and effects plugins, which are often horrible, but that's solved with third party plugins.

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