Does Live Do Dynamic Bit-Depth Reduction As a Tradeoff For Stability?

[Slow Hand]

Hey all,

A well-respected mixer recently made a claim in an online discussion that I wanted to follow up on:

The discussion was about the sonic quality of Ableton versus other DAWs like Pro Tools. In this discussion the mixer was arguing that Pro Tools was superior and then made a few claims about Ableton that I found curious:

1. That Ableton is dynamically changing bit-depth for audio (compromising audio quality) as a tradeoff for performance stability.
2. That the threshold for this behavior starts at 25% CPU usage.
3. That the threshold for this behavior starts at more than 24 tracks.
4. That this behavior persists even in bounces. (Presumably they're referring to offline bounces).

They say that they were told this by someone who works at Ableton. My intuition on the matter (knowing the mixer) is that the mixer is misinformed or misinterpreting what was told to them. Nonetheless I think it is worth asking the question in order to confirm it or to put it to bed.

Ableton has been very forthcoming about the ins and outs of it's audio engine and what will or will not compromise the audio quality. Their Audio Fact Sheet in the manual (https://www.ableton.com/en/manual/audio-fact-sheet/) seems comprehensive and I don't see anything to that effect mentioned there. I expect that if this behavior is true then it should already be common knowledge amongst the more technically-minded here.

That said. Another community of audio professionals I work with are very keen to investigate this claim and either put it to bed, or come to a greater understanding of this supposed behavior. Any perspective on these claims would be greatly appreciated.

[[jur]]

Bullsh*it. As you said, the Audio Facts Sheet explains it all in details.

And funnily, if you look at the SRC numbers here you'll find that they're much better for Live VS ProTools... It's not about bit depth, but that's probably something your mixer would love to know anyway.

[Tarekith]

There a times when Live will sometimes use 32 or 64 bit processing, depending on when that makes sense. But that is totally different from changing the bit depth. And again, covered in the audio fact sheet as you said.