How professional is this software folks ?

saultopaul · Post by **saultopaul** » Mon Jan 16, 2006 7:50 pm

Yep i kinda got the jitters about buying live 5. I was going to but after reading the negative feedback i am more or less convinced to forget it! I was looking for something to help me get my compositions outa my head and onto the tracks. My music is pop rock and orchestral. I literally dream melodies ( honest!) so i wanted an easy bit of kit to get the tunes etc down without hassle. Boy the feedback kind of spells PAIN and little gain! Before i finally bow out on Ableton any thoughts would be greatly appreciated. Just how does this s/w compare to Sonar for example - audio quality etc. And please if you have any thoughts on other s/w that could help. Also looking for orchestration help - maybe beyond any s/w scope ( ie advanced auto accompaniment stuff)
Thanks Paul
PS sorry if it sounds so negative - i only decided on looking into Ableton Live because i did hear a lot of good reports

kenn michael · Post by **kenn michael** » Mon Jan 16, 2006 7:54 pm

Try downloading the demo and see if it works for you...

Personally, I think it's amazing, and VERY professional!

inis · Post by **inis** » Mon Jan 16, 2006 7:58 pm

I think its perfect for what you need.

but dont take anyones word for it. THATS WHAT A FULL FUNCTIONING DEMO IS FOR. check it out.

Angstrom · Post by **Angstrom** » Mon Jan 16, 2006 8:11 pm

many people try the demo software and say "the audio quality is no good".
This is because they loaded a piece of audio and Live is set to 'beats' timestretch mode by default, this results in slightly lumpy audio on a vocal or string section. With warping (ie timestretching) off it sounds the same as any application. If you want to warp harmonically complex things use complex mode, or 'tones' perhaps.
If you are looping at the same BPM you recorded - you shouldn't hear the warping.

There is a lot of talk about "buss summing" from people, these discussions dont often come from anyone with a background in DSP, most often worries are stirred by people who think "my computer is good because it uses fixed point calculations!" IE people who read something somewhere and half understood it.

Unless live is actually truncating wordlengths during the attenuation and working at 16 bit internally - but it isn't.
So, I wouldn't worry about the sound quality with respect to the competitors (NOTE: live is 24bit internally AFAIK)

as far as workflow goes there are a few niggles in what is otherwise an excellent program for putting things together quickly. You may miss multiple envelope views, but you will gain in other areas.

some people are having serious problems, fortunately I haven't had any so far - only 'differences of opinion' on functionality

err_fatale · Post by **err_fatale** » Mon Jan 16, 2006 8:17 pm

Professional??????? Do you see who's using this??? Nine Inch Nails, Daft Punk, Sasha, many more artists whose names have disappered from the list (why is that????????)

http://www.ableton.com/index.php?main=artists&sub=list

if anyone has access to anything and everything for audio production under the sun it's Trent Reznor and he uses Live!!!!!

marky · Post by **marky** » Mon Jan 16, 2006 8:17 pm

I thought Live was 32-bit float internally, no?

Angstrom · Post by **Angstrom** » Mon Jan 16, 2006 8:19 pm

maybe it is 32, I couldn't be bothered to search back!
anyway, high enough to avoid nasty truncation even without dither.

saultopaul · Post by **saultopaul** » Mon Jan 16, 2006 8:19 pm

Thanks Kenn and Innis and Angstrom . Your responses are a really good sign anyway!
I just got the demo and have worked through the first few tutorial pages. Very good pedagogy ( if that’s spelt right!). I guess what I was thinking is to really find out for myself how good or bad the ableton live 5 is it will take me a long time. I mean, I don’t want to get to the mastering stage 6 months down the line and find I have got to start again because of some poor quality or buggy trait that I never spotted earlier on. I want to be able to master as well on this as on any other prof piece of software. I do have for example protools le with the 001/Mac set up.Now many say it’s the bees knees I always found it not too intuitive and due to a s/w bug damaging my ear I shelved it some time ago( of course digi didn’t want to know and talked about preferences on my Mac – sorry another story!!)
Thanks also for the tips on settings – I have read about audio probs and as you say is probably down to the settings / defaults
So we all have our complaints I figure – thanks for your responses.Will keep checking here . Have to put kids to bed as its 20:17 here but will check out this later thanks. I know this is proving VERY imjportant for me to get a bit of balance!

Angstrom · Post by **Angstrom** » Mon Jan 16, 2006 8:21 pm

AFAIK a lot of people use PT with ableton in a rewire setup.
best / worst of both worlds

Michael-SW · Post by **Michael-SW** » Mon Jan 16, 2006 8:29 pm

Angstrom wrote:maybe it is 32, I couldn't be bothered to search back!
anyway, high enough to avoid nasty truncation even without dither.

With floating point, you don't get truncation. Which is the point (eh) of it. You also got infinite headroom. Try it: push all your track faders to max and bring down your master fader. No clipping.

(Possibly some VSTs will do bad stuff internally if the level is too high?)

It is only when the audio come out from the master fader that it is converted back to discrete bits again.

rikhyray · Post by **rikhyray** » Mon Jan 16, 2006 8:41 pm

How professional ? That I can earn my living using it, submitting my work to companies/ labels that expect highest standards. Never had any problems with it.
It is different then Protools, Logic or Cubase but not less professional ( but if you need score functionality they will be better choice). If you want to work professionally you might be expected to deliver you product in the more popular format (like PT which is standard in movies and videos) but it is not difficult to "repack" a project .
Sonar definitely is half ass, waste of money is you serious, I wont waste my time to elaborate.
P.S.
regarding the "dream thing", Live is the fastest to realise your ideas, visions, in all the rest you have to do so much action before you get it recorded that you may forget too much of you dream. That speed is the reason why I use other progrems only when i have to.

Moody · Post by **Moody** » Mon Jan 16, 2006 8:45 pm

Well, I could afford anything else in the world that is out there and I choose to use Live. Why?, because I have used all the other crap out there and Live gets the job done.

Angstrom · Post by **Angstrom** » Mon Jan 16, 2006 8:54 pm

Michael-SW wrote:
Angstrom wrote:maybe it is 32, I couldn't be bothered to search back!
anyway, high enough to avoid nasty truncation even without dither.
With floating point, you don't get truncation. Which is the point (eh) of it. You also got infinite headroom. Try it: push all your track faders to max and bring down your master fader. No clipping.
(Possibly some VSTs will do bad stuff internally if the level is too high?)
It is only when the audio come out from the master fader that it is converted back to discrete bits again.

really?
truncation isn't about clipping it's actually the in between values. not 0.5 , 1.5 or even 9.999 .. but 0.00001000101112123 or 2.0009000009009111.

If we only have 16 (theoretical) bits to play with, some truncation is always going to happen in any finite system.

in 16 bit there are 65,500 ish volume steps , attenuation of a prerendered wav at 16bit (while working at theoretical internal 16bit) will of course ruin that further.

sure we can point shift to maintain wordlength of low values, but if the word contains too many decimals for the wordlength then truncation will still occur.

0.0011101010020340130423450 is going to get truncated, thats what dither is for eh?

hambone1 · Post by **hambone1** » Mon Jan 16, 2006 9:13 pm

You dither/truncate/"0.5, 1.5 or even 9.999 .. but 0.00001000101112123 or 2.0009000009009111." guys need to get out more, or you're gonna hurt yourselves...

Angstrom · Post by **Angstrom** » Mon Jan 16, 2006 9:37 pm

funny, I tried telling my girlfriend about how dithering in a dsp process improves the apparent bit depth and she wasn't interested either!
:ironic icon goes here:

yeah, it's tedious but sadly we need to try and keep a grip on these topics, technology in this business gives the impression of being foolproof - but there is a large opportunity for user/programmer error.

a long time ago I took a dat to a mastering house and had all the things I had done wrong pointed out to me. All of it was avoidable stuff, but things I thought were unimportant .. word clocks? 'pah!' I just run stuff together. etc.

my name is angstrom , I am a geek