Discussion of music production, audio, equipment and any related topics, either with or without Ableton Live
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rolfski
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by rolfski » Mon Oct 02, 2006 9:14 pm
I just picked up the October issue of MusicTech magazine, curious of course how Live 6 got reviewed. They gave it a 8/10, their main gripes being the limited editing functions and audio quality still behind compared to the major DAWs:
"Although the relative audio quality of the various sequencers is a controversial subject, in our experiences mixes made in Live can suffer a bit in overall crispness and clarity; this difference can be heard if the individual audio tracks are exported one at a time and then imported into another sequencer for mixing."
Has anyone also experienced this? If true this would be a major bummer for me.

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b0unce
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by b0unce » Mon Oct 02, 2006 9:19 pm
ableton live sounds as good as any other daw
Last edited by
b0unce on Mon Oct 02, 2006 9:40 pm, edited 1 time in total.
spreader of butter
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The Phat Conductor
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by The Phat Conductor » Mon Oct 02, 2006 9:33 pm
it's the timestretching.
if you take the timestretch off it exports fine.
you will notice the same thing with other sequencers.
the people who wrote that review don't know what's up.
that said, the compressors and eqs could be a lot better. load up a tune you're working on and then try replacing all of your comps and eqs with waves audiotrack and see the difference it makes. it is shocking.
i had to install windows on my macbook for producing as a result. boo-urns.
EDIT: posted after the comment below

he isn't referring to my post.
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leisuremuffin
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by leisuremuffin » Mon Oct 02, 2006 9:33 pm
bullshit.
edit, yeah, of course i'm talking about the idea the live's sound quality is somehow different from other daws.
.lm.
Last edited by
leisuremuffin on Mon Oct 02, 2006 10:04 pm, edited 1 time in total.
TimeableFloat ???S?e?n?d?I?n?f?o
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djmyke
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by djmyke » Mon Oct 02, 2006 9:45 pm
another protools trashtalk
old protools cant learn new tricks wit ableton
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ashley_k
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by ashley_k » Mon Oct 02, 2006 9:49 pm
rolfski wrote:I just picked up the October issue of MusicTech magazine, curious of course how Live 6 got reviewed. They gave it a 8/10, their main gripes being the limited editing functions and audio quality still behind compared to the major DAWs:
"Although the relative audio quality of the various sequencers is a controversial subject, in our experiences mixes made in Live can suffer a bit in overall crispness and clarity; this difference can be heard if the individual audio tracks are exported one at a time and then imported into another sequencer for mixing."
Has anyone also experienced this? If true this would be a major bummer for me.

I was going to post a bit about this as it’s seem an incredibly poor way to review a product in a magazine, but I didn't think anyone took MusicTech magazine seriously any more.
They don’t give or seem to have any evidence for suggesting Live has inferior audio quality and using words like “perceived” in a review lead one to the conclusion that it’s not really a credible review, for instance they don’t even mention the missing “edit” button.
It will be interesting to see what a more credible magazine like Sound on Sound has to say in its review of Live 6.
For the time being I’d suggest that you import your reading to another more credible publication such as the Beano or a comic of your choice.
The only major bummer for you is if you actually paid for this pathetic magazine.
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Machinate
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by Machinate » Mon Oct 02, 2006 10:10 pm
the unknown wanderer wrote:it does sound different to logic i must say
proove it

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the unknown wanderer
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by the unknown wanderer » Mon Oct 02, 2006 10:23 pm
i did not say it logic sounded better, just different.
but it depends on the quality of the plugs you use ,with the right mastering tools you can change the sound every thing
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franknputer
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by franknputer » Mon Oct 02, 2006 10:36 pm
The only way to really tell is to load both DAWs with the same source files & export them, then do a comparative spectral analysis of the results.
Sounds like maybe they were talking out of their...

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stew
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by stew » Mon Oct 02, 2006 10:44 pm
Let me guess...their other DAWs were half a decibel (or three) louder than Live? Even when you don't perceive it as being louder, just a slight difference in volume makes things sound better to the human ear (which is why all radio stations compress the sh*t out of the songs they play).
There's no secret sauce in mixing that would make one DAW sound crisper than another. A magazine called "MusicTech" should be capable of tracking down why it sounds different or at least finding a better description than "crispness and clarity" - that sounds suspiciously like VooDoo Hifi magazines telling me I should put my CDs in the freezer and buy gold-plated power cables.
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noratronika
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by noratronika » Mon Oct 02, 2006 10:47 pm
rolfski wrote:I just picked up the October issue of MusicTech magazine, curious of course how Live 6 got reviewed. They gave it a 8/10, their main gripes being the limited editing functions and audio quality still behind compared to the major DAWs:

I'l take it seriously when its written in Sound on sound.

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the unknown wanderer
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by the unknown wanderer » Mon Oct 02, 2006 10:52 pm
franknputer wrote:The only way to really tell is to load both DAWs with the same source files & export them, then do a comparative spectral analysis of the results.
Sounds like maybe they were talking out of their...

ok here goes...... here is a little loop i made up using just ableton reverb and logic reverb
i did not alter the settings just how they came as they were loaded
now you can argue that they are different plug ins but what im trying to say is that logic plugs sound different to ableton plugs. not one is better than the other.
cos ultimatly is the plugs you use to create and define your sound
so here is logic
http://www.yousendit.com/download/Gz1YegCtYZc%3D
here is ableton
http://download.yousendit.com/11A665A042B73A9D
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Tarekith
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by Tarekith » Mon Oct 02, 2006 10:56 pm
Here's the testing I did with Live 6 and SX3:
http://www.ableton.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=45804
Comparing anything that uses different plug ins is not a comparison at all. You're not saying Live sounds different than Logic, you're saying Live's Reverb sounds different than Logic's Reverb, which means....nothing.
Of course all host plug ins sound different, but if you were to compare the same VST plug ins in both hosts, the results would be identical.
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leisuremuffin
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by leisuremuffin » Mon Oct 02, 2006 10:58 pm
yes, plug ins sound different from each other.
that is not what the quote in the magazine says.
And that's not what a lot of puffed up morons are saying when they complain about live's summing bus being somehow subpar.
.lm.
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