MusicTech review: Live 6 lacks audio quality!!

Discuss music production with Ableton Live.
Tarekith
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Post by Tarekith » Wed Oct 04, 2006 8:25 pm

headquest wrote: But for the sake of casual readers who have seen the MTM review and are looking for a PLAIN answer about Live's audio handling, please let's all keep this On Topic and just give a straight answer.
I actually posted this link already, but here is whre I showed the summing engine in Lvie to be identical to SX3:

http://www.ableton.com/forum/viewtopic. ... c&start=15
Tarekith
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headquest
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Post by headquest » Wed Oct 04, 2006 8:33 pm

Thanks for that link - another interesting disucssion! 8)
iMac Retina 4K 3.3Ghz i7, 16Gb RAM
Live Suite 9.7.1 + Reason 9.1 + Pianoteq 5 + Sibelius 8.5

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dj superflat
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Post by dj superflat » Wed Oct 04, 2006 8:43 pm

love the discussion of summing, i'll keep my fader at 0 rather than get external.

that said, here's the neve:

http://www.vintageking.com/New-Brands/N ... ming-Mixer

here's the shadow:

http://www.vintageking.com/New-Brands/S ... he-Equinox

the shadow looks way cooler, cause you can select three different types of console (effectively) and it's also got 2 great mic pres.

Zerobae
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Post by Zerobae » Wed Oct 04, 2006 8:47 pm

thanks!

mikemc
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Post by mikemc » Wed Oct 04, 2006 8:51 pm

*bazzzzzzttphh* wow, I've done it! According to the gauges on the machine, I've successfully transported myself INTO THE FUTURE from last year! let me see what they are talking about on the ableton forum...

wait a sec, 10 pages of "...sounds better/different/no different than other daw software..." Damn... the gauges must be broken.
UTENZIL a tool... of the muse.

melocoton
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Post by melocoton » Wed Oct 04, 2006 9:19 pm

Tarekith wrote:WOW, that's a VERY interesting video Melocoton! I understood it perfectly, and am at aloss to explain what's going on! Thanks for sharing!
Yes it's a little perplexing 8O The only mode which really sounds like artifacting to me is the complex. Do you see what I mean about how repitch almost cancels at the beginning and then seems to drift further out as it goes? That makes it seem like some kind of timing or latency issue. Then there's the whole section where I couldn't get any of them to cancel but as you can see that was fixed by firing the scene again so they must have somehow drifted out of sync as well. But I am able to get Tone mode to cancel pretty reliably.

mikemc
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Post by mikemc » Wed Oct 04, 2006 10:17 pm

I cannot get the video to playback sound, but it is very cool the way you've been able to capture it. What do you use to do that?
UTENZIL a tool... of the muse.

melocoton
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Post by melocoton » Wed Oct 04, 2006 10:39 pm

mikemc wrote:I cannot get the video to playback sound, but it is very cool the way you've been able to capture it. What do you use to do that?
I used a program called Snapz. Just so you know there is no sound at the beginning and then very little sound throughout. So maybe you just thought you couldn't hear the audio :D But it is possible that I encoded it in a weird way. It should play fine in quicktime.

forge
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Post by forge » Thu Oct 05, 2006 3:56 am

melocoton wrote:
dj superflat wrote:unclear re repitch (the latter has never come up before as one that changes sound, so i'm not buying it without more proof)).
I made a video demonstrating the different warp settings and the fact that repitch doesn't always cancel. It's a little boring and maybe a bit confusing but I can explain what's going on step by step if anyone cares.

http://ultrashare.net/hosting/fl/a88b195057/
in digital audio all you have to do to change the pitch or speed of something without timestretching is keep the playback sample rate constant and increase or decrease the sample rate of the sample - so in repitch mode the only thing that will affect the quality is whether Hi-Quality interpolation is on or off

I think maybe what's happening regarding warping is slight variations in the warp on the sample - such as a sample that was recorded at 120bpm showing up as 120.04 bpm or whatever, then you are bound to get phasing issues

the sample is being constantly manipulated to keep in time with the project tempo, so if Live doesnt have to do anything to it then it should be left alone, but if it thinks there is any variation at all between the sample tempo and the project tempo then it will adjust it, which is where i think the phasing is happening

although I have definitely noticed in complex mode before if something is at the same tempo there was phasing, but I mentioned it and think it was some kind of bug - I havent tried it again since Live 6

eyeknow
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Post by eyeknow » Thu Oct 05, 2006 5:20 am

knotkranky wrote:No, that's not right. Every daw sounds different. You cannot discount the sound of operating the daw. The processing process and operational flow is the sound. Forget fidelity tests. Hell, even ram and cpu power have a huge influence on sound. Consider this; Even different live6 setups can sound better than other live6 setups, right?

Here's the real and only test to consider. Simply mix the same song in different daws. The mix that sounds best came from the best daw.

I mix for a living and there is no way I would get the same mix sound from each popular daw. Limits and freedom have a sound.
My humor is somewhere between a vermouth-less martini and the sahara.

I was of course being horribly sarcastic (hence the deaf person joke...)

eyeknow
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Post by eyeknow » Thu Oct 05, 2006 5:21 am

tomperson wrote:
eyeknow wrote:remember, daws are all the same since it's digital 1's and 0's......

Just like cables/connectors........there are no differences in them right?

If someone says "wow, listen to the difference between these" to a deaf person ( or a ......dumb person.......), the deaf person wouldn't be able to distinguish between the two :lol:
Not true. Different daws implement different algorythms to make calculations. Think of it as if it was a recipe. You can read it out of a book, and *theoretically* every chef that prepaired the meal would get the same dish, right? Nope. Every chef would get a different taste of the same recipe, because of the different approaches to cooking, the different trade offs that were taken into account, etc. It's exactly the same when it comes to digital signal processing. For instance, Live developers probably err on the side of cpu optimization, since their app should work ok for live performance, but that sometimes compromises sound quality. Give and take, you know?
there is a post I just made......I totally agree...I just have a really dry sense of humor.

dj superflat
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Post by dj superflat » Thu Oct 05, 2006 4:28 pm

many thx forge. that's the only explanation i've seen that makes any sense (and the issue seems fairly straightforward).

knotkranky
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Post by knotkranky » Thu Oct 05, 2006 4:53 pm

eyeknow wrote:
knotkranky wrote:No, that's not right. Every daw sounds different. You cannot discount the sound of operating the daw. The processing process and operational flow is the sound. Forget fidelity tests. Hell, even ram and cpu power have a huge influence on sound. Consider this; Even different live6 setups can sound better than other live6 setups, right?

Here's the real and only test to consider. Simply mix the same song in different daws. The mix that sounds best came from the best daw.

I mix for a living and there is no way I would get the same mix sound from each popular daw. Limits and freedom have a sound.
My humor is somewhere between a vermouth-less martini and the sahara.

I was of course being horribly sarcastic (hence the deaf person joke...)
Ah, I follow. Yeah, my humor is somewhere between martini's. :)

ingo
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Post by ingo » Thu Oct 05, 2006 5:47 pm

Some remarks concerning unwarped playing
for warpmodes when the file tempo equals song tempo:

Unfortunately there is currently no indicator in the gui when
file tempo or song tempo are cut of after the second decimal.
So they might well differ a small amount, even though they
seem to be equal. This is what i assume to
be the case shown in the video.

In fact, even for such small differences in the tempo
this will not immediatly lead to warping for most warp modes,
they propably will make a different decision as to what grain
is played at some points but for most of the time will just
play unwarped with a constant sample offset resulting
from such decision.

There seems to be a quirk in the "tones" warper that
causes such an offset quite from the beginning.

"Repitch" starts pitching the sample to accomodate the
small tempo difference, and in effect diverts
more and more from the unwarped sample.

"Complex" mode is different from all others in that it
does no "grained" playing of the existing material.
It performs a time base analysis and transformation
of the input material. Furthermore "complex" also
does the resampling necessary for
sample rate conversion. In effect it diverts in almost all
cases from the "unwarped" sample.

Independed of the above i experienced single sample
offsets (from jitter) between warped and unwarped after subsequent
starting and stopping with "Shift+Space".

For the time being (meaning as long as there are no
envelopes for unwarped clips, no "clip tempo to song tempo" button)
i suggest the workaround:
- use more or less integral clip tempo
(equaling song tempo, naturally)
- use beats mode

I hope this was helpful,

regards, ingo

melocoton
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Post by melocoton » Thu Oct 05, 2006 5:51 pm

ingo wrote:Unfortunately there is currently no indicator in the gui when
file tempo or song tempo are cut of after the second decimal.
Aaaaah, all is clear. Thanks for the response Ingo!

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