live's "quality for discussion......

[eyeknow]

I'd like to propose that although 6 is the BOMB feature wise, but I'm still having allot of what I call serious issues with rendering, midi export.....chriminy.....the list is too long. So here's what I'd like to discuss......

Has it gotten ahead of itself? Not "feature" wise necessarily, but too new/too fast so to speak?

[Tone Deft]

I rendered the same trance song in Live 5 and Live 6, Live 5 is definitely warmer. If 6 doesn't cut it, 4 still rocks. 7 is going to suck until the Covert Operators get their Max MSP Slicer plug-in perfected.

[JACKAL & HYDE]

I'd like to propose that although 6 is the BOMB feature wise, but I'm still having allot of what I call serious issues with rendering, midi export.....chriminy.....the list is too long. So here's what I'd like to discuss......

Has it gotten ahead of itself? Not "feature" wise necessarily, but too new/too fast so to speak?

Yes imo, get the MIDI (along with everything else that already exists) kicking ass before anything else. I use a Folcrom so I never "render" a song, always record it live. Even if I didnt use the Folcrom I still wouldnt render anything, I dont trust it. I especially dont trust it summing/math/seperation/round wise. I've never seen anything "rendered" in any mastering house or during a studio mix down ever on any DAW. The final product is always recorded live into Peak, PT, Wavelab etc in real time. But yea agreed, get every feature that already exists working flawlessly before adding 10 piles of shit the thing arguably doesnt really need. Soon it will be bloated to the point of insanity like Cubase. More bloat can be stifling to creativity real quick.

[sqook]

[4am]

yes! audio quality of rendered is for me the weak point in live
it was already discussed in other threads with tests and lots of bla bla

[minimal]

pointless to bitch about rendering since you can just resample

[4am]

pointless to bitch about rendering since you can just resample

you know i'm lazy

[Angstrom]

speaking of lazy.

has anyone compared a resample 'render' with a normal render?
phase invert one and add them together, what are the differences?

obviously a good choice of source material would be essential, nothing with a freely sweeping LFO which would make both renders slightly different.

Obviously I've not tried this, I would do it now but I have to go out.
I would hope that both are exactly the same.

-----------------------

edit.

I just tried it, I rendered out 8 bars of a simple 5 track thing (I froze the tracks first).
I then 'resampled ' the same 8 bars to a new audio track.
I opened the rendered version in a wave editor, phase inverted it and pasted it as a 1:1 mix with the resample version

total cancellation.

0 bits left over.

If you try this remember tomake sure that your resample and your render are at the same bit depth BTW (I just found out my resample has been on 16 bit for god knows how long!)

anyway, to my mind resampling and rendering are equivalent.

[minimal]

4am: I know you are lazy, that's why I ansered the way I did, but I know you know it was not meant bad
as far as angstrom's point: you have a point here dude, I haven't tried by myself.
But I remember once I was in the studio with 4am, we did a test on his computer, thake the same loop, resample it and render it... well, we both had the impression the rendered was a bit dullier than the resampled file.
4am if you remember this (it was before we had our first gig, so long time ago) please confirm.

[4am]

4am: I know you are lazy

i confirm...... i'm lazy

take the same loop, resample it and render it... well, we both had the impression the rendered was a bit dullier than the resampled file.

please confirm.

and i confirm, the resampled loop sounded much better

[minimal]

4am: I know you are lazy

i confirm...... i'm lazy

take the same loop, resample it and render it... well, we both had the impression the rendered was a bit dullier than the resampled file.

please confirm.

and i confirm, the resampled loop sounded much better

I guess your being lazy has to do with your origin.
Not that my origin are sign of hard work....
the coutries we are coming from are not the busiest in the world.

[Tarekith]

has anyone compared a resample 'render' with a normal render?
phase invert one and add them together, what are the differences?

total cancellation.

Try again on 24 bit and watch how they no longer cancel. Tested and posted this last time we got into the huge argument about Live's sound quality. For some reason, there's a small amount of low level of 'noise' that gets added to resampled files. Confirmed and acknowledged by Ableton, here's Henke's reply:

"Yes, indeed we found some small odditiy in the recording process at 24bit.
It needs some more investigation but we are on it. It looks like
render is the more accurate path... and there is no problem at all
if using 32 bit files. I would not say any of the findings are
dramatic but of course sound quality is too important to be ignored.
You can expect significant changes here for Live 7. Details depend on
the results of our research. We figured out that most user reports
about sound qaulity are the result of unwanted warping or other user
induced sound degration. This implies we not only need to improve the
engine by offering dither, state of the art sample rate conversion,
offline timestrech, oversampling in audio effects or 64 bit
processing where appropriate etc... but also rethink the user
interface to make more transparent what happens to sound in which
conditions. ( warping, fades, sample rate conversion, clipping etc... )

We plan to make a Live sound quality statement at some point, telling
the interested users the exact facts and explain our future strategy
to improve the product. This will not keep people from hearing
differences in bit identical files but it will help those who are
seriously using Live and want to know exactly what they will get
under which conditions.

Cheers, Robert"

Which makes it ironic that people like resample more.

[nebulae]

I rendered the same trance song in Live 5 and Live 6, Live 5 is definitely warmer. If 6 doesn't cut it, 4 still rocks. 7 is going to suck until the Covert Operators get their Max MSP Slicer plug-in perfected.

But Live 6 in Vista is much warmer than Live 6 on crappy XP. Even warmer than that is Live 6 on Vista running off bootcamp thru a Macbook.

[minimal]

Which makes it ironic that people like resample more.

whatever this or that mister says, I trust my ears, do not care what is written, when I mix my tracks I hear music I do not read code-lines, when I send demos to label I need to work so that my music sounds as good as I can, whatever statement I encounter on the way.
Sure I always try again and again the resampling, but until now I'm not satisfied yet, whatever people says with more or less irony

[nebulae]

I use my ears and my tools, and I have been happy with Live's results over the past three years of producing with it. I don't get too hung up on bits/warping/processing/signal bus/etc. I just do what sounds good, and if it doesn't sound good, I figure out how to make it sound better.

I'm not invalidating those who have sound quality issues with Live, I'm only saying that the standard ought to be what sounds good to your ears, not necessarily if one output cancels out another output. Just make good music, fellas