Live Sound quality

[Audio Engine]

Hi Guys,

Im not complaining and am a very happy user of live3 and soon to be live 4. I am grateful for the speed that Ableton implement new ideas so just for teh record this post isnt a demand to Ableton. Just merely a query with other users.


I have used most of teh software out there from Cubase Logic Pro Tools Sonar reason. I definitely lik ethe sound of Cubase SX audio engine. That one is my favourite. It doesnt matter how many tracks I have runnning the sound doesnt seem to shrink. I cant say the same for Pro Tools and definitely Reason

However, Ableton does seem to suffer from the same------the more thats going on the more the auidio engine seems to struggle.

Of course I realise that with Warping there will be a quality loss issue, and all of those summed warp tracks can make a track sound a bit 12 bit *fine if you lik ethat sort of thing(

But I dont warp every track or clip. And some tracks I havent bothered usuing the warp features at all

When I compare a mix done in SX with Ableton there is quite a difference. I would border on saying its huge if your a bit of an audiophile.

I use Live for studio works so quality is important to me and I cant help but notice that Ableton Live audio engine seems a bit under par.

Also what about Dithering? Isnt it strange that Live doesnt include a Dither plugin? yes I can use a VST one but what if I didint have one. Also there is no way to sub tracks....stuff like that kinda makes me think the sound quality issue is of little importance?

As said earlier Live is a great composition and liv etool and I love it. Just wondering if others out there are thinking similiar as me

Suggestions Comments

Thanks

[pwestern]

I agree. It sounds a little bit lo fi. Especially if you transfer mixes into it that you are used to hearing mastered off cd. Once they are in Live, something weird happens to them. But the software is just so damn fun, and I hope that eventually they will improve on that aspect of it.

[noisetonepause]

Everybody knows you should output discrete tracks to an analogue mixer and master to tape when you're in the studio, anyways...

-Paws

[dfusion]

I cant say the same for Pro Tools and definitely Reason

In Reason are you rewiring into another application? Or are you staying within the Reason environment? I do not experience this issue in Reason, but I do not Rewire and export each track as a seperate WAV file for Pro Tools. Are you adding proper EQ and Compression at the master outputs? Here is an example of 'properly' configured Reason rack to alleviate the issue you are talking about.

http://www.markholloway.com/reason/mf_mconormx.rps

[qchapter]

I'm typically concerned with the exact opposite issue. I'm always trying to dirty up my tracks a little more. Things usually sound too polished for my tastes. Of course, I think many commercial releases are just too sparkly anyway. Just personal taste, really. My songs are dark and dingy, and so is my production. All of this neither here nor there really....

-Kevin

[raapie]

Live doesn't re-sample audio which is different from the project-setting. Other than that I think sounddifferences must come from the effects.

Steinberg said they rewrote the audio-engine for Nuendo2 which is now also used for SX2, but I don't think the sound has changed. mixing 2 channels still sounds the same to me.

I think it's great marketing to say something sounds better. With Reason it's an old discussion. They all sound the same, only the effects are different.

Better invest in good monitoring and effects in my opinion!

[raapie]

dfusion: I am not into Trance but this is a great example. Reason is very flexible and you can make your own multi-band compressor indeed!

[perry]

this is a topic close to my heart , and one that burns up many audio forums.

there are a few issues involved. 1 being the sound engine, the other being the summing bus, or how multiple tracks get crammed into the master track. this can make a huge difference.
ideally one would send each track out thru a console and back into a HD or Tape, but if you cant do that you might definatly benefit from rewiring into a program with a better summing bus algorithem.

but we'll have to see what live 4 sounds like.

[Robert Henke]

This topic seems to be very esoteric.

First of all, if you believe that a compressor with an orange display sounds warmer then one with a grey skin and this helps you doing
good music i will be the last person to tell you that you are wrong.
If it works for you it is right.

But in this thread we are talking about a very brutal mater: DIGITAL AUDIO.

if you take a file which has been recorded with 44.1 kHz 24 bit
into any system on this planet which plays it back sample by sample
you will get the exact same file at the output. This is true for Cubase, Logic.... and for Live since version 2.0 as long as it`s sample rate is set to 44.1 kHz and the file is either unwarped and pitch is set to 0.00 or if it is warped and pitch is set to 0.00 and original tempo at every warpmarker is exactly the same as song tempo. No wapring, no interpolation between samples, just straight sample by sample readout.
I have been checking this many times. If you can show me single reproducable example where this is not the case i am very curious to see it.

Mixing: MIXINIG in a digital system means multiplying a signal with a value. It does not change the sound. ADDING two ore more channels is
a mathematical addition of two or more signals. It does not change the sound. There are some very theoretical differences if you go into the extremes ( i am talking of boosting a signal by 100 dB ) because then
single precission floating point math may be a bit unaccurate, but
Live uses the same math as Cubase Logic... so there will be no difference.

Dithering: dithering is a techique which shifts the spectral energy of quantisation errors once a file is put out into a digital analog converter.
It is never recommended to add dither as long as you stay in the digital domain and are not creating a finished product which will not go thru any mastering process including changing the level even by a very smal amount. Dithering should be applied at the mastering studio as the very last step by someone who knows what to do.

Unless you are doing music with _very_ quited parts you will not hear
the difference anyway. We are talking aobut the range of -80 dB and below....

Effects : of course different plug ins use differrent kinds of algorithms for creating compression, tube saturation, reverb or eq. Feel free to use
what ever VST and Audio Units offer you to find the one which sounds best for you. In Logic Cubase ... and in Live - no difference.

These are the facts. I have a history in professional mastering and vinly cutting and i am willing to discuss this topic in depth if needed. I can also point to literature.

I know how much psychological factors determine our perception
and as i said at the beginnig, i am perfectly fine with what ever one
believes as long as it leads to good results, but i am getting upset by this
discussion about "sound quality of an audio engine". This is DIGITAL, not
analog. My old ENSONIQ ASR-10 sounds great beacause the digital to ANALOG converters do funny things. If i am making a typo here it will be _my_ fault and it will be at the forum because i wrote it and not because my computer has a slightly different way of thinking then yours.

Robert

[Guest]

yeehaw, amen, preach it brother. I have always thought that these speculations were bs. I have tried a test: I have a finished song with automation and effects in Live. I rendered the 13 tracks individually in Live with effects and automation. Then I loaded them into a new Live set, set the master fader at the approriate level, and rendered the master out--no effects, no automation. then I loaded these same 13 tracks in Cubase, set the master to the same level as the one I used in Live, and rendered the master out. Everything 16/44.1 the whole way through. Sounds IDENTICAL to me, on Mackie Hr824's with RME multiface. try it yourself. I think the "cubase and logic sound engines are better than Live" talk is a bunch of malarkey and hooeeey. I trust Robert, his reasoning and logic are sound, and his software is the best. Digital does not have the nuances of analog, except in the AD/DA converters, which shouldn't matter in a test like this, as you would be using the same soundcard anyway (and the files are already digital). Drop some real scientific facts or hold your tounges, these statements are very misleading. Do a legit test and prove us wrong

Ryan

[bensuthers]

fuck the subjective testing, even though that is really the only thing that matters.

someone take two tones, mix them in both cubase and live, say at -6dB each and compare the rendered files.

[Robert Henke]

I would like to add something which goes pretty much into the opposite direction but tells very much about the perception of audio:

A lot of people say, vinyl sounds better then CD.
A lot of people say, the acoustic image and the way instruments can
be located within the stereofield is much better then on CD.

So, lets have a brief look at how vinyl works:

A cutting needle cuts a groove into wax. The music is coded into
a horizontal and a vertical displacement of the groove.
The needle of your turntable has to trace that recorded curve.
In order to stay in the groove the needle needs to apply a force to the groove. Since applying a force to an infinite smal area would lead to an infinite force at that area the force of the needle has to be distributed. This is why the needle has an eliptical shape and this is why your record is destroyed it your needle breaks and leaves a sharp spike.

And here comes in one of the most fascinating miracles of vinyl:

The needle is not tracing the bottom of the grove but the two walls.
Even if the record only contains a single sine wave, recorded in mono,
which leads to a pure horizontal movement of the cutting head, the needle of the record player while tracing the walls of the groove also
creates a bit of a vertical movement. This is simple geometry.

This vertical movement translates into a signal of twice the frequency of the original sinewave but 180 degrees out of phase, added to that original
signal. These distortions are called "geometric distortions".

If you do this with music you get amazing artificial stereo effects.
Just listen to high hats on 12 inches. They all sound like someone did
apply a wierd stereo distortion effect on them, and the louder the record the more stereo and the more distorted it gets. Now you know why.

So, what is the conclusion:

a) records do sound fantastic.
b) records do not reproduce at all any "natural" stereo image.

This was my good night science lesson

Good night.

Professor Robert

[jed]

Thanks to Robert for the post. Very informative, and nice to see certain suspicions confirmed.

[ak]

Yeah Robert,

nice good night lesson.

(for me thats kind of familar, working all day and night on my neumann lathe

greetings

ak

[Vercengetorex]

Much props to Mr Henke on stuffing a sock in the audio engine bashers. Out of curiosity Robert, what kind of recording education do you have in your background? It is rare to find someone that can speak so elequently and accurately on such sordid audio subjects as these... I myself have formal schooling in Electrical Engineering, Physics, and Recording Arts. I completely sympathize with you regarding the frustrations caused by ignorances in others of the nuances of PCM based recording and the software bull-headedness that can result thereof...