Live's resampling quality aka Sample Rate Conversion

Timur · Post by **Timur** » Wed Mar 19, 2008 2:53 pm

Thanks so much Slatepipe, you just proved that I'm not just an outofthisworld-testing-non-realworld-issues freak, but that some people (like you) are actually doing music in unconventional and new ways that reflect our modern lifestyle.

Unfortunately I cannot install your ALP Livepack. I get an error message saying that there is a Live pack in it (what a surpise?!) and that I cannot install it into another pack (huh?).

Robert Henke · Post by **Robert Henke** » Wed Mar 19, 2008 3:55 pm

So, the sample rate conversion adds some distortion to the signal. What a horror. A recording ends up with some more harmonics during the process. The end of the world.

Timur, i strongly advice you to never ever play back vinyl. Or use loudspeakers, or microphones, or human ears, or headphones, or any kind of tube equipment. Or transistorised amps. Or analog consoles, or listen to music with a car stereo. Or from an ipod. Or transfer to an mp3.

I bet if you would do a blind listening test with a bunch of people, most would prefer the same recording *with* distortion. And in case of vinyl they would call it "more natural","has better stereo image" and all that shit.

This discussion is so incredibly not to the point. As others said, if you think the SRC in Live is not good enough, there are alternatives. If everything else in Live is not good enough, there are also alternatives. The time you spent uploading all those graphs, doing all those tests, and so on... how much music could you have done at the same time ????

Robert

slatepipe · Post by **slatepipe** » Wed Mar 19, 2008 4:03 pm

hmmm.... ill check that when i get home, im at work at the moment. but they worked ok when i uploaded them and tested them

3dot... · Post by **3dot...** » Wed Mar 19, 2008 4:03 pm

Robert Henke wrote:So, the sample rate conversion adds some distortion to the signal. What a horror. A recording ends up with some more harmonics during the process. The end of the world.

Timur, i strongly advice you to never ever play back vinyl. Or use loudspeakers, or microphones, or human ears, or headphones, or any kind of tube equipment. Or transistorised amps. Or analog consoles, or listen to music with a car stereo. Or from an ipod. Or transfer to an mp3.

I bet if you would do a blind listening test with a bunch of people, most would prefer the same recording *with* distortion. And in case of vinyl they would call it "more natural","has better stereo image" and all that shit.

This discussion is so incredibly not to the point. As others said, if you think the SRC in Live is not good enough, there are alternatives. If everything else in Live is not good enough, there are also alternatives. The time you spent uploading all those graphs, doing all those tests, and so on... how much music could you have done at the same time ????

Robert

as much as I agree with you on the issue of 'fidelity' Robert....

... you shouldn't get mad at Timur for letting us know...

dj superflat · Post by **dj superflat** » Wed Mar 19, 2008 4:06 pm

i don't think he's mad, so much as saying get a life, nothing's perfect, the tools are more than up to whatever you want to do, get to it. granted, the audio quality fetishists are free to use live to indulge their generally (not always) paranoidesque sound quality pecadillos. but the whole sky is falling thing starts to get tiresome (even if timur didn't say sky is falling, others will take it that way).

3dot... · Post by **3dot...** » Wed Mar 19, 2008 4:11 pm

is this an interpretation...?

Robert Henke · Post by **Robert Henke** » Wed Mar 19, 2008 4:11 pm

Well, the problem is, it confuses people. It's a bit like those is-my-penis-large-enough thoughts. I don't know how often I had discussions with inexperienced producers who where scared like hell that they a) use the wrong tools b) that their tools are not pro and all that. And for the rest it is also pseudo information. If a soundfile sounds like shit because it is warped, this is a different story. But harmonics -60dB added to a recording ???

If the harmonics are in a complete different spectral range, it will be easy to filter them out. If they are close to the original signal they are inaudible.

I mean, it is so easy to try this out. Take a recording, play it back at 0dB and add a variety of test signals at -60dB.

( And before this ends in total madness: Even the bad bad Live SRC will not add harmonics of that amplitude. The artefacts are much lower )

Robert

knotkranky · Post by **knotkranky** » Wed Mar 19, 2008 4:23 pm

It's all about reference. Timur, check conversions in logic, protools or bias peak and compare.
Warp should be off btw. If the same-ish distortions are present then......

dpel · Post by **dpel** » Wed Mar 19, 2008 4:48 pm

Robert Henke wrote:Well, the problem is, it confuses people. It's a bit like those is-my-penis-large-enough thoughts. I don't know how often I had discussions with inexperienced producers who where scared like hell that they a) use the wrong tools b) that their tools are not pro and all that. And for the rest it is also pseudo information. If a soundfile sounds like shit because it is warped, this is a different story. But harmonics -60dB added to a recording ???

If the harmonics are in a complete different spectral range, it will be easy to filter them out. If they are close to the original signal they are inaudible.

I mean, it is so easy to try this out. Take a recording, play it back at 0dB and add a variety of test signals at -60dB.

( And before this ends in total madness: Even the bad bad Live SRC will not add harmonics of that amplitude. The artefacts are much lower )

Robert

I like to think of Robert as Live's Manual personified with a forward thinking attitude. But it's true, and no disrespect to Timur, but we all get caught up in these trivial discoveries that are vast distances away from disturbing the creative process. Live's SRC process is in place to allow the creative flow to go un-interrupted.

Tone Deft · Post by **Tone Deft** » Wed Mar 19, 2008 5:38 pm

Timur wrote:
Tone Deft wrote:if you think you can hear -60dB in a music mix you're either doing serious jazz/classical or don't know what -60dB is in a mix. I don't take myself so seriously you shouldn't either, that's bullshit dude.
Hon, you didn't read the whole sentence!

but sweetness if you're going to add 20dB of gain to boost it from a basically inaudible -60dB to an audiblish -40dB with an effect you're either madly polishing a turd with EQ/compression/etc or doing some freaky FX with phasers/flangers etc. in the first case it's a lost cause, in the second case a little noise is probably good fun.

Timur we cannot have this discussion if you cannot draw a line on what's acceptable noise and what' not acceptable. you've got the tools but you're not using them right. nearly every DSP algorithm is going to introduce errors, you've found a way to see them but you don't know how to interpret the results. that begins with establishing a baseline of anything below -XdB is 'in the noise' (where do you think that phrase came from? maybe they don't say that in Germany "don't worry about that, it's in the noise".)

not to mention AMR and mp3 are lossy formats. who knows what kind of phase damage was done, garbage in, garbage out. these signals are highly processed. myabe that makes them more interesting candidates, if we were putting a man on the moon with Live, fuck 8k samples, right? this is a goofy test man.
You really think I don't know about lossy formats? Does it matter here? Nope: 1. The AMR is the Original, 2. The 320 kbit MP3 demonstrate the differences properly, if you want them 100 mb WAVs then just show me the way to your heart, eh, FTP server.

test files can be short 3 seconds long. your test is cool and totally fucked for the reason that you're using utter crap as a test source. creative plus 2 lossy formats (yes you know lossy formats, I was just trying to follow your long ass description of what you did.)

sure post graphs but you do not know how to use them. you're learning, that's cool. like in a lot of threads, use your ears. you can interpret audio from graphs but you have to know how to read it first, that begins with knowing what results to throw out. after that it's identifying harmonics, then looking for that f-ing 50/60Hz tone, then...

I think you're on to something but you don't know how to interpret your own results, you're jumping to extreme conclusions.

play with Spectrum more, leave it open all the time on your master, get used to seeing spectral content on audio, there's a LOT of shit that our ears don't get. hearing is a lousy sense, maybe the worst of our five senses. that's the funny thing about 'snake oil', it's really easy to fool people, in your case it's really easy to be fooled.

props for pushing the envelope, just chill a bit on the conclusions. you've found a new way to look at the world, it's not as pretty as you thought, relax, it's not that bad. ya dig?

thank you for your bug testing, we are all better off for it.

thefool · Post by **thefool** » Wed Mar 19, 2008 5:41 pm

Actually he stated the quality loss WAS audible, seems like you miss the whole point

Tone Deft · Post by **Tone Deft** » Wed Mar 19, 2008 5:44 pm

thefool wrote:Actually he stated the quality loss WAS audible, seems like you miss the whole point

omfg get the fuck out of the discussion.

I wrote that I heard them too, I'm not dumbing this down for the likes of you.

thefool · Post by **thefool** » Wed Mar 19, 2008 5:48 pm

Tone Deft wrote:
thefool wrote:Actually he stated the quality loss WAS audible, seems like you miss the whole point
omfg get the fuck out of the discussion.

I wrote that I heard them too, I'm not dumbing this down for the likes of you.

I didn't read the first things you wrote because it was so boring. I'll read it now.

anyway thing is how do dithers and other stuff react to this inaudible but still presentable data.

Besides why would i get out? I was chatting with timur long before you lazy ass got in here. Why the hell do you have to make me in a bad mood all the time

Tone Deft · Post by **Tone Deft** » Wed Mar 19, 2008 5:48 pm

does remind me of another point.

I'd like to try to take an 8k sample without all the creative/phone/AMR crap and play with them in Live. someone posted an example of an 8k song, maybe it's audible, maybe not.

ultimately I'm cool with Live not being 8k compatible. just add a patch to not let Live accept 8k formats.

but it's fun to break toys too, push things to their limit.

Tone Deft · Post by **Tone Deft** » Wed Mar 19, 2008 5:51 pm

thefool wrote:That said you do know i was here first right?

you were here first... so it's your thread? lol <--- not. fool I know you get into threads and just chat away, I'm not interested in that, Timur's brought up a discussion for adults, go play with your sister. if you have something of substance to post, I'm all for it, but I'm not up for your games on this one.

/pets head, slams face into cement. you're a weird one fool.