Samplitude user disses Live as 'shit for mixing in' at GS

[3phase]

actually it's true and not true.

all my summing tests with plugins showed no difference or a difference below -160 dbfs (which is almost the same as no difference since you cant hear -160 dbfs). Live sounds fine, I've found nobody that can prove something different!

but live is NOT sample accurate (search the forum), that is a big no no for me. not to mention the fade bug. that are real issues I can prove, no esoteric chitchat. it makes me sad since I really like the company and the way live works.

this is a quite harsh statement.. a program that is not sampleacurate has nothing to do with -160db..


-160 db? are you crazy? what does that say? the converter error with live is the same as the coverter error with any other software? Or, life dont adds noise but alters the audio material in the direction of digital unprecission?

I can belife that.. but same applys to any DAW



I actually thought Life is sample acurate when handled corectlly..at least thats what ableton claims..

however.. i never belived that... even digidesign was able to go wrong there for years and they have invented the term sample accurat


and besides.. ableton live gives you some tools to investigate what happens down there at -160..

and this is great and shows that live has a professional soul deep in it..


but what you will see is that -160 is something you dont find in the frequency regions that hurt.. you might find some peeks that have a 30 db higher energy down theire on a certain high freq.. or even 50 db peaks at 8 k or something like that.. dont hurts because its still -110? minus 110 what? - 110 reference to fullsale that runs on your -10 db revox amplefier at full volume..
so it feels actually rather like -70 or -60? ok..still good regarding noise... but one masty high freq peek close to your listening border like a mosquito on attack?
A 50 db peak equals to half an earthquake... even when we only feel it and cant hear it, its there neverthe less...
and the spoken myth is... that a 50 db peak alarms our brain..
there was some test performed with 80 year old half deff people.. the brain gets the peaks even when it dont passes any direct audio to your ?? big brain? we actually really have 2 of them.. a small sensetiv one and a big adaptebal storage device..

However..that peeks theory is something that is a nice thought..
I just mention it to show that "we cant hear dont there" might be irelevant when we feel the extraordinary energy boosts down there..especially in the hiss frequencies. But just as an example.. i ve no indication that thats the ableton problem..

maybe ther is no ableton prolem.. but i personaly just came along it again.. but maybe all people in te studio just shared the same haluzinatio.. we was togethet not -160db but +160 years in age.. and your listening cant be that sensetiv anymore than..
must be a haluzination..


but beside that.. freq response measurements dont tell anything about sound quality.. nothing..
the only tell if something in the circuit is broken

you can measure a telefunken v672 first series disrete preamp or V72 valve device... with full freq range against a behringer eurodesk and you will measure the same within 0,01 db .. actually the behriger might be more flat...

problem.. .. boosting a signal with a behinger will sound crap--lifeless and plastc while the doing the same with the other gear sounds gourgeous.. and you might even like the noise floor on the valve model and make an own track out of it..

actualy most modern equipment measures pretty identcal regarding freq response.. it should all sound the same..

people claim it is when you put a single channel without gain or eq thru the desk they all sound the same..
behriner or ssl-- no difference
i hope so..buteven when that would be true... thats not what happens in reality on a mixing desk.. otherwise we would use a cable to do the job.


The sound quality myth regarding ableton is so prominent that i would investigate in that when i would be ableton..
either its gossip or there is a truth in the sage.

maybe its not a static thing.. the midi engine can get faulty from one version to the other without having them noticing it because only certain computer models was affected.. is it possible that there is an audio bug? or are some users just into a more digtal grainy sound and others prefer an audiofile to sound at least as good as on a cd or mp3 player?

[Tone Deft]

this is still going on?

never before has so little been said by so much.

you mean "many" right?

Have I said too much?

yeah, that didn't come out right. I was thinking of the words written rather than the posters saying them.

has the troll gained cred with anyone? seems to me he's only lost cred.

[evernaut]

It was a long, weary road we had to summon the strength to walk once more. We fought hard...we even lost men in the fray, but we endured

Seriously, one very cool thing occurred in the heat of battle and I feel it deserves a re-post in widescreen for anyone that may have overlooked it amidst the usual nonsense. Obviously, It won't settle anything, but it bears repeating.

Read it. Then when you think you understand it, read it again and burn it into your brains forever

Cue my favorite Roger Nichols article:

"I heard the mixing buss in Pro Tools is no good. Everyone says I should mix through an external analogue summing buss."

Someone asked Al Schmitt how he mixed a record. Al answered "I just turn the knobs until it sounds good." You can't argue with that.

The first thing I had to learn about audio engineering was signal flow. You have to know how to get the audio signal from the microphone to the recorder and back to the speakers so you can hear what you are doing. The second item is gain structure. At any point in the signal path you have to keep the signal higher than the noise floor but lower than the point of clipping and distortion. Everything else is going to be easy. Just twist the knobs.

Every console is designed to add signals together before they come out as finished mix. It is called a mix because the individual tracks are mixed together. I rather fancy the English term 'two-track reduction': it is being reduced from 24 tracks to two tracks.

Physical consoles usually have a stereo mix buss 'summing amp' for each group of eight modules. These summing amps then feed another summing amp connected to the master output module. During the mixing process the master fader is turned all the way up. As individual tracks are turned up their audio is heard through the master fader and the level is registered on the main output meters. As more and more audio channels are introduced to the mix, the overall master level starts getting high, so the master fader is turned down a little to compensate. This work flow proceeds in a loop until the mix is getting pretty far along.

At some point the engineer looks at the gain structure of the mix he has going on the console. He has learned that by running the individual faders high and pulling down the master fader he runs the risk of overdriving the summing amps with too much level and adding distortion to the final mix. The engineer will trim down all of the track faders by 6dB or some similar amount so that the master fader can be brought back up to zero.

This method has worked for decades to keep the audio quality as high as possible while remaining within the limits of the console's design, but for some reason engineers ignore this procedure when mixing inside a DAW (digital audio workstation). When asked why they don't perform this requisite task the answer is always "It's digital, you don't have to do that." All of the 78 track faders are up near zero and the master fader by now is down to -40dB. Soon the engineer starts to complain about how gritty and distorted digital sounds.

How do they fix it? They connect the DAW to a console. At the console they either trim down the inputs or pull down the track faders to prevent the summing amps from clipping, and they make sure that the master fader is all the way up. "Hear how much better the mix sounds through a console?"

Sound familiar? I know all of you have run across this situation from one end or the other. The smart guys who saw this wanton disregard for gain structure quickly designed 'outboard analogue summing boxes', charged a lot of money (because it can't be good if it doesn't cost enough), and made a fortune. Good for them. Too bad I didn't think of it.

Because Pro Tools was the most visible professional DAW, Digidesign took the brunt of the criticism. "Man, I can't mix inside Pro Tools, their internal mixer sucks." Although there were tons of good-sounding records made and mixed in Pro Tools by engineers who knew how to turn down a fader, the majority of the forums on the Web hosted tons of complaints. "It shouldn't do that, it's digital."

Digidesign have updated their internal mixer to 48-bit. This means that you can mix 128 faders at +12dB with the master fader down to -90dB without overdriving the internal mixing buss. There will not be much room for a final fade, but at least Pro Tools is now being idiot-proofed. Me, I prefer to watch what I am doing and trim all of my faders down so that my master fader stays at zero. It has worked for me since the '60s and continues to work for me in whatever digital DAW I mix in.

PS: Just so you know, I do tell my clients that "I only mix on dual 64-bit processors with a 48-bit mixer fed by 16 gigabytes of memory and an on-line RAID5 disk array of 8 terabytes and a 15 gigabit-per-second fibre-optic Internet connection. You do hear the difference, don't you?"

(Thanks again T)

[anybody human]

Still prefer analog summing. Have to make do with what I have though.

[leedsquietman]

+1

However, both formats are fine so long as you work with their strengths.

[mdb]

To me though when recording engineer's talk about 'we mix it in this because of that' it's often because of gossip and rumours they heard elsewhere. People diss Live more because it's an unusual looking DAW than for any other good logical reason. In a blind test, he probably wouldn't be able to tell which DAW rendered an audio file if I gave him a selection of Live, DP and Logic, especially if it ran to multiple audio clips.

I've even heard respected engineer's say stuff like 'We moved from Logic to Nuendo because the bottom end sounded rounder' (note they never say Cubase, even though Cubase has the same audio engine) - Well as much as I love Cubase and Nuendo, this is just not true in my experience, but because Nuendo COSTS more, it must be better - right ? No. Placebo/correctional bias is responsible for much of these opinions. It has already been proven that people choose the shiniest GUI time and again, when people have run the same plugin, same setting with a generic interface, 9/10 people say the plugin with the fancy GUI SOUNDS better.

So it couldnt possibly be YOUR problem, right? Maybe your hearing sucks dude. You ever think about that? Maybe you just dont know what your listening for. It couldnt possibly be anything with you, yourself... Your perfect, and you know everything. As usual...

I've done DAW shootouts and there is a difference. That is fact. No one has the same code dude. Everything is unique in charecter. If you cant hear a difference between, then maybe this isnt the right job for you and you need to re-evaluate yourself.

Does it matter in the end? Of course not, No one is EVER going to know what you used to do what. And thats ok. Use what you like. But accept the fact that each program handle audio differently. A key point your missing is that, when track counts get high, a lot of programs go down hill. Of course a stupid fuckin null test with pink noise sint going to put any strain on an audio engine. Try 100 tracks of pink noise, and THEN tell me if it nulls. It wont, and never will.

[adventurepants_]

To me though when recording engineer's talk about 'we mix it in this because of that' it's often because of gossip and rumours they heard elsewhere. People diss Live more because it's an unusual looking DAW than for any other good logical reason. In a blind test, he probably wouldn't be able to tell which DAW rendered an audio file if I gave him a selection of Live, DP and Logic, especially if it ran to multiple audio clips.

I've even heard respected engineer's say stuff like 'We moved from Logic to Nuendo because the bottom end sounded rounder' (note they never say Cubase, even though Cubase has the same audio engine) - Well as much as I love Cubase and Nuendo, this is just not true in my experience, but because Nuendo COSTS more, it must be better - right ? No. Placebo/correctional bias is responsible for much of these opinions. It has already been proven that people choose the shiniest GUI time and again, when people have run the same plugin, same setting with a generic interface, 9/10 people say the plugin with the fancy GUI SOUNDS better.

So it couldnt possibly be YOUR problem, right? Maybe your hearing sucks dude. You ever think about that? Maybe you just dont know what your listening for. It couldnt possibly be anything with you, yourself... Your perfect, and you know everything. As usual...

I've done DAW shootouts and there is a difference. That is fact. No one has the same code dude. Everything is unique in charecter. If you cant hear a difference between, then maybe this isnt the right job for you and you need to re-evaluate yourself.

Does it matter in the end? Of course not, No one is EVER going to know what you used to do what. And thats ok. Use what you like. But accept the fact that each program handle audio differently. A key point your missing is that, when track counts get high, a lot of programs go down hill. Of course a stupid fuckin null test with pink noise sint going to put any strain on an audio engine. Try 100 tracks of pink noise, and THEN tell me if it nulls. It wont, and never will.

Hold on. Youve done a DAW shootout, which im assuming was not performed under double blind test conditions. Youre then saying that your subjective opinion on said shootout is fact, while other people's subjective opinion is flawed?

What does 'strain on an audio engine' actually mean? How does said strain affect the sound?

The whole problem with this debate is that is based upon endless subjective opinions.

If there are so many who say that Lives engine is 'worse' than others, then this should be very easy to prove under test conditions.

[leedsquietman]

and mdb is the all seeing, all knowing, golden eared oracle, so I defer to his mastery and take back everything.

[Machinesworking]

I think it's hilarious people are complaining about what a DAW sounds like at 100 tracks.
Do any of you people realize how new that sort of recording technology is? or how bad it sounded at first?

Also, I own Logic, Digital Performer and Live. There is no real difference in 'sound' the panning laws are different, but that's not a worthwhile reason to think DP is the best etc. Summing engine wise, it's all bullshit, according to more than one programmer I've talked to about this it's pure math at that point, and they are in fact all the same. People don't want to believe that though. Especially not Samplitude and SAW Studio people.

Also, someone earlier said that Live was always the one that's singled out so it must be true etc. That's bullshit too. For a while people said Cubase sounded better than Logic. Digital Performer users often claim it sounds better than either. Sonar users claim the 64 bit version is the king, and so on..... Logic users claim it sounds better than Live, and SAW Studio people desperately try to justify their overpriced POS..... Any amount of time on any music forum where DAWs are discussed you will have all sorts of silly claims.

[gurumonkey]

I just wanted to chime in and say I love you guys.

[shatzer]

Here's all the proof you need:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fbGkxcY7YFU

[leedsquietman]

http://www.gearslutz.com/board/music-co ... mer-9.html

this GS post highlights this perfectly - some dude saying how terrible Digital Performer sounds and then 250 odd posts with about 150 different opinions ... including many from our old buddy Timur, who for most part is being reasoned and sensible

[mdb]

Well shit.. look at that! Theres OTHER people that can hear differences tooo!!! REALLY?!?!? I thought i was the only one!

And there you are! ------------------> http://www.gearslutz.com/board/4790490-post132.html

The shootout I did was done in a professional studio and monitored through $25k Monitors --> http://www.transaudiogroup.com/atc/scm3 ... ount.shtml - They were all internal laybacks rendered in each program. You could EASILY hear the differences between EVERYTHING we tested. Did the test about a year and half ago, and only tested the real major players at that time.

Heres what we tested and heres my first impressions, if i can remember correctly...

Ableton - Nice transient attack but kinda plastique sounding compared to others.. Not horrible, but noticable
PT 7.4 - Actually had "no comment" for it on my notes.. didnt like it at all - Boring and lifeless(I laughed when i saw the results)
Reaper - Was my second choice - The low end was super fat in Reaper
Samplitude - My final choice - Smoked everything.. Very clear, Very wide.. "smooth" sounding, very plesant to the ears. Best Balance
Cubase - Decent - Lacking depth and lacking the clarity that Reaper and Samplitude had.
Nuendo - Almost the same as Cubase - Slighty more space and mid/bass response.
Sonar 8 - Very clear, Very Balanced - Low end wasnt quite as fat as the Reaper and Samplitude. Was my third choice.
Logic 8 - Messy Low end - Harsh Mids - Decent transient attack - Not that great compared to the others.

Take it for whatever its worth.

But again, i could care less what any of you use, what you hear/dont hear.. I'm basically saying the same thing as drBill in that gearslutz thread. Ive heard it with my own ears. It becomes VERY apparent when you get into large tracks counts, which programs sound better then others. Do i need to post a screenshot with 100 tracks, and 60 plugins so that you can see that people DO mix large tracks? Hell, read around gearslutz and youll see a guy named Ken Lewis talking about 225 track songs with some of those Puff Daddy artists.. Danity Kane and that other boy band he has. 100 tracks just of vocals alone.. THATS REAL WORLD!

When i refer to strain on the audio engine. I'm saying.. It doesnt take a lot of processing to playback two tracks of pinknoise and calculate "the sound" for your ears. Try it with 100 tracks in two different programs and tell me if they null out. IT WONT! And whats that say?? Each engine is different.. And whats thats say? They all sound different because they arent nulling at 100 tracks.. end of discussion.

But go ahead and believe what you believe and I'll believe what i believe and laugh all the way to the bank.

[tigali]

Heres what we tested and heres my first impressions, if i can remember correctly...

Ableton - Nice transient attack but kinda plastique sounding compared to others.. Not horrible, but noticable
PT 7.4 - Actually had "no comment" for it on my notes.. didnt like it at all - Boring and lifeless(I laughed when i saw the results)
Reaper - Was my second choice - The low end was super fat in Reaper
Samplitude - My final choice - Smoked everything.. Very clear, Very wide.. "smooth" sounding, very plesant to the ears. Best Balance
Cubase - Decent - Lacking depth and lacking the clarity that Reaper and Samplitude had.
Nuendo - Almost the same as Cubase - Slighty more space and mid/bass response.
Sonar 8 - Very clear, Very Balanced - Low end wasnt quite as fat as the Reaper and Samplitude. Was my third choice.
Logic 8 - Messy Low end - Harsh Mids - Decent transient attack - Not that great compared to the others.

What unbelievable horse shit.

[mdb]