sound quality

[3phase]

if you learn how to produce and mix you can make out of shit gold.

really? and how do i learn to mix and produce? a course with the sae?

[leedsquietman]

People don't believe it because of other people's opinions and old rumours. Just like some people will never get over Samplitude 'sounds best' because it was the first to bring 32 bit float audio to the table and genuinely did sound better than Cubase and Logic for a short time, until they also updated their audio engine to 32 bit float. Also because Samplitude started out as an audio only program on Amiga, whereas Logic and Cubase were MIDI only on Atari ST and Mac, so Samplitude was audio with midi tacked on, whereas Logic and Cubase were MIDI with audio tacked on (until Cubase SX which was designed around the originally audio only Nuendo sound engine, with MIDI built on top).

People are snobs and music industry pros are the worst kind of snobs. Even some of the best engineers around who ought to know better and who could test (but are too lazy and get offended that any science is worth more than their 'golden ears'), just prefer to make lazy statements based on old information and/or correctional bias (they like the GUI and setup better, or they DON'T want to have to invest time and energy (and cash) learning something new.

Therefore, if Fruity Loops and Reason actually did upgrade their audio engine to genuinely sound better, they would never get credit for it. FL Studio, Reason, Live, Sony ACID Pro, are considered as 'toys' by the studio pro snobs, most of whom have never used these programs or at best rewired them to ProTools or Logic etc.

SubFunk is correct anyway - even if there were minor differences, every program from the freeware Audacity, to PTHD gives someone who knows how to engineer and mix the platform to make a great sounding record. How you learn is up to you, SAE is one option but not a complete one in my opinion. This plus years of practice, either interning at studios like I did, or through personal experience, especially when you can share with other experienced people, audio-visual training and appropriate literature from respected engineers, throw it all in the melting pot and that should help you to be confident and accurate in your production and mixing skills.

Recording acoustic music is totally possible in Live just as easily as in any other sequencer. I have done it plenty myself and heard some great recordings even in the Link Your Music section here demonstrating this. Mastering - Live is not best suited to this because it doesn't have some plugins typically used, or supply audio statistics, but with some 3rd party vsts/aus can be used for this purpose. I agree it's not a strength.

[3phase]

but tracking and editing is a strenght?

and was the sound quality before L7 compromised or not?

[leedsquietman]

IMO Live is fine for tracking and satisfactory for editing. Editing is not a strength, but for live tracking in arrangement, it's pretty much as efficient as anything else (native at least), dependent on the audio hardware side too of course.

The sound quality wasn't 'compromised' in Live 6 in my opinion AT THE TIME, because almost all the DAW manufacturers, including ABleton have made (slight) improvements on their audio engines in the past 3 years.

Of course, if you are using Live 6 now in comparison to the newest Logic (Pro 9) or Cubase (5) etc, it is slightly inferior (again mostly through things such as warping) but mostly this is more down to mathematical charts or visual analysis, rather than obvious audible artifacts.

[leisuremuffin]

and was the sound quality before L7 compromised or not?

it was absolutely comparable to the majority of what was on the market and about 1000x better than anything digital that was available when you started making music. Remember that? don't you have releases on transmat from the early 90's? people really have no idea how good they have it. stop being a whiny little pussy and go make a track half as good as Der Klang Der Familie instead of crying about shit on an internet forum.



.lm.

[3phase]

IMO Live is fine for tracking and satisfactory for editing. Editing is not a strength, but for live tracking in arrangement, it's pretty much as efficient as anything else (native at least), dependent on the audio hardware side too of course.

The sound quality wasn't 'compromised' in Live 6 in my opinion AT THE TIME, because almost all the DAW manufacturers, including ABleton have made (slight) improvements on their audio engines in the past 3 years.

Of course, if you are using Live 6 now in comparison to the newest Logic (Pro 9) or Cubase (5) etc, it is slightly inferior (again mostly through things such as warping) but mostly this is more down to mathematical charts or visual analysis, rather than obvious audible artifacts.

??? i havent seen any charts. just what my ears told me... but when this is backed up by measurable data.. fine.. very often theese sondquestions are a bit beyond of measuring...

at least plain freq response and simple distortion meaasurements dont tell much... at least not on modern systems.. a rme multiface and an adi 8 qs have prety similar data...

but the adi can ask for 2000 more with less functionality..

because it sounds better? or is this just a marketing stunt again?

[dum]

First of all, I'm not claiming to be bothered or put out by flaws in the 'sound engine'
But the debate is a tired one, because it seems to be going in the wrong direction.
The 'sound engine' debate is a red herring.

You'll find users doing NULL TESTS, by simply placing a sound in the DAW - rendering the output and phase cancelling against Ableton's output given the same circumstances.

This is utterly pointless, because in the real world we're using automation data all the time - how often do you just load a sound into your daw, do nothing to it, render the project and then call it finished ? I'm guessing never.

For the audiophiles out there I think the real debate lies in the automation engine and how THAT affects sound in comparison to other daws doing the same thing.



http://forum.ableton.com/viewtopic.php? ... 9&start=23

Mixing desks sound different because they use different hardware. DAWs sound exactly the same because they are all using the same mathematical algorithms.

(...)

This is not really true, there are surprisingly many ways to do the same thing. The differences are just not where you would expect them if you have no expert knowledge, and they are all in a range way below of what I personally believe is audible.

Of course summing two or more tracks in every DAW is output = a+b+c+d, where a = signal of track a * volume of track a . So it is impossible to introduce here compression or any change in frequency response, and the dynmanic range if you do this with normal floating point mathematics is allready super big, not talking about the headroom if you do it with 64bit resolution.

But there are other details: if you draw a volume automation curve and this curve has a sharp edge theory says that this edge introduces nonlinear distortions to the signal. A good example for this is what is called "zipper noise" when moving a MIDI fader on a cheap audio processor.MIDI resolution is 128 steps. If you move a fader assigned to volume and you do no further smoothing you will get a bit of noise every time a new value comes in. In order to avoid this you have to create a smooth ramp instead of a sharp edge. This is known and every DAW manufacturer of course does some kind of ramping. But this is nothing where you can look up the one perfect way to do it in some research paper and every company does it like that. Instead it is always a compromise between reaction speed, cpu usage, and resulting quality. Some of our competitors are quite conservative here, they do very long ramps. This minimizes distortion but also makes all automation a bit floppy. Others prefer punchy automation, and as a result are more likely to introduce more distortion. Unless they use a more intelligent alogortihm. Which east more CPU or introduces latency... and so on.

This is just one example. There are probably a dozend places in a DAW where there is a potential differerence. So, yes, they all do sound different. But it is important to understand that this is a very very accademic way to look at it, because as mentoned before, the effects are in a range of -120db if things are really bad and maybe -160dB typically. Every active speaker introduces a noise floor way above this, every microphone has less dynamic range, not talking about a typical recording environment.

I personally would judge a DAW by all kinds of things but certainly not buy its meassured sound quality. Much more important is: do i like the way the EQs works, am i fine with the compressor, can i use my favourite plug ins with it and so on. This is what will shape the sound of my productions and not the ramping algorithm.

Robert

[drako]

Ill bet if Ableton would put live in a fashionable GUI, like Cubase or Logic, with fancy precision meters and stuff, no one would complain about the sound anymore.

I think it's all placebo.


For some odd psychological reason it even has that effect on me sometimes when i check out 3th party plugs by a certain brand, sometimes i get tricked by it's looks.
I remember Crysonics SPECTRALIVE when it came out, so many people were enthusiastic, it sounds so damn good, and when the same people discovered it was made in synthedit a lots of the reactions were that it sounded shit....... power of the GUI?

[3phase]

[ people really have no idea how good they have it. stop being a whiny little pussy and go make a track half as good as Der Klang Der Familie instead of crying about shit on an internet forum.



.lm.

where have you read that? that is absolute bullshit..ok. everybody has a little virtual studio with as many compressors as he/she wants.. but is that sounding good? the transmat record was actually ripped from a vinyl..

the digital converters back than? soo bad? i have a dd1000 wright in front of me,.. it sounds still better than a multiface.. ..and above it is an yamaha ad2x.. the state of the art AD of 1990..


its only 20 bits and 44/48 k... but a modern appogge is not so much better.. much cheaper..
you get 16 channels now for the former price of 2... ok..now the yamaha is 100 bucks..because it cant record in 96 and 24 bit.. its not good enough for the "super pro geek"...

But highend of that time still sounds better than consumer stuff today.. sorry..

Its a myth that you have in your laptop a full studio replacement.. not from the workflow.. not from the sound..its however impressiv what each kid can do after school theese days..
i would have loved impulse response reverbs when i was 16... ok.. a furman spring had to do.. and sometimes listening to the lexicon 224 from the neighboring pro studio..

And you know what? i owned a 224 for a while in later years.. and its stil so damn gourgeous..

Leave me alone with all the plugs when you had a listen to such a nice old dark wet sounding beast.. Idont doubt that the time of perfect simulations will come.. but its not there yet..or at least.. i rather would buy an emt 250 than spending the same mony on an uad card...



sorry..except the ongoing trial to simulate analog studiotechnik in the computer there hasnt been any real inventions..
what you easily can see in the progress of electronic music styles ... from latest the mid 90´s ther was nothing new..

people now only have more and cheaper toys.. the only progress in sound quality is by knowledeg that has spread.. And teher fore everybody thinks he is the superior techno producer by using all this prest sounds and prest grooves and preset knowledge.. sorry..
nothing in your laptop sounds better than the real stuff..its only close because samples from the real stuff and simulations of it


ANd i am not whining.. i just remind that the truth is that this all is still in development..

And that highend is allways a special quality, ther is no inferior highend euqipment of the 50´s..60´s 70´s 80´s or 90´s.. All the stuff that has earned props for beeing good sounding equipment is still good sounding eqipment.. that also applys to 14 bit pcm recorders and 12bit emulator 2 samplers.. they just sound good..

Why do you think uad is so after emulating 12 bit reverbs from the 80´s? because they are so inferior?

sorry..wrong argument

[leisuremuffin]

all i'm saying is this:


i started out 100% hardware in the 90's.

i don't miss carrying my setup to gigs on two rolling carts.

i love writing my tracks in the same exact environment i'm going to perform them in.


i have had to change the way i work, but i think my stuff now sounds waaaaay better than it did in the 90's. because i have grown as a producer and engineer, and because it's actually easier for me to get from an idea to a finished product now. and i'm more into using what i have than talking about what the perfect solution is, or what the ultimate in sound quality should be. That doesn't write tracks, it wastes time.




.lm.

[Sage]

Why do you think uad is so after emulating 12 bit reverbs from the 80´s? because they are so inferior?

sorry..wrong argument

I don't think emulations prove anything with regards to older gear.

[3phase]

Why do you think uad is so after emulating 12 bit reverbs from the 80´s? because they are so inferior?

sorry..wrong argument

I don't think emulations prove anything with regards to older gear.

sure they do..they proove a demand. and the demand is created by the special sound..
the good sound..

but the muffin man is wright regarding the wight issue..that defently has improoved... no question about that just had to move an oberheim 4 voice... would be lovely to have such a beast on stage.. its so... wall shakin.. But..
some ableton loops must do :-/..

but it wont be the same.. you cant make a filet from meatloaf anymore

[contakt321]

Everybody knows Live sounds better on Mac than PC.

Just saying...

[3phase]

Everybody knows Live sounds better on Mac than PC.

Just saying...

no no.. it only looks better

[Tarekith]

I've tested Live against many other DAWs, across multiple revisions. As long as you don't add warping and they have the same pan law, they cancel. If they don't cancel (Live 8 and Logic 7,9) the differences are slow minute and close to the noise floor as to be completely irrelevant. I won't say there's no difference between different DAWs anymore, but if there is, it's so low as to not even be worried about. Dither is a stronger signal by far compared to these differences.