BIG Problem WE ALL HAVE With Live

[3phase]

i like to know how its possible that i think the sound quality got better...

anybody else experianced that?

and i still would like to know why everybody..except people on this forum here, thinks that ableton sounds inferior..
its really many many people here in berlin...almost any releasing producer i know.. and many professional engineers..
One friend told me he knows even people that work for ableton that share this belive..
or at least did 2 years ago..
Can someone please enlight me with some arguments? where does this come from?
are this people that are so many years in the audio biz really all deff ? the esoteric type that buys expensiv converters instead just using a sound blaster that clearly sounds the same aswell because any digital sound is so superior that the differences are beyond the borders of perception? all audio myths?


I really dont like to say that ableton sounds inferior.. as i said..i think it became better and should be ok now. but regarding all statements i came along here it didnt..
so it must be as bad as ever..and therefore inferior..or?

isnt it rather like that that ableton kept very quiete about improvements in the soundengine to dont oppose to theire own earlier statements about the topic.. so they kept theire face but the professional world sofar hasnt noted that its ok or at least better now?


I really like to know if there are people that state clearly that the soundquality hasnt improoved during the last upgrades,
because anything else would indicate hat there was false or misleading statements around in the past..

There are many intersting statements around regarding digital audio.. like: because an addition of high resolution digital signals has so little error any digital mix should sound the same..

true or false statement?

A 200k mixing desk sounds the same as a 32 bit float daw? possible.. you only hear this kind of desks in rooms that sound great anyway...

i will do an experiment regarding that..
will get a yamaha dmc1000 mixingdesk..and even when i dont like digital mixing.. i will give it a shot... i think that thing is max 32 bit fixed... maybe less.. but consequent constructed with propper internal event timing.. own dsps for each channel.. was a 200k machine at its time..
we want to listen to digtal highend to compare with ableton live.. and the 1992 highend against a consumer 2010 standard should be a fair test...or?
This old beginning of digital age crap should sound identicall to live or worse.

I will find out soon, but maybe they have a better pan law...

[3phase]

i hope the poll is reflecting the statements and not what people hear..

because if this files with different plug in settings dont sound different you most certainly know that you have tomatos on the ears and should stay out of sound quality discussions...


i can hear the difference on my bad laptop speakers.. so its a huuuuge difference

[siliconarc]

...tomatos on the ears...

amazing

[3phase]

...tomatos on the ears...

amazing

why? do you think the files he has posted sound the same? that would be indeed amazing

[esky]

...was a 200k machine at its time..

It was 30.000 USD at its time...hopefully your measures are a little more precise...looking forward to it...

[3phase]

...was a 200k machine at its time..

It was 30.000 USD at its time...hopefully your measures are a little more precise...looking forward to it...

it was more in europe.. one converter unit was 10 k allready.. but you are wright. 100k was for a set of 2 of them linked and 100k D-mark back than is 200k euros now

you havnt seen theese desks in many private studios back than...

however.. i only agreed to test it because of the look.. and i remember that i liked the filters back than...

i very much can rely on my prefferences of the past..whatever made me feel the itch is still good sounding stuff..

i never had the itch with an eq plug in sofar..so the dmc1000 might be still able to compete..

the converters defently can.. i ve some here allready.. not bad at all... may be not as transparent as the modern stuff but good warm lowend.. for 70 euro defenetly a bargain


its funny how cheap digital gear gets when its dated... one shouldnt spend money for it....

[3phase]

maybe its the looks that make the listening experiance? that would explain why the quicktime player sounds so much fresher than live

[stonee]

look, will someone with protools do a reverse phase test on this and end this?

also remember, ableton's warping probably buggers audio a bit, as its designed to do.

[Ed J]

Not this bullshit again...

[Angstrom]

i hope the poll is reflecting the statements and not what people hear..

because if this files with different plug in settings dont sound different you most certainly know that you have tomatos on the ears and should stay out of sound quality discussions...


i can hear the difference on my bad laptop speakers.. so its a huuuuge difference

I voted "no". , but I was mistakenly comparing the two Protools .wav files!
I didn't see the ableton.aif. Of course the two protools files sound the same!

of course, since then he has admitted that the patches were the same in protools and different in ableton. Thats why you can hear a difference. The ableton Nexus preset is not the same.

I could't hear a difference because I just grabbed the two wav files without reading the filenames, to try and avoid prejudicing the result on expectation. Turns out that was a mistake.

[nathannn]

look, will someone with protools do a reverse phase test on this and end this?

also remember, ableton's warping probably buggers audio a bit, as its designed to do.

this was done but with cubase:
http://forum.ableton.com/viewtopic.php?f=1&t=45804

[3phase]

i hope the poll is reflecting the statements and not what people hear..

because if this files with different plug in settings dont sound different you most certainly know that you have tomatos on the ears and should stay out of sound quality discussions...


i can hear the difference on my bad laptop speakers.. so its a huuuuge difference

I voted "no". , but I was mistakenly comparing the two Protools .wav files!
I didn't see the ableton.aif. Of course the two protools files sound the same!

of course, since then he has admitted that the patches were the same in protools and different in ableton. Thats why you can hear a difference. The ableton Nexus preset is not the same.

I could't hear a difference because I just grabbed the two wav files without reading the filenames, to try and avoid prejudicing the result on expectation. Turns out that was a mistake.

mr angstrom. my long text clearly shows that i ve doe the listening test befor i ve read that he has used differnt plug settings...

if you dont have his ableton file you better dont do assumptions... its really a very easy to get the difference...

to answer no in this test is a no go.. at least when your speakers are not worse than the ones in my laptop...



i would preffer if ableton would free some budget to clear the sound quality issue one and for all...

but not with tests they choose themself.. more demanding stuff..and involving some highend measurments thats can do spectral analysis on distortion and having a proper refference setup... soemthing like a competition..

all major daw manufactors do a competition.. and can reach in own test.. but have to stand user tests and judgement aswell...

because they might agree between themself that they are better off to agree in sounding the same than having theire week points published ... in the end of the day nobody is perfect...

however.the others have a good name.. ableton clearly has not. the opinion on this forum dont matches the opinion in the audio world..
i guess ableton knows that... and the audio world is still very much based on word of mouth.. once a product has a bad name its hard to get rid of that...
So if the realtiy has changed and ableton has a pro sound now its probabbly necessary create better proove than this pseudo audio fact sheet...
just the word phase cancelation test has to be avoided.. it sounds too cheap.. such things have to be measured with bit scopes outside the daw in question.. thats pretty clear or?

[Angstrom]

As I said, and noted in my original post. My vote was a mistake, based on the assumption that the two waves were the two I was meant to compare.
My voting mistake. I guess I could cancel my vote, but then the poll would look like this flawed test has actually proven something. So I think I will not.

I would be interested in a well implemented and controlled test of various daws producing mono fullrange frequencies across several channels. But it wouldnt change my choice of DAW. The sound quality is fine by me. Other things are much more important to music than near-imperceptible audio differences. Even if differences were apparent, I frankly dont care. I have heard the sound from Live and it is acceptable. That is all that is required.

[3phase]

As I said, and noted in my original post. My vote was a mistake, based on the assumption that the two waves were the two I was meant to compare.
My voting mistake. I guess I could cancel my vote, but then the poll would look like this flawed test has actually proven something. So I think I will not.

I would be interested in a well implemented and controlled test of various daws producing mono fullrange frequencies across several channels. But it wouldnt change my choice of DAW. The sound quality is fine by me. Other things are much more important to music than near-imperceptible audio differences.

i am ok with the actual audio quality with life aswell..wouldnt turn red if had to do a in the box mix and do improtant things anyway with a mixing desk.. .

i however experianced something like a warp engine bug in the closer past... and maybe the audio quality is still not as good as with the others.. i still would prefer logic for an in the box mix... but thats maybe mayinly because i know some tricks there the ableton plugs cant do... and working with automation is defently better there...

a real test and competition would be intersting for me.. bt wouldnt change the way i work much.. maybe i would do more with ableton when the result is good.. in the moment o dont trust it too much..too many false statements in the past...

same with other people in the scene.. when i tell them that the audio quality went better they tend to dont belife it...

and than the get interviewed and give ableton a bad name... as has happened lately..

unfair or not..but ableton has to do some promotion work here..at least when they can stand up in real tests. if not they better keep quiete up to the point they can... another false propaganda would ruin the name forever.. the behringer phenomen... even if behringer would build the most highend stuff nobody would belife them..they did too many false statements in the past...

[diskowipe]

people do HEAR differences between applications, has nothing to do with all this summing nonsense

if you want to talk about "sound" issues in Ableton Live, the PDC (delay compensation) is completely unstable. This is exactly what causes people to hear the differences. Although the PDC in any DAW can fail, something like Cubase has superior compensation compared to Ableton. Live uses two independent buffering system for plugins and the audio drivers at the expense for further increased latency, this makes sense for what the program was designed for (live performance) but its the reason it cant be treated the same as other applications and will fail much easier as the PDC is constantly recalculated in real time. not to mention the uncompensated automation, add all this together and it hinders Ableton as a serious studio tool for productions. Of course you can work around this like anything else, but it really kills the workflow advantages of the program in the first place

If any of you have ever read the FL Studio Manual, you will know that the company didnt even implement PDC into the program until the most recent version 9.1. The program is set up to allow for easy and sample accurate manual compensation for plugin latencies and FL even suggests doing it manually rather than relying on the PDC telling you how and why it can fail under some circumstances. FL Studio also allows you run PDC only for certain tracks so you arent limited to one global setting and can easily keep your project tight.

Instead of guiding users to get the best out of the program, Ableton only ever gives the users academic, generalized information and as a result we have 10 years of people that formulated their own uninformed opinions about why the software sounds bad. What goes around comes around, If I were ableton i'd think it would be beneficial to just explain the pitfalls to my users like FL Studio instead of letting the myths spiral out of control about my software.

Also, softwares DO sound different in real time. Once again in the FL Studio Manual it tells you about the various playback resample qualities and how your renders will sound different than the real-time audio. They also make it clear on how the various resample qualities can be used in various stages of production to get a good idea how the final render will sound, other DAW's like reaper have these types of options.

So its not sound engine voodoo, but real-world measurable facts thats the reason alot of producers dont use live in the studio. i have done all my 15+ vinyl/digital releases in cubase and i couldnt fathom switching and i spent many headaches trying to get the same results out of live as i actually tried switching over to it before as my main tool, of course when i asked about it on here i got flamed by all the talentless assholes with 20k+ posts and no releases. you guys can argue all you want, meanwhile i will keep making music and releasing records that move dancefloors

Also, since i cant help myself, if you all remember the thread about villalobos from the resident advisor thing talking about ableton. you will probably recall Mr. Dennis ferrer chimed in to defend ableton. Funny thing is he had his own feature on RA recently where he said he still believes Nuendo sounds better than live, everybody thinks that, because its true!!!! LINK: http://www.residentadvisor.net/feature.aspx?1149

i am bitter about this company from all the time i have spent, they hid in the manual about the uncompensated automation data and then finally admit it after theres a few years of people asking questions about this. i will never support this company again. FUCK YOU ABES!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!