What Ableton IS KEEPING SECRET about Live's audio engine...

[nopattern]

for what its worth, ive gotten better recordings out of LIVE than any other application i've ever used. its all to do with how it makes me vibe with the rest of my studio, for me ableton is like a nice modern workspace in the computer to compliment my surroundings. visual aesthetics for me are very important to help the mood when creating music and only ableton gives me "that" feeling in the studio

i believe this sound quality debate centers around Ableton so much because of its immediacy of ease of use, meaning a beginner can find their way around the program quickly opposed to more complex DAW software and start making music. These people then realize that what they are making in Live doesn't sound as good as the records they listen to and blame the software. Ableton is just a canvas, nothing more...

the sound quality debates are inevitably linked to the fact that people are forgetting about the recording process in music. most likely alot of them being ableton users trying to make dance music on their laptop with all virtual synths/sounds and wondering why it sounds flat compared to other stuff. No amount of mastering or processing will give you the sound of a good recording. I'm all about working ITB but the people need to remember where this debate started, the analog vs digital argument was always about recording. now its taken on new meanings like softsynths vs hardware etc...

all the sound quality discussions always include words like "warmth" "punch" "bottom"

the DAW does not do this for you. mic pre's on the other hand can take a sterile digital softsynth and make it sound like he most dripping wet gooey analog synth on the planet. try recording some operator sounds into the mic pre on your audio interface and see if these sound quality issues still exist. record your music

actually from my observation its rather the other way around.. the people you describe are actually very positive about the quality of live while the people with all the analoge gear that are doing records for over 1 - 2 decades now are very negativ about it.. ok.. negativ about the previous versions.. all of them i know havent gave live a real try for years now..
the actual crashing state that really creates a nice feel in the studio and enhances the barflow rather than the workflow dont really helps there...

i dont really know what to say to that other than as a gear user myself, i find live perfectly capable of holding the quality of my recordings. For me the whole point of DAW software is to be transparent for stuff like that. Any color due to the built in effects or warping in my case has been a good thing and i more and more turn to only using the native tools as i personally think the "ableton sound" they add is great for my sounds most of the time...

all the people i have met who complain about sound are the ones using all virtual instruments and rendering all in the computer. they dont know it, but they are really complaining about all DAW software and just happen to be using live because its the only thing they can make music on given the easy learning curve. maybe some of them got another daw and heard a louder output from pan law and automatically thought it sounded so much better. 99% of the time they say that based on hearing more tight low end due to the width and volume of the pan law, but of course they can actually make a track in the other DAW cause they dont know how to use it so the comparison is off of one vst plugin. the problem is what they really need to be doing is using the computer like an instrument and recording the parts through the preamps and focus on making good recording. I believe digital instruments are every bit as good as analog but i still like both... However pressing render on an all virtual ITB track out of any DAW where nothing has been actually recorded and the result is something i personally would never listen to. All the technology we have is great but rendering a track in a computer will never replace a well made recording. On the flip side to that, technology is so good now that even a pre on an maudio is probably capable of some mind bending results
the point was that

[fx23]

I've just made small quick test

Ive used 3 audio files which i mixdown in Live 8, Logic 9 and Reaper with identical channel strips settings (0db on each track, -6db on master)

Then i've made phase cancelation tests

The results you can hear there

http://www.speedyshare.com/files/231177 ... s_Test.zip

But i don't want to participate in your debates

wich are the phase cancelation files? the combo folder? the sound is far too loud for being an eventual panning law rule difference.are you sure there is no latency offset in samples on bouncing, we should ear a clear gain reduction, and therically even ear nothing, or some messy sound due to phase offset but it more seems like a a/B comparaision. What were the phase cancelation results, you should have include them. in any case the pb won't be answered by simply summing 3 files at 0db, that would only reveal a main summing pb or not but im more thinking pb came from bit conversion/envellopes/gain reduction algo of all insert bus (racks,sub racks ect) in previous versions anterior to L7 in some larges process. I doubt live main summing 3 files at 0db would have such drastic differences.

[ilya.soloviev]

I've just made small quick test

Ive used 3 audio files which i mixdown in Live 8, Logic 9 and Reaper with identical channel strips settings (0db on each track, -6db on master)

Then i've made phase cancelation tests

The results you can hear there

http://www.speedyshare.com/files/231177 ... s_Test.zip

But i don't want to participate in your debates

wich are the phase cancelation files? the combo folder? the sound is far too loud for being an eventual panning law rule difference.are you sure there is no latency offset in samples on bouncing, we should ear a clear gain reduction, and therically even ear nothing. in any case the pb won't be answered by simply summing 3 files at 0db, that would only reveal a main summing pb or not but im more thinking pb came from bit conversion/envellopes/gain reduction algo of all insert bus (racks,sub racks ect) in previous versions anterior to L7. I doubt live main summing 3 files at 0db would have such drastic differences, you made a mistake somewhere.

No latency offset

But i agree with you, such tests are useless
There should be more stuff to hear any difference
It just a tough task to use more in the identical way

Im not pretending to prove anything

[Khazul]

Surely it doesnt matter what the panning law is between DAWs for a normal panner - eventually some combination of pan and level in one DAW will produce absolutely identical results to some (possibly other) combination of pan and level in other DAW. Even if there is no panner at all, and only mono faders for the left and right channels - you can still match up.

Where pannign law makes a difference is when you are used to one DAW/console and move to anotther, perhaps you just thought - this needs to be about 33% to the left and cranked it there based on experience with one daw or console, but the one your using is slighly diffeent and you needed to also crank the level a bit to comensate and didnt - weve all done it - and we all should have used our ears more than our eyes

[3phase]

The engineer also mentioned that under intense CPU loads, Logic's sound quality goes down.


Anyway, I don't think Ableton is keeping anything secret.

They kept certain sound improovements secret.. also some flaws regarding latency compendsation of automation..
And the fatal midi bug was kept secret..

only discussions on the forum gave that infos to the public..

this things with the rduced quality on higher loads is intersting..

thats also a point that can influence the experianced sound quality of daw´s and give differnt immages for different users with differnet workflows and different computers..

a real daw test also needs to test what happens under heavy loads...

i never heard sofar that there are issues with logic..but there was some with protools in the past..

also similar heavy discussed like the ableton sound issue now.. the critics had a hard time to proove that something was going wrong. but eventually it turned out that earlier protools versions had problems with trackcounts above 16..

i wonder how live deals with that.. when its possible in protools and logic it might be one of the hidden or secret issues that keep the bad sound myth up...

[hoffman2k]

Those "secrets" were always mentioned in changelogs. And as for the secret MIDI bug, it got fixed after it got reported.

[3phase]

Those "secrets" were always mentioned in changelogs. And as for the secret MIDI bug, it got fixed after it got reported.

yeah.. but it was kept secret for month.. what i consider a crime towards the giging musicans..

i actually expect form my main daw company that they anounce workarounds in big letters as soon as they are known and not keeping them privat for friends that ask them silent in the background..

its a question of character., digidesign never tried to hide something..when they got problems..and they had often problems, they at least officially anounced the problem and known critical hardware..and even when this kind of problems dont look good for the company.. at least it allows the professional to work around.. even when this means in the extreme to buy another computer..

with ableton we still dont know which models are the ones that show critical behaviour..

maybe they really dont know... i certainly dont abandon my good working machine without an official uncompatibility report. that it´s still a crashing one after more than one year is rather sad.. so eventually you go for a new machine w

but back to the midi bug...
When you find out that switching off multiprocessor support clears the crashing caused by a fatal bug, and you dont anounce that as soon you know... you are bad !!!

sorry.. that is really nasty.. image over user safety...
and all my bad tong towards ableton is well deserved by just this little fact.. and there was many others ...

they defenetly can improove theire performance and attittude towards theire users..and maybe even theire sound quality..its still a bit harsher in the highs...

and i hope they will

[hoffman2k]

Those "secrets" were always mentioned in changelogs. And as for the secret MIDI bug, it got fixed after it got reported.

yeah.. but it was kept secret for month.. what i consider a crime towards the giging musicans..

i actually expect form my main daw company that they anounce workarounds in big letters as soon as they are known and not keeping them privat for friends that ask them silent in the background..

its a question of character., digidesign never tried to hide something..when they got problems..and they had often problems, they at least officially anounced the problem and known critical hardware..and even when this kind of problems dont look good for the company.. at least it allows the professional to work around.. even when this means in the extreme to buy another computer..

with ableton we still dont know which models are the ones that show critical behaviour..

maybe they really dont know... i certainly dont abandon my good working machine without an official uncompatibility report. that it´s still a crashing one after more than one year is rather sad.. so eventually you go for a new machine w

but back to the midi bug...
When you find out that switching off multiprocessor support clears the crashing caused by a fatal bug, and you dont anounce that as soon you know... you are bad !!!

sorry.. that is really nasty.. image over user safety...
and all my bad tong towards ableton is well deserved by just this little fact.. and there was many others ...

they defenetly can improove theire performance and attittude towards theire users..and maybe even theire sound quality..its still a bit harsher in the highs...

and i hope they will

But nobody kept any secrets. You just weren't paying attention.
Not sure why you keep stating lies. Our collective memory is bigger than yours.
Anyway, have another wonderful weekend in knowing that you devoted yet another almost entire week to make statements you couldn't back up even if your life depended on it.

You'd think this gets boring, but its like watching paint reapply itself.

[Khazul]

even theire sound quality..its still a bit harsher in the highs...

This sort of thing should be really easy to isolate the source of.

[3phase]

But nobody kept any secrets. You just weren't paying attention.
Not sure why you keep stating lies. Our collective memory is bigger than yours.
Anyway, have another wonderful weekend in knowing that you devoted yet another almost entire week to make statements you couldn't back up even if your life depended on it.

You'd think this gets boring, but its like watching paint reapply itself.

"your" collective memory? is very short lasting... and when my life would depned on that i would be doomed..


when you say i am lieing please show me the official ableton anouncement regarding the midi bug..

hidden in a thread and only after i made some noise on the forum is no official anouncement... and the fix was known for weeks before that even happened...

sorry.. thats no lie.. cruel reality

[hoffman2k]

But nobody kept any secrets. You just weren't paying attention.
Not sure why you keep stating lies. Our collective memory is bigger than yours.
Anyway, have another wonderful weekend in knowing that you devoted yet another almost entire week to make statements you couldn't back up even if your life depended on it.

You'd think this gets boring, but its like watching paint reapply itself.

"your" collective memory? is very short lasting... and when my life would depned on that i would be doomed..


when you say i am lieing please show me the official ableton anouncement regarding the midi bug..

hidden in a thread and only after i made some noise on the forum is no official anouncement... and the fix was known for weeks before that even happened...

sorry.. thats no lie.. cruel reality

Show me one thread where they DID announce a bug. There's the woodwinds one, but thats for a pack on a dvd already printed and is probably redundant with their latest Livepack updates. And the vst issues thread, which rarely sees any updates.

Apart from the Quality Statement made by Gerhard Behles, I can't recall Ableton ever announcing bugs in Live or even a known issues list. That sucks and should change.
All we got are the thread tags and they're not consistently updated
But to claim they withheld information about bugs is stupid, since at that time an Ableton developer even offered to visit your place to see the bug. And we know that because it was a conversation on a public forum.

Collective memories of your posts aren't hard to come by, since you're in almost every thread. And this thread in particular is yours. You should really go on a bug report tangent again. Or can't you find any bugs anymore?

[Poster]

an Ableton developer even offered to visit your place to see the bug.

really? pwned!

[3phase]

Or can't you find any bugs anymore?

the last time i opened live it crashed on me within 15 minutes.. ..inklusive dataloss of my recording.. a good one !!!
i ve sended in the bugreport and havent it lauched since.. cant afford to loose any recording i do by the worng choice of program

btw.. my atari is now 1 year running c-lab creator.. permanently..
And i just reinstalled my old dd-1000 record on mo disks... with timecode !! not bad.. thats safe..
will arrange the stems either in logic or protools ..

and funny thing.. this old 16 bit machine sounds realy good.. just as it sounded on the speakers.. no tired copy as a playback with live...

[H20nly]

^ probably best that.

i wish i could have it removed from "View Your Posts".

[thatrobrobinson]

MAJOR EDIT I LOOK DUMB: It was literally just delay compensation. lol Been out of the game for a hot fkn minute.


I know this is old. I just wanted to put a small response here almost 10 years later.

I'm still using Live 9 btw.

I am ... well was a pro audio engineer working in live sound. I got injured a couple years ago and am just now beginning to rebuild my studio.

Long long long story short...

I have always swore by ableton. I have defended it until the end. I have always said many of the things here in its defense.

All of the arguments for Ableton are valid.


I began rebuilding my studio recently, and wasn't in a position to download ableton over my phone tether. I figured i'd just download Bitwig and use it in demo mode to scratch my production itch and not worry about losing it.

I was finally able to access wifi and download ableton.

Bitwigs demo allowed me still to save all my midi to files and import them into ableton as data. I had saved a couple of them, but some I chose to reproduce as envelopes just were strange between DAWs

I rebuilt my arrangement to spec with similar enough synths and routing to at least save it.

It's saved, its fine. I didn't lose the work overall.

But now I find myself here.

For the first time in my life I am observing that there is something different about the way ableton handles time.

I don't think its the audio engine though.

It seems to be a time problem, that isn't latency related.

It is possible its a setting, or settings I can disable/enable and make my arrangement "feel" like it did in bitwig, but I am just about to begin troubleshooting that.

I always thought certain qualities of my works in ableton were just all on me.

I am for the first time questioning that.

Logic for instance, has a garbage workflow but I get better sounding works out of it. But its not the audio engine there either, I promise. It's not "core audio vs asio either" something is different.

I have had plenty of final products in ableton rival anything in logic or pro tools.

I just do not understand how something made of pure data, with no mixing, mastering, time stretching or anything past simple arrangment can be so drastically different.


When a clip is soloed, It sounds perfect. I add in one more, it sounds fine.

As I begin to add in each clip that I know for a fact is the way it should be - something changes.

Again, its not a latency issue.

The best way I can describe it is it feels as if the software is trying to average the data and outputting what it "believes" the user wants. This type of thing may be very useful for DJ's, but from a production standpoint, this is counter intuitive and it would explain why as I bounce my session clips over to arrangement I would end up having to do extra work to make things flow the way I wanted it to, and also why others would kind of ruffle their brow.

things I have been coerced into producing in logic, did not get the same result. I still hate F** logic.

Abletons implementation of session view was what I personally needed. If I find its just a setting, or if you know there is a setting that could be causing it let me know because Ableton has been my baby for almost a decade now. My experience with Bitwig 2.xx however gave me the playback response of something like Logic, with the workflow of something like Ableton and after just a week of playing with it I will be buying it.

No hate towards ableton here at all - I just would like to know why a simple arrangement of midi loops feels so drastically different between these two DAWs