purpurkatten wrote:fisto wrote:
Every consolidation in Live leads to resampling (correct me if i'm wrong), automation is proven to be inaccurate, midi sync never worked well, plug-in delay compensation does not work correct
Is this true?
there are two main pbs in 3 letters words. A) PDC and B) SRC. (MIDI for later)
A)PDC PluginDelayCompensation.Live compensates audio but don't compensate related controls (sync, modulation and automations) for VSTs inducing latencies(most of them)and as a result all devices, beeing vst or native, following in the chain will drift from the original drawn on grid modulations or sync effects.
ex: the two most used tools in mastering are certainly linear phase EQ and multiband, limiter or other 'need buffer' plugin. they are high latency process, nothing coming after that in the chain can be automated or modulated with accuracy with live, and will produce out of sync and unprecise, unwanted results, and will be incremental, proportionally linked to vsts uses. this apply and is worse in mixing as the pb is spread on X process, and not on a single stereo file so relative offsets occur between sources.
you can read one of the X pdc/adc threadZ like this recent one:
http://forum.ableton.com/viewtopic.php?f=1&t=157048
and can test by yourself to understand the problem here:
http://rapidshare.com/files/443477011/P ... roject.rar
B)SRC SampleRateConvertion. in lot's of case live performs a sample rate conversion. this is a non neutral operation that
apply rounding and interpolations to raw audio. like if you scale a picture and rereduct it, each gen loose definition and
introduce artefacts. generally it's not drasticly hearable, but repeated it can for some. i don't have much time but
you can search for SRC threads too, i think 3phaze recurently complained about that, among few others..
im personally much more affected by PDC, but i can understand some highly suffer of SRC pbs.
so globally automations precisions/latency and SRC problems linked to live architecture make it's definitely not the ultimate daw for mixing and mastering VS few other like pt or logic, despite what most people used to claim in the past. (robert henke said that himself for info, about src).
Howerver, don't take that as a drastic info It's still totally possible to mix and master in live. just be aware and avoid those pb
when it is possible. if you didn't noticed this that mean you don't have to care or stress much about that. it's not the thing that change a shit song in a tune usually. it depends of music kinds and processing/routing chains complexity, personal setups. global music that don't need to be ultra tight and ultra phased don't need more than what live actually offer and are totally possible to produce with live. If you like the out result and your friend/clients too, then its cool. no one care about pdc or src or whatever if it just sounds good.
In some other cases, if you work at sample accurate level, do music that rely on strong tightness and phazing (a good ex is psytrance, in my case)or make any other kind of music but use a lot 3rd party with automations/rytmic effects, you can definitely feel live's limits. it's not the best tool to do chirurgical tight or synced stuff in short. however in those problematic cases it remains a great creative tool before engaging the mixing or mastering in later external process , if the liveset deserve it and if it suffers from live's limitation. pre-rendering as audio is a pain but possible workaround to remain all in live.
still, they have to sort this out, that's a long time pain, and they are the essential reasons live is globally not very used
in studios for mixing or mastering. it's not only because op are used to pt despite what some claim imo.