Improvement of the Audio Engine

[EX]

That all said I guess an audio engine can always be topologically optimised, so let's have it!

[yush]

I don't think there's anything wrong with Live's 'audio engine', certainly not in comparison to other DAWs. When this discussion comes up, it's almost always an issue with someone not understanding some of the ways Live works that is causing the issue. More often than not it's that they are using warping on their audio since it's enabled by default, and of course timestretched audio is going to have some degradation. Some of the warp modes even change the sound of the audio when you're NOT timestretching them as well, as is clearly explained in Ableton's Audio document.

Or they're using something like EQ3 which colors the sound even when no boost or cut is applied. Or something like Compressor 1 or 2 from earlier versions of Live, which were admittedly kind of poor sounding compared to the compressors included with the competition. When you remove these differences and do straight comparisons with other DAWs, there is no practical difference. Myself and other respected audio engineers have proven this again and again, both scientifically and with audio examples.

And anyone that claims that two filse that phase cancel an still be different should not be teaching audio.

Agree - to most of what you have said here/
I guess what it comes down to - is that a lot of folks will not probably ever learn the proper use of compressors/limiters, multiband compressors and EqS...........
In live these plugins are not present by default and MAYBE-- in logic and other Louder and wider sounding DAWS have these placed as default on each channel and even the master bus thus to a casual user - a rendered file sounds louder/fatter.........

Having said that -- I am sure with the right plug ins Live can be made to sound fatter/louder -- fabfilter pro L being the one that I use......
Although I have to say Logic 9 def sounds "better" OOTB-- but nothing can ever compete with the ease of music creation and sound design live brings to the table