bad ableton sound rumour - just caught myself :-)

[ze2be]

the stupidity of some people is really scary.

Well, I can agree on that at least!

[mr.ergonomics]

hey I see you 3phase, but I'm not at home at the moment, I will check it when I'm back. I will also repeat this test just for fun without rendering in live, just with the played out signal.

that will be interesting.. there shouldnt be a difference with your actual mind set

so 3phase as promised... I did it again and there was a differance, but I figured out why (thanks to my good RME metering), even with the same settings fader settings cubase was about 3 db louder (...maybe it was 4 db, I forgot the exact value) . I had a litte shock before I saw it at the metering . I don't know why, but I'm pretty sure that there is a simple technical reason I don't see at this unholy hour. After that I adjusted the fader settings so that my metering showed me the same peak value. I made a short 909 snare loop in cubase, exported it, loaded it into ableton, played it, recorded that via the RME Mixer (internal loopback) into cubase. Then I switched between the original and the re-recorded loop without knowing (blind) which one I was playing. They sound absolute the same to me even in a blind test. But in a phase cancellation test they did not cancel out perfect (a difference signal at about -80 dbfs), I recorded the difference signal and boosted it about 80 db to see what was the difference. It sounds exactly like the original loop, no artefacts, differently no grainy sounds or whatever, so I guess the difference is just the result from two not 100% equal loud files.

I did not have a perfect experimental setup, but I have no more spare time at moment for such geeky stuff, even if I feel a urge to explore it further and come up with a prove. I had a small difference signal, even if it's really really good explainable (small volume difference) and I would bet that the reason for it was my "dirty" experimental setup.

Bottom line, again, it's really easy to overlook a small parameter and came to a wrong conclusion so it good to be really careful. But I know the reason now why cubase did sound better to me, it was just a bit louder with it's standard settings...

edit and ps: I think I just found the next sample inaccuracy bug in ableton ,I will upload a short test project in the next days.


- 2 bar loop in arrange view [BAR1 | BAR2]
- do a 1 bar audio loop
- A: audio tracks with this loop, at the first just duplicate the loop to make a 2bar loop,
- B: for the other one use the clip loop and drag the 1bar loop to a 2bar loop

result, the second bar from B has1 sample offset.

video, I will add some comments tomorrow:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=syhfGcdevuA

[Carl Lofgren]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BYTlN6wjcvQ

Amazing.

[G.D.Matteoni]

Hi guys.
I work in a music-instruments-cds-audio stuff shop, where we sell also softwares and do some production class on Ableton Live and Cubase.
Different people, not BIG producers, not GREAT engineers, but only guys that try to make good music in home studios, tell me that they find Cubase is sounding better than Ableton when triyng to do their projects.
Because Ableton changed my life of working on music projects I'm always on a defence way, BUT I feel the same.
I did some test about phase cancellation, recreating the same projects with same plugs and same settings and same levels, pans etc..
I think the most important difference is about compensations between tracks and consequently difference in PHASE between signals. Difference between software will increase with increasing of audio tracks in the project. Anyway my tests are not so deep so I don't want to add any other personal opinion but I ask you to read this:
That's an extract from an interview to SANDE VEE (producer-mixing man behind GUETTA-KATY PERRY-RIHANNA.. winner of a grammy last year) on Sound On Sound magazine (april 2011)


"I know Pro Tools very well, but for me that system is a bit 2000. It’s slow, particularly when you are using the TDM. I did a test recently with virtual synths. I opened 200 virtual synths in my native Nuendo system, and the demand on my CPU was around six percent. When I tried to do the same thing with Pro Tools, I had run out of CPU when I had opened just eight virtual synths! Pro Tools is cool for tracking — it has hardly any latency and is really easy to use — but my Nuendo rig with two Universal Audio Quad cards simply destroys an HD6 system. In Nuendo, I can have a session with 200 tracks, and have 300 plug-ins open and 30 VSTi virtual instruments, all at the same time, and it’s totally stable. The audio in Nuendo also sounds fantastic. Everyone says that all DAWs sound the same, but that’s simply not true. I’ve done tests comparing the sound of the same session in different DAWs, and Ableton sounded terrible, Logic and Pro Tools were OK, and Nuendo sounded incredible. Editing in Nuendo is also really fast. Pro Tools is just a standard, it was the first to come onto
the market and everybody uses it now, almost out of habit. People in the US don’t know about Nuendo, but I’m sure that if they did, many would switch."

And I can say: in our pro studio we use Protools and it sound OK but working with midi and RTAS in impossible so it is good for recorded music only. When I was using Cubase in the project studio never had the problem of get the things sounding good but I had the problem of being creative and doing good arrangements in few time. Now that I'm totally LIVE addict I can be very creative, fast, but things are not sounding so good...

Software are not the same... next step for me will be trying to export things from ableton and mix them on ProTools/Cubase to try How it sounds. And I hope the the sounding problem is something linked to SUMMING PROCESS AND COMPENSATION only, because if it's not I will have "bad" sounding files as starting point in the other DAWs.

My dream is to have not only ABLETON LIVE, but a great ABLETON STUDIO with a more heavy engine but that sounds good.

[necho]

I constantly switch off my monitor while listening back to things. Makes everything sound better because my senses are focused on the sound, not the graphics.

[nylarch]

I'm convinced people - including famous producers - who "spot test" Live against other DAW's don't know Live well enough to realize its initially set up for live use with auto fades, auto warping and eco mode on most of the plugs. I did that myself - "why do these one shots I drag into Logic sounds slightly punchier than when dragged into live". Live's sound sucks! About a week later I realized everything had fades. Oh.

[anybody human]

All DAWs handle summing differently.

[beats me]

I still don’t get these “scientific” A/B tests. If you repeatedly make or mix songs in another DAW that sound better to you than just use that other DAW for that purpose. Having your scientific proof isn’t going to make it sound any better coming out of Live.

[crumhorn]

Oh no, not again.

[Tone Deft]

next time skip the posting and just go to bed.

[3phase]

I'm convinced people - including famous producers - who "spot test" Live against other DAW's don't know Live well enough to realize its initially set up for live use with auto fades, auto warping and eco mode on most of the plugs. I did that myself - "why do these one shots I drag into Logic sounds slightly punchier than when dragged into live". Live's sound sucks! About a week later I realized everything had fades. Oh.

without the fades it clicks all the time and you dont have the tools to fight the clicks otherwise...

[nylarch]

not saying "don't use fades". Just saying don't use auto fade, which adds a fade to the front and back of the file automatically and is mostly useful for avoiding clicks when you're dragging loops and samples in on the fly in a live set, which of course is what Live is originally meant to do.

But when producing some people leave auto fade on and think think the slightly flabby attacks on things like one shot drums means the sound engine isn't good.

[3phase]

not saying "don't use fades". Just saying don't use auto fade, which adds a fade to the front and back of the file automatically and is mostly useful for avoiding clicks when you're dragging loops and samples in on the fly in a live set, which of course is what Live is originally meant to do.

But when producing some people leave auto fade on and think think the slightly flabby attacks on things like one shot drums means the sound engine isn't good.

thats not the problem with the ableton sound.. its the dull and 2 dimensioanl sounding mix bus.. and tha unavoidable samplerate conversion on any sound

[Poster]

sound quality is such an overrated topic, really..

[Tone Deft]

I've been using this at work
http://www.simplynoise.com/
I'd love one for the forum.