Katy Perry Mixer - "Ableton sounded terrible" (SoundonSound)

Discuss music production with Ableton Live.
T.I.M.
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Re: Katy Perry Mixer - "Ableton sounded terrible" (SoundonSound)

Post by T.I.M. » Sat Jan 07, 2012 6:23 pm

I have a distaste for corny music and he is engineering that. His sound is what I do not want.

hmj
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Re: Katy Perry Mixer - "Ableton sounded terrible" (SoundonSound)

Post by hmj » Sat Jan 07, 2012 7:37 pm

newboss wrote:
pgmjsd wrote:Ever turn the SSL master bus compressor on/ off for a client? Watch their faces do this: :D :( :D :(

If you're coming from SSL world, Lives mixer is going to seem very 'plain'. Personally, I like that... Live is more 'bare metal'. It takes more time to get a Live mix right because you have to build things up from components, but I actually enjoy that.

Anyway, some of you may disagree, but I have always felt Live didn't really have ''a sound"... You build it yourself. I guess if you just slap some presets in...

Thats just the nature of digital audio that it dont has a sound and that you build it yourself.
But that you need more work in ableton to get a mix sounding good than in some other daws actually points to problems in their audio engine.
Just like with with a cheap mixing desk versus a big console..

With booth you can make a good sounding record, but on the cheap desk that is more work while on the expensive console you just set levels..ready...

The difference between DAW´s is definitely not as big as between a cheap desk and an expensive console.. its rather subtile.
But its actually ableton that has "a sound" here while other daw´s are more transparent and neutral in the mix. Especially on high track counts ( more than 24...) and recordings of real synths and instruments that gets audible.
Whether that special a bit grainy Ableton sound is to your liking, or whether you just hate it is a matter of taste. But technically it shouldnt be there. What you hear there are the flaws in the audio processing.
Do all DAWs sound the same in their most basic usage? Probably, but the point newboss makes is probably the most valid.

How does a DAW sound in actual usage? 100+ tracks with processing etc, how does it sound THEN? That's the question we should be debating here because that is what these big engineers are talking about and that why Ableton IS NOT the standard in multi-million dollar production houses and why the 1% is the music industry are not using the program.

So sure, Pro Tools, Ableton, Logic etc all might sound the same with two or 3 audio tracks running but the difference happens in real world usage. If you can debate that with factual information I'd love to know.

Rationalizer
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Re: Katy Perry Mixer - "Ableton sounded terrible" (SoundonSound)

Post by Rationalizer » Sat Jan 07, 2012 7:46 pm

This topic keeps popping up.

I wonder can Sandy Vee, or any other person for that matter, tell which DAW was used when the track is finished and released. With his definition of DAW sounds all Katy Perry tracks have been done with Live.
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kitekrazy
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Re: Katy Perry Mixer - "Ableton sounded terrible" (SoundonSound)

Post by kitekrazy » Sat Jan 07, 2012 7:52 pm

friend_kami wrote:
toeman wrote:Well let me be fair with you guys

I used Reaon (years), Protools (about a year), Cubase (years) and eventually tried Ableton.

I NEVER went back....Is it me or is Ableton just the damn best?

Ok I don't know Nuendo, I must be honest, but just had the same discussion with a producer-friend of mine from the states who shifted from Cubase to Ableton....He said the same thing. Ableton is above all....

What I hated about Cubase is the inconsistent automation....As in some cases I had to tweak the start of an automation as to make it sound kicking in at the right moment.
Freakin hated that!

Never had that issue with Ableton....
correct me if i'm wrong, but we are talking audio engines here, not workflow.
I think you have proven that most people get work flow and and knowledge of an app confused with what they hear. That's where the "audio engine sounds better" deception begins.

kitekrazy
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Re: Katy Perry Mixer - "Ableton sounded terrible" (SoundonSound)

Post by kitekrazy » Sat Jan 07, 2012 7:58 pm

paraclude wrote:guess why Nuendo is not a favorite? ITS FRIGGIN $1800! i just looked it up and was shocked.
It's geared toward the professional market. There is a grammy engineer using this apps as well. I tend to believe that any music that is meant for commercial release gets run through some sort of mastering suite instead of coming straight from a DAW.

newboss
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Re: Katy Perry Mixer - "Ableton sounded terrible" (SoundonSound)

Post by newboss » Sat Jan 07, 2012 8:56 pm

Rationalizer wrote:This topic keeps popping up.

I wonder can Sandy Vee, or any other person for that matter, tell which DAW was used when the track is finished and released. With his definition of DAW sounds all Katy Perry tracks have been done with Live.
can you tell whether a track was produced on a ssl or an amek console? or whether the tracking was done on a studer or otari tape machine? i cant but that dont makes them sounding the same..

That the topic keeps popping up actually says it all. That wouldnt happen when there wouldnt be issues.
I guess thats because in the music production world you find more people with fine listening senses than in the programmers world. So when a coder assumes that his little trick dont causes audible artefacts because its all in the -100db department he is just wrong with the target audience he is dealing with.

Actually Ableton should have realized that by now.
That so many different people claim daw xy to be better sounding than ableton live.. happens continuously over the years again and again in this thread alone you have at least 5 people stating in this direction.
Just, has there ever any professional producer made claims in the opposite direction? Stating that Live sounds better than daw xy?
Not so often really.

Therefor I hope the long development time for L9 was also used for improvements in the audio department.

simpli.cissimus
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Re: Katy Perry Mixer - "Ableton sounded terrible" (SoundonSound)

Post by simpli.cissimus » Sat Jan 07, 2012 10:48 pm

I have pretty well trained and skilled ears by doing this for many years now.
Also have good clear and honest monitors.
I hear a difference and can't ignore it.

My sounds have improved and my partners acknowledged that too.
They have also very good ADAM's monitors in their studio.

All this discussion of sound quality is not coming out of nowhere.

Many other features still keep me attached to Live,
and I couldn't switch easily to another DAW.
Luckily I found StudioOne having a similar easy workflow like Live.
It's still missing some features, but has it's own too.

Using both is my best way working now.
Live ReWired with StudioOne, taking advance of S1 audio engine
and 64bit internal audio processing, has given me the best results.

Many other users here also use Live together with Logic or ProTools.
They know why...

Live 9 has to be much better than now to keep up with competition.
..and stable(with VST's), finally...!
No! I'll never use the Push-App Live 9 !!!

icedsushi
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Re: Katy Perry Mixer - "Ableton sounded terrible" (SoundonSound)

Post by icedsushi » Sat Jan 07, 2012 11:15 pm

The people that complain about Live's sound quality almost never take a second to specify in their post that they've gone through any effort to make a sincere apples/apples comparison. Or are they referring to the effects & instruments provided in each DAW? It's almost always a general statement that it "sounds worse" with no specifics as to how they came to that conclusion.

Have they actually taken 30 mins & tried mixing the the exact same project (exact same VST's, exact same audio files) on another DAW, render that and A/B'ed them? Usually not, instead take the 30 mins to post online about some kind of a gut feel they have. It would be much more meaningful & informational to the forum to back up the comments with some kind of specifics as to how they arrived at their conclusion.

When I used to have Logic, I did a comparison mixing the same audio files stems dragged into both Live & Logic, all track faders set to 0db, everything panned to the center without effects. When played back at the exact same volume level, I could not tell the difference.

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Re: Katy Perry Mixer - "Ableton sounded terrible" (SoundonSound)

Post by Donnie » Sat Jan 07, 2012 11:19 pm

From my experience people who complain about Lives sound quality are typically using warping in some sort of undesirable way, usually unintentionally. Sure this isn't always the case but it seems to be the most common cause.

grooverb
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Re: Katy Perry Mixer - "Ableton sounded terrible" (SoundonSound)

Post by grooverb » Sat Jan 07, 2012 11:36 pm

lapieuvre wrote:
grooverb wrote:So if Ableton is as terrible in its sound quality, why doe DJ fresh use it?

He got a number 1 single with Ableton
Because he makes good music! Isn't it about that? And I'm sure it's not that terrible.
Have we crossed wires? Yeah he makes good music, using a DAW someone thinks is shite. If it really was that bad he wouldn't use it. Nor would Dan Le Sac or Jazzy Jeff or anyone else. My point is the guy who claims ableton sounds shite is proven wrong by all the people who are knocking out tunes that are topping the charts, getting played on radio stations, even being used live in night clubs.

The sums don't add up for this guys claim. Would be interesting to sit him down with some tracks all made on different DAWs and get him to say what was made on what DAW. Egg-->Face

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Re: Katy Perry Mixer - "Ableton sounded terrible" (SoundonSound)

Post by shuutobi » Sun Jan 08, 2012 12:35 am

icedsushi wrote:The people that complain about Live's sound quality almost never take a second to specify in their post that they've gone through any effort to make a sincere apples/apples comparison. Or are they referring to the effects & instruments provided in each DAW? It's almost always a general statement that it "sounds worse" with no specifics as to how they came to that conclusion.

Have they actually taken 30 mins & tried mixing the the exact same project (exact same VST's, exact same audio files) on another DAW, render that and A/B'ed them? Usually not, instead take the 30 mins to post online about some kind of a gut feel they have. It would be much more meaningful & informational to the forum to back up the comments with some kind of specifics as to how they arrived at their conclusion.

When I used to have Logic, I did a comparison mixing the same audio files stems dragged into both Live & Logic, all track faders set to 0db, everything panned to the center without effects. When played back at the exact same volume level, I could not tell the difference.

This.

The only difference between live and logic, as tested by Tarekith*, was the last 3 bits of a null-test, which is below -126dBFS. This is a little above the -144dB range of 24bit... But what music do you know has 126dB dynamic range?

Oops, I think I found a piece... http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6zrej_iN7Fs

edit: fixed name
Last edited by shuutobi on Sun Jan 08, 2012 1:18 am, edited 2 times in total.

newboss
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Re: Katy Perry Mixer - "Ableton sounded terrible" (SoundonSound)

Post by newboss » Sun Jan 08, 2012 12:44 am

icedsushi wrote:The people that complain about Live's sound quality almost never take a second to specify in their post that they've gone through any effort to make a sincere apples/apples comparison. Or are they referring to the effects & instruments provided in each DAW? It's almost always a general statement that it "sounds worse" with no specifics as to how they came to that conclusion.

Have they actually taken 30 mins & tried mixing the the exact same project (exact same VST's, exact same audio files) on another DAW, render that and A/B'ed them? Usually not, instead take the 30 mins to post online about some kind of a gut feel they have. It would be much more meaningful & informational to the forum to back up the comments with some kind of specifics as to how they arrived at their conclusion.

When I used to have Logic, I did a comparison mixing the same audio files stems dragged into both Live & Logic, all track faders set to 0db, everything panned to the center without effects. When played back at the exact same volume level, I could not tell the difference.

bla bla.. you dont export 38 track projects to another daw without doing just that.. and you wouldnt do that when ther wouldnt be benefits.

The tendency is clearly that as more experience the user has as more they get that something goes wrong when mixing with ableton.
It´s rather the newbs that claim that its the same as any other daw.

Why dont you take the 30 minutes and try it out.

newboss
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Re: Katy Perry Mixer - "Ableton sounded terrible" (SoundonSound)

Post by newboss » Sun Jan 08, 2012 1:06 am

shuutobi wrote: The only difference between live and logic, as tested by Takerith, was the last 3 bits of a null-test, which is below -126dBFS. This is a little above the -144dB range of 24bit... But what music do you know has 126dB dynamic range?

Oops, I think I found a piece... http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6zrej_iN7Fs
Some posts ago you claimed the sound is the same and now we have 18 db difference on an cheesy amateur test already.
What else would we find in proper scientific tests?

However really not worth the the hazel to prove something the half audio production world hears and knows anyway to people that have obviously not the sensory equipment to get the difference anyway.

I would think that by now ableton must know that even cheap open source projects like reaper already beat them regarding the audio quality..logic that now just costs less than the half of live beats them too..aso..

Shall we make bets whether L9 will come with a better sound or not ?

trevox
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Re: Katy Perry Mixer - "Ableton sounded terrible" (SoundonSound)

Post by trevox » Sun Jan 08, 2012 1:29 am

icedsushi wrote:The people that complain about Live's sound quality almost never take a second to specify in their post that they've gone through any effort to make a sincere apples/apples comparison. Or are they referring to the effects & instruments provided in each DAW? It's almost always a general statement that it "sounds worse" with no specifics as to how they came to that conclusion.

Have they actually taken 30 mins & tried mixing the the exact same project (exact same VST's, exact same audio files) on another DAW, render that and A/B'ed them? Usually not, instead take the 30 mins to post online about some kind of a gut feel they have. It would be much more meaningful & informational to the forum to back up the comments with some kind of specifics as to how they arrived at their conclusion.

When I used to have Logic, I did a comparison mixing the same audio files stems dragged into both Live & Logic, all track faders set to 0db, everything panned to the center without effects. When played back at the exact same volume level, I could not tell the difference.
As per a previous post of mine, I did take the time to do exactly this and did notice a difference.
newboss wrote:bla bla.. you dont export 38 track projects to another daw without doing just that.. and you wouldnt do that when ther wouldnt be benefits.

The tendency is clearly that as more experience the user has as more they get that something goes wrong when mixing with ableton.
It´s rather the newbs that claim that its the same as any other daw.

Why dont you take the 30 minutes and try it out.
As per a post just above, Tarekith did this and noticed that technically there was a difference too - albeit an apparently very small one. Now most people say that this difference should be negligible, but I am wondering if the difference I perceived correlates exactly to what Tarekith identified - I have to assume it does. I really do not know how to check this out, nor can I be bothered to. I have to trust my ears over anything technical anyway, so I will keep on assuming! And I will re-iterate - people will still use Live because of it's workflow regardless of any audio quality difference. If they feel it is necessary to render tracks and mix in another program, that is fine. If others do not hear any difference, go ahead and mix in Live.

One more thing - can we get over this whole "noob" or "newb" thing please? Just because people have differing opinions doesn't mean they have not been around the block a few times. Real "noob's" generally introduce themselves that way. Some of the comments saying that there is no difference in audio quality have come from people who's opinions I respect, as they have shown themselves to have enough experience and knowledge to have that opinion. The term "noob" has become derogatory - thus showing a lack of respect. Sorry, it just annoys me.

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Re: Katy Perry Mixer - "Ableton sounded terrible" (SoundonSound)

Post by nathannn » Sun Jan 08, 2012 2:45 am

i rather listen to m83 than katy perry any day
from Anthony Gonzalez of m83
As far as equipment, Moog products were deemed “too expensive” but he loves the classic Voyager synthesizer. For creating his music in studio, Gonzalez used to work with Pro Tools and Logic but for the past three or four years he has been using Ableton products only. “I love Ableton and I’m really convinced it’s the best thing that happened to music in ten years,” he said. “It’s so easy to be creative with it, really inspiring”. Gonzalez also singled out the vintage synth Yamaha CS-80, even though he doesn’t own one, he uses one in studio production. “It is so easy to use and play,” he said. “It’s so old that you have to tune it over and over but it’s fantastic. It’s so satisfying and rewarding when you can come up with a great sound”. He also favors the Roland G3P for the classic synth sounds of composer Vangelis (Chariots of Fire).
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no computers or synths

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