Ableton vs Logic engine

[mikb]

there are so many things that influence "sound" that honestly..
unless y'all have an extremely well treated room with extra revealing speakers and "golden ears" hearing..
you're better off moving to another topic..than commenting subjective dribble...
"better sound" is in the ears of the listener...
or more accurately.. in the space between the ears..

Obviously it's subjective what is better. That is not the issue here even if I said better. But to propose everything always sounds the same outside of summing is just plain stupid. Because everything else is NOT equal as soon as you move beyond playing back a set of audio tracks without any further processing.

The interesting notion here is not what is "better", but whether different DAWs yield different final sound when you consider everything in use (built-in instruments, effects, time-stretching audio and so on).
It's on each and everyone of you that claim that "All DAWs sound the same" to explain exactly how that would work. It would prove interesting to hear someone explain how different signal processing always will yield the exact same final bit level sound.

[mikb]

On a more serious note, it's not "stupid" to use the term "sound engine" because that is term that dates back to avid days (iirc)

The correct vocabulary doesn't affect how anything sounds. so that is totally beside the point. It's a valid meta-discussion observation of course.

[eyeknow]

Well what I'm saying is it's a term that has been around for a while. I don't actually care what is said, I know what people are talking about.

BTW. There is a guy who will charge you 100 bucks to send you some crap to "null" on any host and prove they all sound the same. You guys should try it

[fishmonkey]

The interesting notion here is not what is "better", but whether different DAWs yield different final sound when you consider everything in use (built-in instruments, effects, time-stretching audio and so on).
It's on each and everyone of you that claim that "All DAWs sound the same" to explain exactly how that would work. It would prove interesting to hear someone explain how different signal processing always will yield the exact same final bit level sound.

once you introduce different instruments, effects, etc. then of course there will be differences. nobody is disagreeing with that notion. straw man.

[mikb]

once you introduce different instruments, effects, etc. then of course there will be differences. nobody is disagreeing with that notion. straw man.

On the contrary, it's the individuals in this thread who doesn't seem to be able get their heads around a nuanced discussion who created a straw man argument implying DAWs will never ever sound different. If this was just when certain parameters were left out, then they should have hinted at least which ones that didn't count and why.

Even if all DAWs can give a decent creation of the sound a producer is looking for, it may be easier for that producer to achieve this in a specific DAW.

[fishmonkey]

once you introduce different instruments, effects, etc. then of course there will be differences. nobody is disagreeing with that notion. straw man.

On the contrary, it's the individuals in this thread who doesn't seem to be able get their heads around a nuanced discussion who are the individuals who created a straw man argument implying DAWs will never ever sound different. If this was just when certain parameters were left out, then they should have hinted at least which ones that didn't count and why.

Even if all DAWs can give decent creation of the sound a producer is looking for, it may be easier for that producer to achieve this in a specific DAW.

really? who are you referring to?

and besides the thread topic is to do with "audio engines", it wasn't asking which DAWs come with better instruments or effects.

warping, automation, and delay compensation are obviously big issues but they have been done to death in other threads here.

[mikb]

once you introduce different instruments, effects, etc. then of course there will be differences. nobody is disagreeing with that notion. straw man.

On the contrary, it's the individuals in this thread who doesn't seem to be able get their heads around a nuanced discussion who created a straw man argument implying DAWs will never ever sound different.

really? who are you referring to?

and besides the thread topic is to do with "audio engines", it wasn't asking which DAWs come with better instruments or effects.

Well, you can read, can't you?

Audio is what comes out of Ableton Live. While "Audio Engine" may be off as an exact term I interpreted this — IMHO quite correctly — to mean the final sound of a given production in Ableton Live. The "master" or the "mix" or whatever you want to call it. This final sound includes everything in the DAW a specific production project can use. Not just anything willy nilly you do not say openly just get a cheap laugh.

I've read nothing in this thread to imply this was just about audio track summing, which is another discussion. This also done to death already.

[tekkers]

i've been using logic X quite abit recently as live 9.0.5 has been crashing my echo audiofire 2 all the time

NO issues at all with logic, no cpu spikes and no pausing with the beachball before playing and god knows what else that live is throwing at me at the moment.. so on that side of thing logics audio engine is superior - for me at least.

and it does sound good! - i think it is what ppl have been saying the synths and fx you get are really good in logic, just have a certain phatness to them...


but - the workflow is a pig... i just cant get into it - i can see myself making loops in logic, especially while i am having these problems with live ... then rendering them out and using them in live

and - the logic remote app for ipad is nice - but its NOT touchable by a long shot!

[leisuremuffin]

mikb, do you think that you can pick out different DAWs in a blind listening test?
I don't believe that you, or anyone else can.

[Dom Murphy]

Well I find Live 9 to be a huge CPU hog. Within a few tracks of audio & effects I'm hitting 60% and there's audio dropouts galore. I have a fairly high specced Macbook (i7 2.66ghz with 8gb RAM & SSD). The other night I was round a mates and he was demoing me the new Logic and was running 10+ tracks with effects and not a single glitch. On a lower specced machine too.

D

[jlgrimes]

Well I find Live 9 to be a huge CPU hog. Within a few tracks of audio & effects I'm hitting 60% and there's audio dropouts galore. I have a fairly high specced Macbook (i7 2.66ghz with 8gb RAM & SSD). The other night I was round a mates and he was demoing me the new Logic and was running 10+ tracks with effects and not a single glitch. On a lower specced machine too.

D

One of the drawbacks of gapless audio in live situations is extra CPU use.

Live probably isn't the best solution if you are working with 80 tracks.

I always had horrible multitrack performance on Live.

That said with my Mac Mini at 16 gigs of Ram with SSD drive and on Live 64 bit, I haven't had any problems using 15-20 audio tracks.

To be honest I think Live is more of a RAM/Disc hog than CPU hog.

[mikb]

mikb, do you think that you can pick out different DAWs in a blind listening test?
I don't believe that you, or anyone else can.

That's the very definition of making a straw man argument as I haven't even hinted something like that. On the contrary I'm talking about subjectivity and practical actual work. You are talking about objectivity as that was the most interesting. It's not.

What sounds better (as apart from just "different") is indeed subjective and one interesting thing is actually why people prefer different DAWs based on how they perceive their "sound"  — as in what sounds they can achieve rather than specific a DAW sound — and other important factors. There are many such factors, most of them subjective, that can affect what DAW a producer may prefer.

In my case, I slowly abandoned Logic when Live 8 arrived as I found it more possible to achieve the sound I was after in Live. That's not to say it should have been impossible to achieve basically the same thing in Logic, but in practice Live takes me there faster, even as I had used Logic for a very long time (for other types of music though).

So what I'm saying is that my music would sound different in Logic because of how I interact with these two DAWs.

[Dom Murphy]

I'm not so sure, it's the CPU meter that starts hitting the highs. The current track I'm working on is all Ableton synths too - no samples.

I just don't think it's very well optimised. To be honest, I was a little shocked when I saw Logic's flaw free performance.

[mikb]

I'm not so sure, it's the CPU meter that starts hitting the highs. The current track I'm working on is all Ableton synths too - no samples.

I just don't think it's very well optimised. To be honest, I was a little shocked when I saw Logic's flaw free performance.

But are you sure of what you are comparing here? The processing of the buil-in Instruments and effects in Live may be more demanding, no?

What should be interesting would be a project with the same third party plugins, with MIDI tracks and perhaps some audio tracks used in both DAWs. Then you would be comparing the same thing more or less.

[Dom Murphy]

Yes of course, that would be a neutral test of performance of actual software. All I'm observing is my workflow with Live's built in gear max's out the CPU a bit too quickly for my liking. Am I trying to justify the need for a new computer?... Probably