wow freeze function is really limited, huh ...

[bensuthers]

> No, not so obvious as you perhaps think!

well, actually, i did think of what you were talking about; I just rejected it out of hand. I figured that if you were that interested in warping as an effect; either as pitch shift or artifacts, you would leave it as audio. That's obvious too, isn't it?

Once you render your illustrator file as a bitmap and apply a filter you don't try and convert it back to lineart, do you?

[3phase]

also i've learnt that your eyes and your brain can fool ur ears, I mean, how things look like, marketing stuff, design, etc... may influence.

you scared me a bit at first

cheers

This is in fakt true.. but i am pretty trained listener..

and try to dont look while listening...

I wonder if there might be hardware related issues.. i am on a powerbook Ti with 1 ghz and Hammerfall multiface and firewire 410 audio hardware..
The degeneration when mixing in live within the digital domain is a thing that i realize regulary since years..its not that i waiting for it..it just ends in a mix situation where i say..ok..we need to port it...

It would be interesting if some others would do the test aswell..maybe there is a figure that points to a apple related bug or so..

One thing that happened with earlier live version was a significant difference in sound when running under OS9 and OS x...but this was in the earlie stages of OS x...but it shows that such things can happen..

[serotoninsteve]

I just did the test here,
played back a clean loop unwarped in ableton and in nero wave editor and I can´t hear any difference.

Both used my yamaha XG internal soundcard.

Greetings

[serotoninsteve]

> No, not so obvious as you perhaps think!

well, actually, i did think of what you were talking about; I just rejected it out of hand. I figured that if you were that interested in warping as an effect; either as pitch shift or artifacts, you would leave it as audio. That's obvious too, isn't it?

Once you render your illustrator file as a bitmap and apply a filter you don't try and convert it back to lineart, do you?

Yes I know, that is obvious, I agree.

The freeze could stay as it is, but to have the ability to move a freezed clip by simply draging it into an audiotrack for further mangling would do the trick.

If needed you could change some settings in your original midiclip, refreeze it, drag it in the audiotrack and copy/paste the warpmarkers to your new clip.


Greetings

[studiologic]

the freeze function should be a the vsti level and not the track level. or both?

[bassntreble]

I just did the test here,
played back a clean loop unwarped in ableton and in nero wave editor and I can´t hear any difference.

Both used my yamaha XG internal soundcard.

Greetings

You won't hear the difference with a single track. take 15 tracks in live and let's say nuendo or protools and then take a third mix that uses analog summing. do the same mix in all (let's just use level and pan settings so VST's aren't a factor) Even if your hearing isn't so keen, you will hear a difference. Want to get started with some research on audio quality in the digital domain? check out this article;

http://www.rane.com/note153.html

hope this helps

[3phase]

I just did the test here,
played back a clean loop unwarped in ableton and in nero wave editor and I can´t hear any difference.

Both used my yamaha XG internal soundcard.

Greetings

You won't hear the difference with a single track. take 15 tracks in live and let's say nuendo or protools and then take a third mix that uses analog summing. do the same mix in all (let's just use level and pan settings so VST's aren't a factor) Even if your hearing isn't so keen, you will hear a difference. Want to get started with some research on audio quality in the digital domain? check out this article;

http://www.rane.com/note153.html

hope this helps

I hear it with a single track..the level trick is important to focus your listening ... But of cause its much more drastical in a mix..

Please tell me..what computer and audiointerface are you using?

thanks
Sven

[3phase]

Want to get started with some research on audio quality in the digital domain? check out this article;

http://www.rane.com/note153.html

hope this helps

Interesting article.
I havent realized Rane as a digital audio company yet.
But its however true that Yamaha went up to 56 bit floating point and there new mixingdesks sum much better than the older 02r generation.
And its also true that some older designs sound better as the 02R aswell..
DMC 1000, CBX-D5 ... They mix digital signals pretty sweet and i would prefer them any time over a 02r. But i dont know what kind of processing the 2 mentioned machines have.

If its true that floating point is lowering the mathematical precission by wrong gainstructures, sounddifferences between programs, that both use 32bit floating, can be easy explained.

I will post the link in another forum and see what they think there about it.

I heard that Live is using 32 bit floating... i like to know if this is by design or a must when having an audio workstation on a modern PC/Mac OS ?

[serotoninsteve]

You could try Tracktion 2, it can do the maths in 64bit if enabled in preferences.

http://my.mackie.com/products/tracktion/demov2.asp

Compare it to quicktime if you can hear still a difference.

Greetings

[bassntreble]

I hear it with a single track..the level trick is important to focus your listening ... But of cause its much more drastical in a mix..

Please tell me..what computer and audiointerface are you using?

thanks
Sven

I agree, it can be heard with a single track if your hearing is acute enough but IMHO, the difference in painfully evident when summing a large number of tracks. I use at home a powerbook and digidesign mbox and at work i could be using anything from a Protools HD or Mix system on a high end G4 going through a dangerous 2Bus to a Metric Halo, RME or crappy little audiophile card on a G5. I don't really deal with windows PC's but am considering one for personal use.

[bassntreble]

Interesting article.
I havent realized Rane as a digital audio company yet.
But its however true that Yamaha went up to 56 bit floating point and there new mixingdesks sum much better than the older 02r generation.
And its also true that some older designs sound better as the 02R aswell..
DMC 1000, CBX-D5 ... They mix digital signals pretty sweet and i would prefer them any time over a 02r. But i dont know what kind of processing the 2 mentioned machines have.

If its true that floating point is lowering the mathematical precission by wrong gainstructures, sounddifferences between programs, that both use 32bit floating, can be easy explained.

I will post the link in another forum and see what they think there about it.

I heard that Live is using 32 bit floating... i like to know if this is by design or a must when having an audio workstation on a modern PC/Mac OS ?

I wouldn't think of Rane as a digital audio company per se, but they do make some of the best quality products for audio both analong and digital. More application specific stuff for PA rather than studio based designs. There are a lot of variables other than summing topology that factor into the qualitative assesment of "how good something sounds" like D/A conversion and clock stability. Since we are talking about summing inside of a software application, i wouldn't use hardware based digital mixers as a comparison basically because companies that build these units use DSP's tailored to the task. With software, the summing is purely based on code that might run on an Intel or Pentium or G5. The code has to be able to scale to the different processors and will not be as robust as code written for a specific DSP.

I think all DAW's, with the exception of Protools TDM, use 32 floating point math because in terms of processor usage, it's more frugal to implement than double precision 24bit fixed. Protools TDM is the exception because it's based on outboard DSP. A single mixer engine takes up a whole chip and if you want to run 64 tracks (in a mix system) it takes 2 chips. that's one third of a single Mixfarm card!

At the end of the day, if you stuff ends up being broadcast, it's all compressed to shit anyway. If it ends up on CD it's being reduced to 16bit/44.1 khz or worse, mp3. If it's played in a club, chances are the PA system doesn't have enough frequency range to reproduce the song accurately(even most of the major venues are harsh at the top end) and is being compressed on top of that.

Still with all of this, as musicians, engineers, producers and dj's we strive to make things sound the best they can possibly be with the equipment we have at hand. That says a lot about the ears of a sonic craftsman versus the ears of a regular consumer or the average punter.

that's my 2 cents.

cheers!

[3phase]

I hear it with a single track..the level trick is important to focus your listening ... But of cause its much more drastical in a mix..

Please tell me..what computer and audiointerface are you using?

thanks
Sven

I agree, it can be heard with a single track if your hearing is acute enough but IMHO, the difference in painfully evident when summing a large number of tracks. I use at home a powerbook and digidesign mbox and at work i could be using anything from a Protools HD or Mix system on a high end G4 going through a dangerous 2Bus to a Metric Halo, RME or crappy little audiophile card on a G5. I don't really deal with windows PC's but am considering one for personal use.

It´s interesting that sofar the only guy that backs up my experiance here is on a mac aswell.. that of cause can have other reasons than a apple problem..but its however worth to investigate... Do you mind to do a statement in my poll in this forum here?

I agree that dedicated hardware mixing desks have a better stand than a software.. But when its all code on DAW´s mixing bus there might be improovments possible for Ableton Live...
I think its just important to show a demand for that.
I wish a high quality mode for the mixbusses.

In the moment it looks like that the userbase would prefer midi to audio freezes and other toys and dont has problems with sound issues at all.
Actually the reason why this little sound quality discussion happens in this thread.

There was some threads regarding soundquality allready, but the critics was allways outnumbered drastical so that Ableton probably got the impression that the critics are just theese sour people that hear the gras growing and never will be satisfied with a product...

This is however wrong to me..i went to thru the real rockn roll school where gaffa tape is your best friend and good sounding records get produced with
minimal equipment effort... I only critzise when i see a real need for it.
And soundquality is a basic foundation of a DAW...timing and soundquality..The rest are features.

regards
Sven

[serotoninsteve]

Is tracktion 2 the only DAW that can do 64bit?

Then mixing a lot off tracks toghether in T2 should sound better as in other progs?

Would be nice if we could switch to 64bit in Live, if your ressources would allow that.

Greetings