Question: Ableton Live 9 and FLAC

[kyo_acid]

Hi all,

This is my first post!!!

I want to know if Ableton Live 9 can render/record to FLAC file type.

Anyone know?
Thanks.

[BobSubgenius]

Hi kyo_acid, Live can only do wav and aiff, nothing else. Not even mp3 unfortunately.
Hope to see that in a future release as well.

[kyo_acid]

Hi kyo_acid, Live can only do wav and aiff, nothing else. Not even mp3 unfortunately.
Hope to see that in a future release as well.

Woah, I am very surprised by that. I'll be adding that to the wish-list part of the forum on here.
Looks like i'll have to convert .WAV to .FLAC after rendering from Ableton. What a pain!!!

Thanks for clearing that up for me.

Much appreciated indeed.

PS - AIFF? my old Amiga's work in that file format ;P

[BobSubgenius]

AIFF is the standard audio format on Apple computers (like WAV on windows).
But still yes, I often have to quickly send a music file where quality isn't the most important and it always annoys me that I have to use a third party app to convert the file. The Ableton forum is full of complaints about that since years, hope they include that feature sometime.

[kyo_acid]

AIFF is the standard audio format on Apple computers (like WAV on windows).
But still yes, I often have to quickly send a music file where quality isn't the most important and it always annoys me that I have to use a third party app to convert the file. The Ableton forum is full of complaints about that since years, hope they include that feature sometime.

Yeah, I just got this:

http://www.nch.com.au/switch/index.html ... wwodWK8AyA

Seem alright.

FYI, AIFF (which is based on .IFF) was created by Electronic Arts in the late 1980's, apple used that. It is also the standard for the Commadore Amgia!!!

[BobSubgenius]

What I wanted to point out is that there is no difference in quality between wav and aiff.
They both are uncompressed PCM formats and speaking in terms of computer development rather old.
Your post sounded like aiff was some outdated format, that's why I wrote this.
I don't know about the exact difference between IFF (Amiga) and AIFF (Apple).

[kyo_acid]

What I wanted to point out is that there is no difference in quality between wav and aiff.
They both are uncompressed PCM formats and speaking in terms of computer development rather old.
Your post sounded like aiff was some outdated format, that's why I wrote this.
I don't know about the exact difference between IFF (Amiga) and AIFF (Apple).

I'm returning to making music from years away from it, I was just totally amazed that anyone would still use AIFF, I used to make music on Amiga you see (as well a bunch of other stuff) - it was always good though. I'd have thought that better formats would exist, that's all

Anyway, a better format does exist, FLAC, I hope Ableton take it on.
I realise that the quality is no better, i'm looking to save my HD space and processing/rendering time.

PS - there is no real difference between .IFF and .AIFF - you could import 'apple' AIFF to an Amiga right now with no difficulty.

[jestermgee]

For the same reason Live doesn't directly work with MP3 files is the same reason it won't work with FLAC files. It is a compressed format which has to first be decoded to be used and when decoding files on the fly while also applying processing (on the fly) adds a lot of extra stress cycles to the humble little CPU worker.

Working with uncompressed files means more processor power for the rest of software. Video editing software is the same thing. Though you can sometimes work with compressed files you typically take the direct RAW footage from the camera in HUGE sizes and work directly with that.

[BobSubgenius]

@ jestermgee: I thought kyo_acid meant rendering the entire project to flac and not internal recording (maybe I understood the question wrong).
Working with a compressed format would make no sense of course, not only because of higher load on the processor but also for quality reasons.
I wouldn't even want Live to internally work with 16 bit audio (it uses 32 bit) because of quality loss when processing recordings.

It is just that I often have to send a quick preview of something I'm making and don't like the extra step of using a third party application. So I would be happy if Live could render my final project to wav, aiff and mp3. Logic does that for example.
Just a little time-saver, that's all.

@kyo_acid: Cool, didn't know that about the Amiga I grew up gaming on a C64, some friends had Amiga 500's No experience in music making on them though I have been using Ableton for some years now on a more or less daily basis, it's a great software.

[kyo_acid]

@ jestermgee: I thought kyo_acid meant rendering the entire project to flac and not internal recording (maybe I understood the question wrong).
Working with a compressed format would make no sense of course, not only because of higher load on the processor but also for quality reasons.
I wouldn't even want Live to internally work with 16 bit audio (it uses 32 bit) because of quality loss when processing recordings.

It is just that I often have to send a quick preview of something I'm making and don't like the extra step of using a third party application. So I would be happy if Live could render my final project to wav, aiff and mp3. Logic does that for example.
Just a little time-saver, that's all.

@kyo_acid: Cool, didn't know that about the Amiga I grew up gaming on a C64, some friends had Amiga 500's No experience in music making on them though I have been using Ableton for some years now on a more or less daily basis, it's a great software.

Hi, Im getting into Ableton now. I use LOTS of hardware (synths etc) so its the MIDI and then audio processing im interested in, and Ableton does that well.
You were absolutely correct mate - I am just talking about the final render - Ableton needs to be able to render to FLAC for sure.

[jestermgee]

Sorry, my bad. Certainly read it wrong. A FLAC on render would be a nice option.