MusicTech review: Live 6 lacks audio quality!!

melocoton · Post by **melocoton** » Mon Oct 02, 2006 11:02 pm

Wait wait wait.. all plugins don't sound the same? I thought if something was called "reverb" it would sound identical to every other device called "reverb." Shocking.

Anyway, to do a real comparison you should also probably use mono files because different programs have different panning laws and a mix will end up sounding slightly different which will lead someone to conclude some b.s. like "Logic has much better imaging than live".

Tarekith · Post by **Tarekith** » Mon Oct 02, 2006 11:03 pm

Panning laws made no difference in the test I did BTW, SX was set to the same as Live (-3dB if I remember correctly).

melocoton · Post by **melocoton** » Mon Oct 02, 2006 11:16 pm

Sorry, that comment wasn't aimed at you specifically. Just throwing that out there.

shotsi673 · Post by **shotsi673** » Mon Oct 02, 2006 11:30 pm

Machinate wrote:
the unknown wanderer wrote:it does sound different to logic i must say
proove it

I can vouch for this. Logic is far superior when it comes to (perceived) audio quality. But Live is still a fantastic application.
One thing I have noticed is that while I have to turn up the volume in Live the record levels are truer than those in Logic. The audio sensitivity in Logic is more acute making mixing and overdubbing more responsive but when recorded the levels are low such that I need to normalise the file. And this is using exactly the same settings in my audio interface.

tottigoool · Post by **tottigoool** » Mon Oct 02, 2006 11:33 pm

I don't know where the problem is. Monolake uses only Ableton Live and the results are high end. There is no quality difference between Logic, Cubase or Ableton Live. All that stuff are professional tools for creating music and there is only the musician to make the difference.

melocoton · Post by **melocoton** » Mon Oct 02, 2006 11:34 pm

Tarekith wrote:Panning laws made no difference in the test I did BTW, SX was set to the same as Live (-3dB if I remember correctly).

And now I just read your other thread. Good stuff! Thanks for the systematic approach.

the unknown wanderer · Post by **the unknown wanderer** » Mon Oct 02, 2006 11:42 pm

agreed

i was not saying logic is better than live just that the bundled plugs sound different!!!!!!!!!!!!

each has their own merits......truth be told i use live more..... infact all these tunes are made usung live as a sequencer

www.myspace.com/theunknownwanderer

Spiralgroove · Post by **Spiralgroove** » Mon Oct 02, 2006 11:46 pm

im so sick of hearing this "live lacks quality" stuff whenever it pops up
every time i play my stuff for another producer they ask "what do you use?"
they dont say "that sounds like Ableton"
so even if it does sound different its not something people can pinpoint
unless you want to talk about the "sound" of certain presets
or warping effects and that is a whole different ballgame

Tarekith · Post by **Tarekith** » Mon Oct 02, 2006 11:52 pm

When discussing Live's audio quality, there's only two factors that can degrade the sound:

- Effects. Live's effects are geared towards live use, thus lighter on the CPU, and probably not as accurate or transparent as SOME other plug ins. Obviously using high quality third party plug ins for production work resolves this issue.

- Warping. Obviously if you need to warp audio, it's going to have some effect on the source audio, plain and easy for anyone to hear. This isn't bad per se, just a side effect of any warping that's efficient enough to use in real time. Solutions: Don't use warping if you don't need to. If you're arrangeing individual drum hits, turn off warping for those parts. If you're recording audio (guitar, live synths, vocals) into a song in progress, it doesn't need to be warped, as you most likely have the tempo set anyway. Turn off warping for those parts.

If you need to time stretch something for the song, another possibility is doing it offline in another app like Prosoniq's Time Factory (same stretch algorithm as SX's MPEX btw.), then bring it into your song. To be honest, I've found that using a combination of warped and non-wapred samples typically covers up the "dulling" effect warping can have.

My guess is MusicTech had a bunch of loops in their test song, all of which were warped somehow. This DOES lend itself to loss of clarity and high end (slightly). Using a few cymbal samples (for instance) that aren't warped however, can solve this as suddenly you once more have digital audio in your song that retains all of it's frequency range. Obviously they have to be high quality samples in the first place. A 12 bit 808 HH is not going to do anything

hoffman2k · Post by **hoffman2k** » Tue Oct 03, 2006 4:49 am

MusicTech magazine

You said enough there

They hire "pro's" to write the article. What did you expect?
The experts in Live are apperently overqualified

nolus · Post by **nolus** » Tue Oct 03, 2006 5:55 am

Anyone with a web browser, could have hacked together that review from press releases and speculation on internet music forums.

I got the distinct impression they hadn't even tried the program in any serious way - if at all - maybe just enough to get the screen shots.

SubFunk · Post by **SubFunk** » Tue Oct 03, 2006 6:34 am

rolfski wrote:

"Although the relative audio quality of the various sequencers is a controversial subject, in our experiences mixes made in Live can suffer a bit in overall crispness and clarity; this difference can be heard if the individual audio tracks are exported one at a time and then imported into another sequencer for mixing."

Has anyone also experienced this? If true this would be a major bummer for me. Sad

+1 absolut my experience / ear messurement. [not techtalk, numbers] concerning all yet existing versions of Live.

that said, i don't think that it concerns any of electronic purists / sample based producers, for that it really doesn't matter at all... who cares, the difference is very small and this music mainly being palyed on mediocre in mono set up PAs in clubs [good club PAs are always mono!] or iPods / homecomputer speakers / cars stereos / etc.

or on mediocre monitors set-up in untreated bedrooms for comparision to other DAWs for that matter!!

MrYellow · Post by **MrYellow** » Tue Oct 03, 2006 6:56 am

Yes it's true. Logic does sound better then Live.

UNLESS

You turn Live up to be the same volume as Logic

Louder stuff sounds better.....

Panning Law.

http://www.teragon.org/wiki/index.php?t ... _others.3F

How Live could sound worse then any other DAW with Saturator being
available is beyond me!!! With a saturator and a bit of playing with EQ or
whatever Live sounds MASSIVE, all from low-CPU inbuilt effects!

-Ben

nolus · Post by **nolus** » Tue Oct 03, 2006 7:00 am

to paraphrase:

SubFunk wrote:
... light fuse and retreat to a safe distance ...

SubFunk · Post by **SubFunk** » Tue Oct 03, 2006 7:03 am

nolus wrote:to paraphrase:
SubFunk wrote:
... light fuse and retreat to a safe distance ...

??? my mothertongue is NOT english, i understand chinese.

can someone help me out here and translate that into english for foreigners?