MusicTech review: Live 6 lacks audio quality!!

Tarekith · Post by **Tarekith** » Thu Oct 05, 2006 6:10 pm

Thank you Ingo!

knotkranky · Post by **knotkranky** » Thu Oct 05, 2006 6:52 pm

ingo wrote:Some remarks concerning unwarped playing
for warpmodes when the file tempo equals song tempo:

Unfortunately there is currently no indicator in the gui when
file tempo or song tempo are cut of after the second decimal.
So they might well differ a small amount, even though they
seem to be equal. This is what i assume to
be the case shown in the video.

In fact, even for such small differences in the tempo
this will not immediatly lead to warping for most warp modes,
they propably will make a different decision as to what grain
is played at some points but for most of the time will just
play unwarped with a constant sample offset resulting
from such decision.

There seems to be a quirk in the "tones" warper that
causes such an offset quite from the beginning.

"Repitch" starts pitching the sample to accomodate the
small tempo difference, and in effect diverts
more and more from the unwarped sample.

"Complex" mode is different from all others in that it
does no "grained" playing of the existing material.
It performs a time base analysis and transformation
of the input material. Furthermore "complex" also
does the resampling necessary for
sample rate conversion. In effect it diverts in almost all
cases from the "unwarped" sample.

Independed of the above i experienced single sample
offsets (from jitter) between warped and unwarped after subsequent
starting and stopping with "Shift+Space".

For the time being (meaning as long as there are no
envelopes for unwarped clips, no "clip tempo to song tempo" button)
i suggest the workaround:
- use more or less integral clip tempo
(equaling song tempo, naturally)
- use beats mode

I hope this was helpful,

regards, ingo

Great straight-forward helpful post. Thanks.

dj superflat · Post by **dj superflat** » Thu Oct 05, 2006 7:11 pm

thank you very, very much.

rasputin · Post by **rasputin** » Thu Oct 05, 2006 8:25 pm

I don't think you should take their reviews too seriously. Some might be OK, but for instance they gave Vocaloid Lola a 9/10 which was the most breathtakingly bad software I ever heard.

But on the other hand, their reviews of Live 3, 4, and 5 all got 9/10s as well, so they're not completely without clue.

rolfski · Post by **rolfski** » Sat Oct 07, 2006 5:58 pm

WOW! I just returned here after posting this topic a few days ago and it has become massive!

Haven't checked all pages but have we already seen any official point-of-view from the Abes on this issue?

mdk · Post by **mdk** » Sat Oct 07, 2006 6:01 pm

theres 'official info' just up there about warp modes and robert henke said that theres nothing different about live's summing compared to other DAW's and if there is, then its a bug. BUT no-ones found one yet..

just read tarekith's posts. he's done all the necessary testing to prove this.

the only issue is that the music tech reviewer is an idiot.

ruprecht · Post by **ruprecht** » Sat Oct 07, 2006 6:30 pm

Good talk.

So, is the conclusion that beats mode is the best choice when you want transparency for clips originally at the project tempo that need to be looped?

Tarekith · Post by **Tarekith** » Sat Oct 07, 2006 6:44 pm

Maybe not the "best", but safest IMO. Seems to be that's the only one no one's found even slight issues with so far.

mercyplease · Post by **mercyplease** » Sat Oct 07, 2006 8:47 pm

Why are you guys on a huge discussion about whether Lives warping affects sound quality. Of course it does isnt this obvious to your ears.
the question is about Lives general audio quality. If you warp nothing its the same as any daw. How good your mix comes out is wholly dependent on your skills and eq plugins. If you use only lives eqs and fx you will struggle to get a great sound.

mdk · Post by **mdk** » Sat Oct 07, 2006 9:13 pm

you kind of missed the point a bit.

the problem is you can only loop clips with warp on, so this brought about a question which was :

Does warping a clip which is AT THE SAME TEMPO AS THE MASTER TEMPO sound any different to when its not warped.

most people knows that in general warping changes the sound...

does no-one read around here?

Tarekith · Post by **Tarekith** » Sat Oct 07, 2006 9:51 pm

mercyplease wrote:Why are you guys on a huge discussion about whether Lives warping affects sound quality. Of course it does isnt this obvious to your ears.
the question is about Lives general audio quality. If you warp nothing its the same as any daw. How good your mix comes out is wholly dependent on your skills and eq plugins. If you use only lives eqs and fx you will struggle to get a great sound.

Maybe if you had read the discussion you'd know your post is completely missing the point of what we are talking about.

technatural · Post by **technatural** » Wed Oct 18, 2006 7:45 pm

I don't understand why everybody is ignoring there's a noticable different in sound in Live.. And no it's not just that it sounds 'different'. It lacks something...

I wonder how many people that say Live is as good as any other DAW actually worked with other DAW's?

I produce for about 12 years now. From analog gear to logic, cubase and Live.
I really love Live as a creative tool, but any mix i make lacks something.
And NO it's not the stretching.

I don't care about theoretical bullshit and audio tests that proove the quality is the same. I care about what i'm hearing.. And what i hear is that my productions in cubase or analog gear for instance sound so much better (no, not different)than productions i do in Live.

Ofcourse , it's also a matter of taste but i think it's really funny that most people i know that have experience with analog gear, cubase or logic experience the same..

It's also funny that most people that scream Live sounds just as good don't have any experience with anything else.. If you do i would love to hear your opinions

Peace

Tone Deft · Post by **Tone Deft** » Wed Oct 18, 2006 7:52 pm

technatural wrote:Ofcourse , it's also a matter of taste but i think it's really funny that most people i know that have experience with analog gear, cubase or logic experience the same..

It's also funny that most people that scream Live sounds just as good don't have any experience with anything else.. If you do i would love to hear your opinions

Using your logic and judging from all of your 16 posts could one make a case that you don't use Live enough to judge it?

What sounds good enough is relative and an exercise that's a never ending battle to empty your wallet. Fact is, there are major releases out that sound great done in Live. Bad production won't work on a good DAW, a good DAW can't hide bad production.

Phil Specter could do more with Fruity Loops in mono than I could do with a $100k Pro Tools system.

peeddrroo · Post by **peeddrroo** » Wed Oct 18, 2006 7:58 pm

ok, let me take an example: you're used to driving a ferrari, and easily reach 200km/h.
now you get a porsche, that is supposed to go as fast, but you don't manage to reach this speed.
are you going to say that porsches don't drive as fast as ferraris?

it may be that you're not used to the gas or clutch or whatever. maybe after sometime you'll reach 200 km/H. maybe you'll never manage to do that with a porsche cause you don't "feel" it.
to me, it's not a question of tool, really.
i moved from cubase to live. i'm happy with the sound i get from it. it took me some time to get used to it, but eventually i did.
i never managed to get something decent from reason. i know some ppl who do amazing stuff with it.
all this is completely subjective. if you've got facts, write them down. if you just write "this sounds better than that, i can feel it", then i'm sorry but you don't have a point.
get over it.

njh · Post by **njh** » Wed Oct 18, 2006 8:13 pm

i was going to buy this issue of music tech yesterday just because it had live on the cover. then i remembered that they just bad mouth live so i bought a pack of smokes instead.
btw.. there are only two programs i notice that have something wrong with the audio.. 1 is reason.. no matter how much i try to adjust a mix in reason i still hear a watery effect going on (i guess it would be channels cancling out other channels).
2 is fruity loops.. when i used to use fruity loops i would always notice the eq way off after i rendered a track.. everyting would sound great within fruity but once bounced to audio i would notice the whole mix off.

MusicTech review: Live 6 lacks audio quality!!

well

Re: well