Ooooooook, The great debate - tip-toed around for too long

robbmasters · Post by **robbmasters** » Tue Apr 20, 2004 2:19 pm

Anonymous wrote:well, I for one think Live's quality of sound is great. I don't time-stretch anything

Well, yes - anything's going to sound great if you're just playing back the original audio!

I think its a bit unfair to diss Live's sound quality just because it doesn't time stretch like others.

I diagree completely. Since real-time time-stretching is Live's biggest selling point, it needs to be better at it. It should be at least as good as Acid (popular opinion is that it isn't - but I don't use Acid myself). I'd like it to be at least as good as my CDJ-1000s, and I can see no reason why it shouldn't be - these also have to time-stretch in real-time too, and they don't have as much of an opportunity to look ahead (as the data transfer rate will be slower than it would be from a hard drive).

Just my opinion, though, of course.

Guest · Post by **Guest** » Tue Apr 20, 2004 2:41 pm

Anonymous wrote: Also, Live is fast & fun but the time stretching is not the best.
For that I use Melodyne. NO comparison.
Live does not do 'transient' detection like Acid, Apple Loops format, or Melodyne.

I think I read that Melodyne can only work with audio from a monophonic source - does this mean that its time stretching only works on this type of material ? Or can it time stretch anything ?

I'm interested in Melodyne Uno which is supposed to be realeased in May - I envisage using it to time stretch stuff that Live struggles with but if it can only handle monophonic source material, its usefulness will obviously be limited.

Guest · Post by **Guest** » Tue Apr 20, 2004 2:42 pm

Live is easier to work with but too much warping ruins stuff. give us VST instruments in Live and there's nothing else to discuss. record your own vstis and there is no stretching or warping issues cause its all at the same tempo when it gets recorded.

Mbazzy · Post by **Mbazzy** » Tue Apr 20, 2004 3:02 pm

Used AcidPro 2 &3 ... audioquality was deplorable ... so don't expect too much ... and Acid certainly is not a Live tool ... so in that respect you can't compare it ...

Regarding the timestretching, sometimes I think people are expecting too much for on the fly timestretching. I have "a faint suspicion" that normal use of Live isn't timestretching 16 or 32 bar samples ... reasonable results can be achieved with carefull warpmarkersetting and modechoice for long samples but we have to be realistic.

Melodyne can't do it either in real time .... and that's the stretch reference for realistic efx....

gaspode · Post by **gaspode** » Tue Apr 20, 2004 3:24 pm

I guess my philosophy is, if it works use it, and if it makes you more productive marry it

As far as melodyne... yeah it has to be monophonic for the algorythms to correctly detect pitch/formant and all that good stuff. But if you just want to take a drum line and fix the tempo or something, you can do that no problem... for that, Uno should work just fine for ya.

Guest · Post by **Guest** » Tue Apr 20, 2004 4:28 pm

Melodyne does do stereo... I guess the issue is with pitch detection(?)...
It also does stretching and MUCH more in real-time.... no problem there.
It's coming out witha Samples browser to trigger regions to your current comp to try out ideas...
etc...
Live really needs 'transient detection' to have better stretch fidelity. Hope they do it... it'll save me some big steps.
joe

gaspode · Post by **gaspode** » Tue Apr 20, 2004 5:27 pm

Monophonic does not mean mono...

Monophonic means... one note at a time.

So although you can have stereo monophonic samples... it cannot work with stereo polyphonic samples for pitch detection (ie chords, etc).

Just thought I'd clarify

steve-o · Post by **steve-o** » Wed Apr 21, 2004 5:17 am

VariPhrase spanks Live's timestretching sound quality. Like melodyne, it processess transients and formants - the key to working with vocals.

The true test of timstretching is vocals. Vocals immedietly display the limitations of timestretcing software.

steve-o · Post by **steve-o** » Wed Apr 21, 2004 5:23 am

But considering the total package - Warp Engine, Clip envelopes, session view, VST effect integration, Live presents itself as product with more depth and capability. I for one use a v-synth for time stretching, and Live as my audio sequencer. From what I hear, Logic 7 will have abelton live features. This should provide ableton with some incentive to improve the time stretching algorithm.

UKnowWho · Post by **UKnowWho** » Wed Apr 21, 2004 10:32 am

I still love the old Akai S950 for the totally alien artifacts it will impart on samples through shitty timestretching

.
Generally it's best to work withing a 5 - 10 % stretch ratio max either way.
Anything after that is just IMHO freeform slather for another form of effects processing.
Use stupendously huge time stretches with grain delays + reverb on some sounds you'll absolutely love the results.
IE:Instant Autchre style pads from vocal phonetics and the like.
Or stretching audio by 200% reversing it stretching back to the original size and reversing it back (doing an audio render between each stretch/reverse job) etc etc etc .....

matias · Post by **matias** » Wed Apr 21, 2004 2:22 pm

I use no timestrecthing at all, all plotted beatz, n record sound from my virus kc, etc etc, so timestrecthing doesnt apply to me, so..... there shuld be no sounddifference, ie, the same trak written in logic wont sound heaps heaps diferent to the same one in live, just the plugins give logic the edge???
yeah?

pixelmechanic · Post by **pixelmechanic** » Wed Apr 21, 2004 2:46 pm

Anonymous wrote:give us VST instruments in Live and there's nothing else to discuss. record your own vstis and there is no stretching or warping issues cause its all at the same tempo when it gets recorded.

Not necessarily so...

The whole point of live for me is that I can take stuff I recorded in session A at tempo A, and then give a new lease of life in session B at tempo B...I know you could run a sequence against yr session, but sometimes it's nice to "fix" stuff...

what I've started to do is bounce out my loops at a number of tempos i.e. one at the ideal tempo for the track at the time (could be between 85 -125 bpm)...and then one at 100bpm for use live in Live (which I find gives me a reasonable amount of "varispeed" options and makes it easier to mix and match loops...you'd be surprised how much you can pick up or drop pace without actually varying the tempo!)

main · Post by **main** » Wed Apr 21, 2004 5:07 pm

matias wrote:I use no timestrecthing at all, all plotted beatz, n record sound from my virus kc, etc etc, so timestrecthing doesnt apply to me, so..... there shuld be no sounddifference, ie, the same trak written in logic wont sound heaps heaps diferent to the same one in live, just the plugins give logic the edge???
yeah?

I am not sure if I understood right.

If I never use warpmarker and timestretching there is actually no sound difference to logic. But I produce my tracks at home at 130 bpm and at the club I prefer 135 bpm. There is a big problem difference I described before. Still artefacts or untight beats. And warping is Ableton biggest selling argument although it doesn't work proper.

I prefer Logic because of the dynamics (do you any other cheap and good working sidechain compressor on the market that not works on a frequency base as Live's one?), Platinum Verb is great, Phaser and Flanger too, Multiband Compressor and so on.
But the biggest point is the environment. It is so easy to create groups and this is one of my first steps when I start a song. And the screensets, shortcuts. Perfect UI.

Ooooooook, The great debate - tip-toed around for too long

Hmmm...

uhmm....