Live audio quality?

[Michael-SW]

Mixing desks sound different because they use different hardware. DAWs sound exactly the same because they are all using the same mathematical algorithms.

Their plugin suites sounds different of course, but that is not the same thing.

[mkelly]

Mixing desks sound different because they use different hardware. DAWs sound exactly the same because they are all using the same mathematical algorithms.

But do they all use the same mathematical algorithms?

[jez3122]

Yeah but dude, to be fair to Krisstoff, the search on this forum is practically worthless. It's not like you can type in something like "ableton live audio quality" and get what you want quickly. I just did that search and got 77 thousand fucking results. The number one result returned was "what was the name of that eric b and rakim song..."

Yes it's been asked a million times, yes he could have found the answer probably not more than a few pages deep into this forum, but in my experience, you can't expect phpBB's search function to be worth a shit.

+1 It really is fuckin Shit!

[ze2be]

Yeah but dude, to be fair to Krisstoff, the search on this forum is practically worthless. It's not like you can type in something like "ableton live audio quality" and get what you want quickly. I just did that search and got 77 thousand fucking results. The number one result returned was "what was the name of that eric b and rakim song..."

Yes it's been asked a million times, yes he could have found the answer probably not more than a few pages deep into this forum, but in my experience, you can't expect phpBB's search function to be worth a shit.

Well, you can google it: audio quality ableton forum

[mkelly]

Well, you can google it: audio quality ableton forum

Try this instead:
"audio quality" +site:www.ableton.com/forum

The +site:www.ableton.com/forum should limit responses to that URL only. I used quotes round "audio quality" to avoid the major failing of the forum search engine - that if the word audio and the word quality are on the same page then it counts as a match, despite not being together.

[forge]

I'm getting a feeling of deja vu

[forge]

I'm getting a feeling of deja vu

[brightonalex]

Midget Enya House.

[Robert Henke]

Mixing desks sound different because they use different hardware. DAWs sound exactly the same because they are all using the same mathematical algorithms.

(...)

This is not really true, there are surprisingly many ways to do the same thing. The differences are just not where you would expect them if you have no expert knowledge, and they are all in a range way below of what I personally believe is audible.

Of course summing two or more tracks in every DAW is output = a+b+c+d, where a = signal of track a * volume of track a . So it is impossible to introduce here compression or any change in frequency response, and the dynmanic range if you do this with normal floating point mathematics is allready super big, not talking about the headroom if you do it with 64bit resolution.

But there are other details: if you draw a volume automation curve and this curve has a sharp edge theory says that this edge introduces nonlinear distortions to the signal. A good example for this is what is called "zipper noise" when moving a MIDI fader on a cheap audio processor.MIDI resolution is 128 steps. If you move a fader assigned to volume and you do no further smoothing you will get a bit of noise every time a new value comes in. In order to avoid this you have to create a smooth ramp instead of a sharp edge. This is known and every DAW manufacturer of course does some kind of ramping. But this is nothing where you can look up the one perfect way to do it in some research paper and every company does it like that. Instead it is always a compromise between reaction speed, cpu usage, and resulting quality. Some of our competitors are quite conservative here, they do very long ramps. This minimizes distortion but also makes all automation a bit floppy. Others prefer punchy automation, and as a result are more likely to introduce more distortion. Unless they use a more intelligent alogortihm. Which east more CPU or introduces latency... and so on.

This is just one example. There are probably a dozend places in a DAW where there is a potential differerence. So, yes, they all do sound different. But it is important to understand that this is a very very accademic way to look at it, because as mentoned before, the effects are in a range of -120db if things are really bad and maybe -160dB typically. Every active speaker introduces a noise floor way above this, every microphone has less dynamic range, not talking about a typical recording environment.

I personally would judge a DAW by all kinds of things but certainly not buy its meassured sound quality. Much more important is: do i like the way the EQs works, am i fine with the compressor, can i use my favourite plug ins with it and so on. This is what will shape the sound of my productions and not the ramping algorithm.

Robert

[Tarekith]

Robert would it be fair to say that even though most of the errors you talk about might be -120dBFS in a worst case scenario, it's still something people might need to be interested in as these errors are cumulative?

I'd agree that distortion that low is likely inaudible, but when you start summing many tracks that contain this, or doing multiple processes that add add additional distortion, then it becomes more of any issue, no? Dither for instance is nothing but noise that resides in this portion of the dynamic range, but it's well known that you want to use dither once, and last, to avoid cumulatively adding dither noise to a file, and thus making it more easily audible. Is noise generated by a DAW different in this regard?

Not disagreeing, just looking for some insight.

[mkelly]

I'm getting a feeling of deja vu

Apologies if I was duplicating the +site tip - I know there was a thread on the forum search recently, but I didn't see that tip mentioned when I was reading it then.

[forge]

I'm getting a feeling of deja vu

Apologies if I was duplicating the +site tip - I know there was a thread on the forum search recently, but I didn't see that tip mentioned when I was reading it then.

he he..no I meant the thread topic

I think Tone Deft might have made a comment the other day about putting the top 10 recurring questions somewhere

An FAQ section isn't a bad idea really - in fact it was added to "the great ABleton to-do list" about 50 million years ago and will probably never happen

so for now the tips and tricks sticky and the WIKIs are good places to direct people as most of these things have been put there at some point

but as you have just witnessed, it is not always beneficial to be that anal as every now and then someone like Robert might feel like chiming in with some solid hardcore science!

[rikhyray]

Kriss had lots of warped clips so that is rather obvious why he heard the difference. Why being rude? Few posts only, that obvious enough he does not have to know all that what might seem obvious. I guess he is more interested that his music sounds the best it could, pseudo scientific experiments with cancellations wont help. I guess once he changes some from beat to tone or rerecord, and leaves unwarped, will hear that it is not all that bad.
The whole thing of being pro is not about some higher caste or superiority. It is simply for people who pay their bills working as musicians, delivering, all what counts is the endresult and achieving it as quickly and well as possible, specially that most of us are underpaid (or feel they are underpaid). I personally wouldnt advice anyone to become pro musician, barrister or medical doctor are definitely better for anyones future and position in a society
Whatever it takes, if Robert would write that keeping a glass of bier,beer or a bear next to my computer would help to get better sound I would surely try to do that, and not try to vivisect the bear or drink that beer ( at least not before the final mixdown). Anyway as vegetarian, the idea of vivisecting a bear is not very appealing to me.

[Robert Henke]

Robert would it be fair to say that even though most of the errors you talk about might be -120dBFS in a worst case scenario, it's still something people might need to be interested in as these errors are cumulative?

I'd agree that distortion that low is likely inaudible, but when you start summing many tracks that contain this, or doing multiple processes that add add additional distortion, then it becomes more of any issue, no? Dither for instance is nothing but noise that resides in this portion of the dynamic range, but it's well known that you want to use dither once, and last, to avoid cumulatively adding dither noise to a file, and thus making it more easily audible. Is noise generated by a DAW different in this regard?

Not disagreeing, just looking for some insight.

I will skip the dithering answer, since it would mean i spend two hours explaining , but for the rest:

Honestly, i don't know if there is a realistic chance that those effects under very special circumstances become audible. But since working with a DAW is an iterative process, I would assume that a user who is capeable to hear such things will also automatically change the mix in a way that the effect is not a problem.
What is music and what is distortion? This is the very first question. Everything appart from a pure sinewave can be regarded as a distorted signal. So, if the DAW adds a specific character, you either like it, or you notch it out by filtering a bit differently without even noticing. I would go one step further: Good sounding effects will even more introduce nonlinearities in the future. What confuses users of DAWs is the lack of warmth, the lack of nonlinearity. They sound too clean in comparison to an analog desk / tape recorder.

Robert

[Michael-SW]

Mixing desks sound different because they use different hardware. DAWs sound exactly the same because they are all using the same mathematical algorithms.

(...)

This is not really true, there are surprisingly many ways to do the same thing. The differences are just not where you would expect them if you have no expert knowledge, and they are all in a range way below of what I personally believe is audible.

Of course summing two or more tracks in every DAW is output = a+b+c+d, where a = signal of track a * volume of track a . So it is impossible to introduce here compression or any change in frequency response, and the dynmanic range if you do this with normal floating point mathematics is allready super big, not talking about the headroom if you do it with 64bit resolution.

(...)

Robert

I was referring to the straight summing/mixing, as the original comparison was to analog mixing desks. Automation, the default plugin suite and a host of other things might of course introduce a sonic character of its own.