Live 7 improved audio engine?

noisetonepause · Post by **noisetonepause** » Mon Dec 03, 2007 8:12 pm

Johnisfaster wrote:
Robert Henke wrote:64bit summing: no difference to 32 bit summing AFAIK.
I hate to ask this (for fear that it's been covered and I didn't notice it) but if it makes no difference then why is it there?

Because some people, most of whom don't do a lot of computer programming, will be impressed by it.

Timur · Post by **Timur** » Mon Dec 03, 2007 9:24 pm

Robert Henke wrote:Well, Timur,
we had long long internal discussions about this, since indeed a lot of energy went into the improvement of the audio engine. However, there was a huge pressure to improve things, even if I still believe the reason why people assumed Live sounded bad had nothing at all to do with the summing or the sample rate conversion. It was routed in the notion of Live as a "loop tool", it was routed in the artefacts created by timestrech and those factors. But, for the psychology of the users it is very important to know that the application we deliver is state of the art. It does not matter if this has any effect even on a single bit in a renderd file. If the changes in the audio engine give our users a better feeling and helps ending some of those previously endless discussions which mainly create *fear* amongst users, it will pay off.

I wasn't around when these discussions where happening, but I think I have read enough on this forum to get the point. I don't think many professional producer/musician shares this fear though, it's mostly the masses (of customers?) of amateurs. A friend of mine finished his last record with Live 6 alone (plus Mastering by another gifted hand with other tools), he finished the record before with Fruity Loops. The Live made record was reviewed by german magazine Keys (see below, sorry for the advertisement, but it's worth listening to his tracks anyway

) and you wont find any comment on substandard sound-quality. Actually my collaboration with him is the reason I have started to use Live at all. And the reason why I am so active on this forum atm is because I spend alot of time on learning my new digital tools including Live and try to learn as much from the experienced users on the forum as possible. Taking part in the 64 vs 32-bit discussion is partly out of curiosity and partly out of the desire to learn the facts (aka learn the tools).

Autoaggression pleases electronica lovers with a new release. "Artefacts" contains what the title promises: digital soundfragments, sample-grains and sharpedged rhythmnloops, which are put together with the precision of a clockmaker by chief-aggressor Lukas Schneider, until they come to life as very unique electronic compositions. The finely graven soundtextures call for concentrated listening - but only untill the third title pulls the surprised listener to the dancefloor. "Artefacts" refuses to be just a minimalistic Ambient album, but offers industrial fans, friends of glitch and even techno disciples music to enjoy. The connenction between those variing eleven tracks is the precise detail work by Lukas Schneider, who puts with "Artefacts" an exclamation mark behind the word "electro". (wus)

I am not so sure about samplerate-conversion, that can be a delicate matter and proper SRC eats lots of CPU (more than half of Creative's million-transistor X-Fi chip is only busy doing SRC). Concerning 64-bit vs. 32-bit it should be clear that the main practical benefit can only be seen when summing lots of tracks/effects. I do wonder however if the higher resolution aka more in-between steps shouldn't lead to less aliasing/quantisation noise in the audible range even with only a few signals when complex effects are used. Digital steppings can be tricky for something that is so much bound to "feeling right" as Audio/Music is. After resampling to 16-bit without dithering or even MP3 it wont matter anymore anyway I guess.

It is not that i cannot understand the motivation to aim for best possible sound quality, it is just that in my experience good sound has nothing to do at all with 32bit versus 64 bit. Good sound is possible with 12 bit and analog equipment from the 1950s.

I agree on the analog equipment and also agree on the 12 bit part as far as electronic music is concerned. It does become lots more difficult with acoustic instruments and vocals though. Not so much because of missing headroom, but because of really ugly artefacts (or nice artefacts depending on what sound you seek

).

The reason, why it became so difficult to achive good sound is the fact that we have so many tools. Instead of spending half a life practicing how to place a microphone best in front of an instrument we assume that some tool will do the work for us and that we need at least five EQs and three compressors in series to achive a good sound. The risk that we do something wrong here is incredibly high. If we had no compressors or EQs all we could do is listen, move the microphone and listening again. This is what's missing. So, after we all know now that Live 7 sounds okay, we could try to explore what we can do with it.

Well, most of your customers expect the tools (Live, Virtual Instruments, Effects, the digital realm in general) to be easy to handle, like owning a car that can drive mostly on its own as long as you don't try to win races with it. They don't realize that there is a reason to call audio-craftsmen "engineers", even in the digital age.

On the other hand that was my point with the last post, as you have noticed yourself alot of people on this forum seem to be quite happy with the overal quality that Live had delivered before 7, but are now very happy that they don't have to buy third-party Compressors and some other stuff. But especially those people who already knew of Live's quality and also knew "what we can do with it" would have prefered to see the energy spend on 64-bit summing to be put in workflow improvements.

Personally - I still own no licence - I think that I have come just at the right time to start working with Live. The change to 64-bit is right and fit, Live is upto-date as far as the numbers are concerned and since 64-bit floating-point computing does not come with any considerable drawbacks anymore we should use the best precision we can get (96 kHz sampling still poses a problem though, so its a welcome addition to have oversampling on plugin/effect basis instead of the whole signal path). The Drum Racks and External Instruments, good Compression and good Oversaturation are the real deal for me (most likely I will buy a VST Compressor or keep using an analog compressor for recording anyway). These add possibilities for adding external Gear (physical and virtual) and affecting external sound like no other Live version before. And that is very nice for all of us who do more than just 4-to-the-floor electronic music.

Thanks for your elaborate answer!

sans soleil · Post by **sans soleil** » Mon Dec 03, 2007 9:57 pm

well...fwiw: i had no idea they'd made improvements to the audio engine and noticed a difference pretty quickly (i was working on sets that had been created in live 6; many of them use fairly dense layers of textures)...i then went and checked the forum to see if that was indeed the case.

apparently it is.

Briangoodman · Post by **Briangoodman** » Mon Dec 03, 2007 10:18 pm

Robert Henke wrote:wow, still a sound quality discussion!

some of the best sounding productions ever made in the last 30 years were recorded on vinyl, with a headroom around sixty db.

Yes, Live 7 sounds better. We can meassure it. The difference is in a range below -130dB. If you believe you can hear this, fine.

It is sad, that the music industry and press managed to get people into a complete absurd race for technical data that has nothing to do with : making music.

Cheers, Robert

There will always be a sound quality discussion because working with the daw is a new concept still. It is still in infancy compared to the analog model which has been tested and improved over the space of sixty years by some very smart people that had to use their ears as well as their knowledge.

I very much appreciate you teling it like it is and what you say is the engine has been improved. I would rephrase and say computer code has been changed and we can measure the improvement. You dont say or claim you can hear the improvement like the people here who have ben given BIONIC EARS and have been aggressive to me as if I am some stupid person not able to understand my own instinct and ears. .It has been my point and i believe it to be hype made by software people and the magazines, although strange to see you write its the magazines but I think I understand where your coming from. Its like saying we have improved the carbon emission of the car by 0.000000001%. I just dont think the tree in my garden - the forest - the continet - planet or the beaver and worm that burrows in my hedge will notice.

Briangoodman · Post by **Briangoodman** » Mon Dec 03, 2007 10:19 pm

Pasha wrote:
Robert Henke wrote: It is sad, that the music industry and press managed to get people into a complete absurd race for technical data that has nothing to do with : making music.
Well said.
One day Mr Henke we'll be quoted in the school books.
This is exactly my feeling. Thanks to have it expressed in such a clear way.
I'm probably within the ones who weren't able to much any Trevor Horn production.... but I like the way Live 7 sounds

yes and you must have liked the sound of live 6 just as much

Briangoodman · Post by **Briangoodman** » Mon Dec 03, 2007 10:24 pm

Johnisfaster wrote:
Robert Henke wrote:64bit summing: no difference to 32 bit summing AFAIK.
I hate to ask this (for fear that it's been covered and I didn't notice it) but if it makes no difference then why is it there?

yes exactly but the answer is in his words regarding media.

Briangoodman · Post by **Briangoodman** » Mon Dec 03, 2007 10:28 pm

Tone Deft wrote:
Robert wrote:Yes, Live 7 sounds better. We can measure it. The difference is in a range below -130dB.

did you mistype that? that reads as saying that the difference between 6 and 6 is very very small AND 7 sounds better?? that statement reads as 6 and 7 sounding very very very similar.

No he didnt mistype it. Look at you just trying to cover your behind. Yesterday you were claiming the diiference is obvious and I tried to tell you it wasnt obvious at all and I will say this to any fool who makes a big quote saying its is obvious.

Well you must have the bionic ears then

Caymus Cab · Post by **Caymus Cab** » Mon Dec 03, 2007 10:34 pm

not to get in the middle of all this tech talk,...
i would consider myself to be an amateur at this (writing music w/ computers), and I like it this way... but
i definitely hear a difference, its almost as clear as day to me.. maybe your monitors?

Briangoodman · Post by **Briangoodman** » Mon Dec 03, 2007 10:35 pm

Tone Deft wrote:thanks for your insight Robert.

I just get into these because I believe I get where the discussion is bounded, these guys are easy to handle.

oh oh oh hmmm robert oh Hmmm Robert hmghmphhh

What do you mean guys like me are easy to handle. What is your problem with me sir. I have been nice and corteus to you at every step of the way but enough is enough. Do you think the amount of times you make statements on this website entitles you to call people names you dont know and then say Oh I know how to handle these guys.

Just who the hell are you and what exactly do you do in the music making game. You look to me like someone obsessed with making your self look important to people here. I think people should be alerted to your fraudulent styled demeanour.

You have not handled me at all and I stick by everything I say. Take your bionic ears out of the equation please.

OK You understand me now

Briangoodman · Post by **Briangoodman** » Mon Dec 03, 2007 10:38 pm

Caymus Cab wrote:not to get in the middle of all this tech talk,...
i would consider myself to be an amateur at this (writing music w/ computers), and I like it this way... but
i definitely hear a difference, its almost as clear as day to me.. maybe your monitors?

More Bionic Ears. I believe you hear what you wish to hear I have done it my self before I think we all have. I dont hold it against anyone and that is the truth because it makes no difference to me at all. I can only trust me reasonable monitors and what experience I have and im fine with that.

Johnisfaster · Post by **Johnisfaster** » Mon Dec 03, 2007 10:39 pm

Caymus Cab wrote:not to get in the middle of all this tech talk,...
i would consider myself to be an amateur at this (writing music w/ computers), and I like it this way... but
i definitely hear a difference, its almost as clear as day to me.. maybe your monitors?

jesus christ.....

placebo

Timur · Post by **Timur** » Mon Dec 03, 2007 10:51 pm

I do not think we should call everyone suffering to Placebo that claims hearing a different between an older audio-engine with old effects and a major overhaul with both a new engine running under the hood plus new effects. Problem with our discussions is that many of those people who state that they hear a difference do not/cannot state clearly under what circumstance they hear the difference.

If they hear difference when rendering a track to disc with dithering then I am very inclined to believe them. If they hear a difference when using any of the benefitial improvements to Live's plugins which even at same settings as in Live 6 might use different algorithms then I am again very inclined to believe them. As far as pure summing up and routing out to speakers at (mostly today) 24-bit is concerned then we have to partly trust what Robert says but also need to do some comparison tests by experienced Live users who have both versions at hand. (Sorry Robert, but you know: Trust is good, control is better.

)

And these tests do serve a purpose more than to please curiosity or ego, they can reveal errors/bugs within the deepest realms of the audio-engine. During Beta Nebulae compared some Live 6 sets with Live 7 and it turned out that the new Compressor had a bug that lead to time-shifts on sample-basis which in turn made the rendered tracks of both versions differ from each other. Had we not tried to compare the audio-engines of both versions then we probably no one would have found that bug.

radib · Post by **radib** » Mon Dec 03, 2007 11:01 pm

it basically sounds the same as before, aside the improvement or changes of devices. but its no surprise that people who paid for this minor and loveless update want to justify their payment and use their imagination to believe there is any difference but the number of the "factsheet"/advertisment paper.

mr.adl · Post by **mr.adl** » Mon Dec 03, 2007 11:03 pm

Has there been a blind test on this allready? Would be nice!!

Tone Deft · Post by **Tone Deft** » Mon Dec 03, 2007 11:36 pm

Briangoodman wrote:
Tone Deft wrote:
Robert wrote:Yes, Live 7 sounds better. We can measure it. The difference is in a range below -130dB.

did you mistype that? that reads as saying that the difference between 6 and 6 is very very small AND 7 sounds better?? that statement reads as 6 and 7 sounding very very very similar.
No he didnt mistype it. Look at you just trying to cover your behind. Yesterday you were claiming the diiference is obvious and I tried to tell you it wasnt obvious at all and I will say this to any fool who makes a big quote saying its is obvious.

Well you must have the bionic ears then

nope, I wrote over and over and over and over again that if YOU can't tell the difference then you know 7 doesn't sound worse, so why does it matter. there are other factors to consider with Live 7. I have never once written that Live 7 sounds better than anything else.