Live 7 improved audio engine?

Discuss music production with Ableton Live.
Tone Deft
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Post by Tone Deft » Fri Dec 07, 2007 7:24 pm

Robert Henke wrote:****** We offer highest quality true analog background noise for a surprisingly low price ******
it's the Martin Hannett Live Pack of vintage Manchester silence.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zGA6rmsnDkQ

/off to play Impulse kits on the roof.
boom boom bop boom boom bop



seriously... would recording silence be a way to get dithering in the old school analog world?
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Afro88
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Post by Afro88 » Fri Dec 14, 2007 3:20 am

Wow, amazing how much the placebo effect does. We're about to mixdown a new track, and I did the mixdown in both 6 and 7. At the time, 7 sounded much better. However, loading both mixdowns into 7, lining them up exactly and crossfading between them there was no difference. The session doesn't use any Live effects (though does use vst effects extensively), all midi is bounced to audio and there are at least 10-15 tracks playing at once throughout (in a 50 track session). So it was basically the engine that was being tested, and to my ears as well as doing a phase inversion there was no difference.

Couldn't believe it, I was totally convinced that Live 7 sounded better when I was listening in realtime :lol:

Landser
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Post by Landser » Fri Dec 14, 2007 10:15 am

That's nothing new, that hearing is highly psychodependent.
Robert Henke already explained, why they had to implement the 64-Bit mixing engine - due to market reasons, not engineerig reasons.

Now, with your discoveries, i'd recommend to read and look at the advertisements about Sonar64 and the rest again. An important lesson for the whole life...

White loudspeakers sound thinner than black ones.

dj superflat
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Post by dj superflat » Fri Dec 14, 2007 6:10 pm

it's not necessarily even just placebo. most people ignore how much subtle differences in the orientation of the head between the monitors can affect sound. people will move all around a relatively untreated room, tweaking sounds, not realizing they're as likely tweaking in response to the differences in sound they're creating by moving about the room (which is why good studios are so expensive, good engineers/producers try to sit in exactly same place for listening, etc.).

3phase
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Post by 3phase » Fri Dec 14, 2007 6:42 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, and nonlinear distortions beyond words. Some of them were stored on 14 bit PCM tapes. Some of them were recorded on a ultra expensive digital workstation, the Synclavier, with a resolution: of 16 (!!!) bit per track, summed analog with all the additional nonlinear distortions and added noise.

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. But everyone who was not able to make a tune that outperforms a trevor horn production from the 1980s in terms of sound quality and mixing using Live 6 will not be able to do so in Live 7 or in any other software. Just the slightest EQing by a fraction of a db has a magnitude more of an influence to the sound. We are talking about music after all. Who gives a shit if a recording of a voice has an additional nonlinear distortion of -130dB. Is your music a perfect sinewave with infinite duration in the first place?

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
true..
technical data have nothing to do with music...

but nobody outperforms an 80´s big studio production with a stinking lowgrade daw and some plug ins... thats again pure polemik.
Reality in music produktion is still that most major and quality indy productions go over an analog mixing desk. And thats not because all this people are stupid beginners that are into marketing hypes.
rather the opposite...
this of cause has nothing to do with measurable purity of the single signals... but as a famous sound engineer once said..the best mixer is the air...and a simple mathematical adition of signals is very far from what happens to 2 soundsources that get mixed by the media air before they meet the ear of the listener..
A digital mixbuss that produces no sublime artefacts whatsoever still cant match with a good analog system that adds unlinear distortion in a nice way..we like that sound..purist proove with measurements all the time that a neve console is supposed to sound shit..but in human reality it doesnt ...
And because we do music for humans thats what matters in the end of the day

And btw..live 7 sounds better for me, especially because its possible now to work in 96 k without headache... that allone is advantage enough for the new version

Do you mix your indeed very good sounding records in ableton live?
A simple yes or no as an answer would be enough ...
mac book 2,16 ghz 4(3)gb ram, Os 10.62, fireface 400,

Tone Deft
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Post by Tone Deft » Fri Dec 14, 2007 8:01 pm

^^^ :lol: *cough*bullshit*cough*

that line of thinking is nothing more than "it's bigger so it must be better", the same logic of <sorry to go there> "the world is too complex for me to understand, therefore god exists." your statement above is mostly voodoo and snake oil.
a stinking lowgrade daw and some plug ins
total unbounded audio snobbery. Live's fidelity (ability to reproduce sounds accurate to the original) has not been shown to be low quality or even sub par compared to other DAWs. it's 2007, DAWs are out of the dark ages.

the real value of a professional studio is in the people using it. don't they use equipment to make their productions sound better? why would you rant about Neve consoles in their studios when that's hardware to make their DAW sound better?

have fun with your monster cable, yellow speaker cones and boogeymen in your studio. glad you're finally able to get 96k working, most pros have the same problem. ;)

[/rant]
In my life
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At people who I'd much rather kick in the eye?
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Landser
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Post by Landser » Fri Dec 14, 2007 8:10 pm

Tone Deft wrote:^^^ :lol: *cough*bullshit*cough*

that line of thinking is nothing more than "it's bigger so it must be better", the same logic of <sorry to go there> "the world is too complex for me to understand, therefore god exists."
And you think that is not bullshit?
It is, too. And i will tell you why: because you mix things from a well understood and so far not proven wrong scientific theory (signal theory) together with religion, a sphere out of the narrow borders of the falsification principle of the scientific empirical complex. Religion is not science, so it's not wise trying to measure it with the rules that are only valid for science.

Rosko
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Post by Rosko » Fri Dec 14, 2007 8:19 pm

What is signal theory Landser?

Tone Deft
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Post by Tone Deft » Fri Dec 14, 2007 8:37 pm

Landser wrote:
Tone Deft wrote:^^^ :lol: *cough*bullshit*cough*

that line of thinking is nothing more than "it's bigger so it must be better", the same logic of <sorry to go there> "the world is too complex for me to understand, therefore god exists."
And you think that is not bullshit?
It is, too. And i will tell you why: because you mix things from a well understood and so far not proven wrong scientific theory (signal theory) together with religion, a sphere out of the narrow borders of the falsification principle of the scientific empirical complex. Religion is not science, so it's not wise trying to measure it with the rules that are only valid for science.
I haven't a clue what you're saying. I think you're being funny/sarcastic.

I did not rest one theory on the other, I made a parallel analogy. I did not say that the god line is true therefore the audio voodoo line is true.



SWEET!! we've managed a convergence on two hot topics on the forum, now if we can just add forum moderation and mac vs. pc into all this we'll have one Super Thread to rule them all.
In my life
Why do I smile
At people who I'd much rather kick in the eye?
-Moz

leisuremuffin
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Post by leisuremuffin » Fri Dec 14, 2007 8:44 pm

Tone Deft wrote:^^^ :lol: *cough*bullshit*cough*

that line of thinking is nothing more than "it's bigger so it must be better", the same logic of <sorry to go there> "the world is too complex for me to understand, therefore god exists." your statement above is mostly voodoo and snake oil.
a stinking lowgrade daw and some plug ins
total unbounded audio snobbery. Live's fidelity (ability to reproduce sounds accurate to the original) has not been shown to be low quality or even sub par compared to other DAWs. it's 2007, DAWs are out of the dark ages.

the real value of a professional studio is in the people using it. don't they use equipment to make their productions sound better? why would you rant about Neve consoles in their studios when that's hardware to make their DAW sound better?

have fun with your monster cable, yellow speaker cones and boogeymen in your studio. glad you're finally able to get 96k working, most pros have the same problem. ;)

[/rant]

+1
TimeableFloat ???S?e?n?d?I?n?f?o

Landser
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Post by Landser » Fri Dec 14, 2007 8:58 pm

Your analogy is not a valid one, because you mix up audio-vodooism wich religion. Audio voodoism can easily be fefuted: just make a few blind tests and the results will prove any audio-vodoo-solution obsolete.
Religious things cannot be refuted,because they are not built on empirical facts.
To say it short: someone believing in god, cannot be refuted, while audio-vodooism is and has been refuted many times. So you are unjust to people with religion compared to audio-vodooists. And you are quite narrow minded, if you conclude from the things we don't know yet, that there were no god.

And youself are a good example, btw: in the spheres out of scientific knowledge, we don't know, we believe. You believe not in god. It is not even more "scientific", than the believe in god. But you seem to believe that. :)

LJN
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Post by LJN » Fri Dec 14, 2007 9:06 pm

Lovely thread. In the 80's I was sharing a studio that kept a 16 channel Tascam tape machine. At that time, sound quality was called "Ampex". If you weren't using Ampex tapes, you weren't serious about music. We found the TDK tapes to be just as good but a lot cheaper. Yet, a lot of customers had very strong opinions on this topic and wouldn't go with TDK tapes. I find the ever ongoing discussion on Live's sound quality to be similar. Damn, if your songs don't sound right, there's gotta be something wrong with the software!

Rosko
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Post by Rosko » Fri Dec 14, 2007 9:08 pm

Oh my.

Tone Deft
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Post by Tone Deft » Fri Dec 14, 2007 9:10 pm

Landser - whatever your point is, you're not moving this AUDIO discussion any further, you're going off into the weeds or some analogy I made, invoking some bullshit about religion and scientific theory. if I had the time I'd engage this conversation but there's no point.

anyone else want to pick this up? we got a live one here.
In my life
Why do I smile
At people who I'd much rather kick in the eye?
-Moz

Landser
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Post by Landser » Fri Dec 14, 2007 9:25 pm

Then don't use such offensive characterizations, if you don't want to be forced to argue them.
Not everything you do not understand is bullshit - even if you believe that. ;)

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