Logic, or save up for waves?

[morerecords]

Well ,that sounds to be a very valid way of examining relative amplitude of summed master tracks, one from Live one from Logic, That is not quite what I am addressing, and it doesn't quite apply to relative FREQUENCY amplitude levels on a track X track summed basis.

Lets think about this: what would cause negative phase cohersion in this test?
AMplitude, or the sum relative frequency at the SAME amplitude in two different apps, one being live and one being DAWx...

In fact that almost establishes an argument FOR multi-leveller, I will have to sit and try that test out, but that might make me believe there is multiband limiting going on again.

(WOLVES ATTACK NOW)

[morerecords]

additionally, that is a test performed WITHIN live, The program in question and I am stating that there is something going PRE faders/channel strips etc...either that or there is NOT... smae difference (sorry for 'phase pun' but, seriously, how many times in your life do you get that chance: )

[forge]

loads have people have tried in and outside of Live

to save yourself the bother you could try a search on it

I'm really not sure of the problem you are talking about, I havent heard that one before

usually the test people do is to take an audiofile rendered in each of the DAWs and do the phase inversion on that - when the circumstances were identical then it cancelled every time proving absolutely unequivocably that the audio files produced from each DAW were identical

[morerecords]

but if you render all tracks, import into a different DAW, then you have to re-mix and happily, because you now can actually pump each channel well beyond unity in many cases, we are fighting the "loudness wars" as an industry lately, yes? That paricualr test and my particualr beef is differnt and can't quite be solved using that test. It is an excellent way of determining if the SAME audio will be the same in both apps regardless of comparing summed masters from two apps simultaneously, but it doesn;t quite apply to my statements, because the second you import these multis from Live in to a DAW, you immediatly have more headroom and can attain more LOUDNESS for your master bounce, as well as nothing compensatory in the low end (though it's going on acrooss theboard, I only take the time to 'fix' the more audible priorities, simply because you have to pick your battles or only make one song every sixmonths) which will provide YOU with the option to level, rather than wondering why it's been done for you, and possibly not to suit your needs or designated format.

[leedsquietman]

There has been a loudness war going on, but it finally seems to be relenting a bit, when influential MEs such as the legendary Bob Katz have been preaching the message that dynamics are good, and that loudness wars are only killing the sound of music and causing undue listening fatigue and that it is a myth that louder CDs sound louder on the radio because the industry standard Orban compressor/limiters were not build to handle hypercompressed material, so it sounds distorted and dull on the radio, whereas more dynamically alive but quieter music is pumped up but sounds more alive on the radio because there are transients, peaks and troughs instead of a square wave. Also, Bob Katz has been making quite a few converts to his K-14 mastering process, which produces music to a conformed standard/calibration with a healthy dynamic range.

Not just Katz too, the whole world of mastering engineers, Doug Sax, Bob Ludwig, John Vestman et all would all like a return to the days of the mid 1990's where at discs were mastered to an average 13 or 14 db of dynamics and with no clipping and only very rare transients peaking at or around 0db.

If you think that Cubase sounds better than Live, I still disagree as someone who widely uses both programs, but the the following scenarios have been widely recognized as capable of producing audibly different results

1) Pan Law - Cubase's pan law can be adjusted to various configurations.
2) Warping - clips that have been timestretched/warped can introduce audio artifacts in Live. If you don't vary tempo and turn warping off, or use a mode like repitch but have not changed any tempos or pitches then this does not color the sound. Otherwise, you can get some degradation of sound. But this is also true for timestretching in Cubase.

[morerecords]

that is as reactyionary as saying flatten everything. I don't make Brittany spears records, I make techno. OF COARSE dynamics are good, especially for our music, doesn't it feel good when you are iun a club and there is an actual 'groove' due to dynamics? The guys you are quoting are coming from rock, the guys who make brittany spears / hip hop records are on the complete other side. We are in between. You want oyur records to be loud, but retain a groove you can feel at high volume levels. right?

If oyu listen to a BOb marley record from the 70s, that would be what Kats and ludwig ar telling you to go for. That would be TOO varied for a conventional nightclub sound system (actually that would be f'n sweet, but it's not the current convention) right? Those guys are not talking about mastering for enourmous nightclub soundsystems.
We fall somewher in between, modern but not flattening the shit out of every element.

You still need your vinyl to be loud though, don't throw that completekly out the window. The hip hop guys in the 90's were reactionary by squashing the fuck out of everything, the old timers are then reactionary again by lamenting a different era, where it was ALL dynamics, and going to vinyl forhome stereos was priority.

We fall in the middle making house or techno, and that's one aspect where we might be pinoeering to some degree at this time.

sort of modern, but classy and not too decadent

[forge]

it seems he's not talking about sound Q but headroom

@morecords - have you experienced this in Live 7? Live 7 is 64 bit and so by definition you should have more headroom than you could possibly need

AFAIK cubase and logic still dont do 64 bt, is that right?

I have no idea what you are experiencing really, I have no problems with headroom in Live

[leedsquietman]

I get that. Yes, finding an middle ground is key.

I don't produce Hip Hop, but I have been known to listen to it and a certain pumping is a hallmark of the sound - then again, many hip hop records have pretty minimal stuff going on, a big drum and bass with some rapping and the occasional supporting synth or guitar sound, so not much is going on in the arrangement dynacially compared to some big ambient production or a progressive rock track say.

And yes, vinyl is a different medium with a different solution required and it allow s you to push for hotter levels and get a more naturally compressed sound that can sound raw and pumping (and good for that genre). But still risky in it's own way, too much energy can cause the cutting machine to slip and rip through the vinyl and that's a very expensive repair.

[leedsquietman]

Cubase SX1 to SX3 and Cubase up to 4.0.3 are 32 bit.

The most recent Cubase update 4.1.0 has 64 bit mix summing, as in Live but not 64 bit throughout the whole audio engine *like Sonar, Reaper, Tracktion etc*

Logic is still 32 bit, as is Samplitude. Funny how these 2 are considered more pro than say, Sonar, but are behind the curve.

[mdb]

This thread is a perfect example of whats wrong with forums. Long live having conversations in person!

[leedsquietman]

Well I could try talking to my mom about it or my work buddies, but since all they talk about is sex, chocolate, chips and crap TV shows, this is all we got ...

No-one forced you at gunpoint to read it

[morerecords]

well, when you talk about mix summing be it 64 it or 32 bit, you are onestep beyond the mix process I am commenting on. The thing is, this is not some minute esoteric observation, it's VERY audible.
As far as mix sums, I can buy that, and my suggestion would be, write your tune in Live, render all tracks in order to import to a DAW, then bounce your stems and summ all parts in Lives 64 bit mix sum. If you had only a few stereo stems, It's likely there would be no audible difference, but I am not comminting to that, I'd have to try.

But, next time you make atrack, if you have 2-3 layers of kicks or bass or both, when you render all and import to your DAW, just try re-seqeuncing the same kicks and/or basslines. Don't get to crazy with automating volume levels musically, or anything that couldn't be reproduced in your DAW.
also, even if you choose not to do that, simply take your best mixed Live song, ready to be summed through your master buss, but instead render all tracks and then import to yourDAW, and you will see that you have additonal flexibilty with regards to spectral or timbral composiiton as you are setting your levels.

Or even, just make three stems from your mixed Live composition, kicks+bass, harmonic elemnts, everything else. Import those three stems to your DAW and they will immediatley sound bigger, and with more possiblity for amplitude boost WHILE retaining relative dynamics

[forge]

well, when you talk about mix summing be it 64 it or 32 bit, you are onestep beyond the mix process I am commenting on. The thing is, this is not some minute esoteric observation, it's VERY audible.
As far as mix sums, I can buy that, and my suggestion would be, write your tune in Live, render all tracks in order to import to a DAW, then bounce your stems and summ all parts in Lives 64 bit mix sum. If you had only a few stereo stems, It's likely there would be no audible difference, but I am not comminting to that, I'd have to try.

But, next time you make atrack, if you have 2-3 layers of kicks or bass or both, when you render all and import to your DAW, just try re-seqeuncing the same kicks and/or basslines. Don't get to crazy with automating volume levels musically, or anything that couldn't be reproduced in your DAW.
also, even if you choose not to do that, simply take your best mixed Live song, ready to be summed through your master buss, but instead render all tracks and then import to yourDAW, and you will see that you have additonal flexibilty with regards to spectral or timbral composiiton as you are setting your levels.

Or even, just make three stems from your mixed Live composition, kicks+bass, harmonic elemnts, everything else. Import those three stems to your DAW and they will immediatley sound bigger, and with more possiblity for amplitude boost WHILE retaining relative dynamics

it sounds like it might be helpful if you could break it down to the minimum example where this happens and post an example set, or the samples

if there is a real problem there it would be good to get to the bottom of it

[Tarekith]

I posted this on these forums before, but I can't find the thread anywhere, so this is a cut and paste job from the ALDJ forums:

-------

Ok, here goes. I tested Live 7.1 versus Logic 8.0. As we are talking about overall sound quality and not timing issues (and not saying there are any), I ran the test using three audio loops all at the same tempo of 120 BPM. I also tried this test using projects that contained up to 10 audio loops, but the results were identical, so I'm going to discuss the 3 loops test in order to save my bandwidth, as I'm making all files available for DL:

http://tarekith.com/assets/Live7VsLogic8.zip

These are just random audio loops from my collection, I tried to pick loops that not only sounded decent together, but also demonstrated a lot of dynamics and frequency spread to make audible comparisons easier. All three loops are 24bit/44.1kHz wav files, and exactly 4 bars long at 120BPM. I placed each loop on it's own stereo audio track in both Live and Logic, and set the track faders to -6.0dBFS for all tracks in both apps. The following additional settings were used:

- Both apps latency set to 512 samples.
- Live 7 uses the equivalent of a 3dB pan law, so Logic was set to -3dB Compensated.
- Both projects set to 24bit/44.1kHz default.
- Files in Live were not warped, and did not have Fade on.

Here is the Live Project screenshot:



Here is the Logic Project screenshot:




At this point playback of both projects sounded identical to my ears, at numerous volume tests, using both Mackie HR824 speakers, and my Shure E3c and Sony MDR v700DJ headphones. So I next rendered (Live) and bounced (Logic) the projects down, in both cases choosing the output format to be 24bit/44.1kHz wav files, non-normalized, with no dither. These were then loaded into Logic 8 on seperate tracks, as you can see they look identical:



Listening comparison once again made the two files sound 100% identical, having my wife randomly solo each track while listening through my Sony headphones with my back turned, I was unable to tell any difference in audio quality no matter which was solo'd.

HOWEVER...

As I started to get more scientific in my comparisons, I discovered that there WERE differences between the files. I flipped the phase of the Logic waveform and played the two files back simultaneously. This resulted in audible (err... or not) silence, I could not hear anything as the two files were cancelling. BUT, looking at the master meter in Logic, I could see that some signal was playing back, albeit VERY quietly. As you can see in the screen shot below, using the Inspector XL spectrum analyzer, there are some very low level differences in the files:



It's important to look at the dB scale in the plug in before jumping to conclusions. In the main audible range of human hearing, the difference between the two signals is almost at -90dB, which is only 6dB above the absolute noise floor of your standard CD quality (i.e. 16bit) wav file. This is also below the dither level that would be in the file, had we applied any (and dither is almost always applied to the files you will hear in the real world). So, while there IS a difference between the renders of Live 7 and Logic 8 now, that difference is:

- For all intents inaudible, being well below the average music signal in todays music.
- Likely obscured by dither, had we applied any.
- Primarily in the low end of the audio spectrum, well below 250Hz, where the ear is least sensitive.

Anyway, the main conclusion I would draw based on these tests, is that there is no audible difference in sound quality between Live 7 and Logic 8, though they are not producing bit for bit identical copies.

[forge]

tarektih - could this have anything to do with it?

Logic is still 32 bit.

maybe it's time an Ableton stepped in....