Scary thread about Live on KVR - please address!

Discuss music production with Ableton Live.
kb420
Posts: 2772
Joined: Fri Jan 13, 2006 3:35 am
Location: Cydonia on the 4th Planet

Post by kb420 » Tue Jan 27, 2009 10:32 pm

jamester wrote: Just did, but not sure what I'm supposed to see or do with it. I feel like I understand the workaround (two tracks, monitor and record) solution better than I understand the problem! :?






In the "drum1" track, turn send #1 up and see if that kills the audio. Turn it back to it's oringinal position.

Then turn send #2 up and see if that kills the audio.




In my setup (which is also a Jim Roseberry pc) send #1 doesn't kill the audio, but #2 does.
"That which does not kill us makes us stronger..........."
-Friedrich Nietzsche-

keithtalent
Posts: 82
Joined: Thu Aug 02, 2007 9:12 pm
Contact:

Post by keithtalent » Tue Jan 27, 2009 10:38 pm

adventurepants_ wrote: Obsessive Music tech nerds who like finding technical problems in DAWs, and shaking their tiny impotent fists more than making music will probably think this is the worst audio crime committed since Scooter. Others will work around it and make music.
Nice one.

mdk
Posts: 914
Joined: Sun Jul 31, 2005 3:51 pm
Location: Skopje, Macedonia
Contact:

Post by mdk » Tue Jan 27, 2009 10:40 pm

well, i've learnt something new today.

i always wondered why playing beats via midi into live just felt a bit weird. now i know.

the other situation about routing sends back into a bus doesnt bother me, its never something i do, but still good to know its there.

at least for the midi recording there is a workaround although its a shame you cant choose to record what you play AND monitor it all on one channel.

for me its not a 'showstopper' but i can appreciate that for some it would be.

seems like the kind of thing that should be an option.
Pr0k Records - Bandcamp Facebook Twitter

mdk
Posts: 914
Joined: Sun Jul 31, 2005 3:51 pm
Location: Skopje, Macedonia
Contact:

Post by mdk » Tue Jan 27, 2009 10:44 pm

and whats with this attitude of attacking the people who are highlighting the problem? some of you make it seem like choosing a sequencer is like being part of a religion.

im grateful there are people who are providing clear information and instructions to reproduce it for ourselves.

thats real science right there.
Pr0k Records - Bandcamp Facebook Twitter

glitchrock-buddha
Posts: 4357
Joined: Fri Oct 14, 2005 1:29 am
Location: The Ableton Live Forum

Post by glitchrock-buddha » Tue Jan 27, 2009 10:47 pm

As far as recording what it hears, I like that. I mean, we're talking about 10ms here of output latency (at least with my presonus at 256 samples). 10 ms I'll probably compensate for almost subconsciously. It's like playing 15 feet away from a guitar amp isn't it?

As for the sends issue, I don't ever route sends back to a track. What I have started doing however, is sending return track to each other or feeding a return back to itself. Does this return track delay happen when you send a return to another send or to itself? I haven't noticed yet if it does.
Professional Shark Jumper.

jamester
Posts: 1272
Joined: Sun Jun 04, 2006 7:43 am
Location: Baltimore, MD

Post by jamester » Tue Jan 27, 2009 10:49 pm

kb420 wrote: In the "drum1" track, turn send #1 up and see if that kills the audio. Turn it back to it's oringinal position.

Then turn send #2 up and see if that kills the audio.




In my setup (which is also a Jim Rosenberry pc) send #1 doesn't kill the audio, but #2 does.
Ok, Send A doesn't kill it (but is phasing or something), Send B kills it.

that's bad I'm assuming...
Purrrfect Audio PC by Jim Roseberry
Edirol UA-1000, Korg PadKontrol, Dynaudio BM 5A's
REAPER, Live, Sound Forge

kb420
Posts: 2772
Joined: Fri Jan 13, 2006 3:35 am
Location: Cydonia on the 4th Planet

Post by kb420 » Tue Jan 27, 2009 10:49 pm

mdk wrote:and whats with this attitude of attacking the people who are highlighting the problem? some of you make it seem like choosing a sequencer is like being part of a religion.

im grateful there are people who are providing clear information and instructions to reproduce it for ourselves.

thats real science right there.



I'm glad you said that. I definitely fetl like j2j was attacking, and for the life of me I don't know why.

I said that the problem isn't a deal breaker at all for me. I will still use Live as my program of choice and it doesn't affect how I workflow at all.

But, if there is a problem, I'm more than willing to see if I can duplicate the problem on my serup in the hope that the Abes can fix it for those who are affected by it.
Last edited by kb420 on Tue Jan 27, 2009 10:58 pm, edited 1 time in total.
"That which does not kill us makes us stronger..........."
-Friedrich Nietzsche-

SWAN808
Posts: 94
Joined: Fri Feb 08, 2008 5:17 pm

Post by SWAN808 » Tue Jan 27, 2009 10:54 pm

A revealing post from the 21 page thread of doom regaridng this issue:
popslut wrote:You're never going to get Ableton to address this as a bug because it isn't a bug. They've designed it to do this on purpose.

The monitor on/auto/off issue took me a while to work out, but I've got it fixed in my head now and it can be made to make sense if you approach it from a programmer's point of view.

From a musician's point of view it is the most insane scheme anyone ever cooked up.

The basic issue is that Live doesn't apply latency compensation when the channel is set to monitoring 'on' or 'auto'.

What Ableton have concluded is that a human playing a synth with 30ms latency will automatically compensate for this latency by playing consistently 30ms early. They assume that the human is capable of latency compensation. Anyone who has ever tried this will know how impossible this is.

Likewise, they assume that a singer monitoring through the software will compensate for the latency by singing consistently 30ms early.

If this were possible, their on/auto/off scheme would make perfect sense. Any audio or midi recorded with monitoring set to 'on' or 'auto' - according to Ableton's theory - will have been compensated for in the singing or playing - in order for it to sound correct whilst recording - and so will not require compensating for again.

This is obviously ridiculous to anyone with any experience of recording.

I've read [in this thread, stated by Amaury] that this is the only way it can be done due to the constraints of the laws of the space-time continuum, but anyone who has ever used Cubase, Nuendo, Logic, Sonar, Reason, and every single other piece of audio software available to mankind know this is nonsense. They all manage to do it seamlessly - Ableton is the only sequencer that doesn't automatically compensate for latency in the background.

I want my audio software to compensate invisibly for any latency. I want my softweare to "know" that if I hit 'that' key as 'that' kick drum sounds from the speakers i want 'that' bass note to be placed beside 'that' kick drum.

This doesn't require a rewrite of the laws of physics - it simply requires that as soon as the note is played during recording that 30ms [or whatever the latency amount is] be subtracted from the "real" note position. It really is not rocket science.

When I record vocals I use direct monitoring through my soundcard. No singer likes performing with latency in their headphones.

Occasionally, I'll forget to set the monitoring to "off" on the Ableton channel and only realise when I play back my recorded vocal and discover it is late by the total latency amount.

Can anyone at Ableton please explain to me in which circumstance this would be a desirable outcome?

While you're there, can you also explain to me why my external midi equipment responds with the same latency as my VSTis?

I'm using Ableton as a midi sequencer - my Kurzweil K2000 is connected to my analogue mixer and goes nowhere near my soundcard. yet, I find that midi data that passes through Ableton Live is subject to the same latency as audio. WHY???

I can think of no technical reason why this should be the case - every other midi/audio sequencer on the planet manages to pass midi data through its recording engine without adding audio latency delay. Why not Ableton Live?


I must say - Live is an absolutely amazing piece of gear but this is one aspect which needs changing really soon. It keeps being reported as a bug and this is because to most musicians this behaviour is so counter-intuitive and illogical it is difficult to believe anyone could have thought it was a desirable way to operate.

kb420
Posts: 2772
Joined: Fri Jan 13, 2006 3:35 am
Location: Cydonia on the 4th Planet

Post by kb420 » Tue Jan 27, 2009 10:57 pm

jamester wrote:
kb420 wrote: In the "drum1" track, turn send #1 up and see if that kills the audio. Turn it back to it's oringinal position.

Then turn send #2 up and see if that kills the audio.




In my setup (which is also a Jim Rosenberry pc) send #1 doesn't kill the audio, but #2 does.
Ok, Send A doesn't kill it (but is phasing or something), Send B kills it.

that's bad I'm assuming...
That's the point. Take a good look at the setup and you will see all he's doing is making a drum bus for all of his drums, and also making an effects bus for all his effects, and there is obviously a delay since he is inverting the phase on the "A to bus" return channel. Do you see the "Utility" effect there on the "A to bus" with both the right and left channel phases inverted?

He said that it gets to be a bigger issue with more effects and more channels.

Now, he also said that he uses Sonar and that the problem doesn't exist in Sonar. I wish he would have posted the Sonar file so that I could verify that it doesn't happen in Sonar, but he did post this pick showing the phase cancellation on the Master channel:



Image


So, until I can test it myself, I will have to believe that he is telling the truth.
Last edited by kb420 on Tue Jan 27, 2009 10:59 pm, edited 1 time in total.
"That which does not kill us makes us stronger..........."
-Friedrich Nietzsche-

keithtalent
Posts: 82
Joined: Thu Aug 02, 2007 9:12 pm
Contact:

Post by keithtalent » Tue Jan 27, 2009 10:57 pm

mdk wrote:and whats with this attitude of attacking the people who are highlighting the problem? some of you make it seem like choosing a sequencer is like being part of a religion.
I don't think it is completely to do with some quasi-spiritual defense of a preferred DAW. For me personally, there's something about the apocalyptic tone of these warnings and complaints ("scary thread ... please address!") that makes them a little laughable.

I'm glad to here of problems, even ones that don't affect me in any way (or haven't yet). If there were real problems with Live that honestly affected the way I make music, I wouldn't upgrade. But I wouldn't feel the need to voice them on multiple forums as a consequence. There seems to be a special kind of technician/musician REALLY affected by these issues and REALLY interested in making sure everyone knows. These problems may be real for a number of people, but I don't think they are keeping musicians from making important records. Do you?

mdk
Posts: 914
Joined: Sun Jul 31, 2005 3:51 pm
Location: Skopje, Macedonia
Contact:

Post by mdk » Tue Jan 27, 2009 11:07 pm

keithtalent wrote: I don't think it is completely to do with some quasi-spiritual defense of a preferred DAW. For me personally, there's something about the apocalyptic tone of these warnings and complaints ("scary thread ... please address!") that makes them a little laughable.
absolutely, it started off bad and went downhill from there.
These problems may be real for a number of people, but I don't think they are keeping musicians from making important records. Do you?
no, because for the people who are bothered by it they find a solution, either turn off monitoring or use some other software.

now that I know what the problem is I can deal with appropriately, it didnt stop me making music before, but it certainly made me feel frustrated that whenever i recorded something (either midi or audio) it just felt wrong. of course, i should have investigated further myself, but i just assumed it was my problem. basically i would sit here and jam on my guitar, find something to record and then as soon as i was recording it just felt wrong. i actually thought it was a psychological reaction to being in the 'recording state of mind', but now i know its actually a rather unfortunate technical decision.

it wont stop me making records, i just wish there was an option to choose.
Pr0k Records - Bandcamp Facebook Twitter

keithtalent
Posts: 82
Joined: Thu Aug 02, 2007 9:12 pm
Contact:

Post by keithtalent » Tue Jan 27, 2009 11:11 pm

mdk wrote: it wont stop me making records, i just wish there was an option to choose.
fair enough.

mdk
Posts: 914
Joined: Sun Jul 31, 2005 3:51 pm
Location: Skopje, Macedonia
Contact:

Post by mdk » Tue Jan 27, 2009 11:16 pm

actually, i now know what my first Max for Live creation will be, 'post-record time-shifter' to shift the recording back to the right time. :D
Pr0k Records - Bandcamp Facebook Twitter

kb420
Posts: 2772
Joined: Fri Jan 13, 2006 3:35 am
Location: Cydonia on the 4th Planet

Post by kb420 » Tue Jan 27, 2009 11:19 pm

mdk wrote:actually, i now know what my first Max for Live creation will be, 'post-record time-shifter' to shift the recording back to the right time. :D

Good shit!!!! :D :D :D
"That which does not kill us makes us stronger..........."
-Friedrich Nietzsche-

SWAN808
Posts: 94
Joined: Fri Feb 08, 2008 5:17 pm

Post by SWAN808 » Tue Jan 27, 2009 11:22 pm

mdk wrote:actually, i now know what my first Max for Live creation will be, 'post-record time-shifter' to shift the recording back to the right time. :D
I wonder - might this be possible?

Post Reply