Guilty - totally subjective !andydes wrote:So you were using different settings on different instruments and plug ins, and completely different drums for each one. Not exactly a carefully controlled experiment.vicz wrote:I recently mixed and mastered a Jeff Wayne War of the Worlds midi file using Live, Logic and Reason. I used mainly samples in Sampler, EXS and NN-XT with native drums and Korg LDC M1 synth sounds (except for Reason). In each case I made it as well as I could, then took it via aiff to a 160 mp3.
Now these were all done on the same machine and all converted to mp3 using itunes without any itunes eq.
I then listened to each one 'blind' and rated them for audio quality. Third was Reason, Second Logic, and first by a long way, was Live. I was most surprised by the Reason result, because the mastering suite in R4 certainly looks the business. Maybe the NNXT synth samples just lacked the presence of the M1.
But the Live mix was by far the best. Everyone who heard it agreed. Maybe it is just because the tools are easier to use, and therefore I did a better job, maybe Live does a better mixdown, who knows? But this exercise was one of the key factors leading me to focus mainly on Live from now on, even though each of the others have a lot going for them, in their own way.
But as we don't make music under carefullly controlled conditions, perhaps the only test that matters.
Does ableton bottleneck sound quality?
Sounds to me that some of us should be on the Beta Forum..why are we not?Tarekith wrote:I wish I was kidding, I truly do. Usually I'm one of those who defends Ableton sound quality, but after a recent trip to the doctor, it was discovered I had a large chunk of dirt in my ear that was blocking everything above 2kHz. Once they removed it, I could instantly hear this huge sound quality issue everyone talks about. I can see why they call it Live now, it's only suitable for playing gigs in crappy bars over jukebox speakers IMVHO. Unfortunately, it's my only DAW now, and the only way I can make things sound good is to compose with my laptop connected to my TV speakers. I'll likely sell my soundcard and HR825's so i can raise money for a better TV, with larger subwoofers built in.SubFunk wrote:i don't get the joke propperly...? right?Tarekith wrote:Honestly the sound quality in Live sucks ass, it's really really bad. I've been donating (selling) my blood once a week just to save up enough money to buy back Logic. It sounds SOOOO much better, like I'd be signed to a real record label in a heartbeat if I wasn't using Live instead right now
At least the new Live 8 version will finally output 8 bit mixdowns, dealing with 7 bit mixdowns for the last year has been killing me.
or are you serious?
+1 Go in there only when you are absolutely ready to buy and then they're tough to beat.McQ714 wrote:i think guitar center is great... not for information or knowledgeof the products they sell! only for negotiating a good deal. i'll do my research online and then go there to get my sales guy to give me a great deal. I got Reason 4 two days before it's official release date for a discounted price and I bought Live 7 Suite full boxed version the day of it's release for $599. I think they've cut back on giving discounts these days but i can still get 10-15% off of most purchases. and the guy i ordered it through got a free copy of Live 7 Suite from Ableton because it was the first one they sold.
Re: Does ableton bottleneck sound quality?
he's trying to upsell you...m.nash wrote:So my friends and I were considering grabbing a UAD-1/2 card, but when we were chatting with a gent from the music store, he said we wouldn't be able to get out the quality of the plug-ins/card if we used Ableton.
That we would need Logic Pro or Pro Tools to really take advantage of it.
Any thoughts on this?
especially with the protools, cuz you would also have to buy digi hardware
then you'd be LOCKED IN FOR LIFE
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Euklid.fox
- Posts: 175
- Joined: Thu Sep 09, 2004 12:24 pm
Im sorry I love live, I use it for 6 years already and it's less noticeable now but audio quality has always been a bit under other daw imo (at least cubase that I knew), not if you let your track on 0db with no process of course (from V7), but what's the point of that? If you make music you have to tweak the sound.
internal process/plugins/chains/send overall signal path is not as clean at is could be, even if L7 was a high raise concerning the core summing. I still can feel a "live grain", (for me it's not a myth), on my tracks or liveset, im not talking about droping one wav, but a general track process.
but it has to be light on cpu and latency so.. it's "correct"
robert H. himself say he produces in Protools, enough said...live is not the best if you search the ultimate sound, but you will get 95 percent of it in ten time faster than in another daw. it's a compromise.
and even if im always searching ultimate quality, a good song 128kbs MP3
is still better than a s h i t song in wav float 32 or whatever...
For me from V7 live has now the descent sound for it's main purpose: LIVe
...im not sure it has enough for really hi eq mixing and mastering production with internal tools, but with 3rd party certainly it does.
internal process/plugins/chains/send overall signal path is not as clean at is could be, even if L7 was a high raise concerning the core summing. I still can feel a "live grain", (for me it's not a myth), on my tracks or liveset, im not talking about droping one wav, but a general track process.
but it has to be light on cpu and latency so.. it's "correct"
robert H. himself say he produces in Protools, enough said...live is not the best if you search the ultimate sound, but you will get 95 percent of it in ten time faster than in another daw. it's a compromise.
and even if im always searching ultimate quality, a good song 128kbs MP3
is still better than a s h i t song in wav float 32 or whatever...
For me from V7 live has now the descent sound for it's main purpose: LIVe
...im not sure it has enough for really hi eq mixing and mastering production with internal tools, but with 3rd party certainly it does.
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leedsquietman
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- Joined: Sun Nov 19, 2006 1:56 am
- Location: greater toronto area
I use PTHD sometimes at work. The reason why people use PTHD rigs (let's not confused with LE or M-Powered at this point) is the myriad of amazing plugins available and the fact that for pure audio processing and audio editing PT has a strength in that field. Many plugins such as McDSP and others only release plugins on protools TDM.
The quality of PTLE and PT-MPowered is not the same and unless you spend a fortune on extra plugins. And then you talk about latency. While the PTHD rig has latency compensation and very low latency being a DSP based system, PTLE and M-Powered do not (and the Mbox USB version is not capable of very low latency) and the amount of noobs who fail to manually compensate means some recordings done in PTLE and M-Powered sounds worse and with more phase shift and comb filtering as a result.
I have used Logic and Cubase extensively. They do not sound better than Live, and if you do warping in Cubase, then it lends itself to the same artifacts as Live does when warping in modes other than repitch. I have only been using Live since L6, but if you weren't using warping it sounded fine.
One or two articles such as Musictech Mag's Live 6 review which stated the false opinion on Live's audio engine being inferior, although it did not take into account warping and other factors in that assessment gave a stick to a whole bunch of drones to believe this, even though they have no experience. I have used Live, ACID, Sonar, Logic, Cubase, Reaper, PTHD, Soundforge, Wavelab and Vegas and the only thing I will say is that the quality of the inbuilt plugins varies widely and this is most often what people use to judge one DAW is better than another in terms of audio, rather than fact such as null audio tests which has proved otherwise.
Mr. Henke has been on here many times before to argue that Live's sound engine is not inferior. I agree with him and that's not just the fanboy in me - that's almost 25 years of music engineering experience.
The quality of PTLE and PT-MPowered is not the same and unless you spend a fortune on extra plugins. And then you talk about latency. While the PTHD rig has latency compensation and very low latency being a DSP based system, PTLE and M-Powered do not (and the Mbox USB version is not capable of very low latency) and the amount of noobs who fail to manually compensate means some recordings done in PTLE and M-Powered sounds worse and with more phase shift and comb filtering as a result.
I have used Logic and Cubase extensively. They do not sound better than Live, and if you do warping in Cubase, then it lends itself to the same artifacts as Live does when warping in modes other than repitch. I have only been using Live since L6, but if you weren't using warping it sounded fine.
One or two articles such as Musictech Mag's Live 6 review which stated the false opinion on Live's audio engine being inferior, although it did not take into account warping and other factors in that assessment gave a stick to a whole bunch of drones to believe this, even though they have no experience. I have used Live, ACID, Sonar, Logic, Cubase, Reaper, PTHD, Soundforge, Wavelab and Vegas and the only thing I will say is that the quality of the inbuilt plugins varies widely and this is most often what people use to judge one DAW is better than another in terms of audio, rather than fact such as null audio tests which has proved otherwise.
Mr. Henke has been on here many times before to argue that Live's sound engine is not inferior. I agree with him and that's not just the fanboy in me - that's almost 25 years of music engineering experience.
http://soundcloud.com/umbriel-rising http://www.myspace.com/leedsquietmandemos Live 7.0.18 SUITE, Cubase 5.5.2], Soundforge 9, Dell XPS M1530, 2.2 Ghz C2D, 4GB, Vista Ult SP2, legit plugins a plenty, Alesis IO14.
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leedsquietman
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to be fair, many people mix their projects out of live mostly just through familiarity with another system, for the myriad of top class 3rd party plugins or in the case of PTHD, if you had spent upwards of 10k on a system like that, would YOU mix in Live ??
The point is though - plugins aside (and you can use your tasty 3rd party plugins in Live of course, I rarely use Live's internal FX except compressor and EQ8 and even then, I often use 3rd party plugins) that otherwise, mixing in Live is fine and dandy just as in any other DAW. I'm pretty certain that Robert has mixed plenty of music using Live and is proud to do so, even if he has used other systems. I sometimes mix in Cubase, not because it 'sounds better' but because I like the way I can run the arrangement on one monitor and the mixing window on a second screen, and the fact that it uses less CPU means some track/plugin heavy projects that melt down Live on my system can be mixed in Cubase thanks to it's lower CPU usage. However, it's still rare. Many people here use Logic to mix because of plugins too such as Space Designer which have no equivalent in Live.
The point is though - plugins aside (and you can use your tasty 3rd party plugins in Live of course, I rarely use Live's internal FX except compressor and EQ8 and even then, I often use 3rd party plugins) that otherwise, mixing in Live is fine and dandy just as in any other DAW. I'm pretty certain that Robert has mixed plenty of music using Live and is proud to do so, even if he has used other systems. I sometimes mix in Cubase, not because it 'sounds better' but because I like the way I can run the arrangement on one monitor and the mixing window on a second screen, and the fact that it uses less CPU means some track/plugin heavy projects that melt down Live on my system can be mixed in Cubase thanks to it's lower CPU usage. However, it's still rare. Many people here use Logic to mix because of plugins too such as Space Designer which have no equivalent in Live.
http://soundcloud.com/umbriel-rising http://www.myspace.com/leedsquietmandemos Live 7.0.18 SUITE, Cubase 5.5.2], Soundforge 9, Dell XPS M1530, 2.2 Ghz C2D, 4GB, Vista Ult SP2, legit plugins a plenty, Alesis IO14.
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Euklid.fox
- Posts: 175
- Joined: Thu Sep 09, 2004 12:24 pm
leedsquietman
if you talk for me im not saying live core audio has less quality, i would more say I wish an impossible state where live build in plugins would have a such hi quality we wouldn't have to export track to "PT",
that mean totally producing hi quality from sound generation, process to final master into one only Daw, with his own ultimate workflow gui:
Live (no werid poput with x differents gui of x different plugins)
but L8 will allow to hide this.yeah
stevo: im not a rumor guy lol but i saw it on a video where he shows the monodeck II amazing, great vid, great teaching, but sorry i don't remember the link , it's in the forum.
if you talk for me im not saying live core audio has less quality, i would more say I wish an impossible state where live build in plugins would have a such hi quality we wouldn't have to export track to "PT",
that mean totally producing hi quality from sound generation, process to final master into one only Daw, with his own ultimate workflow gui:
Live (no werid poput with x differents gui of x different plugins)
but L8 will allow to hide this.yeah
stevo: im not a rumor guy lol but i saw it on a video where he shows the monodeck II amazing, great vid, great teaching, but sorry i don't remember the link , it's in the forum.
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leedsquietman
- Posts: 6659
- Joined: Sun Nov 19, 2006 1:56 am
- Location: greater toronto area
euklid - I kind of agree with you on Live's plugins but a couple of things to consider
1) Live's plugins are mainly designed for Live performance use IMHO.
2) The affordable versions of PT, i.e. PTLE and M-Powered, only have a couple of decent plugins in the box. YOu have to buy expensive 3rd party stuff just as in Live to get the pro studio effect.
3) Even PTHD systems don't have many great plugins in the box and this is why Waves, Soundtoys and McDSP and others do a roaring trade selling plugins for PT, especially in TDM where they can charge a premium over native VST/AU/RTAS.
4) Not everyone is a plugin junkie and some people don't need many and/or very sophisticated FX, so Live's internal FX are not so bad for this crowd (although eventually a convolution reverb and a couple of enhancements would be nice).
1) Live's plugins are mainly designed for Live performance use IMHO.
2) The affordable versions of PT, i.e. PTLE and M-Powered, only have a couple of decent plugins in the box. YOu have to buy expensive 3rd party stuff just as in Live to get the pro studio effect.
3) Even PTHD systems don't have many great plugins in the box and this is why Waves, Soundtoys and McDSP and others do a roaring trade selling plugins for PT, especially in TDM where they can charge a premium over native VST/AU/RTAS.
4) Not everyone is a plugin junkie and some people don't need many and/or very sophisticated FX, so Live's internal FX are not so bad for this crowd (although eventually a convolution reverb and a couple of enhancements would be nice).
http://soundcloud.com/umbriel-rising http://www.myspace.com/leedsquietmandemos Live 7.0.18 SUITE, Cubase 5.5.2], Soundforge 9, Dell XPS M1530, 2.2 Ghz C2D, 4GB, Vista Ult SP2, legit plugins a plenty, Alesis IO14.
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Euklid.fox
- Posts: 175
- Joined: Thu Sep 09, 2004 12:24 pm