Does ableton bottleneck sound quality?

forge · Post by **forge** » Wed Feb 04, 2009 5:28 am

leonard wrote:i had a ferrite bead stuck up my nose so i couldn't taste anything above 20kHz.

all too common these days.

Nick the Zombie · Post by **Nick the Zombie** » Wed Feb 04, 2009 5:42 am

forge wrote:
leonard wrote:i had a ferrite bead stuck up my nose so i couldn't taste anything above 20kHz.
all too common these days.

I've seen it a thousand times, and it never gets any easier

aqua_tek · Post by **aqua_tek** » Wed Feb 04, 2009 8:23 am

FFS/facepalm

Dexes · Post by **Dexes** » Wed Feb 04, 2009 4:24 pm

A noobish question:
I've only been making my own music for about a year now (if you don't count playing with fast tracker II at the age of 13 around 96/97). Started off with reason, and last summer I got Live which I use as sequencer, vst host (mainly audiorealism's Bassline - apart from that still mostly using reason's synth via external intrument), for audio samples & effects.

I've never actually heard PT/Logic/Sonar and been told "that's what logic sounds like" so I could directly compare the sound quality (of the effects, warping, whatever)
So my question to those stating that there is a difference in sound:

What is the difference?
I.e. what does one hear differently, would any non-producer/sound engeneer actually notice the difference if you use the same instrument an send it through an effect in protools, or the same effect with the same settings in live? Or is it just a case of noise at -200db vs noise at -130db which you can only notice if you filter out everything that you actually want to hear and the boost the remaining signal to the maximum at every possible control?

What do we need top soundquality for?
Obviously if your recording a band & just want to add a little reverb to a real instrument, you'd still want it to sound as clear as possible.
But lets face it, on the other side we have 25 year old synths going for 10 times the original price on ebay because the people actually want the bad sound quallity. I don't even want to know how much time & money has been spent around the world trying to get a vst to play that (objectivly) bad 303 sound

Tarekith · Post by **Tarekith** » Wed Feb 04, 2009 4:32 pm

Dexes wrote:A noobish question:
I've only been making my own music for about a year now (if you don't count playing with fast tracker II at the age of 13 around 96/97). Started off with reason, and last summer I got Live which I use as sequencer, vst host (mainly audiorealism's Bassline - apart from that still mostly using reason's synth via external intrument), for audio samples & effects.

I've never actually heard PT/Logic/Sonar and been told "that's what logic sounds like" so I could directly compare the sound quality (of the effects, warping, whatever)
So my question to those stating that there is a difference in sound:

What is the difference?
I.e. what does one hear differently, would any non-producer/sound engeneer actually notice the difference if you use the same instrument an send it through an effect in protools, or the same effect with the same settings in live? Or is it just a case of noise at -200db vs noise at -130db which you can only notice if you filter out everything that you actually want to hear and the boost the remaining signal to the maximum at every possible control?

What do we need top soundquality for?
Obviously if your recording a band & just want to add a little reverb to a real instrument, you'd still want it to sound as clear as possible.
But lets face it, on the other side we have 25 year old synths going for 10 times the original price on ebay because the people actually want the bad sound quallity. I don't even want to know how much time & money has been spent around the world trying to get a vst to play that (objectivly) bad 303 sound

Here's a test I did last year on this:

--------------
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. So, have fun arguing about the test I ran, I'm off to go shopping with the wife, fun. Not.

pulsoc · Post by **pulsoc** » Wed Feb 04, 2009 6:31 pm

Tarekith wrote:
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. So, have fun arguing about the test I ran, I'm off to go shopping with the wife, fun. Not.

So I think what you're saying is....

Live's sound quality sucks?

mr.adl · Post by **mr.adl** » Wed Feb 04, 2009 6:43 pm

Wow, thanx for your effort Tarekith!
Really good to know that Live´s soundquality isn´t bad at all, as this is what so many people claim

diskowipe · Post by **diskowipe** » Mon Feb 09, 2009 11:11 pm

I have been using live since version 4 and i now own suite 7. I have never been satisfied with the sound of using live for productions, although i think it sounds fine when importing finished material, even with the warp on...

i personally am doing techno/minimal stuff and all the producers I have talked to (people who chart on beatport) none of them are using ableton exclusively for productions. most people dont even use it at all in the production phase, except for playing live which i think it was designed for

i think live is a wonderful program but apps like cubase or sonar have over 20 years of experience developing their systems and that means something. your sound will benefit

USE BOTH

Tone Deft · Post by **Tone Deft** » Mon Feb 09, 2009 11:12 pm

what a massive waste of time and money.

diskowipe · Post by **diskowipe** » Mon Feb 09, 2009 11:17 pm

Tone Deft wrote:what a massive waste of time and money.

what buying both? maybe

arent you the one on mnml.nl who only uses logic?

Tone Deft · Post by **Tone Deft** » Mon Feb 09, 2009 11:44 pm

diskowipe wrote:
Tone Deft wrote:what a massive waste of time and money.
what buying both? maybe

arent you the one on mnml.nl who only uses logic?

nope. there's another one of me? god help us.

leisuremuffin · Post by **leisuremuffin** » Tue Feb 10, 2009 4:10 pm

diskowipe wrote:I have been using live since version 4 and i now own suite 7. I have never been satisfied with the sound of using live for productions, although i think it sounds fine when importing finished material, even with the warp on...

i personally am doing techno/minimal stuff and all the producers I have talked to (people who chart on beatport) none of them are using ableton exclusively for productions. most people dont even use it at all in the production phase, except for playing live which i think it was designed for

i think live is a wonderful program but apps like cubase or sonar have over 20 years of experience developing their systems and that means something. your sound will benefit

USE BOTH

the badgers, unleash them.

.lm.