How professional is this software folks ?

[Moody]

funny, I tried telling my girlfriend about how dithering in a dsp process improves the apparent bit depth and she wasn't interested either!
:ironic icon goes here:

yeah, it's tedious but sadly we need to try and keep a grip on these topics, technology in this business gives the impression of being foolproof - but there is a large opportunity for user/programmer error.

a long time ago I took a dat to a mastering house and had all the things I had done wrong pointed out to me. All of it was avoidable stuff, but things I thought were unimportant .. word clocks? 'pah!' I just run stuff together. etc.

my name is angstrom , I am a geek

Difficult to make setting changes when the songs run together.

[Michael-SW]

Of course you are only gonna be able to use a fixed number of decimals, regardless of format. That is why it is called digital.

But that is not the point. The beauty of floating point is that you get the same resolution, regardless of scale.

In fixed point, you only get to play with the full number of bits if your waveform is normalized. If you scale it down to half level, you are suddenly only using half the number of bits. If you scale it back up again, you have suddenly lost half the precision. You can see it yourself in an audio editor. Half the gain (destructively) and the double it again. Your audio is suddenly much more jagged. That is truncation (in the audio sense).

With floating point, you only change the exponent. That means you can scale the audio all you want without losing precision. A very soft noise has the same precision as a load one.

Edit:

BTW, there is no 0.00111.... in the floating point world. It will be represented as 1.11..*10^-3. It is only when it meets the outside world that it will be truncated to zero, and thus needs to be dithered.

(yes, I'm a geek too

[kenn michael]

Thanks Kenn and Innis and Angstrom . Your responses are a really good sign anyway!
I just got the demo and have worked through the first few tutorial pages. Very good pedagogy ( if that’s spelt right!). I guess what I was thinking is to really find out for myself how good or bad the ableton live 5 is it will take me a long time. I mean, I don’t want to get to the mastering stage 6 months down the line and find I have got to start again because of some poor quality or buggy trait that I never spotted earlier on. I want to be able to master as well on this as on any other prof piece of software.

I've been using Live since version 1.0. I'm still using it... Delivered many pro projects to record labels, television networks and movie studios (did a remix in Live that was an end credit song in a theatrical motion picture)... Live never lets me down. It just gets better. Its a VERY DEEP program. If you like its workflow from the surface of the demo, trust us, you'll love it the more you use it.

[sqook]

As other people already noted in the thread, you should check out the demo first before deciding whether or not the software is worth it. Reading forum posts by random people on the internet is by far the least reliable source of accurate information... for god's sake, there are people on this forum that are complaining about products made by other companies. Try the demo, and if it does what you want, then buy it.

[saultopaul]

Thanks all. I really appreciate all your posts. If the quality is reflected in Live then it has got to be good! Hey they may appear random 'random people on the internet ' -sqook's post above - but i think the forum here is pretty well precise with the comments. I needed to hear from users - a stitch in time saves nine and all that. I will really give it a go and am happy i didn't just bow out without posting here.

[saultopaul]

and thanks kenn michael. I needed to hear that

[dubbyah]

Believe me, Live is the best tool to accurately convey what you hear on your head into an easilly transformable/manipulative enviroment to build tracks... just try it out, get a book, read the manual, you'll swear by it..

other sequencers work too, if you master them, but none have the unique features live does

[MarkH]

Just to throw you a curve, Harry Gregson-Williams (Chronicles of Narnia, Shrek 2, Man on Fire, Kingdom of Heaven, Spy Game) uses Live quite a bit.

[stinky]

Something to point out also, beyond the professionalism of the software, is the professionalism of alot of the users on this forum. That definitely says alot about Ableton. You'll be hard pressed to find a better forum on pro audio software (besides maybe KVR for plugs). It amazes me; the level of dedication to helping others that some of the users of Ableton offer to the newbies to help them get up to speed. Signed artists like AdamJay, Pitch Black, Chris J... and programmers like Angstrom.. lighting guys like Hambone... I'm not kissing ass here, but i haven't seen users on other forums try to cut out most of the bullshit backbiting, sneering, and pompous attitudes, like Abe users do. Yeah, I know, there's still alot of drama, but for the most part, pro discussions (not just about Ableton software, but gear and setups) are the mainstay here, and IMHO, there's not a better forum out there.

[RobStrobe]

try gettin version 4....

)

[saultopaul]

Looks like just the s/w i need for the task(s). Really appreciate all the posts. I am a bit long in the tooth now ( but still have them!) and years ago the number of a&r guys i used to see in London then never hearing from them again but hearing my music via them if you know what i mean was quite discouraging. I would hear my music and yet never got a penny for it. Well i kept a lot of stuff to myself and now hope i can put it all down and use the web to get it around. Seems the big boys monopolies are crumbling! Thanks for a great forum and ableton for obviously ace s/w. You got it stinky ‘Something to point out also, beyond the professionalism of the software, is the professionalism of a lot of the users on this forum. ‘ in the few seconds I’v been here I gotta agree. Will be a regular here from now on

[saultopaul]

Hi Rob am intrigued - try getting version 4 - go on -let me in!