Ableton Forum

Angstrom wrote:

forge wrote: ... but for the record I never use complex mode, but if it was improved I might

Complex really isn't very good for its stated purpose, such as "warping a whole track" or "some classical guitar", but I do find a use for it when I am fixing a few odd notes in my horrible bass playing / guitar playing.
I ctrl-e around the bad note or two, turn on complex for just that little chunk, stretch/shrink the note length so the phrasing is right ... and I have not affected the sonic integrity of the other notes in the phrase.
Usually the guitar / bass is being processed by an 'amp' rack, so the complexified segment doesn't leap out as different it flies by.

It's yet another reason why I work in Arrangement, I just couldn't do that in Session. But that's a whole other story.

I mainly use tones for that

yeah I'd probably use arrange for that too - but my comments about session vs arrange arent really referring to using arrange in that way - I'd do that then consolodate and move back to session - my comments about arrange are more to do with the overall arrangement of the song

What exactly isn't pro enough in the complex mode? I use it often sync instrument tracks I've recorded if ever I decide to speed up the tempo for example, or change the tempo all in all. Just recently, I've used it on pianos to do a gradual crescendo, and now you're worrying me Is it an audible degradation? Cause I haven't heard that much degradation in sound, not if you don't time stretch extremely... On individual instruments at least.

it is not very good on transients because, it is a CPU lite frequency windowed algo and not beat hinted time-windowed like the native Ableton ones. frequency windowing eliminates 'bumpiness' like you might hear with Abletones 'Tones' mode which is a time windowed stretch. But frequency windowing also produces artifacts, and if you aim for a low CPU version then you get more artifacts.

Zplane's website doesn't really spell it out, but the Pro version has better transient handling - that means hits and beats and note starts are not 'blurred'. There's a lot of marketing blurb on their site about "The time-stretching engine is based on state-of-the-art psychoacoustic models and signal processing theory" which is just not informative. Some of it is hard to believe, such as "élastique Pro is based on a completely new approach to time-stretching, making stretching artifacts obsolete"
Which seems very unlikely!
I would prefer them to say something a bit more persuasive, such as : "we improved the engine by increasing the oversampling and made the windows dynamically responsive, (or some such techno waffle).
But still, a listening test from their downloadable demo app shows that it is 'better' than the older version.


'Pro' demands more CPU than 'efficient' (about double actually), but the benefit is that it comes with 'efficient' anyway so we would keep the existing one if Ableton went for an upgrade to Pro.

of course there are added benefits - the 'solo' mode, the formant preservation. All of which mean more silly noises

+1, would be a big improvement for djs

+1 from me!

J

+!

+1 I'll take some of that action!

+1

good call

+1

Defenitly +1 One of the few things I dislike about Live compared to other daws...

+1

Count me in as well.

+1

+1

This could even come out in a 7.x release, no need to keep us in suspense another year.

Bump - this thread for sticky

+1