How to disable Mr. Ugly Warp completely??

longjohns · Post by **longjohns** » Sat Mar 03, 2007 6:41 am

Hehe, it's a valid point - notice my strategically placed winky face. here's another:

But seriously, for a long time on the forum, RePitch was considered the absolute safest mode. Ingo from the Ableton team was the one who said that actually Beats mode should be the safest bet at original tempo. There was at least one experiment which demonstrated a very slight difference in clip length in RePitch mode, which would result in an infinitessimally small pitch difference, which I would not consider worth worrying about.

I believe everyone is in consensus that Complex has a relatively dramatic effect on even original-tempo clips.

So the only real modes up for debate are Tones and Texture. It's a bit foggy for me on my own experiments, but I would swear I've had both complete cancellation, and at other times, some remaining artifacts / phasing with these modes at original tempo.

So I could in all fairness be called out to put up or shut up on this point, but I suspect that the quote of leisuremuffin in my last post was actually just a brain fart.

Tone Deft · Post by **Tone Deft** » Sat Mar 03, 2007 6:43 am

longjohns · Post by **longjohns** » Sat Mar 03, 2007 7:33 am

Oh Man, I hate to post this (believe me)

I just did a bit of experimenting.

Somebody please try this -

set an exact tempo so you can easily get back to it accurately.

record a clip

copy the clip to another track

put a phase-inverted utility on the second track

I can't at this point get anything but complex to cause problems with cancellation.

Now, set a follow action on the first clip. "Play Again" at a certain number of bars.

What I get at this point is: if you launch both clips by the SCENE Launch, they will cancel.

If you launch both clips with the space bar, they will NOT cancel anymore, until you remove the follow action.

Which makes me worry why Live is changing the clip playback depending on settings which theoretically should not matter.

Although I can't see how this would lead to a warping distortion, because it seems to stay that way, i.e. doesn't start un-cancelled and then phase back in with the other sample and disappear. It seems to just be a consistent offset.

longjohns · Post by **longjohns** » Sat Mar 03, 2007 7:55 am

First pic original clips

Second pics = those clips bounced to another 2 tracks.

Seems that the phase inversion is correct, but strangely the inverted one is ending up BEFORE the normal one, here by over 1 grid section...

must be a delay because of the follow action, which is on the first track (?)

rikhyray · Post by **rikhyray** » Sat Mar 03, 2007 12:26 pm

leisuremuffin wrote:
4ace wrote: If the program has to "be ready" to process audio at the drop of a dime then that would mean the audio is passing through some type of algorithm.

actually, neither of us know that for certain.

what we do know for certain is that one clip copied to two tracks, one with warp on, one with warp off are identical (in beats, tones and textures. NOT repitch or complex). the fact that they cancel each other out 100% when one's phase is flipped is scientific proof of the fact that they are the same.

.lm.

LM you are missing the most important point, neither me or anyone else really questions your experiment and its result.
Let me put it clear once again, as musician and producer I dont care if the files look the same, I care how they sound. And Warp on, any type make any clip sound worse at any tempo, including the original one.. If you do not hear then it might be really difficult to do your further research, maybe you need some more people to help you
Be assured that Josh or myself are experienced enough to notice the difference and we do. As I said for me very simple fact, I switch the damn thing off and if necessary rerecord a clip new at another tempo.
I would be an idiot ignoring it just because you, Ableton or anyone else telling me "it is not possible"

Being so inquisitive as you are and having time and abilities to experiment more, you will be appreciated by myself and others if you happen to find out the reason for those behaviors
Keep on good work, thanks

Josh Von · Post by **Josh Von** » Sat Mar 03, 2007 4:10 pm

longjohns wrote: Live is changing the clip playback depending on settings which theoretically should not matter.

Here is the thing that I think gets right to the heart of the matter:

In a lot of ways Live is a very mysterious, quirky application and always has been. It is not a squeaky clean predictably precise surgical tool.

Live is doing all sorts of magic behind the scenes in order to get the job done and interpret what you are telling it to do. IN the process of doing so the tradeoff is a certain amount of unpredictability

Live is full of bugs, both large and small that will not go away and keep popping up with exactly this kind of qualifier longjohns just made ..

"BUT THEORETICALLY.. IT SHOULDNT BE DOING THAT"

These are famous words among Live users ... they might say "THATS WEIRD .. WHY IS IT DOING THAT" ... or .. "WAIT ... WHATS IT DOING NOW" ... or "WTF"

How many times have you said, or heard this? How many times have you cursed under your breath at YET ANOTHER problem that there's no clear answer for (is it YOU? is it ABLETON? is it WINDOWS? is it NI? is it etc etc)

and that you may never get an answer for. Trust me when I say that this program is often a mystery to the people that developed it, otherwise we would have the answer to some fundamental things that have been screwed up from the beginning.

SO this is the price we pay in order to use this program to do music.

Dont sit behind your monitor and do isolated experiments, that prove the sound quality of this program is predictable and consistant, because I dont believe it.

Those kind of experiments do not reflect the true nature of this program, which is creative imo, not antiseptically perfect. You live with the mystery of it and accept it for what it is, or you go off and use something else (PT) where your science experiment will probably hold water

.

leisuremuffin · Post by **leisuremuffin** » Sat Mar 03, 2007 4:58 pm

y'know what? Fuck it. I don't care. You can all believe whatever bullshit you want to.

This thread was about one thing and one thing only -----> The effect of warp when the orig tempo has not been changed.

It wasn't about follow actions, although i'm sorry to hear they are not sample accurate in their timing of launching clips. It's not the end of the world to me.

and as for you cats, post some sort of proof to back up your statements, even if it's two audio files for people to see if they can hear a difference in or STFU. Seriously. I'm so fucking sorry of listening to you fucking puffed up pompous asses talk about how great your ears are and how experienced you are as producers/musicians/engineers/dog fuckers/DickJockeys/whatever. Go tell somebody who cares. I've been doing this shit my whole life too.

.lm.

longjohns · Post by **longjohns** » Sat Mar 03, 2007 5:03 pm

Next time you complain about something, supster, I will remind you to "live with the mystery of it and accept it for what it is, or you go off and use something else"

Josh Von · Post by **Josh Von** » Sat Mar 03, 2007 5:06 pm

leisuremuffin wrote:y'know what? Fuck it. I don't care. You can all believe whatever bullshit you want to.

This thread was about one thing and one thing only -----> The effect of warp when the orig tempo has not been changed.

It wasn't about follow actions, although i'm sorry to hear they are not sample accurate in their timing of launching clips. It's not the end of the world to me.

and as for you cats, post some sort of proof to back up your statements, even if it's two audio files for people to see if they can hear a difference in or STFU. Seriously. I'm so fucking sorry of listening to you fucking puffed up pompous asses talk about how great your ears are and how experienced you are as producers/musicians/engineers/dog fuckers/DickJockeys/whatever. Go tell somebody who cares. I've been doing this shit my whole life too.
.

i love you man, you are the most entertaining character online that i know of

.

Josh Von · Post by **Josh Von** » Sat Mar 03, 2007 5:07 pm

longjohns wrote:Next time you complain about something, supster, I will remind you to "live with the mystery of it and accept it for what it is, or you go off and use something else"

hahaha...

.

leisuremuffin · Post by **leisuremuffin** » Sat Mar 03, 2007 7:00 pm

All i want is for people to understand the one point that this thread is about:

Warping (on it's own, when in the 3 modes mentioned) does not change the quality of an audio clip if the orig. tempo is the same as the project tempo.

that's all. It's not up for debate until somebody provides a counter to the proof that i've made. The proof is easy enough for anyone here to try themselves.

Bring it or admit that i am correct. That is the only point i came into this thread to debate and you have put up a smokescreen of vague bullshit.

direct responses please.

.lm.

leisuremuffin · Post by **leisuremuffin** » Sat Mar 03, 2007 7:07 pm

longjohns wrote:
leisuremuffin wrote: it's been proven that with beats, texture, and tones mode the warp engine does nothing when the orig. tempo of the clip matches that of the current song.

Please, can we be VERY careful about this? Texture and tones have NOT proven to be safe at original tempo, from what experimenting I've done and from what I've read.

Again, Beats and RePitch are the safe modes, with a slight chance of very small (1-2 samples-like small?) differences in clip length with repitch.

I decree that anybody who posts anything contrary to that must post in the context of a detailed experiment report.

I have already posted the steps for how to prove this on the first page of the thread. Re pitch is not *safe* if by safe you mean identical. However, i think repitch sounds fine, just for some reason it doesn't quite identically match an unwarped file. try it. <-----actually, repitch seems safe too, I made a user error on my first test.

beats tones and textures are 100% identical files to their unwarped counterparts at the same tempo. I have tried this even when varying the warp parameters for tones and texture.

.lm.

franknputer · Post by **franknputer** » Sat Mar 03, 2007 7:11 pm

leisuremuffin is completely correct to state that 2 identical waves out of phase with each other cancel each other out. That fact has nothing to do with how it looks, but rather how it sounds, i.e. silence. If the files are not identical, then you will hear the difference between the files when one is out of phase. (Meaning, if the track loses high end from warping then you will hear only the high end that the 1st track has, that the 2nd track does not have.)

Now - that said, has anyone ever done this sort of test running a large number of tracks? Suppose you copy 20-30 unwarped tracks, warp them & throw them all out of phase: theoretically, if you still have perfect tracks you should still get 100% cancellation, and the point still holds true. But I wonder if there's a possibility that Live could start 'slipping' a bit when under a heavy load?

Josh Von · Post by **Josh Von** » Sat Mar 03, 2007 7:20 pm

franknputer wrote:has anyone ever done this sort of test running a large number of tracks? Suppose you copy 20-30 unwarped tracks, warp them & throw them all out of phase: theoretically, if you still have perfect tracks you should still get 100% cancellation, and the point still holds true.

But I wonder if there's a possibility that Live could start 'slipping' a bit when under a heavy load?

This is exactly what i was just thinking, and was debating whether to try and frame into words and take another few minutes of my time to post

Live definitely does slip under heavy loads, this is evidenced by the horrendous audio problems in arrange view with large projects, problematic editing with large numbers of clips

... and other issues that have been reported and documented and tested ad infinitum elsewhere. Nothing anyone in here with an academic argument about individual clip behavior and phase cancellation experiments can tell me (or many, many other users) otherwise.

I know there are people on here that take this as a personal insult, and they will 'defend the honor' of the company to thier dying breath, no matter what.

Personally I call it the way I see it and always have, Im on no corresponding vendetta to bring anybody down ... quite the contrary I personally like everyone at Ableton Ive ever dealt with

But I am impartial about the performance and audio quality and will say what I think. I do think there is a difference and dont have hours to blow devising experiments, carrying them out, and posting them on here for public review

Unless somebody wants to pay me for my time

.

.

leisuremuffin · Post by **leisuremuffin** » Sat Mar 03, 2007 7:22 pm

josh, bring some evidence or STFU.

.lm.