Ableton Forum

just getting to this discussion late, I make hiphop so you know I don't care
Lives sound is great for me, but someting I thought about while reading through what everyone has said, basicly you've all brought the discussion down to two things, math, and your ears and both viewing methods are valid of course, but regarding the maths, if we were to be that paticular regarding the resolutions of different audio apps, would it not be logical to also be so paticular regarding the different computers we use, I'm not talking about platforms, but physical machines would figure into the maths
as well as all of the different sound cards that we all use, and even the platforms, but what i'm getting at is at the level that you are discussing this is it really possible to separate the sound of Live or the sound of say a cubase from the sound and effects of all the internal circuitry of our equiptment? imho it's not really feasable, a 24/96 soundcard from m-audio
does not sound the same as one from rme so maybe these things have a perspective ratio that's hard to keep in mind when we are excited about something as much as we all are about Live.

and regarding the 'ear' method, with everything being so subjective one has to strive to satisfy ones self, if the sound of Live did not sound good to me I would not use it, and if there was a problem with it I would report it to ableton so that it could be fixed.

I wonder if the people who say live sound bad are not also working for cubase or logic companies spreading rumeurs beacause they are afraid of the competition?

BTW steinberg experiments on puppies and kittens for make there software working

and for a last test I wanted to check this affair of phase and offphase so that both files reset to get silence

This is what I found ...

The test is made in sonar 3.1.1

1. The original wav in phase (normal) and a copy of the original wav (off phase). I get silence = normal

2. The original wav in phase and the same file rendered from Live and put off phase. I can hear some highs ... I can easily recognize the song

3. The original wav in phase and the same file rendered from Sonar and put off phase. I can also hear some litte highs ... less than with Live but I can hear something

4. The original wav in phase and the same file rendered from Cubase SX 2 and put off phase in sonar. I hear nothing but SILENCE ...

Results : Cubase SX is the only one to not transform the original wav .. as the rendered file played off phase with the original in phase results to silence ...

I am not so a specialist but now I know with which prog I will render my files ...

bye

and I had that I dont work for Steinberg (but if they want me why not

yeash, that's due to the extra sample at the end of the live file as robert explained

For anyone that thinks that if you critisize Live in any way it must mean you are either being too picky or working for Steinberg, why don't you try to think about it this way: Maybe this discussion will push Ableton to make a great thing even better.

Why not?

Anonymous wrote:yeash, that's due to the extra sample at the end of the live file as robert explained

i believe the extra sample is at the beginning of the Live file. An extra sample at the end wouldn't affect the phase cancellation.
Something has confused me about Robert's post regarding the 1-sample delay introduced by the Hi-Q setting. In my experiment from Page 5, the phase cancellation experiment worked when Hi-Q was turned on, not when it was turned off. Plus, Hi-Q shouldn't affect anything because, in my experiment, there was no sample-rate/bit-depth conversion taking place.
As always, this esoteric experimentation is just for fun, and implies no lack of faith in Live's sound engine

That extra sample also makes sound forge report an illegal loop everytime I transfer a rendered track for mastering to sound forge. Disconcerting at first but no harm done.

yeh, i get that illegal loop sometimes, not all the time though.
nero burning rom doesnt recognise rendered files from live sometimes too because of this and i have to open the WAV in my audio editor, make a change, then save it to make it happen

Hi all!

I don't have much time to write at the moment, but I had to fill you all in in something that has to do with the issues of this thread.

As you remember I was asking about the big difference in sound quality I've noticed between Live and other programs, playing just a single wave file without any manipulation.

I am using the RME RPM convertor, working at 24bit 96kHz.

Because of the sound problem I've decided not to use Live at the moment.

Still, using other programs I've noticed there was a problem with my RME convertor when playing loops at 96kHz. The sound of the left channel would get compressed and filtered for some reason, whenever a 96kHz short loop would play.

To make a long story short, after weeks and weeks of trying to solve this problem - talking to all the experts I could fins and being in close touch with RME support, last night I've finally got an e-mail from RME saying:

"We have just discovered a problem with the RPM's firmware which may also be the cause of your problems.

Please find attached a new Settings dialog, hdsp32.exe."

Well, what I did was install the new software and played my loops again, and finally, after weeks and weeks of banging my head against the walls, the problem was solved.

*But* what I noticed is that not only the looping problem was solved but also the sound of Acid for example, seemed better on the whole. What I did next was obviously load up Live again, and......

It sounded much better!!!!!!!!!

It still didn't sound identical to Sound Forge, and I have to do the blind tests again before I will state my final impression, but there's no doubt that after this new fix from RME the sound of Live improved considerably.

So..........

What can I say??? Maybe I need to appologise, though I hope nobody will be too angry with me, because I was just stating what my ears heard, and none of the experts that I talked with suggested that all this could be a problem with the RME convertor. Especially since it played great using Sound Forge for example.

I find it amazing that such a huge bug existed, that had such a dramatic effect.

Anyhow, I'm more or less back to square one. I will have to check all this much deeper, but it seems that I can work with Live after all.

If you would have heard the difference in sound quality before the fix, I'm sure you would all understand why I thought I can't work with this program. (and I was going nuts asking: Why am I the only one hearing this????)

Anyhow, my final conclusion for the moment: Computers are a nightmare!!!! It's been months that I'm spending most of my time trying to fix technical problems, rather than using my creativity. I used to own a fourtrack tape and a guitar and a piano, and I used to work with a couple of turntables and a mixer, and back then I did something with my time! Still I want all the advantages of digital, but can you understand how furstrated I am after all this time of sorting problems????

Purple

Oops, it logged my out again. That was me up there.

I realize that most of the posts here are about unwarped files...
but for me... the biggest problem with Lives sound quality is that Live does NOT do 'transient' detection like Melodyne, AppleLoops, Acid (I believe), and others... This is critical for quality time stretching. They really need this. For now, I jam & compose in Live, then when I feel I have a great song developing I rebuild it in one of the others aps.
rRand

Just to clarify: I haven't even started checking and comparing sound quality of summing or time stretch etc. My only test and the only thing I was talking about was playing a straight wave file from disk, without any manipulation.

Does the audio sound better if Rewired into a app like Logic or SX?
Or same?