Improvement of the Audio Engine

[xyandrej]

Even working in 32 bit recording/exporting the sound which comes out from ableton doens´t compare with the other production softwares on the market. Logic, Cubase, Sonar...

...my wish for ableton 9 is an improvement of the audio engine.

[gibson_ewok]

Depends who's using the software. I reckon it sounds pretty good. I've heard shit sounding music come out of logic and cubase too.

[xyandrej]

yes sure, thats also true,
but lets say you record a midi part and send it to some softsynth plugin and lay under some beats made in battery
bounce it out (render) in ableton and in logic 9 the end result will be better from logic.

i made that test with a friend of mine whos has logic and you can hear differences in the base range and dynamics and the overall sound...

[gibson_ewok]

I own Logic 9 and Ableton 8. Here is the exact same layers put into both pieces of software http://www.mediafire.com/?jmzyyjyyuzz
If you can tell the difference between that you are doing very well!

[Bran richards]

Are you kidding me ? Thats the worst test ever they sound nothing a like the drums sound the same the rest sounds louder and fatter in the logic wav..

I personally love it when this topic comes up cause I hope Ableton really do over hall there audio engine because it DOES sound inferrer not to mention its a CPU hog.

Forget about all the phase tests and people saying " I stuck some loops in logic and some loops in live and got complete silence when i did a phase cancelation test, there for the summing is exactly the same"

An Audiophile once told me that phase tests don't prove anything because you can get silence even know there are subtle differences in the two audio files, I don't know anything about that and haven't bothered looking into it because I trust my ears and ive done many tests with mates, teachers from QT and producers I'll except that half the time people cant tell because it's to subtle but to a trained ear they always pick live out as being less fat and some what distorted in the top end and stereo image.. And these are all blind tests! Whats my point ? some say its a definitive test some say its not , Just trust you ears ! Thousands of people bag Live and most of them have a problem with it because they use it and want it better its no myth that live sounds worse

Live is such a creative tool you can get stuff going lighting quick, thats why I use it so I have no reason to say it sounds worse, I'd love to be able to convince my self it sounds great but it just doesn't but i wish it did. If you care about your overall sound then get a metric halo and use that for summing... thats what I did and even the people that cant pick Live in a test can always pick the Halo, it's better than any of the daws ive used (Cubase, Live and Logic) .... I thank god Live has Render "All Tracks"

[Tarekith]

An Audiophile once told me that phase tests don't prove anything because you can get silence even know there are subtle differences in the two audio files,

Werd man, werd. People need start realslising Live is wack yo. It doesn't have an audio engine, it has an audio hamster on a wheel yo.

[Bran richards]

I take it thats a joke as your the one that has done the most elaborate post about how the summing is the same cause you got complete silence!

Clever how you quoted half of my sentence, when my point was clear i don't buy into any of it i just trust my ears.

[Tarekith]

I'm not making fun of you, I'm making fun of "the audiophile". Gotta watch those types, they'll believe anything.
----------------

"Are you kidding me ? Thats the worst test ever they sound nothing a like the drums sound the same the rest sounds louder and fatter in the logic wav..

I personally love it when this topic comes up cause I hope Ableton really do over hall there audio engine because it DOES sound inferrer not to mention its a CPU hog.

Forget about all the phase tests and people saying " I stuck some loops in logic and some loops in live and got complete silence when i did a phase cancelation test, there for the summing is exactly the same"

An Audiophile once told me that phase tests don't prove anything because you can get silence even know there are subtle differences in the two audio files, I don't know anything about that and haven't bothered looking into it because I trust my ears and ive done many tests with mates, teachers from QT and producers I'll except that half the time people cant tell because it's to subtle but to a trained ear they always pick live out as being less fat and some what distorted in the top end and stereo image.. And these are all blind tests! Whats my point ? some say its a definitive test some say its not , Just trust you ears ! Thousands of people bag Live and most of them have a problem with it because they use it and want it better its no myth that live sounds worse

Live is such a creative tool you can get stuff going lighting quick, thats why I use it so I have no reason to say it sounds worse, I'd love to be able to convince my self it sounds great but it just doesn't but i wish it did. If you care about your overall sound then get a metric halo and use that for summing... thats what I did and even the people that cant pick Live in a test can always pick the Halo, it's better than any of the daws ive used (Cubase, Live and Logic) .... I thank god Live has Render "All Tracks""

[Bran richards]

This audiophile actually teaches at the Queensland university of technology in Australia and is not an idiot, it took him two seconds to point out that one of the files had a distorted stereo image.
... Like i said anyone that listens to a lot of audio in my experience always gets it right

I said you quoted an incomplete "sentence". So you Post my whole reply and your trying to say your not joking ?

[Tarekith]

Good point, I need to listen to a lot of audio I guess.

[Bran richards]

Or find a new career doesn't involve hearing. Maybe you can make a living being sarcastic ?

Did you download the clips at the start of this thread ? There not even close ............

Why would you even bother surely being an Ableton user you want them to improve the audio quality and not suggest its fine and have them do nothing Or can you really not hear the difference. And even if you cant hear the difference you must know someone that says it's not up to scratch, someone whos opinion you respect. My first bit of music i ever wrote was on cubase then i switched to Live and it sounded different even people like Tipper said to me that i have changed something cause my music now had a "papery type sound" ...It sounds inferrer to me, people that dont even produce, people that teach and people that have been producing for over 20 years .. are you really going to say cause you cant hear it we are all wrong ? I think it makes more sense to say that it is there and you just cant hear it, their blind tests for god sakes !! there is no biased opinions !! Just good old ears .... And its sad that you would base it all on a phase test ... and I bet you just used audio loops as well either way surely there is more to it than just reproducing audio files what about plugin instruments and effects, what about how the daw reacts under a lot of CPU stress surely the variable are to vast to be able to test it any other way than with your ears !

[Tarekith]

I don't think there's anything wrong with Live's 'audio engine', certainly not in comparison to other DAWs. When this discussion comes up, it's almost always an issue with someone not understanding some of the ways Live works that is causing the issue. More often than not it's that they are using warping on their audio since it's enabled by default, and of course timestretched audio is going to have some degradation. Some of the warp modes even change the sound of the audio when you're NOT timestretching them as well, as is clearly explained in Ableton's Audio document.

Or they're using something like EQ3 which colors the sound even when no boost or cut is applied. Or something like Compressor 1 or 2 from earlier versions of Live, which were admittedly kind of poor sounding compared to the compressors included with the competition. When you remove these differences and do straight comparisons with other DAWs, there is no practical difference. Myself and other respected audio engineers have proven this again and again, both scientifically and with audio examples.

And anyone that claims that two filse that phase cancel an still be different should not be teaching audio.

[xyandrej]

All I know is that I can hear a difference between, Ableton and Logic...
i cant explain why but i trust my ears and therefore fact is that logic, cubase or sonar just sound better.
Allot of well know electronic musicians that i know say the same and they use ableton for live acts but not in the studio.

[gibson_ewok]

You would have to do a blind test to know for sure. When you see a file called "Logic" and "Ableton" your mind could easily play tricks on your ears.
We did a test at uni where the lecturer played A and B files to everyone and at least 15 people swore they could hear one of them sounding "better" then the other. They were the exact same file.

[EX]

You've gotta trust your ears and that's it.

Otherwise these threads where 10 producers will swear blind that the perceptibly identical A & B sound totally different will drive you insane. Gearslutz is a good forum for threads that will do your head in like that.

Even when there is a slight difference, one has to consider or allow for the possibility that the difference is so minute that it isn't going to make a blind bit of difference to a real listener and is therefore negligible or isn't a difference that represents the difference between success and failure. I know for some engineers it will be impossible to look at it like that though, hence those Emperor's new clothes threads.

Not implying thats the case with anyone in this thread, just saying the identical/as-good-as-identical A & B thing has done my head in a bit in the past.

Oh and +1 re the point about warping and accumulated Live devices probably being the slight, or maybe not so slight, degradation culprit in most cases.