Ableton Forum

The rumor is that Ableton does not sound as good the competition. Be it due to the effects or something less obvious, some people believe it and it could be true.

So my theory is that Ableton is taking so long on Live 9 because they are rebuilding the sound engine. New sound in Live 9.

Got to be true, right?

Hello Rydn,
Lets just forget the rumours for a moment, I'm curious as to what your thoughts are on Lives sound?

I think the effects generally have a dry and grainy sound. After demoing a couple EQs, I think the same is true of EQ8, though to a lesser extent. All of that might be be design to keep CPU usage low, as the tone focused are going to be using 3rd party plugins anyways.

What concerns me is the possibility that the 'dry' quality that is most apparent in the effects but affects everything in some subtle way.

Obviously awesome and professional mix can be created in Live. But would everything sound some small percent better if Live was using, say, Logic's sound guts? I spend a ton of time dialing in sounds - not that it necessarily shows, but I'm trying! - so a small built in bump in that direction is a very appealing idea.

It's because of Live stretch audio clip during playing. Called warp. It inevitably degrades sound. Don't use it if you don't want.

what pencilrocket said.
Regarding Lives effect, some of them have quality settings. "Eco" is the default setting which is the lowest CPU intensive process.

edit. EQ3 is known to colour the signal and is primarily a DJ tool.

And all this time I have been under the impression that theory is based on hypothesis and backed by (empirical) evidence. Thanks for setting me straight.

Also remember to put EQ8 on High-Quality Mode
many other live native plugins have the same feature.

Element wrote:Also remember to put EQ8 on High-Quality Mode
many other live native plugins have the same feature.

only if you need it.

God it's annoying that people are still going on with this bollocks after all this time.

http://www.abletontrainer.com/?p=308

http://www.abletontrainer.com/?p=316

Forge. wrote:

Element wrote:Also remember to put EQ8 on High-Quality Mode
many other live native plugins have the same feature.

only if you need it.

God it's annoying that people are still going on with this bollocks after all this time.

http://www.abletontrainer.com/?p=308

http://www.abletontrainer.com/?p=316

thanks mate, I didn't actually look into what Hi-Q meant, was just hitting it expecting that it was better

is this the same for the reverb?
I could just read the manual...

rydn wrote:The rumor is that Ableton does not sound as good the competition. Be it due to the effects or something less obvious, some people believe it and it could be true.

So my theory is that Ableton is taking so long on Live 9 because they are rebuilding the sound engine. New sound in Live 9.

Got to be true, right?

Ground hog day.

All DAWs can sound fuked and all can sound perfect - Its just sods law whether you manage to invoke its nasty quirk or not. With live, they way some bit of warping are handled and some aspects of the way elastique is driven, and verious other common oppotunitis for user fukwit errors that can occur in live, then the chances are you will hit some issue or other more frequency in Live than say logic, cubase, record (ie the audio bit of reason), PT, Sonar etc. Part of that is becuase live currently has more featuire for letting you make fukups.

However that is changeing as more DAWs include equivalent features with equivalent quirks.

The irony is the DAW world is changing - next year - DAWs probably WILL sound completely different to each other when you enable new character mix engine features that we shall soon see (already two audio mix engines in mini-DAWs do this, but none is a general main stream DAW).

How automation is handled has an effect on the sound output.
Every DAW doesn't handle automation the same.
Whether you think it matters or not is up to you.
Case closed.

Confirmed by Robert Henke in older threads.

Live (currently) has automation latency horribly.

automation timing accuracy
http://forum.ableton.com/viewtopic.php?p=1095894

Case closed. (maybe)

I thought Ableton was goin out of business, so Apple bought them and they were gonna make live a 93bit DJ app and completely do away with session view, and you will only be able to use Live as a plug-in in Logic so it will sound better, ALL because the success of Maschine?

pencilrocket wrote:Live (currently) has automation latency horribly.

automation timing accuracy
http://forum.ableton.com/viewtopic.php?p=1095894

Case closed. (maybe)

Latency could certainly be a contributing factor.
But I was referring to 'zippering' of automation, and the like.

Case definitely closed.

zipping effect usually happens when you automate some parameter you shouldn't ..
it's not a problem with live ..check the same automation on another DAW..