Ableton Forum

Thats cool man.

Although i didnt need convincing, some of my friends do.

what would be good would be if the test was done with warping on (with no tempo differences of course), just to see if that does affect it.
Mainly because I always have warp on, due to not being able to loop clips with it off.

I ll hazard a guess there is no difference there too. ( i hope i'm right!)

Only if you use beats, repitch, or tones mode.

I wonder if theres a difference in quality between Audio stretching (Live Warp & Logic Flex)

A few things i noticed was Live has a 'High Quality' default SR and Pitch Conversion button in preferences.
Also Live EQ has a 'High Quality' Option if you right click the window.

What effect do they have on sound quality.

nice work tarekith

great job and very clearly written!

I wonder if theres a difference in quality between Audio stretching (Live Warp & Logic Flex)

>>> Sure. Well maybe I wouldn't say it was a difference in quality, but certainly they sound different. <<<

A few things i noticed was Live has a 'High Quality' default SR and Pitch Conversion button in preferences.
Also Live EQ has a 'High Quality' Option if you right click the window. What effect do they have on sound quality.

>>> The High quality switch just uses a different filter (more CPU intensive) to reduce aliasing if you pitch a sample up or for on the fly sample-rate conversion. If you're not pitching things up, or converting sample rates, then there's no difference. <<<

i'd love to see the comparison with protools, that seems the daw that so many devotees like to get all puffed up about...

imo none can touch Live's workflow regardless...bc its fun

Logic sounds better. Period.

No studies need to be done. My roommate’s tracks done in Logic with his 5 months total music writing experience sound better than my tracks in Live with 20+ years of music experience and better gear. As further testimonial he really doesn’t know what the fuck he is doing as far as mixing. It just comes out better with minimal effort.

Exactly why this is or whatever scientific data is being compiled on this I don’t really care. It’s just fact in our household.

Thanks Tarekith !

beats me, that sounds more like a groove/mojo/self-loathing issue than a daw issue, sorry!

Tarekith wrote:Only if you use beats, repitch, or tones mode.

Wait, i thought repitch was the only one that DIDN'T affect the sound, since it's just slowing it down? Beats, Texture, Tone, and Complex ALL affect the sound in some way or another, don't they? I had to throw away a bunch of breaks i'd chopped since they had been warped using Beats, and it had made my drums sound different from the originals.

now if we can find someone with Harrison MixBus and do the same thing while bypassing the stereo mix bus channels.. I wonder if the magic of MixBus lies in it's stereo mix bus channels or it's overall summing mojo for it's individual channles to the master track..

I love ableton live but logic sound better bigger warmer.

Nice write-up, Tarekith, as always.

Your test is a perfectly valid view of the two summing engines, yet does not really end the argument of 'DAW A vs DAW B Overall Sound Quality'.

Most of the actual sound quality differences will surface when multiple tracks have multiple plugins on each track and things like plugin delay compensation come into effect. Errors in plugin delay compensation (acknowledged by Ableton in the past )may result in slight phase shifting, multiply that by many tracks and plugins, and you have potential for a muddy mix in the end. This is coming from a HUGE Ableton Live fan.

I have a feeling that if you tried using multiple plugins on each track (same across the two DAWs, of course), the final output would not be the same.

Just my $0.02