Ableton Forum

Hi

It seems that there are a lot of people using Ableton for DJ'ing and 'Live' work who don't seem to see the need for any kind of offline processing options, favouring better realtime processing instead.

I'm a long time Logic user but have started using Ableton for sketching out rough track ideas and have been really impressed with the quick workflow that can be achieved as well as the great looping features. Unfortunately I always have to revert back to Logic or Pro-Tools for any kind of serious pitching & time-stretching. Ableton just doesn't compare to the quality of Serato Pitch & Time, Speed, Time Factory, Waves Soundshifter and even the new 'Complex' options within Logic's Time & Pitch Machine. I'm hoping the new 'complex' option included in Live 5 will be better but I really can't see a realtime process ever sounding as good as any of the above offline options. I'd assume it wouldn't be too kind to the CPU either!

Anyway, I'm a huge fan of Ableton Live and what it can do but as not every Ableton user is a DJ I would like to see a offline processing option for both pitch-shifting an time-stretching. Personally, I'm happy to 'preview' a clip the way it sounds at the moment but the ability to process a clip offline to a comparable sound quality of the plugins/programs I've mentioned would be a very welcome addition in my book.

I have also put together many DJ Mix albums in my time and as great as the re-pitch option is I can definitely recall many occasions when two tracks just aren't quite in key and I have ended up having to use Serato Pitch & Time to just tweak a track up or down a few cents to make them lock together perfectly. Being able to do this all from within Live without moving to another application is surely worth considering.

Anyway, thats my request

Thanks

Agreed! This one has been mentioned a few times before (check my thread in the general forum)...

LIVE's strength is the ability to quickly audition everything in real-time and mix and cue with loops all in perfect tempo to come up with great ideas for tracks or performing live..

problem is tho that if you do this in realtime the sound quality takes a hit.

So the way I do it is I usually end up putting together an arrangement I like and then afterwards I have to fix up all the loops that got killed by the poor LIVE timestretching in another program (I use Fruity Loops.. it actually has a really good timestretching algo), then importing them back in.. kind of tedious for sure.

It would definitely be nice to have a little button in the clip view where you can do an offline timestretch just to fix up the quality of the loop so that the real-time stretching won't destroy it so much!

LIVE seems to especially have a rough time once you try slowing down the tempo

I very much second that wish. Especially the timestretching.

I'm using live in a production environment where it's not crucial to have realtime timestretching capabilities - although i agree its very handy to play around with it...

however, i often miss some high quality offline algorithm that can handle drastic values without much distortion like for instance a phase vocoder.

switching to an external app to do the stretching is annoying and only distracting from the main task...

seeing more and more producers switching to live as an all-in-one production tool it would be a good idea to put that feature in.

just my opinion.

Yes please consider adding offline Time Stretch/Pitch Shifting.

I usually listen to my warped files in the cans and it sounds okay. When I listen to it amplified it sounds horrible. Is this because warping is done in real time that I hear it like that? Will it sound better once I render the warps?

I keep wondering if I am doing something wrong during the recording process to get warbling sounds from my warped loops.

I feel pretty dumb, I know I read it once but forgot about using the warp options for , beat, tone, complex etc. What a difference it makes when you use the right warp options. Now that I have that sussed, song writing can resume. I was thinking that subtle changes in timing makes all the difference in the world, that's why I love using Ableton for composing. I was thinking that because Warping sounded warbled I would simply lay the song out and re-record it linearly after I am done. Now that I fixed the warping options, I don't need to do that anymore. At least I figured it out by myself.

To me it seems more useful to provide a hook than to give up and make some "offline" work (which can be done with tons of VST plugins. In this case i would switch back to Protools and use Synchronic which provides real time features).

Indeed, a hooking facility (or in other terms: extension point) like Protools offers with its TC/E feature is more adequate. TC/E (Time Compresson/Expansion) in Protools is an extension point where 3rd party developers can hook up their functions for doing this particular task which in turn can be customizable by the user in the preferences pane (speaking: a good old callback function ).

So anybody may then write a plugin and we have tons of possibilities to choose from. To me it sounds like the best solution.