Ableton sounds cloudy - what next? (Audio Clips)

[raidensfx]

Hey All.

Have been using Ableton for a while now - producing, mixing down and releasing songs. What I have found is that it takes an herculean effort to get to the point where a song sounds like a reference track, compared to DAWs I was using before. after doing some google searches I just resigned to the notion that DAWs are essentially transparent and I just had to improve my mixes - that's cool.

Recently I got a demo of FL and decided to compare - I got some random drum samples - programmed a short loop in midi - added an orchestral vst. and did the same in Ableton and the results are very different

The Fruity Loops export https://on.soundcloud.com/tGE71A7EQrgTegFRAis brighter and has more presence (I turned off the limiter). Whereas the Ableton Loop export https://on.soundcloud.com/3Nkk89xvnrZNZy9P7 sounds like it's coming from behind a layer of cloud.

Does anybody know why this might be the case - which is the "truer" sound? I've built a workflow with Ableton but just can't help thinking that something is up with the audio coming out of it.

[werner44]

Hey, I had the exact same experience. When I switched to other DAWs I was blown away at how easy it was to mix and make things sound like my references. Ableton's sound engine is really really bad. It's an amazing daw for creative uses but sonic quality is the bottom of the barrel- sad they dont even acknowledge this!

Another thing ( maybe related) is that the midi engine isnt even sample accurate. Meaning if you print the midi programmed drums to audio they dont phase cancel with the midi lol. Every other DAW, even free ones manage to do this. But they'd rather focus their energy on hardware and useless feature updates no one requested - sad!

[pottering]

Ableton's sound engine is really really bad.

False, all DAWs' "sound engine" sound the same., FL Studio's own manual has a section about that (https://www.image-line.com/fl-studio-le ... _audio.htm), any difference is due to user error.

There are literally hundreds of tests out there proving this false.

Digital audio is standardized, it is the same in any DAW or in fact in any digital audio software or hardware, if there is a error in any DAW's "sound engine" the difference will be pretty extreme, an WAV file would play like harsh noise, it would not be a subtle difference.

Another thing ( maybe related) is that the midi engine isnt even sample accurate. Meaning if you print the midi programmed drums to audio they dont phase cancel with the midi lol.

False, I tested this dozens of times over the years, again any difference is due to user error (like not noticing the MIDI instrument has some kind of randomization, like pretty much every analog emulation).

[pottering]

Quote FROM FL STUDIO'S OWN MANUAL:

Spend time on any forum devoted to any Digital Audio Workstation (DAW) software or music production and you are guaranteed to see users making claims about the superior audio quality of this or that DAW application. Protagonists will say a given program is clearly and audibly superior to another. To be frank, that's just nonsense. Any DAW application that uses, at least, 32 Bit floating point calculations (and today, that's all software), will process audio without introducing unwanted distortions, frequency response alterations or any other effect that would be 'clearly audible' so as to influence opinion. This ability to process audio without making unintended, audible changes is called 'transparency'. From a transparency perspective all DAW software is created equal.

[werner44]

Ableton's sound engine is really really bad.

False, all DAWs' "sound engine" sound the same., FL Studio's own manual has a section about that (https://www.image-line.com/fl-studio-le ... _audio.htm), any difference is due to user error.

There are literally hundreds of tests out there proving this false.

Digital audio is standardized, it is the same in any DAW or in fact in any digital audio software or hardware, if there is a error in any DAW's "sound engine" the difference will be pretty extreme, an WAV file would play like harsh noise, it would not be a subtle difference.

Another thing ( maybe related) is that the midi engine isnt even sample accurate. Meaning if you print the midi programmed drums to audio they dont phase cancel with the midi lol.

False, I tested this dozens of times over the years, again any difference is due to user error (like not noticing the MIDI instrument has some kind of randomization, like pretty much every analog emulation).

Well, I guess platinum mixing engineers and diamond producers are all wrong then LMAO.

Regarding the midi jitter: if it's user error, please prove how I'm doing this wrong.

Print the programmed midi sequence of a complex rythmn track with drum rack for instance (any midi will do) and invert the phase with the printed audio - why doesn't it phase cancel?

Every other daw will cancel out but somehow it's the "user's error" when there's clearly core stability issues in the audio/midi engine.

[Calagan]

If Live is cloudy, just use something else.
I don't have any issues with Live, but maybe I'm just hitting me some bullets on the feet...

[werner44]

If Live is cloudy, just use something else.
I don't have any issues with Live, but maybe I'm just hitting me some bullets on the feet...

It’s cool you aren’t having a hard time but addressing these core stability issues is something people really want, not new features imo.

Curious if anyone short of changing daws solved these issues through some kinda hack

[login]

Ableton's sound engine is really really bad.

False, all DAWs' "sound engine" sound the same., FL Studio's own manual has a section about that (https://www.image-line.com/fl-studio-le ... _audio.htm), any difference is due to user error.

There are literally hundreds of tests out there proving this false.

Digital audio is standardized, it is the same in any DAW or in fact in any digital audio software or hardware, if there is a error in any DAW's "sound engine" the difference will be pretty extreme, an WAV file would play like harsh noise, it would not be a subtle difference.

Another thing ( maybe related) is that the midi engine isnt even sample accurate. Meaning if you print the midi programmed drums to audio they dont phase cancel with the midi lol.

False, I tested this dozens of times over the years, again any difference is due to user error (like not noticing the MIDI instrument has some kind of randomization, like pretty much every analog emulation).

Well, I guess platinum mixing engineers and diamond producers are all wrong then LMAO.

Regarding the midi jitter: if it's user error, please prove how I'm doing this wrong.

Print the programmed midi sequence of a complex rythmn track with drum rack for instance (any midi will do) and invert the phase with the printed audio - why doesn't it phase cancel?

Every other daw will cancel out but somehow it's the "user's error" when there's clearly core stability issues in the audio/midi engine.

FYI the only think the "sound engine" does is sum the signals, audio from recording or virtual instruments and effects from different tracks is just summed, at the "calculation level" it is just adding numbers, there is absolutely nothing mysterious about it, it is like two calculators doing the same operation. The bit depth, sample rate and Pan law are all adjustable. NUll tests have been done ad nauseum about that.

And yes mixing engineers can very well be wrong, they are not publishing papers in a scientific journal with actual data to prove an hypothesis, wonder why nobody has proven with research that DAWs sound different? believe if anyone could the paper would be published in serious engineering and computer science journals.

As for midi Jitter Ableton isn't the best as a clock, that is something that people have measured, but if you use other sequencer as the master clock things get way more tight. The MIDI interface can also introduce MIDI jitter BTW, specially because USB isn't designed for real time performance.