Ableton Forum

first of all I don't really think this is a bug, but it's kind of strange to me..

I never noticed this before, but Impulse emphasises the highs in an audio sample alot..
Listen to the attached audio sample;

First hit is the original sample, the second one the same sample played trough Impulse..
IMO the difference is too big?


sample is here

The second sample sounds like the levels are too hot. There is a clicking spike in the beginning which sounds exactly like digital clipping in Live. I'm even more sure of this because the end of each sample sounds identical where the level of the second sample is below clipping.

Check your levels and make sure you're not in the red. (Including track levels and impulse levels.)

No, there's no clipping..
Both levels are equal, just below 0 dB..

Why does it sound identical to clipping then? Just for a moment, forget about whether it's clipping or not. Don't you think that the huge spike at the loudest point of the waveform sounds like clipping?

That's quite an obvious difference. My bass drum samples never get a huge spike at the highest point of the waveform when I load them into impulse. If I have my levels too high within impulse internal meters, I can get that spike sound exactly. As long as the levels are right, the samples sounds identical whether it's played from impulse or an audio editor.

How did you render impulse? Does playback directly from impulse sound "clipped" too, or is it only noticeable when rendering it to an audio track? Did you normalize, etc in an external audio editor? Are all the knobs in impulse at their default setting? It also sounds like the start point of the sample could be shifted forward with impulse. The click could also be from editing of the sample if the start point was not cut on a zero crossing in the waveform or before the waveform starts. Can you explain any other details about the signal path? When troubleshooting like this, you want to make sure that both samples are treated absolutely identical and you have eliminated all variables before you can come to a conclusion.

I know what I'am doing here..

Impulse at default, no tweaking
the same sample loaded in Impulse and as a Audio looped clip..
Both mixed to an equal 0 dB..

It seems that it only appears with bassdrum samples that contain some higher frequencies, because I also tried with bassdrums that only contain low frequencies..

To me it sounds like if Impulse adds some extra Attack to the sample and therefore enhances the higher freqs..

I suggest you try it yourself with a layered kick (with some higher freqs in it)

Has the audio clip got the fade option turned on?

Poster wrote:I know what I'am doing here..

Impulse at default, no tweaking
the same sample loaded in Impulse and as a Audio looped clip..
Both mixed to an equal 0 dB..

It seems that it only appears with bassdrum samples that contain some higher frequencies, because I also tried with bassdrums that only contain low frequencies..

To me it sounds like if Impulse adds some extra Attack to the sample and therefore enhances the higher freqs..

I suggest you try it yourself with a layered kick (with some higher freqs in it)

Are you slamming your levels up to zero db or are the impulse settings at zero db? In Live it's a little hard to tell the exact db without numbered meters.

If you know exactly what you're doing and you're certain there's something wrong with impulse, why don't you just email the bug report to Ableton and be done with it? Most people post something like this because they're looking for help in troubleshooting. Even though they know what they're doing and have used Live for years. They're looking for ideas what else might be causing the problem before concluding it's a bug.

Yes, there is a snapping sound in the beginning of the sample which indicates to me that the highs are not artificially enhanced but instead there is something funny or abnormal happening at the peak of the waveform. It sounds as if the beginning of the sample was chopped off or the peak of the waveform was flattened somehow...maybe by impulse or by other means...

I will be glad to try it myself. How about if you just post the sample too? That way we can try it ourselves both ways and see if we can duplicate the click sound. That would elimate our guesswork about which kicks have enough highs or any other influencing factors that we may not be thinking about here.

Morphos wrote:Has the audio clip got the fade option turned on?

thanks.. that was it.. the 'fade' softens the attack..

but..

the way I found this difference at first, trough the browser stays the same..
so when auditioning samples in the browser does add this fade to the attack as well..
I found no preference setting for this?

testing

yes its the fade button. Switch it off and the sample sounds the same. Actually thats a relief as I use Impulse exclusively for drums

Thought I'd revisit this thread since I noticed something tonight. I loaded a sample of a chord into an impulse cell and later decided to get the same sound by loading into simpler and be able to pitch shift it with the keyboard.

I noticed that the attack on the same sample loaded into impulse sounds punchier than when it's in simpler triggered at the same pitch. The lowest attack value in impulse is .05ms so I don't think that makes a difference.

The only thing I was changing about the sample was adding some of the drive parameter. I tried to duplicate the same effect with simpler by dropping a saturator after it. I discovered that the saturation (or drive) in impulse has a different character than loading saturator and applying the same amount of drive. It doesn't matter what kind of distortion or tweaking I do in saturator, I can never get it to sound like the drive in impulse.

Saturation in impulse more optimized for percussive sounds? Hmmm... It definately is a different kind of distortion than the saturator effect.