My rendered files sound terrible

kselbee · Post by **kselbee** » Fri Mar 16, 2007 11:09 am

I sent a message to support but was wondering if anyone else has experienced something similar. I have only 2 audio tracks and 1 MIDI track... just a few loops and light effects (reverb, compression, EQ). Everything is arranged and plays fine in Live, but once I render, the audio track has volume fluctuations and stutters. I've tried rendering with and without my interface (FA-66) and the result is the same. Tried normalization, no normalization and a variety of quality and file formats (wav, aiff). I'm using 6.05 on a MacBook with 1 gig of RAM running 10.4.9. Any one else seen this type of thing?

blank · Post by **blank** » Fri Mar 16, 2007 11:36 am

any third part plug involved in your track ?

if so

try disable them one by one

to see if the probs still occurs

minimal · Post by **minimal** » Fri Mar 16, 2007 11:48 am

create a new audio track
set "Audio from": MASTER, post fx (if you have fxs in the master)
arm recording, DISABLE monitor, and record your track in realtime, it sounds better.
Do an A/B comparison between rendered and recorded, you'll hear.

blank · Post by **blank** » Fri Mar 16, 2007 11:55 am

you can also set a new audio track in resample mode

will give the same results

its like a real time export

personnaly, for final version this is always like that I proceed

kselbee · Post by **kselbee** » Fri Mar 16, 2007 2:27 pm

minimal wrote:create a new audio track
set "Audio from": MASTER, post fx (if you have fxs in the master)
arm recording, DISABLE monitor, and record your track in realtime, it sounds better.
Do an A/B comparison between rendered and recorded, you'll hear.

Thanks for the tip... I'll try this. Is this generally what people are doing? I'm still learning....

anti-banausic · Post by **anti-banausic** » Fri Mar 16, 2007 2:30 pm

blank wrote:you can also set a new audio track in resample mode

will give the same results

its like a real time export

personnaly, for final version this is always like that I proceed

The only thing about this technique is that any plugs on the Master will get printed to the resampled audio.

randrohe · Post by **randrohe** » Fri Mar 16, 2007 3:43 pm

you can only resample into a clip, not arrangement... I beleive.

blank · Post by **blank** » Sat Mar 17, 2007 2:05 pm

The only thing about this technique is that any plugs on the Master will get printed to the resampled audio.

we talk about rendering a track right ? so its normal to get the master plugs printed in the audio don't you think ?

if not

just turn it off

you can only resample into a clip, not arrangement... I beleive.

yep I think so, never tried to resample trough classic mode even if the track is sequenced that way. I open the temp record file in wavelab after and trash the recording done in live.

I noticed an improvement ( a little ) over the sound quality in a couple of software using a realtime method.

Live does not have a switch like that in the export menu and this is so sad

radib · Post by **radib** » Sat Mar 17, 2007 5:27 pm

"rendering" is useless and complicated. it just doesn´t work out in most of the cases.

as said use resampling by creating a new audiotrack which simply records the whole master-out (irrelevant if you play by sessions-mode or arrangement-mode, it both sends to the master). works easy and perfect, and you can listen to it while it records.

earsmack · Post by **earsmack** » Sat Mar 17, 2007 7:42 pm

During playback of some of my projects certain files glitch when they play - I'm assuming Live is loading them and there is a little stutter as they play the first time. This usually happens (for example) when the bridge of a song starts where many tracks need to load at once. I do not have them marked RAM because you can't mark EVERYTHING as RAM - right?

So, my question is...using Render it seems to load them all properly and there are no stutters in the rendered version. This is how I've always exported complete mixes. I'm guessing Live is a little better at handling this stuff. However, with the other ideas in this thread I'm wondering...if I resample into another track (either by using the resample option specifically or just running the Master track into the new track) will it record the stutter?

Should I just freeze all my tracks before I render/resample to solve this issue? Any thoughts?

If it matters, I *do* run a mastering effect rack on the master channel usually and would like to capture that.

Thanks!

radib · Post by **radib** » Sat Mar 17, 2007 7:53 pm

earsmack wrote:if I resample into another track (either by using the resample option specifically or just running the Master track into the new track) will it record the stutter?
Thanks!

it records exactly that you hear, therefore depends on your hardware. on my little system, if cpu-usage is beneath 70% it all gets through without any problems at all and without freezing and stuff. maybe just give it a try and decide for yourself. i got used to this method for a happy while, since the first time i never used rendering anymore.

blank · Post by **blank** » Sat Mar 17, 2007 7:59 pm

I rarely improve glitch and pop using live but yes sometimes a pretty big sets can lag a bit on first play after a load

so before launching any export process i usually play the track back once and check if everythings runs fine and exactly like I did build it ( thx NI and your damn buggy synths that sounds so well).

Should I just freeze all my tracks before I render/resample to solve this issue? Any thoughts?

At the speed live is freezing a track, I guess it uses the same method as an export, so freezing everything leads prolly to the same overall quality result.

I run all my audio on another drive than the one live is installed on, if you can't be sure to use another partition. On my lappy, live had problems running big sets that way, once the audio stuff was loaded on a external drive, everything went fine back so maybe its part of your glitch, pops, sluttering problem.

earsmack · Post by **earsmack** » Sun Mar 18, 2007 11:30 am

Render has always done the right thing for me but I'm going to experiment with some of these other methods a bit.

As far as external drive, I can't imagine Live is accessing the disk for anything more than audio data while it's running. I mean, all UI and code is probably loaded already I would hope. Since nothing else is runnning on the computer (G5/2GB RAM) my thought is that an external hardware would only make a difference if it were physically faster than my internal drive and/or had less fragmentation which is morel ikely to be an issue on an internal drive (with the OS installed, etc.)

Good tips - thanks all!

leisuremuffin · Post by **leisuremuffin** » Sun Mar 18, 2007 4:08 pm

1) render has never done anything bad to my tracks. I'm not saying it doesn't to yours, how would i know, but i'm saying it has never affected mine.

2) of course you can "resample" in arrange view. Make a new audio track, set its input to resample. Arm it to record. hit record on the transport.

.lm.

Tarekith · Post by **Tarekith** » Sun Mar 18, 2007 4:43 pm

I always use render, works fine.