Ableton Forum

greetings, i have considered more than a few times to use ableton for
my djing purposes. i promote events on a fairly regular basis and we
own our own rcf 4pro sound system. the thing holding me back is
consistantly everytime i hear someone djing off of ableton the sound seems
very unnatural, almost like parts of the track are slightly out of time. it
sounds quite unpleasing to the ears compared to someone using traktor, cds or vinyl. whats the deal with this? is this something ableton is going to
fix or is it just imperfections in the way that ableton time stretches audio.
i have used traktor on and off over the last couple years and find its key
changing ability to work very accurately and the sound is very natural. traktor has its own issues that im not completely happy with but the way
it deals with time stretching and key changing is flawless in my opinion.
anybody comment on this, thanks.

jaymichael wrote:greetings, i have considered more than a few times to use ableton for
my djing purposes. i promote events on a fairly regular basis and we
own our own rcf 4pro sound system. the thing holding me back is
consistantly everytime i hear someone djing off of ableton the sound seems
very unnatural, almost like parts of the track are slightly out of time. it
sounds quite unpleasing to the ears compared to someone using traktor, cds or vinyl. whats the deal with this? is this something ableton is going to
fix or is it just imperfections in the way that ableton time stretches audio.
i have used traktor on and off over the last couple years and find its key
changing ability to work very accurately and the sound is very natural. traktor has its own issues that im not completely happy with but the way
it deals with time stretching and key changing is flawless in my opinion.
anybody comment on this, thanks.

warp the out of time parts so that they will play in time.

just to be clear this is prerecorded material in question. the tracks
are "beat matched", but what ever ableton does to make them so
it distorts the audio in an unusual way not heard doing the same thing
in traktor. this is an ableton specific issue and its not just me, ive had
this discussion with many people and its a pretty common opinion that
when using ableton for djing the sound is unusual and unnatural.

"the thing holding me back is
consistantly everytime i hear someone djing off of ableton the sound seems
very unnatural, almost like parts of the track are slightly out of time. it
sounds quite unpleasing to the ears compared to someone using traktor, cds or vinyl."

I'm not sure, but this may mean you're listening to bad DJs "consistantly." If you try to play a song that's originally 150 bpm at 120 bpm, it's going to sound distorted. However, if you try to stay relatively close to the original bpm, you should be alright. My friend and I play live with live 7 every week and no one complains. And I'm not even that hot a Dj. Try the demo, mess around with it, and see what you think.

Have you tried using the different Warp modes?

Re-Pitch, for example is just like speeding up/slowing down decks. No artifacts at all.

like i said in my original post i have not used ableton before, but being
in the industry where i see performers weekend after weekend i have
grown to notice that when people dj off of ableton, and just to be clear
these are people i trust to be using ableton to the best of its ability, not amatuers.... generally i find the audio to be unusually garbled and unnatural sounding compared to other sourses, ie cds vinyl and traktor.

Altough they can be using live well, if the track warping (wich you have to do manually before hand) isn't done well and an appropriate warp algorithm selected, there will be noticeable loss of quality, specially with big diferences in tempo.