Ableton Live 9 Pics

[audioconsult]

Originally Posted by NeoHippy

they made a bad looking ssl g bus compressor clone!

I hope it sounds better than it looks

that is exactly what i thought when i touched the first time the real ssl bus compressor

[audioconsult]

Originally Posted by cane creek

Yes I was in a club the other night and as soon as a track produced in Ableton came on the dance floor emptied, the clubbers instantly recognised the poor Ableton sound quality and were straight on the DJs back insisting he should play only tracks produced in Logic & Cubase.

its not about clubbers..its about expensive outboard equipment that sounds great ... and you as producer want to have this quality in the mix without unecessary and unwanted samplerate conversions.. or use the external fx plug without samplerate conversion..

When the majority of the userbase dont gets when the samplerate conversion is on or off because theire plug ins sound shit already..thus some muffeling rather helps them..dont changes that this is not ideal.. use a muffelizer plug when you need mud.. but randomn src engagement and data corruption? where i come from we call such behaviour buggy..

I ve heard umors that fight with a well hidden audio bug caused massive delays in the development of L9.. when there is a bit truth in this rumors ther is a chance that L9 finaly holds the promisse to be as good audio wise than the big DAW´s.. Than they only need to complete theire midi and syncing abilitys and call themself a big daw too

[Dudley]

Audioconsult - do you have any evidence that Live sounds demonstrably worse than other DAWs? if so it would be great if you could post it here.

[SWAN808]

Originally Posted by Dudley

Audioconsult - do you have any evidence that Live sounds demonstrably worse than other DAWs? if so it would be great if you could post it here.

yes Im on the fence on this one but it would be great to actually hear some evidence. It cant be that hard to replicate a mix fairly over several DAW with 3rd party plugins...I think until you actually provide this everything is just speculation that casts a shadow perhaps unfairly...

I would love it if they tightened up the sync and MIDI response.

[audioconsult]

Originally Posted by Dudley

Audioconsult - do you have any evidence that Live sounds demonstrably worse than other DAWs? if so it would be great if you could post it here.

no.. as it only turns up in full load its extremly difficult and time consuming to do such files.. i did it once and posted them in the ableton forum.. and got banned the next day and the posting removed

[SWAN808]

Originally Posted by audioconsult

no.. as it only turns up in full load its extremly difficult and time consuming to do such files.. i did it once and posted them in the ableton forum.. and got banned the next day and the posting removed

Its not a really sensible area to discuss such things the Ableton forum - it is too close to the bone and will inevitably turn into a war.

But you didnt keep the files after all that work?

[audioconsult]

Originally Posted by SWAN808

yes Im on the fence on this one but it would be great to actually hear some evidence. It cant be that hard to replicate a mix fairly over several DAW with 3rd party plugins...I think until you actually provide this everything is just speculation that casts a shadow perhaps unfairly...

I would love it if they tightened up the sync and MIDI response.

its very hard to show that and ableton rarely documents bugs in the audio engine in the changelog.. i pointed them to 3 of them during the live 8 debacle.. and as it turned out 2 of them was present in earlier versions allready.. they than add .."under rare cicumstances" one of theese rare circumstances was changing the project tempo and going back to the original tempo and than inserting recordings from other sessions..Not so rare for me really... theese recordings was than played with samplerate conversion even when project and clip tempo matched.. so degeneration on files from other sessions, maybe out of a logic project, where you easily got that something was foul...

This bug with the Brown henke dither as i called it, has happened because the internal temporesolution is 4 digits and the adjustabel just 2 digts.. and thanks to rounding errors during the tempochange the displayed 120,00 bpm was suddenly a 120.0012 bpm.. therfore no way to set the external recordings properly to the hidden real project tempo...

The last i found was that the external fx plug was buggy and also had its return samplerate converted..or whatever.. at least it just sounded totaly crap in relation to logics external fx plug...

but that was easy to show.. diffificult to show the mystery bug.. abletons legendary muffel bus, that only kicks in in the middle of a track heavy production.. and you only really get that with acoustical recordings of highend gear.. that suddenly starts to sound like plug ins.. on plug ins on the other hand the muffeling is experienced by many users as a positive thing. There are quiete a few that think that ableton sounds better than other daws..But thats the same cattegory of users that find bad amps with a hi THD better just because the highs sound more brittle..


Anyway.. I ve no motivation to proove anything..when you dont got it by now anyway, just dont worry.. you will get it one day when it gets in your way and your ears are trained enough.. Or you wont because they have fixed it by than or it dont matters with your sound sources anyway.

Ableton is a bit shy about changes in theire soundengine because that would look like that they was lying before when they claimed perfection and brought out theire "fact book".. a sad thing where they claim 5 ms midi jitter to be normal and giving themself a good record by holding theese lousy data..But by now theire midi jitter is better than back than.. was a while not possible to work without quantisation an deven now it screws sometimes with your playing and places the events wrongly along the timeline..

Or their midiclock input sync without rounding..

L8 showed pretty well that their theoretical perfection was just illusive.

Problem with ableton is that they have elastic audio..and therfore elastic audio bugs too..they come and go.. Its a bit crappy under the surface.

[audioconsult]

Originally Posted by SWAN808

Its not a really sensible area to discuss such things the Ableton forum - it is too close to the bone and will inevitably turn into a war.

But you didnt keep the files after all that work?

I only keep important files.. and maye i ve kept them.. but not in one of the main folders where i ve a chance to find them quickly.. i ve a new laptop by now ..with new hardrives aso.. I dont even think about starting to dig for such a shit.. spned hours the other day to find a list of caps to recap somebodys desk..lost in the laptop change :-/.. now i ve to go ther and do it all again...

Just test it yourself.. its easy.. just build teh same 16 track project in logic and live.. use only natural sound recordings,. no plug in sound sources..and external hardware reverb and compression via external fx plugs..

do all the same settings and mix.. and compare the outcome.. listen especially what happens to what comes back from your external reverb and to the resolution in the reverb tails and details in the recordings.. like the background sounds in a mike recording..

And than you can post that, and hear that you made it all up or have done something wrong..no one will belive it anyway..except the people that know allready.. So ..just DIY..thats the only valid prove.

Other way..wait for L9.. and when this sounds any better to you than L8.. you can see that as prove that something with L8 was´nt as optimized as they claimed it to be.. The claim was perfection for that what a 32 bit float daw can do..

[Raddler]

Originally Posted by audioconsult

it sounded shitty some years ago..became better.. but is still not at par with the big daw´s.. and they should change that when going high end with the plugs..otherwise you wont have so much benefit from them..

+111111111

I agree with that, and so do about 5 of the last big name producers featured in Future Music.

[Veck]

There was an extensive test in the german magazin "sound & recording", where they tested the summing and audio exports of several DAWs (Ableton, Cubase, Logic, etc.). They provided the audiofiles and all kind of measurments, null tests, etc. There was absolutly no difference between the final exports.

If you switch Ableton to high quality and don't use the warp algorithms, leave it to repitch, there is no difference. I use Cubase too and there is no difference between Ableton and Cubase sound quality wise.

[audioconsult]

Originally Posted by Raddler

+111111111

I agree with that, and so do about 5 of the last producers featured in Future Music.

its only the newbs and people that started with itb production and never came out of it yet, that dont get it.. so 70% of abletons customer base.. so they just didnt cared.. But theire users dont stay newbs forever and after the loss of face with L8.. they cant really keep it like that forever.. they need to become a pro daw at one point.. therefore they need surround support and a stable production quality and not SR conversions that do what they want...

I am really curious if L9 has a more detailed open sound or not.. The long development time would have allowed a restructuring of he whole thing..

Such audio degenrations in a daw are often realted to processtiming issues.. So the structure of the program needs to have the timing services at the root..while elastic audio sounds a bit like no timing service or concept at all..and really.. when you switch off the crossfades ableton is way more clicky than other daws.. cutting on zero crossings dont helps with ableton.. it clicks when it likes to click.. Probably they even use SRC for the crossfades.. and call it than a user error when you complain about sound quality.. but there is no way to work without the crossfade. Its rather surprising that so many claim that ther are no problems with live.. must be nice to know so little.. problems you dont realize are none i guess...

[Raddler]

Originally Posted by Veck

There was an extensive test in the german magazin "sound & recording", where they tested the summing and audio exports of several DAWs (Ableton, Cubase, Logic, etc.). They provided the audiofiles and all kind of measurments, null tests, etc. There was absolutly no difference between the final exports.

If you switch Ableton to high quality and don't use the warp algorithms, leave it to repitch, there is no difference. I use Cubase too and there is no difference between Ableton and Cubase sound quality wise.

I don't buy that at all.

[10 ton splash]

Originally Posted by audioconsult

but that was easy to show.. diffificult to show the mystery bug.. abletons legendary muffel bus, that only kicks in in the middle of a track heavy production.. and you only really get that with acoustical recordings of highend gear.. that suddenly starts to sound like plug ins.. on plug ins on the other hand the muffeling is experienced by many users as a positive thing. There are quiete a few that think that ableton sounds better than other daws..But thats the same cattegory of users that find bad amps with a hi THD better just because the highs sound more brittle..

I didnt know that was a bug. I was wonderin what the hell that was. It would just kick in in the middle of the song. I thought it was the automation somehow.

[audioconsult]

Originally Posted by Veck

There was an extensive test in the german magazin "sound & recording", where they tested the summing and audio exports of several DAWs (Ableton, Cubase, Logic, etc.). They provided the audiofiles and all kind of measurments, null tests, etc. There was absolutly no difference between the final exports.

If you switch Ableton to high quality and don't use the warp algorithms, leave it to repitch, there is no difference. I use Cubase too and there is no difference between Ableton and Cubase sound quality wise.

bla bla..they claim this since years and null test? where have they did the nulling? and have they measured the outcome with a bitscope? why they havent just compared the files with bitscope than instead mushing them up in another floating point process??

This allways upcoming tests are again personal experience here..
And they was up before i showed ableton 3 audio bugs in theire engine..

does that say that all daws share the same audio bugs? or how shall i interprate a successfull nulling when i afterwards can com along and show that the SRC is allways on as soon you move the tempo setting?

sorry guys..its not that simple...

[audioconsult]

Originally Posted by 10 ton splash

I didnt know that was a bug. I was wonderin what the hell that was. It would just kick in in the middle of the song. I thought it was the automation somehow.

The theory says that a summing with 32bit float should be so good that it sounds the same on any daw..thats the theory.. that in practice thats not true in many situations must be than not intended operation.and therefore bugs..often conceptional bugs that only show up in certain situations. Or weard code interactions that act more or less on a randomn base as soon a certain function is used.. In case of L8 that was using midi tracks.. could lead to randomn crashes..but didnt had too..
That major bug had surrived the Beta testing of Ableton..using midi tracks = crash

Problem with Ableton was theire arrogance that they only accepted bug reports that delivered them repeatable proove.. all other reports was considered as user errors.. This together with the moronnic user base that did the "free" betatesting for them..
It worked out up to L8 wher the hidden bug armada break free..Bugs that was reported to them early enough. But thanks to the randomn nature nobody could proove them in an repeatable way..

Anyway..stupidity has many faces..ignorance towards crash bug reports just because one cant repeat them on demand is one of them.

[Hardtoe]

For the way I use Ableton, I have not encountered sound quality issues,

(I began on Live 3 remixing / making techno & house and now use Live 8 for tracking and mixing bands)

but I do have serious issues when trying to record overdubs on top of complex mixes (with bus routing, plugs on master, lots of groups, etc), where suddenly the new track will be recorded out of sync with the rest of the song.

This is a super annoying timewaster (as I have to manually sync everything after the fact) and is totally not pro in front of my clients - not only does this happen randomly, but the amount of offset will be different for new tracks recorded after restarting the program.

(btw - I monitor tracking through the Ensemble low latency mixer software, not through live)

I went through this several times with tech support, but nothing they suggested changed the situation.

I have stuck with Live as using it is so second nature to me now, but if they have fixed the underlying engine to be more solid that would be a major improvement for me.

[audioconsult]

Originally Posted by Veck

I use Cubase too and there is no difference between Ableton and Cubase sound quality wise.

Interesting..how you get that idea? you use only 3rd party plugs and work itb only?

and what monitors do you use?

[Boddhisattva007]

Originally Posted by Raddler

I don't buy that at all.

I don't either. I use logic as well and there is a difference.

[SWAN808]

Originally Posted by audioconsult

its very hard to show that...

The last i found was that the external fx plug was buggy and also had its return samplerate converted..or whatever.. at least it just sounded totaly crap in relation to logics external fx plug...

Anyway.. I ve no motivation to proove anything..when you dont got it by now anyway, just dont worry.. you will get it one day when it gets in your way and your ears are trained enough.. Or you wont because they have fixed it by than or it dont matters with your sound sources anyway... Its a bit crappy under the surface.

well - its interesting to hear your opinion on this issue...It sounds like there may be a mix of experience with testing but also speculation (external FX bug)...

[aproblem]

thread went to shit relatively quick

[Palaver]

Originally Posted by botulus

looks like there might be a convolution reverb as well.
do i win a prize for the best eyes?

I am hoping your observation is correct!!!

[audioconsult]

Originally Posted by SWAN808

well - its interesting to hear your opinion on this issue...It sounds like there may be a mix of experience with testing but also speculation (external FX bug)...

? the external fx bug ist practical experienced in my setup.. multiple times.. its not worth it really to insert hardwar fx in live this way.. dont sounds better than plugs than.. a little maybe but no representation for a 10k.- reverb.

With logic the outcome it as it should be and blows your itb verbs out of the boot..

I havent used live in a year.. maybe they have fixed it by now..

[audioconsult]

Originally Posted by Palaver

I am hoping your observation is correct!!!

hope so too..but it dont shows in the browser under audio fx.. so its maybe a 3rd party to process the demo...

[sakamoto]

People forget that this is a live software for performance on stage.no another big fat DAW...I hope they fix everything in live9 especially bugs mentioned by audioconsult

[SWAN808]

Originally Posted by audioconsult

? the external fx bug ist practical experienced in my setup.. multiple times.. its not worth it really to insert hardwar fx in live this way.. dont sounds better than plugs than.. a little maybe but no representation for a 10k.- reverb.

With logic the outcome it as it should be and blows your itb verbs out of the boot..

I havent used live in a year.. maybe they have fixed it by now..

ok I used speculation because it sounded like you listened to the external fx plug and then listened to logic external fx - then made a judgement as opposed to doing a blind test...youd need to record the same bit of audio then compare in a abx software blind test to properly test any difference...Im sure you wont like to hear this but for something like a audio routing - which surely is a simple operation - I would be concerned that any previous suspicion of Lives engine might easily influence a perception...

I use this external fx so I better check it now or else route it another way...

[nrvana8775]

Originally Posted by teknatronik

are you saying daws sound different? Jus a joke! wouldnt want a new thread about that to get out of hand!

Monitoring via firewire mixer, then monitoring ableton's output...the sound is about 20% different. Reduced bass response, less high end.

[Hardtoe]

Originally Posted by nrvana8775

Monitoring via firewire mixer, then monitoring ableton's output...the sound is about 20% different. Reduced bass response, less high end.

I hear the same signal if I monitor through Live or off the Ensemble low latency mixer - no sound quality issues here - I respect gain staging and all is as it should be.

This stands true when using a Thermionic Culture Rooster / Drawmer 1968 ME on the 2buss for mixing - the bounce I capture (printed back into Live) sounds the same as the pre-Live signal off the Ensemble.

YMMV, but it sounds like you need to find where you are having an issue with your setup.

[nrvana8775]

Maybe it's the effects on live then?

Simple delay makes things sound tinny, once I get past 50% wet.

[Fluid Movement]

Originally Posted by aproblem

thread went to shit relatively quick

Agreed. I dont see the point of these discussions at all...

[Hardtoe]

I rarely use lives effects - I gots lots of the major league plugs over here, so I just never think to use them. I don't remember ever being overly wowed though