Ableton Live Sound Quality

[morebutter]

I often hear people complain about the sound quality; that it souns thin. I can understand that some of the included plugins and warp processes might thin out the sound. But forget effects for a second-- from a dry audio recording and playback perspective, is the summing bus the main culprit? Or is it the basic audio engine?

People who assign multiple outs to a multichannel DAC then sum analog, do you have any complaints about the sound quality compared to other major DAWs?

[morebutter]

Okay perhaps I should rephrase:

How are you mixing live?

Bounce to disk? or

Rewire and transfer tracks to another DAW then ???

Individual outs from Live to ???

Have some of you experimented with getting the best mix using different methods?

[backplay]

I don't do my mixes in live, use PT for that.
But when i do a live act with Ableton, the tracks do sound dull and lifeless, while they sounded very good in PT.
The only solution i found for that is to use Reaktor's Flatblater (multiband compressor) on the masterbuss. This way it sound a bit different than the original mix, but at least it brings back a little life to the tracks.

[morebutter]

Anybody else? How are you mixing down Live?

[Krank]

This has been discussed over and over and over again at the Ableton forum.

With warping turned off and similar pan-laws, there is no difference whatsoever.

[octatonic]

Krank is right- one issue though is Live will lower sound quality when it is running out of DSP- this is documented by Abelton.

[blaugruen7]

Originally Posted by Krank

This has been discussed over and over and over again at the Ableton forum.

With warping turned off and similar pan-laws, there is no difference whatsoever.

can you set the pan laws in live?

[maks]

best results ive had is to send trks to individual analog outs and sum outside, somehow to me audio sounds grainy.but if this option doesnt exist then being carefully selective with warp settings for individual files does bring good results yet still isnt as wide as bigger daw's(logic,pt)...certainly ableton could use algorithms that melodyne has for warping, that would be sweet.

[Krank]

Originally Posted by blaugruen7

can you set the pan laws in live?

Unfortunately, no.

[Seb RIOU]

diggin up an old thread
I've been working for the first time with Live for a month on a play, from day one.
I imported the tunes used for soundtrack without having heard them before.
Now premiere is tomorrow, and I burnt a backup CD with the tracks just in case.
A/B'd them for levels : Holy cow.
The tracks I thought sounded like shit shone out of the CD player.
Played the files with quicktime on the same soundcard (RME) ; pristine
Back in Live : dull, no dynamics, muddy lows
Of course, no warp on,nor anything else
Live 8.
what the hell ?

[LQM]

I use Live, Logic and Cubase daily. There is NO difference to how they sound if everything is set up the same and no processing applied. Live has 64 bit mix summing and it's audio engine was brought up to scratch in Live 7.

Warping has to be set to REPITCH otherwise you may notice artifacts.

The differences are caused by plugin choices. Live's pan law I believe defaults to -6dB, so if your other DAWS are set to -3dB or 0dB you will hear some difference. Unfortunately, Live's Pan Law cannot be changed.

Live sounds just fine for mixing, I do sometimes export tracks to mix in Cubase but more for the convenience of having better dual monitor support and a nicer Mixer GUI than for sound reasons.

[Hardtoe]

I think live sounds just fine - I have mixed several complete indie rock albums using it (some with big track counts) and I do not have any degradation of audio - sounds good when I track & sounds the same when I bounce the final mix. Turn off warp, use good plug-ins and keep your levels reasonable and there are no problems (Ableton does recommend to do the bounce at 32bits and do the reduction with a specialized app or plug).

FYI - I use a Therminioc Culture Rooster as my main pre for tracking, an Apogee Ensemble and KRK VXT 8's - computer is a Mac Pro.

[JPZ]

Originally Posted by Krank

This has been discussed over and over and over again at the Ableton forum.

With warping turned off and similar pan-laws, there is no difference whatsoever.

Ding ding ding you are correct sir! Ive heard the complaint many times, mostly by people who don't know what they're doing.

[valis]

Well that's exactly the point, the grainy/textural effects that Live is known for come from the warping type used (like the drum mode can make other things sound 'warbly'). But that's a huge reason many use Live (ie, for the sound design & looping features that warp enables) so it's understandable that some consider the two related...

[Seb RIOU]

OK guys,
I just want to know if I am doing something wrong here. For the record, I am a pro sound engineer who works on any record oriented DAW (logic, pro tools ,samplitude ,nuendo , bla bla), and that's the fisrt time I chose to work with Live, as a multi-send player for a theatre live set up (10 outs playing different things at the same time). For its purpose it's great, really convenient, but soundwise ?!?!

I am not using any warp (it is turned off), and am playing 16 bit/44,1.wav
no plug ins, nothing. Just routing the clips out of the RME Fireface 400, which I know quite well and doesn't sound like that at all.

And it's not a matter of levels. Hi's are clearly cut above 8Khz, bass enhanced around 120, and loss of dynamics and stereo spread.

The clips are classical recordings, really good ones (I discovered that with the CD!!)


I'll try the repitch thing ( but WARP is OFF !)

I am really surprised

[valis]

I've used Live to record off of my main mixer & ADAT from my Scope cards before and didn't notice any such thing. I do agree with the above posters, with the warping disabled (ie, as a 'summing' engine) Live is fine, at least in my experience.

[Dysanfel]

I once saw a video of a Ableton developer sarcastically mentioning the new 64bit audio engine when 7 first came out. He defied anyone to tell a difference and basically said it was a marketing ploy and not a feature.

In my anecdotal experience mixes in Live gel faster than in other DAWs I have used such as PT or Logic.

[Seb RIOU]

some news
I opened the clips in another session with Live 7 , which was also installed on the computer, and they play nicely, with none of the artifacts noted before.
Settings are exactly the same : ASIO, 1024 samples buffer. 16 bit/44,1 .wav
Would the two version of the software be in conflict ?

I made a new session of the show under Live 7, and it seems to work.

I didn't want to bash Ableton, and it seemed really weird that such a valued software sounded that bad.
I am relieved.

[rockerbruce]

I haven't had any issues when upgrading from 7 to 8, all still sounds crisp to me. knock on wood

[hugol]

Originally Posted by Seb RIOU

Settings are exactly the same : ASIO, 1024 samples buffer. 16 bit/44,1 .wav
Would the two version of the software be in conflict ?

I made a new session of the show under Live 7, and it seems to work.

I didn't want to bash Ableton, and it seemed really weird that such a valued software sounded that bad.
I am relieved.

Does changing the sample buffer size make any difference to the quality or reselecting the driver? Interesting one, but maybe it's some wierd system specific interaction between Live 8 and your sound card.

[valis]

I don't usually mix in Live because I find that the whole audio engine is built more for realtime playback, and I personally find the arrange page a bit claustrophobic when doing automation. I do sometimes get a bit of breakup under heavy mixing as a result (but a lot of what I create is synthetic & processor heavy.) I really like Live a wonderful looping/slicing tool and I also use it as a sampler & general sound design tool running on my laptop, triggering clips unquantized via midi from Logic.

[Seb RIOU]

Originally Posted by HugoL

Does changing the sample buffer size make any difference to the quality or reselecting the driver? Interesting one, but maybe it's some wierd system specific interaction between Live 8 and your sound card.

no, no difference whatsoever (other than crackling when lowering it)
I am puzzled

I'll stick to 7 for now

[joeq]

I had a negative impression of Live's sound quality the first time I worked with it

In retrospect, I realized that the artist's music was constructed almost entirely of grainy 16 bit loops from various sample CDs of questionable origin and then sliced, diced, pitch-shifted and time-stretched all to hell to make the looping work and on and on.

I took the stuff home to mix on my PTHD system and while I was more comfortable and had all my favorite plugs, the graininess was still there.

I bet that a carefully controlled test of the straight summing of well recorded 24-bit files would yield the same results in Live as in anything else.

When people specify "the same pan laws" they are referring to how such pan laws can skew a test, not that some pan laws "sound bad". If something gets louder as you pan it center and you don't like that, as a mixer you can turn it down.

In one test I read about, two passes with the same DAW not only failed to null, but had a very large difference file because in one of the passes, a single channel pan was set at 99 rather than to 100!

Test in mono or full L-R to be sure.

[Timur Born]

Let's pour some oil into the old fire again...

Logic: +6 dB - 6 dB = 0 dB

Live: +6 dB - 6dB =! (NOT) 0 dB fuuck

But to be fair...

Logic: +1 dB - 1 dB =! (NOT) 0 dB

[valis]

Personally I'm a lot less worried about whether my soundfloor is -160dB vs. -180dB (how much processing does it take to sum that up to -70dBf?) than I am about aliasing and other artifacts in the processing chain. I would imagine this is what the Live engineer was talking about in reference to 64bit floating point vs. 32bit floating point engines... Running 32bit flt at 96khz instead of 44.1khz will make even poor (non-oversampling etc) eq's sound considerably better, filters sweeter etc.

It seems most of us are in agreement that it's not the summing engine making the difference...

Of course some people might prefer the more aliased 'textural' sound for synthetic stuff (it's actually nice sometimes to have a bit of grunge in a bass patch imo.) Some may prefer an urban Ableton Live's 'graininess' from its timestretching algorithms over offline processes intended for pristine clarity. (MPC or drumulator vs. multi-gigabyte drum romplers, etc etc.)

[swan]

In the live manual, there's a fairly long section on how to get the best sound out of the program (check chapters 29 and 30 in the live8 manual, very informative)....

to paraphrase:
-Know what operations in live are neutral (no effect on sound quality) or non neutral (chapter 30 in the manual).
-Make sure the warp and fade are turned off on all your clips (if you're not warping, otherwise, stick with Hi-Q mode and the complex pro algorithm)
-Keep your projects in 32bit floating point and bounce them out...proceed to dither and change bit depth in dedicated programs like wavelab.
-use complex pro algorithm (live 8) for warping, and make sure "legacy Hi-Q" is turned off in the options

Since i've been using ableton more and more (it's even beginning to replace my traditional daw's) i've been mixing more and more in ableton....all my vst and uad plugs work there, and with 32bit float, the sound quality is just about as good (when not warping, although the warping algorithms are getting insanely good in Live) as my cubendo sessions. Not only that, but i get the added bonus of the uniform user interface, insane modularity, superior automation, and all around fun that ableton provides.

[Hardtoe]

Originally Posted by swan

In the live manual, there's a fairly long section on how to get the best sound out of the program (check chapters 29 and 30 in the live8 manual, very informative)....

to paraphrase:
-Know what operations in live are neutral (no effect on sound quality) or non neutral (chapter 30 in the manual).
-Make sure the warp and fade are turned off on all your clips (if you're not warping, otherwise, stick with Hi-Q mode and the complex pro algorithm)
-Keep your projects in 32bit floating point and bounce them out...proceed to dither and change bit depth in dedicated programs like wavelab.
-use complex pro algorithm (live 8) for warping, and make sure "legacy Hi-Q" is turned off in the options

Since i've been using ableton more and more (it's even beginning to replace my traditional daw's) i've been mixing more and more in ableton....all my vst and uad plugs work there, and with 32bit float, the sound quality is just about as good (when not warping, although the warping algorithms are getting insanely good in Live) as my cubendo sessions. Not only that, but i get the added bonus of the uniform user interface, insane modularity, superior automation, and all around fun that ableton provides.

Good points BUT - "repitch" stretching sounds better than complex if it works key/note wise
- often good old fashioned "beat" stretch set to 8th notes sound best for percussive material (complex fvcks the transients)

And it doesn't sound "almost" as good as Cubase - it sounds better

[Fredrik]

Originally Posted by Krank

With warping turned off and similar pan-laws, there is no difference whatsoever.

Different pan laws doesn't change the sound, it's just related to how the controls are mapped.

[miro]

Originally Posted by Hardtoe

Good points BUT - "repitch" stretching sounds better than complex if it works key/note wise
- often good old fashioned "beat" stretch set to 8th notes sound best for percussive material (complex fvcks the transients)

And it doesn't sound "almost" as good as Cubase - it sounds better

that's absolutely correct about "complex" i only use it in extreme cases where a sound (non percussive) is stretched very much.

[sbackdoor]

Originally Posted by Hardtoe

And it doesn't sound "almost" as good as Cubase - it sounds better

That's in fact my experience too. Ableton seems to sound a lot better than Logic, I just didn't dare to say it out loud in a thread with this title...