Ableton LIve 4 vs Sonar 5 audio quality?

[zachinalaska]

Hi,

I am curious to see if anyone has compared the two as far as tracking and mixdown and general audio quality. I know live 4 goes up to 24 bit, while sonar 5 goes up to 64 bit. But say im just doing 24/96 is one going to make a difference over the other?

[the_nihilist]

Oh for gods sake, not this argument again.

It makes NO difference. None at all. Stop freaking about about tiny, barely perceptible differences in sound quality and just make some music.

[3rd world order]

i wouldn't say it makes NO difference... but your point is well taken that perhaps ppl worry too much about this when they should just be getting on and making music.

the mixer in Live4 bugs me enough that i'll print tracks and blow them into Protools and mix there. all that on the fly SRC can't be doing the quality any good.

this is probably LESS of an issue with v5 due to the ability to freeze tracks.

i have no idea about SONAR.

[zachinalaska]

i dunno, theres quite a few pissed live users on the ableton forums that complain about when they render a mix sounds like ass. I've noticed this too. It just sounds thin compared to my original mix w/ all the drums, synths, etc laid out. So im wondering what the next best option is? live is great for live pa, which I'll still use it for. But for rendering studio tracks, it sucks and I want something better. Any suggestions?

[3rd world order]

Originally Posted by zachinalaska

i dunno, theres quite a few pissed live users on the ableton forums that complain about when they render a mix sounds like ass. I've noticed this too. It just sounds thin compared to my original mix w/ all the drums, synths, etc laid out. So im wondering what the next best option is? live is great for live pa, which I'll still use it for. But for rendering studio tracks, it sucks and I want something better. Any suggestions?

i haven't had this problem with my OSX 10.3 setup... maybe it's a pc thing?

what i render sounds just like normal playback to me... and my monitoring is good.

[AdamJay]

Originally Posted by zachinalaska

it sucks and I want something better.

then get Live 5, its 32-bit floating.

and like 3rd world order, my renders sound identical to my realtime output, with good monitoring. but i'm on MacOS X 10.4.2

[zachinalaska]

could be a pc thing. I use pc's. live 5 creates the same thing, so im told. I use live 4. Im going to wait until I get my new audio interface. Then what im going to do is make all my tracks record to one track and then save that track individually and hopefully that will make the difference.

Or maybe I should just toss it all and mix analog to an adat or something, eh?

[3rd world order]

Originally Posted by zachinalaska

could be a pc thing. I use pc's. live 5 creates the same thing, so im told. I use live 4. Im going to wait until I get my new audio interface. Then what im going to do is make all my tracks record to one track and then save that track individually and hopefully that will make the difference.

Or maybe I should just toss it all and mix analog to an adat or something, eh?

I don't know, man... i'm hooked on writing with Live4... so i'm not switching to anything. i still mix in protools tho. maybe live5 with the new mixer and the ability to "freeze" tracks will replace protools.. i don't know yet. my mac is likely too slow to bother switching to 5 at this point.

try bouncing track by track, that's what i do when i prep things for protools.

[shaddai]

I'm on Sonar 4.0 PE..soon to be Sonar 5. There's no audible difference that I've ever heard between the mix, and the resulting render/bounce. There's no thin sound anything happening here..don't think it's a PC/Mac issue..

is one going to make a difference over the other?

IMO, the converters are a bigger issue than the software.

My $.02
Todd

[Fredrik]

Originally Posted by zachinalaska

i dunno, theres quite a few pissed live users on the ableton forums that complain about when they render a mix sounds like ass. I've noticed this too. It just sounds thin compared to my original mix w/ all the drums, synths, etc laid out. So im wondering what the next best option is? live is great for live pa, which I'll still use it for. But for rendering studio tracks, it sucks and I want something better. Any suggestions?

Can´t you use rewire and use the mixer in a nother app PT for example?

[Architect]

I use Live 5 on a PC Platform and when rendering it sounds just like my original mix! Don't believe the hype, doesn't really matter whether Sonar or Live if you know what your doing you can use both and get very good professional results.