Ableton 96 to 44?

[David Rick]

Your CPU will go a lot further at 44.1 or 48 than at 96. Don't use Ableton's internal SRC, you'll be sorry. Voxengo has a free SRC program called r8Brain that will do a much better job. Set your output bit depth to 24 bit. r8Brain is pretty slow, so plan to batch up the conversion and let it run overnight.

Its your choice whether to do your production at 44.1k or to do it at 48k and then do a final SRC. Personally, I hate listening to 44.1, so I tend to do that conversion as the last step (with dithering), and audition several algorithms to see which bothers me the least.

In the future, don't assume that 16 bit source files are ok, just because your destination is format is 16 bits. Good dithering at the mastering stage can do wonders -- why make your source files the weak link? If you're using an outside mastering engineer, send 24-bit (or better) mix files.

Not sure what lead you to the 16bit/96k decision. If you were just trying to save disk space, you'd have been better off with 24bit/48k.

David L. Rick
Seventh String Recording

[vincentlepes]

Thanks for the tips, David.

I actually decided to go to 96 because my new interface supports it, I thought I would be getting the best quality at the source to work with. As for my decision to 16bit, it was honestly an oversight on my part. I thought my MBP would be sufficient to handle the 96k audio but it is choking as soon as I introduce any plugins. I'm downloading the Voxengo app you mentioned and I will give it a go. Would you suggest I process each take and switch them out in the main file one by one or is there a better way?

Also, would you then recommend I move down to 16/48 or up to 24/96 when recording and in the latter case freezing tracks all the time? I have been able to get things going by freezing but it doesn't work when I am processing groups or busses and it also takes forever to process and slows down my productivity. I'm trying to avoid being a 'plugin *****' and adding effects left and right, but certain plugins like the Brainworx stuff for example causes dropouts the moment one instance is introduced, and the M/S plugins they offer have proven to be amazing.

Thanks again .

[NeoHippy]

first of all: when you are sure its just for cd anyway...why do you record at 96khz??

second of all....why do you track and mix in ableton??? its a quite nice tool for electronic music production...headed in the direction of live entertainment...

but not for tracking and mixing...

imho the ableton plugs sound awefull, suck like hell and are not usefull!

why dont you use a propper DAW to track and mix like Protools, cubase or logic??

but sorry...to your question!

yes you can convert the samplerate of each single track...i dont know how it works in ableton...but no problemin PT or Logic ..

as the guy above said..you shouldnt use the ableton converter anyway...sucks bones!!!sounds like ass!!(like all stuff of ableton)...

ANYYYYWAAAYYY....go for an other DAW to track and mix....REALLY...im not joking..it will effect a miracle dude...try it out your self and you will see!!

cheers

[vincentlepes]

As I mentioned, I recorded at 96 thinking I'd just get the best possible that my new interface supports. I didn't think it would choke my system to death the way it appears to be. Recording at 16bit was an oversight, I thought I was at 24.

As for Ableton, my personal work is multi-instrumental and relies on using an FCB to trigger loops to build up my material. In this way Ableton is great, as it is like having an endless loop pedal at my disposal. I am also working on a workflow to 'remix' live recorded audio using my APC40 and Ableton is perfect for this. I don't rely on many of their internal plugins, and I don't have the cash to invest in another DAW much less time at the moment for the inevitable learning curve when I do so. While I know there is a holy war brewing about the sound quality in Ableton, I have also read a lot of reputable engineers saying that the best DAW is the one you have, as any of them are more than capable of processing audio at professional quality. I guess I have learned to work around Live's weaknesses but I don't know how I'd live without it's strengths. Aside from the plugins (which I hardly use), VST instruments (which I never use), and SRC conversion (which is new to me but I will be trying Voxengo's tool), what is really lacking in Ableton that makes people so averse to it? I think their approach is perfect for what I'm trying to achieve, and when a recording project fell into my lap I went with what I have and what I know. What am I really missing out on?

[lestermagneto]

I'm not sure what the gentleman above is talking about. Ableton is just fine to mix and track with if you learn what you are doing (and most importantly when to have the warping on and off), and further, ableton is not converting anything, it's your audio interface, so abletons conversion has absolutely nothing to do with it in that respect. That's complete nonsense. There are too many threads on this board talking about abletons' drawbacks that were written by people who seem to have no idea what they are talking about. Sure, it's pan laws are different, it is still 32 bit unfortunately, and it seems a lot of people get confused by the warping, but if i import a file from protools, logic, or whatever, and hit play, with warping off, it will sound the damn same. there are countless threads on this board with people who proved it showing null tests. So ableton is not the problem here.

In the more fruitful advice column, I definitely would recommend moving to 24bit. working at 44.1/24 bit gives plenty of headroom, you don't have to record as hot and maintain integrity, and it gives the plugins more headroom to do their thing. Most professional mixers like to have levels topping off at -10db at 24 bit, and there are a couple of posts on this board explaining how in a daw that theoretically -18dBfs is optimal, but I am no scientist. Sure, most stuff is intended for lower quality transmission, (CD's, MP3's, hell DirectTv broadcasts it sound at I think a lossy 256 codec), but despite the outcome delivered, working with more headroom will give you less distortion and allow things effecting the sound to work efficiently and with better(desired) sonic results.

oh, appendum, i reread the post above, it was talking about conversion AFTER the fact, so perhaps ableton is not best at that, I honestly haven't heard any proven arguments over that with those that were using the engine correctly, but again, I am no golden eared scientist. So if you feel subjectively that that IS the case, and if that is a concern there are plenty of third party sample rate converters (twisted wave, the free audacity etc), that can do that, and batch do it if you prefer. I would not do any dithering in this process, until the final 2 bus bounce if you feel you need it, or if it is going to be professionally mastered, I wouldn't do it at all and let them if they see fit.

[vincentlepes]

I had a feeling that working in Ableton wasn't destroying my project. It makes sense to me that it will record what I give it just like anything else on the market. The warping has already saved my ass on this project as we recorded the scratch sessions without a click and later decided to use one, I was able to sync up the scratch tracks and record the drum tracks to a metrononome - sure, the warped audio didn't sound great but it was still useful in this regard. I'd think about switching DAWs if I found a reputable argument against Ableton but most people I run into have simply written it off as only useful for electronic music and not really tried it to make a comparison.

So, back to the point .

Since I recorded the drums at 96/16, will I run into any issues if I downsample those tracks to 41/16 and continue tracking the rest of the project in 41/24? I'm not sure if mixing and matching like this causes any issues, or if I likewise may as well drop to 41/16 since the drums will never be 24 anyway. I'd re-record the drum parts in a heartbeat if I didn't have a picky drummer and have already spent a month tracking drums in our spare time .

[vincentlepes]

...also, if Gorillaz can make a quality album on an iPad these days, I think Ableton should suffice Gorillaz iPad album: How it was made | T3

[lestermagneto]

Hey Vincent, I don't think you should have any problems proceeding that way. My life is filled with projects that were recorded at different times, and at different bit/sample rates, and I seem to survive without much headache. If you want, and are worried about a DAW engine handling different bit rates (which isn't really a big problem these days in my experience), you could just bounce your 96/16 files to 44.1/24bit, although obviously the files will be larger with no qualitative upgrade.

Ableton certainly isn't destroying your project (), I use all sorts of DAWS, and prefer to write with it myself, and now have gotten more comfortable tracking with it. It is not just a toy to make skrillex....... You know the adage: if it sounds good, it is good. I don't know how we made all those platinum records with frigging ADATS...... But I certainly understand your concern to maximize the resources at your disposal.

[vincentlepes]

Thanks, I think I'll leave the tracks as-is for the moment and continue in 41/24 and see how it goes. I know I can't continue in 96 because I suspect it is why I have no CPU left for even a basic chain of plugins. I can't even run Aether or BX Saturator without constant dropouts, even on a frozen track.

I just started combing around the forums for other opinions on Ableton as a tracking/mixing environment and was pleased to hear that most of the negative press consists of write-offs who haven't tried it. Apparently the audio engine is one of the best in the industry and there is a lot of contention as to whether 64bit support has any effect on audio quality. According to one user, formlabs:

"Live still has the reputation amongst a lot of serious engineers of being just for DJs and Techno producers. What a lot of people don't realize, is that Live has one of the best audio engines in the industry. Prism even uses it to test their Orpheus Firewire interface. So if you know what you're doing, its actually great for processing files during pre-mastering. Their EQ8 is 64 bit, and can even do M-S, and they have some decent dynamics processors. Eventually you will want to add some higher quality VST / AU plug-ins."

Thanks again everyone for your input. I have learned a lot since I started this project but I can't find a definitive answer on the best sample rates for given applications. I know my mixdown on this project will be CD quality but just like I use non-destructive editing and RAW capture in my photography work, I like to develop workflows that are future compatible and offer me the most possibilities, inasmuch as my computer can handle.

[lestermagneto]

Cool, best of luck Vincent. I agree with your assessment of the negative press. It's really just a matter of learning the tool, and since most look at Ableton in that light, they are missing on how they can do what they can do on other DAWs, and many things it can do that others cannot. It is by no means perfect, and if I was a mix-engineer, ProTools would probably be a better layout, or more analagous to the old school way. 64bit is great in that it enables OSX users to address more then 4gb of ram, which definitely comes in handy on larger sessions or ones with more dsp.
For most of my work, I just decided to stay at 44.1/24bit, as it suits my needs/ratio of CPU consumption. Now if I was recording Paul Simon with just an acoustic guitar, I would probably go 96, but I can live with my tracks outside of that....

I am not a techno/dj producer, I tend to work more with "organic" instruments, and I find Ableton has benefited my workflow tremendously. Certainly from a writing standpoint.. The track counts are not as high as I can attain in Logic, but there is tradeoff for me in terms of a happy fluid work environment.

[David Rick]

Let's be clear. I'm not saying you shouldn't finish your production in Ableton Live, just that you'd be better off to use a different tool for your sample rate conversion. The SRC algorithms in Live are optimized for speed, which you need when triggering and manipulating samples in real time. But an off-line SRC tool can do a much better job. When you use r8Brain, you'll notice that it runs quite slowly. That's because it's doing more and better math than what can be run in real time.

It happens with this tool that 96k -> 44.1k takes a lot longer than 96k -> 48k. To save time, you might want to migrate your project to 48k/24 instead of 44.1k/24. At the end, you'll only need to convert the mix to 44.1k, which won't take a long time. Plus, you won't have to spend so much time listening to what 44.1k does to your drums. OTOH, I don't know how many 44.1k samples you still need to incorporate.

David L. Rick
Seventh String Recording

[vincentlepes]

Thanks again, Dave!

I got what you were saying, I will try out that converter for sure. Also thanks for the tip about trying 48 first to save time. I didn't think you were suggesting I couldn't do a good mix in Ableton, I was responding to why I track and mix in Ableton question .

[lestermagneto]

Besides perhaps an error in sample conversion processes, can you really tell the difference between a drum track recorded at 44.1 vs. 48k, disregarding bitrate? Please.

However I do agree that an offline SRC might be best as it will save the cpu and ableton from having to do so every time you hit play in real time. Bit depth is far more important then quibling about 44.1 vs. 48k.

[jrhager84]

No. Though some will argue it. Good recording assumed of course.

Sent from my SAMSUNG-SGH-I777 using Gearslutz App

[lestermagneto]

I apologize if I came off snarky to Mr. Rick, not my intention. It's just in my experience I have never had anyone in a "soundtest shootout" reliably determine and hear the difference. I, of course, am probably deaf, but I haven't thought about 44.1 vs 48k since 1992... (more evidence of my deafness!. I know most broadcast media prefer 48k for submission, and if you are worried about SRC errors etc mucking up your work in that field, I would go with that, but 44.1 works for me. But if the source material was recorded at 44.1, i wouldn't spend a lot of time either worrying about it, or sticking at that rate.

[vincentlepes]

Hey I just wanted to thank you all for your input. I just got back to my mix and bumped down to 48/24 i/o and all of my dropout issues went away immediately. I think the plugins were choking on the 96k tracks. I realize bumping up to 24 isn't going to help the drums, but I will record the rest of the band this way as it seems to be the best audio quality my computer can handle. Just for shits I added a bunch of my worst CPU killer plugins, to see what it could handle, and I can really stack them up now without an issue. This makes me hopeful I won't have any problems when I add all the other tracks. I actually didn't have to re-render the tracks I already recorded, I could be mistaken but they sound just fine to me with the outputs at 48/24 even though I recorded the tracks 96/16. I hope this doesn't come back to bite me come render time, lol.