villalobos about ableton

[jobbanaught]

Ableton's summing algorythm is sh!t. that's its real problem. try to patch all the channels you have through an analog mixer and you'll have a much better quality.

Thats bollocks. Abletons summing is the same as Logic etc...
But in theory digital summing can introduce errors (regardless of the DAW), depending on the internal precision. So using an outboard mixer might improve your sound. And if you have good desk the EQs might do some magic.

[damagedgoods]

JESUS WEPT. We've been through this. Summing in one DAW is exactly the same as summing in another, give or take some dithering noise. Ableton's sound engine does not have a "sound". Neither does Logic's, Cubase's or Fruity Loops'. This is like goddamn Spinal Tap. I bet if you could turn Ableton's master bus up to 11 without the output clipping then everyone would say it sounded fucking great.

Despite all the rumors, there have been a lot of experiments that showed that Logic, Cubase, Live etc... all sound exactly the same, as long as we are talking about digital summing, which is the main contribution of the DAW. The FX are obviously different, but tbh i just dont get what Villalobos meant there. I mean Ive heard a lot of tracks and recognized the Beat Repeat FX or the Filter Delay from Live, but i seriously doubt that anyone can recognize a track by the sound of the DAW. You may be able to tell by the way the track is programmed or which synths are used, but thats a byproduct of the setup and the workflow of the DAW, not the sound engine.

This is exactly it. You CAN in many cases spot an Ableton track a mile off, but not because of Ableton's supposedly inferior audio engine. It's because of three things:

1) Ableton's effects and library samples
2) Ableton's workflow (eg session view, the ease with which clips can be divided and duplicated along bar lines)
3) The strong correlation between Ableton users and talentless hacks making shitty minimal and deep house

...although I'm really struggling to make things sound really clear with the EQ8. Still need to check how the Hi-Quality mode makes a difference though.

AFAIK, the "Hi Quality" mode of an effect in Live 8 simply upsamples by 2x then downsamples on the way out. In the case of EQ8 this has the effect of straightening out the frequency response at high frequencies (where digital EQs can have trouble). You can see it on the graph if you switch to Hi-Quality and back with, say, a LPF at 10kHz.

[Torque]

Please, not this sh!t again...

Despite all the rumors, there have been a lot of experiments that showed that Logic, Cubase, Live etc... all sound exactly the same, as long as we are talking about digital summing, which is the main contribution of the DAW.

All i know is that i've done the test myself between Sonar and Ableton with 9 tracks playing back and there is a difference between the two in the presence of the sound. I'm sure you could cure it by using some compressors and whatnot but there is definitely a difference. I would guess the summing engines are not the same, who knows. Pretty much in the end it just comes down to your ear. You can get a good sound out of Ableton if you want. The problem i'm having with it is on the midi end of things with the clock. Hopefully in a couple of versions that will all catch up too.

[damagedgoods]

Please, not this sh!t again...

Despite all the rumors, there have been a lot of experiments that showed that Logic, Cubase, Live etc... all sound exactly the same, as long as we are talking about digital summing, which is the main contribution of the DAW.

All i know is that i've done the test myself between Sonar and Ableton with 9 tracks playing back and there is a difference between the two in the presence of the sound. I'm sure you could cure it by using some compressors and whatnot but there is definitely a difference. I would guess the summing engines are not the same, who knows. Pretty much in the end it just comes down to your ear. You can get a good sound out of Ableton if you want. The problem i'm having with it is on the midi end of things with the clock. Hopefully in a couple of versions that will all catch up too.

What was on the tracks? Pure audio, no fx? I'll happily eat my words if someone can show me how to reproduce this.

[Torque]

no fx
just 9 tracks of audio already set at the correct levels for the mix so you don't have to touch the sliders
in my case they were all recorded in from hardware already set to the right levels for a rough mix
all at 44.1, 16 bit
make sure the master volume isn't clipping on either
output the mix into 44.1, 16bit
put them both in soundforge and normalise them both
and listen

[idlemode]

what warp settings we're applied to the tracks? if you didn't turn off warping and that would have effected the sound.

[hydrogen]

no fx
just 9 tracks of audio already set at the correct levels for the mix so you don't have to touch the sliders
in my case they were all recorded in from hardware already set to the right levels for a rough mix
all at 44.1, 16 bit
make sure the master volume isn't clipping on either
output the mix into 44.1, 16bit
put them both in soundforge and normalise them both
and listen

Torque, I hate this topic as much as everyone else here. I also went through a whole switching daw phase a couple months ago. nightmare... for sure but i learned a lot about the tools i was using.

3 questions 4 you

1. What levels was your master at? What levels were your faders at?

2. And why were you using 16bit audio to start? live will need to up-sample this to 32bit before summing, which is not a neutral operation. Sonar is likely better sounding upsampling in realtime... Ableton even recommends that you don't work with 16bit audio in the manual.

3. What was your listening test. Did you do blind A/B test?

what warp settings we're applied to the tracks? if you didn't turn off warping and that would have effected the sound.

Please, of the warping already. We all know this is a non-neutral operation in ableton live and affects the sound rendered or unrendered.

[hydrogen]

http://www.mnml.nl/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=53224 - also for reference... this was the last discussion on the topic that i can recall. epic!!! needless to say i'm back to ableton live. which is crashing on me about every 5 minutes now.