"Ableton Live" Sound Quality

ok, I didn't use the in built faders or panning, i made basic reaktor modules to change track levels and panning. The results from cubase and live were exactly the same. I had 6 stereo wav files all with same pan/levels set with the reaktor modules

So I guess that peoples perception of differences is down to the different pan laws used. If you use vsts for panning, cubase and live sound the same.

That's all from me for this thread, I'm back to making my ears bleed with t'acid!

dither

  GORDO said:

dither

I did a dither perceptibility test on ableton:

here is part of it:

I made a wav of normalised white noise in soundforge

I put it into a track with 3 utility effects on, set to -35dB , -35dB and -23dB (totalling -93dB)

in arrange view, I looped the clip over 32 bars

I set an envelope for the gain of one of the utility plugins so that the total track gain went from -93dB to -73dB

I also put an envelope to turn the track on and off every 1/16th note (for A/B-ing)

I turned the volume on my sound system up to full (that's neighbours calling the police volume for a normal track!)

I pressed play on live.

I couldn't hear the noise until the track volume reached -85.8dB (with my ears right up to the speakers)

So in conclusion, my sound system has a base noise level of around -85dB

So all detail below -85dB is lost on my system (dither noise is between -96 and -93dB

the file: http://syntheme.com/noiseTestProject.zip

I don't even know what dither is.

  GORDO said:

I don't even know what dither is.

it's used to correct rounding errors when converting (mainly) from 24 bit to 16 bit audio.

my brain assploded

  ۞ Syntheme ۞ said:

  GORDO said:

I don't even know what dither is.

 

 

it's used to correct rounding errors when converting (mainly) from 24 bit to 16 bit audio.

oh yeah i knew that, i think.

I haven't used any other programs for making music except ableton and reason, which ableton kicks the living shit out of (except for making drafts). I dunno if it's the interface but ableton has a rather stale quantized sound, especially the stretching effects, you can work around it without using quantise and too many effects.

i tend to route it through my analog mixer to smoothen down the sound and it works pretty well. i think alot of it could do with your sound card as well

ableton has lots of perks, it's insanely easy to record and polish up audio, as well as manipulate with lots of effect chains and such, it's the only VST host program i can be arsed to use

also all digital mixing utilities have flaws in general, the best thing i've ever done is route single channels out and mix them with my mixer and route the result back in, it makes a huge difference

  Derelic7 said:

I haven't used any other programs for making music except ableton and reason, which ableton kicks the living shit out of (except for making drafts). I dunno if it's the interface but ableton has a rather stale quantized sound, especially the stretching effects, you can work around it without using quantise and too many effects.

 

i tend to route it through my analog mixer to smoothen down the sound and it works pretty well. i think alot of it could do with your sound card as well

 

ableton has lots of perks, it's insanely easy to record and polish up audio, as well as manipulate with lots of effect chains and such, it's the only VST host program i can be arsed to use

 

also all digital mixing utilities have flaws in general, the best thing i've ever done is route single channels out and mix them with my mixer and route the result back in, it makes a huge difference

yes, sending digital audio through an analogue mixer or some other such circuitry can help to dirty up the audio a bit. Also, an external mixer can never produce a perfectly centre-panned image for each channel - there's always some bleed-through.

I have a pair of anechoic headphones which I used to examine each channel on an old 8 channel mixer. With each channel centre panned, there was a slightly different stereo image. When I did the same test through ableton's mixer, my anechoic heaphones told me that each channel was (of course!) dead centre. (On my headphones, a perfecly dead-centred (or mono) signal sounds uncomfortably straight and narrow - and DEAD!!!)

So my conclusion - It's not that there's anything wrong with digital mixing, in fact, it's perfect! TOO perfect though, you need to mess it up a little.!!!!!!!!! (you can mess it up a bit digitally though, with the right fx --try something like voxengo's analogueflux suite)

Pre digital era:

Engineers/producers would do all they can to clean up audio, remove hiss, tape distortion etc.

Post digital:

Invert

syntheme will you move in with me?

  jon124 said:

  Ûž Syntheme Ûž said:

  Derelic7 said:

I haven't used any other programs for making music except ableton and reason, which ableton kicks the living shit out of (except for making drafts). I dunno if it's the interface but ableton has a rather stale quantized sound, especially the stretching effects, you can work around it without using quantise and too many effects.

 

i tend to route it through my analog mixer to smoothen down the sound and it works pretty well. i think alot of it could do with your sound card as well

 

ableton has lots of perks, it's insanely easy to record and polish up audio, as well as manipulate with lots of effect chains and such, it's the only VST host program i can be arsed to use

 

also all digital mixing utilities have flaws in general, the best thing i've ever done is route single channels out and mix them with my mixer and route the result back in, it makes a huge difference

 

 

yes, sending digital audio through an analogue mixer or some other such circuitry can help to dirty up the audio a bit. Also, an external mixer can never produce a perfectly centre-panned image for each channel - there's always some bleed-through.

 

I have a pair of anechoic headphones which I used to examine each channel on an old 8 channel mixer. With each channel centre panned, there was a slightly different stereo image. When I did the same test through ableton's mixer, my anechoic heaphones told me that each channel was (of course!) dead centre. (On my headphones, a perfecly dead-centred (or mono) signal sounds uncomfortably straight and narrow - and DEAD!!!)

 

So my conclusion - It's not that there's anything wrong with digital mixing, in fact, it's perfect! TOO perfect though, you need to mess it up a little.!!!!!!!!! (you can mess it up a bit digitally though, with the right fx --try something like voxengo's analogueflux suite)

 

 

 

LOL um you might want to read up a bit on analog summing. almost all the big boys do it. Like Ive said before digital mixing/summing has its flaws, and just doesn't sound as good. same with digital eq, doesn't hold a thing to real analog eq. there are pieces of equipment just for analog summing, mixers except simpler and focused just on summing. and no, its not to "dirty it up". the professional units used are designed to be extremely clean and unaltering to the sound- to simply sum it, analogously (is that a word?) sounds a whole lot more "better" than mixing things digitally with algorithms and equations that assume, chop, cut, add, and rearrange to sum things.

 

 

IT AINT NATURAL!

show us the evidence, and i don't mean pointing us to other articles, give us direct audio comparisons, otherwise it's just more of the emperors new clothes

analogue wave versus digital steps argument only works if the original source is analogue, or if you're working with some fucking expensive dac hardware.

i support the whole analogue source/processing/mixing/summing point of view.

i detect a flatness in ableton, but that could be down to the engine.

there's a discernible increase in clarity of sound between sx2 and sx3 despite the actual data being identical.

ableton generally sounds like ableton.

reason generally sounds like reason.

floops etc etc.

i suspect that's got a lot to do with the interface, and the way people use it who aren't that clued up on production techniques... ie there's easy ways to do things in every daw, and there's also good practise.

dunno, jury's out, but i like to hold the conceit that i can pretty much recognise an exclusively ableton track.

plus, as an aside, syntheme knows the shit, re digital.

  ? Syntheme ? said:

Pre digital era:

Engineers/producers would do all they can to clean up audio, remove hiss, tape distortion etc.

Post digital:

Invert

cheers