are there any DAWs better than ableton live?

Its not like any normal person besides audiophiles with money and monster cables is going to notice the difference when listening to it.

  pissflaps said:

Its not like any normal person besides audiophiles with money and monster cables is going to notice the difference when listening to it.

Yeah but its not really about that, most normal people wouldn't notice the difference between 24/96 and 16/44.1, wouldn't notice the difference between an analog and a software compressor, let alone different types of analog compressor. Most wouldn't notice the difference between CD and 2" tape but we need to take care of all these little subtleties because over the course of a track and hundreds of decisions like this they all add up and combine to make the difference between a well produced track and a badly produced one. Also if youre whole mix has a minor but real problem with it processes like mastering become harder to get right so again the tiny difference is amplified.

that said, IMO its only really a concern in a big studio where you're output quality has to compete with all the other big studios, and when the tracks have to sound as near to perfect as possible to compete with all the other recordings out there recorded/produced at that level. Its also a bigger concern when working with real instruments which are a lot easier to make sound shit and are often harder to get sitting nicely in a mix together.

So I think that it is important to understand the subject, but like everything else you shouldn't worry about it too much, I know of people who worry about this stuff all the time but have never learnt to eq a kick, which is silly.

Once you can mix and your tracks are getting some release interest then its maybe worth thinking about ways you could increase overall quality, until then I agree its not that important.

as mayor of daws i look forward to a day that all audio formats are considered equal

  welcome to the machine said:

  pissflaps said:

All mayor DAWs (Cubase, Logic, FL8, Ableton, Pro Tools, etc) have the same sound quality.

 

Don't fall for that marketing bs.

 

not true, they all have different summing engines and sound slightly different, but if you can't make a track sound good on one you can't make a track sound good on any of them. The differences are very subtle, but well documented.

 

its one of the reasons people sum through a desk, and why you can spend thousands on a summing amplifier. But its a concern of pro's in big studios, not people producing tracks in the box or recording demo's for their band.

this is true, but the differences are so subtle that most amateur produces with little to no pro audio training who think that 'fruity sounds shit' and 'nuendo sounds much better than cubase' are just idiots who like to think they know what the fuck they are talking about to seem cool.

It's not very often where someone actually talks about the differences of DAW summing busses who doesnt come off like a complete faker. You actually seem to know what you are talking about.

edit: quite ironic that the poster here 'pissflaps' is using an extremely obscure Discogs.com account Richard D James alias in order to down play the importance of different summing engines.

user Pissflaps, have you seen RDJ's drunken planet mu forum rants about how hardcore of an audiophile he is?

i personally think its very funny, and probably why RDJ hasnt put out very much music recently

any of you ableton users can help me on this? i am trying to record knob changes from my midi synth into ableton. but once i'm done recording the knob movements i want to see it in an envelope which i can then edit in an anal-retentive microscopic way.

for some reason i can only see the envelopes when i use a software synth/plugin, but those aren't my main synth.

all i have to do for that is arm a midi track and record a clip. if you do this in arrangement view you have to click the clip to view the envelope, it won't show up on the track. if you have the opposite problem you can copy the envelope from the arrangement & paste into a clip. also make sure the e button is on on the clip or you won't see any envelopes.

  spraaaa said:

all i have to do for that is arm a midi track and record a clip. if you do this in arrangement view you have to click the clip to view the envelope, it won't show up on the track. if you have the opposite problem you can copy the envelope from the arrangement & paste into a clip. also make sure the e button is on on the clip or you won't see any envelopes.

Just what I was looking for. thank you!

update on my Reaper experience after more plays and noodlings - i really like it! kind of like ACID meets Cubase....i think I've found a Mac DAW i can stick with :) recommended.

  Quote

this is true, but the differences are so subtle that most amateur produces with little to no pro audio training who think that 'fruity sounds shit' and 'nuendo sounds much better than cubase' are just idiots who like to think they know what the fuck they are talking about to seem cool.

Exactly, there it is. I wasn't talking about real audiophiles, but fake audiophiles. Specially fake audiophiles using expensive gear unable to make any music that doesnt suck.

  Quote

user Pissflaps, have you seen RDJ's drunken planet mu forum rants about how hardcore of an audiophile he is?

i personally think its very funny, and probably why RDJ hasnt put out very much music recently

Of course, I've also heard about the internets.

Live has a unique approach to production with its session view. I can't really compare that aspect of live to any other daw's.

It's slice to new midi track is also tough to compete with. unless you consider Battery's auto slice function with apple loops and rex files.

If one is to compare daw's to discover which is better for any one person, i think it helps to start with what all the daw's have in common first, then decide which daw performs those common things the best. So I'll compare Live to other daw's based on their arrange views and mixing capabilities and host fx.

Live - I'd rather shoot myself than work in the Live arrange window. To me it looks clunky, the automation implementation seems a bit funky. However I do like its warp features of course and its quick cut/snip/paste/consolidate features. The native effects that come with live sound pretty generic and thin to me and their mastering effects racks are horrific imho.

Logic Pro - Have used Logic for 8+ years and found its arrange view and mixer constantly improving over the years with their upgrades. Audio editing is a bit clunky. Pretty much everything can be done in just the arrange window now, which is nice, and the host fx sound great compared to any other daw i've used. Logic's pitching and time stretching algo's could use some work though.

Pro Tools - Hands down best audio editor I've used. Quickest processing, arranging, editing, grouping, mixing. With v8, the midi is up to par and has many new features that not all daws have. In some ways the arrange in pro tools is very similar to Live's arrange view. Host fx in pro tools are pretty crap imo, however v8 introduced some pretty slick A.I.R. plugins and instruments.

Additional comments:

I do believe Live handles cpu with audio/midi/vst's far better than Logic or Pro Tools. (cpu wise)

Logic has very good support for vst's/au's. (cpu wise)

Pro Tools only supports RTAS which is kind of annoying, but there are vst - rtas wrappers. (uses more cpu and memory than both Logic and Live.)

Those are the daw's i use those, each for different things, tho i've slowly been moving away from logic lately and just using Live and Pro Tools.

So which one is better? that's tough to say and i'm sure there are a hundred other reason's that i've overlooked that might concern you more in regards to what makes one daw better than another. I've used them all for the most part and it basically comes down to what helps you get the music out the fastest and or inspires you to write. I'd like to just say, "they're all the same, just pick what's right for you", but everyone has their own approach to writing and half the time, the things i find amazing about one daw, another person could care less about.

Try them all!!!

  sysex said:

...it basically comes down to what helps you get the music out the fastest and or inspires you to write. I'd like to just say, "they're all the same, just pick what's right for you", but everyone has their own approach to writing and half the time, the things i find amazing about one daw, another person could care less about.

/thread

  welcome to the machine said:

  pissflaps said:

All mayor DAWs (Cubase, Logic, FL8, Ableton, Pro Tools, etc) have the same sound quality.

 

Don't fall for that marketing bs.

 

not true, they all have different summing engines and sound slightly different, but if you can't make a track sound good on one you can't make a track sound good on any of them. The differences are very subtle, but well documented.

 

its one of the reasons people sum through a desk, and why you can spend thousands on a summing amplifier. But its a concern of pro's in big studios, not people producing tracks in the box or recording demo's for their band.

^ ^

/agreed.

the summing engines on daw's are hardly comparable to an outboard summing mixer imo, the difference in headroom, space, and clarity are definately noticeable if you a/b two of the same tracks run through straight digital vs another thru an external summing mixer.

But like stated above, "its a concern of pro's in big studios, not people producing tracks in the box or recording demo's for their band."

  pissflaps said:

this is true, but the differences are so subtle that most amateur produces with little to no pro audio training who think that 'fruity sounds shit' and 'nuendo sounds much better than cubase' are just idiots who like to think they know what the fuck they are talking about to seem cool.

Richard Devine?

bruce lee impressed by jedi master; less so after a lunchdate.

  welcome to the machine said:

  pissflaps said:

All mayor DAWs (Cubase, Logic, FL8, Ableton, Pro Tools, etc) have the same sound quality.

 

Don't fall for that marketing bs.

 

not true, they all have different summing engines and sound slightly different, but if you can't make a track sound good on one you can't make a track sound good on any of them. The differences are very subtle, but well documented.

 

its one of the reasons people sum through a desk, and why you can spend thousands on a summing amplifier. But its a concern of pro's in big studios, not people producing tracks in the box or recording demo's for their band.

Am I the only one here that smells total fucking bullshit? "Well documented"? Do you even have a slight understanding of how fucking straightforward digital mixing is as a process? No major DAW is going to "sum" two pieces of sample data differently. Take a 16 bit recording of a trumpet and a guitar and "sum" them together in cubase, then do the same in pro-tools, fruity loops. Follow this by a phase inversions test on each resulting piece of audio. What do you get? Absolute silence, zeros. It is all the same. If it is different, well fuck me sideways, but I need some kind of proof before I believe this shit. Basically the term "summing engines" is a catch phrase that audiophiles use to argue about something that isn't really happening. I would like to learn where this summing engine concept was first introduced.

You may have a point if you are speaking particularly to the DAW's resampling algorithms. Say you have a 16 bit 44.1 Khz wave file playing alongside a 24 bit 96 Khz wave file. The host is running in 48 Khz, 32 bit mode. Naturally the program is going to need to translate the 16 bit 44.1 Khz file into 48 Khz. It is considered by some important to try to fill in the missing data in the 44 Khz stream, rather than repeat samples(or truncate, when downsampling), and this is usually best acheived by fitting a high resolution spline curve to the sample data and then resampling it to the native rate or 48 Khz.

Obviously it is best just to always record at as high of a sample-rate that you are mixing with in the first place. In that case, there is no need to argue about the quality of the sound between one host and another, they are going to be the same, case closed.

Oh hey, and I'm not trying to pick on you personally or anything, I was just mostly disgusted by the number of people that were blindly agreeing with you on this. From my brief read of replies it seemed most people were sharing the same misconceptions about digital mixing and what really happens in the summing stage.

aw fuck, I forgot to mention about downsampling algorithms, in which dithering is an important part. Okay I'm going to sleeps now by by

Digital Performer

  Bubba69 said:

  welcome to the machine said:

  pissflaps said:

All mayor DAWs (Cubase, Logic, FL8, Ableton, Pro Tools, etc) have the same sound quality.

 

Don't fall for that marketing bs.

 

not true, they all have different summing engines and sound slightly different, but if you can't make a track sound good on one you can't make a track sound good on any of them. The differences are very subtle, but well documented.

 

its one of the reasons people sum through a desk, and why you can spend thousands on a summing amplifier. But its a concern of pro's in big studios, not people producing tracks in the box or recording demo's for their band.

 

Am I the only one here that smells total fucking bullshit? "Well documented"? Do you even have a slight understanding of how fucking straightforward digital mixing is as a process? No major DAW is going to "sum" two pieces of sample data differently. Take a 16 bit recording of a trumpet and a guitar and "sum" them together in cubase, then do the same in pro-tools, fruity loops. Follow this by a phase inversions test on each resulting piece of audio. What do you get? Absolute silence, zeros. It is all the same. If it is different, well fuck me sideways, but I need some kind of proof before I believe this shit. Basically the term "summing engines" is a catch phrase that audiophiles use to argue about something that isn't really happening. I would like to learn where this summing engine concept was first introduced.

 

You may have a point if you are speaking particularly to the DAW's resampling algorithms. Say you have a 16 bit 44.1 Khz wave file playing alongside a 24 bit 96 Khz wave file. The host is running in 48 Khz, 32 bit mode. Naturally the program is going to need to translate the 16 bit 44.1 Khz file into 48 Khz. It is considered by some important to try to fill in the missing data in the 44 Khz stream, rather than repeat samples(or truncate, when downsampling), and this is usually best acheived by fitting a high resolution spline curve to the sample data and then resampling it to the native rate or 48 Khz.

 

Obviously it is best just to always record at as high of a sample-rate that you are mixing with in the first place. In that case, there is no need to argue about the quality of the sound between one host and another, they are going to be the same, case closed.

 

Oh hey, and I'm not trying to pick on you personally or anything, I was just mostly disgusted by the number of people that were blindly agreeing with you on this. From my brief read of replies it seemed most people were sharing the same misconceptions about digital mixing and what really happens in the summing stage.

So what you are saying is that there is no difference in fidelity between?

a) Ableton Live uses a 64 bit point summing engine

b) Logic uses a 32 bit floating point summing engine

c) Pro Tools uses 32 bit floating point summing engine

d) Sonar uses 64 bit floating point summing engine

e) Pro Tools HD 48 bit fixed point summing engine

This has been tested time and time again. And yes it has been "well documented". I suggest you research further into how ITB summing engines work within daw's before you become so disgusted with these people that are so "blindly" agreeing with what "welcome to the machine" stated. Despite the following links/comments, the audible difference is not even something that should be argued. In the end, the effects and/or other host processes have more of an effect on the fidelity than its internal summing engine.

Anyway, here's a few links to get you started, with plenty of examples where the result was not "null" in every test. (In many cases it was however)

http://www.gearslutz.com/board/music-compu...ng-angle-2.html

You can find many other links within this link for many threads pages of utterly boring debate over this topic.

Forum: "Daw-Sum"

http://www.3daudioinc.com/3db/forumdisplay.php?f=15

Here's one more for ya:

http://mixonline.com/mag/audio_im_sixty_four/

Quote-Bubba69:

"Basically the term "summing engines" is a catch phrase that audiophiles use to argue about something that isn't really happening."

Uh... summing engines add multiple signals, ya kno...like a mixer does. bit rate does have an effect on this with ITB engines. it's not a catch phrase and many producers and studios swear by their analog summing engines.

geek pwn

bumming engine.

Like I think I want to care about all that shit you guys are talking about up there, but I don't really care at all and it frightens me.

I'm just going to have to take my copy of ACID pro and make some tunes with it, and hope that its summing engineering is quaduplexing my audio incorrectly causing remainders of retrigs in IDM to be added to the cross vector of the national association security football agency, creating a trifecta, to reduce the amount of dubstep in my songs and increase gabber folds across the planes of retardation for the rush, the adaptation, and general backwardness of the act.

  acid1 said:

Like I think I want to care about all that shit you guys are talking about up there, but I don't really care at all and it frightens me.

 

I'm just going to have to take my copy of ACID pro and make some tunes with it, and hope that its summing engineering is quaduplexing my audio incorrectly causing remainders of retrigs in IDM to be added to the cross vector of the national association security football agency, creating a trifecta, to reduce the amount of dubstep in my songs and increase gabber folds across the planes of retardation for the rush, the adaptation, and general backwardness of the act.

lol

Bubba 69 -

No need to get so mad about it! I'm not an enthusiast whos read a few books, this is my job and I deal with sound in a high end studio every day, I am confident in my own ears, as well as the ears of other industry leaders, to distinguish a difference between DAW's.

summing is not a simple procedure, in the early days DAW's sounded awful for a number of reasons. Over time they improved but they are not perfect.

Blind tests across many high end recording websites have also confirmed this with an overwhelming majority going for one mix over the others.

DOA recently had a bloke do a simple 1 sample null test (or as you call it inversion test) which showed that reason altered the sample, as did different processes whithin reason, the null test did not come back null. Now I know this is a slightly different thing but if a program can playback a file of a given sample rate incorrectly then how is it expected to add them all together correctly? by different processes I mean higher quality mode turned on an off, both were not null, higher quality mode was actually further from the original.

you site difference in downsampling as being the culprit, DAW's are up and downsampling all the time whithin themselves regardless of whether the piece of audio and the project are the same rate or whether the DAW has to initially covert it to the project rate. so the way a program up and downsamples is integral to the audio engine.

I'm not in the buisiness of convincing you if you don't believe it to be true, so this will be my last post on the subject..

I'm not a techie or audio scientist, I'm an audio engineer, but I have to know about this stuff for my job, or at least be aware of it. Working with professional producers and engineers every day I have never heard one of them dispute the claim that summing is different accros different softwares and platforms, but I have heard many complaining about 'DAW A' not being the best when they have spent 20K on the rig, smug engineers who use 'DAW B' raving about its sound etc. its not open for dispute, its just taken as a fact.

there are many other technical (not creative) things which are more important to the sound of your mix, and the difference is very small, but it is there.

The studio I work at is big and has a lot of big indie/major label work, so quality is a huge concern. when I get home I just make music and forget all that stuff! Not important to care unless you have to.

all i can think of when i see discussions like this is how audiphiles were shown blind tests of Coat-hanger used as speaker wire VS monster cable and they didn't notice a difference.

I have the strong belief that 98% of the people who consider themselves 'audiophiles' are serious fucking liars who want to belong to some sort of weird elite subculture.

hehe, yeah, well I am certainly sceptical about cost vs benefit for monster cables.

I think there's a lot of trouble with doing tests, real world use is so much more compex than tests. Mic pre amps often only show themselves to be great once you've recorded a whole track with them, but people still test them one one source at a time. I'm not using this reference as an example of anything that relates to this thread, just that its a complex world of audio filled with things that sometimes make a difference, sometimes dont and normally are more confusing than worth learning.

It's why we end up with reviews of nice gear with people taking the adjectives to the limit of comprehensability, 'its a great pre amp, sort of plump, but spacious, creamy and liquid but a bit spicy and poached too'.

I wouldn't consider myself an audiophile as such, I'm not too precious about what I use to make music or listen too music on as long as it sounds cool or has character. I do like a nice set of speakers and great converters though :)

However it does annoy me when people have incredibly strong opinions on a very tricky subject to the point of calling it bullshit. Thats not constructive at all, books, forums, pages of text and hours of discussion from people who's job it is to know audio say it is not an open shut case!