Logic instruments/effects in Ableton.....

hydrogen · Post by **hydrogen** » Thu Nov 05, 2009 6:10 am

lots of interesting information here:

http://www.ableton.com/_common/download ... eet-en.pdf

livecollective · Post by **livecollective** » Thu Nov 05, 2009 6:56 am

you get the max for live public beta ?

so far 8 without it, isnt cutting it for me, i am not upgrading unless max for live is sick, bidule works just fine until they get their sh!t together

jobbanaught · Post by **jobbanaught** » Thu Nov 05, 2009 12:47 pm

Brankis wrote: its funny cause on the forums you read this stupid testing stuff meanwhile artists like villalobos, pronsato and others all have talked numerous times about ableton's sound. so you have a bunch of kids on the forum saying there's no difference and the top artists in the world that say there is an obvious sound to ableton.

Maybe its posts like this with no informational content that helps to build a myth? I do not find your name dropping very convincing. And maybe your big shot artists were talking about the native plugs of Live? Anyway, my point is, if you forget about the native plugs, and come down to the basic feature each DAW has to offer, this is digital summing. Nothing more, nothing less. Plugins generate sound or manipulate it, but this is specific to each DAW. So you cant compare Logics Klopfgeist to Abletons Impulse. Everybody knows that. But what you can compare across all DAWs is what all of them have to offer, which is digital summing. Which means e.g. to sum 10 wavs from different tracks into a master track. An in no way this step colors the sound in Live. If you go for the native plugs, the timestretching algorithms and so forth, obviously they depend on the specific coding and introduce their sound into the mix.

Brankis wrote: i think its almost kind of ignorant to think all programs (digital) are "equal" or "the same."

Nobody has claimed that...

hydrogen · Post by **hydrogen** » Thu Nov 05, 2009 2:43 pm

After being an Ableton Fanboy, i'm starting to regain my sanity... but for good reason. Because I am insane for using ableton this whole time. I spent last night in tears after my breakdown. I've got 4 years of ideas written in Live!

Brankis has been on my case for over a year now about LIVE and I've always been able to talk him out of it... but its really all clear to me now, especially after reading that document.

I will probably purchase logic next week, especially since i do a lot of recording and volume automation. I will miss things like clip automation and such... but its a small loss i will have to take over optimized dithering which makes flat sounding stuff. Working in the game industry, i know what this optimized sh!t can do to rendered polygons. and any sort of artistic medium. These types of optimizations are great for realtime processing and memory savings, but NOT for recordings!

What villilobos and brankis are talking about is how live does not sound neutral. A while back I spoke with Matt Didemus from junior boys after a show and he expressed similar feelings... They use live sometimes to write songs sometimes but then Rewire to logic! My favorite part is they don't even use LIVE in the live show. All sequences get dumped down to an MPC! And i'll say... it sounds brilliant.

Anyways... its not just about summing either... here are some of the facts published by Ableton.

Specifically read the parts about Undithered Rendering, Summing at Single Mix Points, Volume Automation, Dithering, Consolidate, Clip fades

Brankis, that part about summing at single mixing points might help EXACTLY describe the problem you were describing to me last evening.

Anyways, I'm glad I've finally realized this and Honestly... i just won't be looking back until I can be somehow convinced that the quality is better. I fucking love abletons workflow... but anybody that knows me and why I havn't released my own material personally in 8 years knows this as well. I will never release anything that I think is sh!t and I'm super pissed that I have a record coming out with this audio engine, thank god I spent hours and hours mixing it down... probably because the audio engine failed me and I spent hours and hours trying to accommodate for those dithering problems and convincing myself I can't make it sound any better using those tools.

I have one live PA this weekend, where I have to bake a bunch of audio down in live... but those days of using this for Recording are over. finished. Live will probably be just used in the LIVE setting only as it was designed for. I should downgrade to version 6.

Thank You Brankis and anybody else that have been hammering this point home again and again.

PsyTox · Post by **PsyTox** » Thu Nov 05, 2009 3:12 pm

jobbanaught wrote:
Opuswerk wrote: Have you tried to null the same sound source? ie play exactly the same loops through both engines and invert the phase of one while playing both together?

There have been comprehensive tests of Live vs Logic using this exact technique. The outcome: they sound exactly the same!
As a computer scientist i might add that this is perfectly reasonable, since there is only one optimal algorithm to do summing of two signals in the digital domain, and boths DAWs use it with 64 bit internal precision. Bottom line: the whole "Live has flat sound" thing is a myth

problem is that it might be reasonable to assume, but it sounds to me a bit like the discussion that people have about cd not sounding as good as vinyl f.e. The pro-cd people will say "yeah but the cd only cuts away the frequencies that are unhearable for the human ear". Yet, they DO sound differently. Why? because not everything in music can be captured simply by logical math and by measurements. It's the same with me in this live vs logic discussion. Somehow, you hear it. Somewhere inside that piece of software, some weird inner working makes that it just simply sounds 'differently'. Just as somehow, you hear or feel the frequencies that are cut anyway, but maybe not with your ear, but with your senses. I'm not a scientist so I don't rely on numbers and measurement tools. I really on what matters in music: the feel.

And that nulltest seems pretty irrelevant imho, since no one ever uses just a null 'setting' to make a tune. So, it's pretty much useless to discart an overall feeling just because of something that is basically just a starting point at best which no one ever uses. It's like saying that two cars with similar weight, power, etc will drive exactly the same speed, yet there's always one of them who gets over the line just a fraction faster.

Anyway, once again, I'm not lookign to dismiss and lose Live, I'm looking for a way to combine the best of both. Logic will never be so easy to use as Ableton, so if I could somehow control everything in Ableton and use that together with the sound of Logic, i'd be the happiest man in euh... Zwevezele.

jobbanaught · Post by **jobbanaught** » Thu Nov 05, 2009 4:02 pm

Just to avoid confusion, a null test is the following:

1. Generate the same signal in two DAWs. You can use audio loops, 3rd party plugins, whatever you want
2. Bounce the out signal form the mix bus
3. Phase invert one of the bounced files
4. Overlay the two files

If the result is a null signal (i.e. silence), then both files have cancelled each other out, which shows that the processing has been exactly the same. This has been done extensively Logic vs. Live, I try to dig up the links. And i say it again, if you do not do anything fancy which involves native plugins (which are of course not available on the other DAW), then the two DAWs sound exactly the same. Like the document that was posted stated, single point mixing in Live is transparent as can be. Everything that involves musical features (like non-linear timestretching or dithering) is not the same on both DAWs. So the more u use special features of a DAW, like warping in Live, the more does the result differ from one you could get in Logic. But i only say differ, it is not necessarily worse.

Man, this has turned into a long waffle... Thing is, I have seen so many threads which multiply common misconceptions about Live that i simply have to point it out this time. For me, the DAW discussion has turned into a religious thing, where everybody claims things but does not have a single bit of proof. Maybe everybody is best of beliving what he wants to...

Brankis · Post by **Brankis** » Thu Nov 05, 2009 4:05 pm

Brankis wrote: i think its almost kind of ignorant to think all programs (digital) are "equal" or "the same."

Nobody has claimed that...

you must be new to the internet

google "ableton vs logic" and read the hundreds of threads where people say exactly that...

also, im not name dropping. i was simply making a comparison to people like you who think warping/timestretching in LIVE is some unknown anomally to all the producers out there. EVERYONE knows about the affects of warp and 99% of people using live for production have it loaded up with so many 3rd party vst's it's almost disgusting. the point being that your argument is the same regurgitated BS that has plagued production forums for the last years

Ableton is made to play Live first and foremost and as henke has stated, there is always a trade off with CPU power and sound quality.

Brankis · Post by **Brankis** » Thu Nov 05, 2009 4:10 pm

i also did a test last night in Reaper comapred to Ableton.

I had a kit coming out of NI Maschine, same kit at the same volume... I applied the Waves L3-LL multiband compressor on the channel.

In ableton once i got more than 3db of gain reduction there was lots of distortion, audible noise... at 6db of reduction the signal was completely broken apart

In Reaper with the exact same Maschine Kit I was able to slam the threshold all the way down with absolutely zero distortion where as Live distorted very quickly.

i should also note that the sound the plugin gave was different in both programs.

the same kit in Live sounded dull and not as clear, where as in Reaper it sounded very clear and more imaged like Psytox was saying. its not just the "sound" but the feel it gives, i cant really explain it, but in reaper it was not tiring on my ears at all where in ableton i find i often have to take breaks because my brain gets tired of the sound quickly

i would be skeptical of anyone who couldnt hear the difference