Thanks for pointing the Ableton info out, I have read that document a while ago, too. If I may comment on the non-neutral operations in Live:
hydrogen wrote:
Volume Automation
Automation of volume level results in a change in gain, which is necessarily a non-neutral operation.
Nuff said, same holds for any other DAW.
hydrogen wrote:
Consolidate
Consolidating clips in the Arrangement View creates new audio _les, which are non-neutral in comparison to the original audio data. Specifcally, the new _les will be normalized, with their clip volumes adjusted to play back at the same volume as heard prior to consolidation.
Normalization is a gain change, which is a non-neutral operation. Also, the new _les will be created at the sample rate and bit depth set in Live’s Preferences window, which may differ from those in the original audio _les.
If you have enough CPU power, like most people nowadays, then you do not need to consolidate. And if you bounce from any other DAW (what "consolidating" actually is), you also introduce artifacts w.r.t. sample rate and bit depth.
hydrogen wrote:
Clip fades
When Create Fades on Clip Edges is enabled in the Record/Warp/Launch Preferences, a short (up to 4 ms) fade is applied to the clip start and end to avoid clicks at the clip edges. These declicking fades can also be applied to Session View clips via the Clip Fade button. Additionally, Arrangement View clips have editable fades and crossfades. Applying any of these fade options is a non-neutral operation.
Again, this is easily avoidable by simply turning auto-fade off.
hydrogen wrote:
Panning
Live uses constant power panning with sinusoidal gain curves. Output is 0 dB at the center position and signals panned fully left or right will be increased by +3 dB. In order to minimize this volume change, it may be helpful to narrow the overall stereo width before doing extreme panning. This can be done via the Width control in the Utility device.
This is also true for every other DAWs, you can find a good explanation in the Gearslutz thread i posted. Panning is generally a non-neutral operation.
hydrogen wrote:
And the most important of them...(Brankis... this is what i think you were experiencing last night with that multiband compressor!)
Summing at Single Mix Points
Since version 7, Live uses double precision (64-bit) summing at all points where signals are mixed, including Clip and return track inputs, the Master track and Racks. Mixing in Live is thus a neutral operation for signals mixed at any single summing point. This is tested by loading pairs of 24-bit les (white noise and xed-frequency sine waves and their phase inverted complements), adding the pairs together eight times and rendering the output as 32-bit les. All tests result in perfect phase cancellation.
Please note that, while 64-bit summing is applied to each single mix point, Live’s internal processing is still done at 32-bit. Thus, signals that are mixed across multiple summing points may still result in an extremely small amount of signal degradation. This combination of 64-bit summing within a 32-bit architecture strikes an ideal balance between audio quality and CPU/memory consumption.
As far as i know and have read in lots of threads, Logic actually uses a combination of 32 bit float and 64 bit for internal processing, too. It actually seems to have a very similar architecture than Live. If somebody has more reliable info on this, please fill me in.
hydrogen wrote:
jobbanaught wrote:Maybe to you it does, but thats your personal opinion, which you try to sell as a fact. The only fact is, they can sound different under certain circumstances.
Yup... and IMO if villilobos and several other of my favorite artists agree... i'm going to go with that crowd.
Im seriuosly interested in the statement that villalobos and others have said they do not like the Live sound. Could you point me to some resource on that? I'm not trying to be a smarta$$ here, I'm trying to learn.
regler wrote:
1. when a lot of people say that something is true, it's not automatically true.
Please understand that there some facts. It makes no sense to discuss a nulling test. Please understand that we all(!) suffer from bias, it's human.
for example:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_cognitive_biases
That's why we need to prove things. Feelings are
great indicators, but no prove.
4. you don't need to understand or be an expert for about sound quality to be a good artist, so don't overrate ricardo. I remember a great guitar player who told me that he can hear through a closed door( the low pass filtered sound, you know how it sounds...) if it's a burned cd or the orignial cd. no kidding. that's absolute nonsense, even though he's a exceptionally gifted musician.
At the moment I think lives effects are a part of the problem or better for a sound signature it sometimes may have(I never use modulation effects for example, I hate lives phaser etc.). Another reason...the quality from the sound source is the most important part. In logic (and cubase) you have many good presets which sounds just good. In live you don't have them... you have to make then by yourself or use 3rd party stuff.
I totally agree with this. Over the years I have read so many useless threads about Ableton being inferior to other DAWs. Almost, none of them was backed up with any knowledge or information, but everyone of them infected more people with the idea "Ableton is bad". I thing it is quite common that once such a myth has started (or has been spread on purpose), people are biased to hear what they are told they are going to hear. Personally, I have experienced psychoaccoustic phenomena many times. Like fine tuning the pitch on a layered hat for some minutes, and then recognising the layer i have tuned is actually turned off
So i thought i was hearing changes, because i was expecting to, where actually the audio did not change at all.
regler wrote:
At the moment I think lives effects are a part of the problem or better for a sound signature it sometimes may have(I never use modulation effects for example, I hate lives phaser etc.). Another reason...the quality from the sound source is the most important part. In logic (and cubase) you have many good presets which sounds just good. In live you don't have them... you have to make then by yourself or use 3rd party stuff.
This might very well be a reason for the feeling that Live does not sound as good. The native plugins are kind of a mixed bag. The compressor is very transparent (which I like), and the delays are, too. But the filter sucks, as does the reverb. So if you use them, you wont get anything sounding very good. But this does not make Live unusable, like many people seem to suggest. The audio engine is not the point, it is perfectlyx up to par with Logic. But the native plugs are questionable, i agree. But that was never the point of this discussion, as i have stated before.
