Sound Difference Quality In Logic, Cubase and Live.

QUAZAR · Post by **QUAZAR** » Thu Mar 17, 2005 2:50 pm

no doubt that there's an audible difference in the soundquality of e.g. logic compared to live. i have to agree with everybody who complained about the 'muffled' sound of live.

what i don't understand though, is why some forummembers are afraid to render. I've never had any problems with this at all. (rendering in live, mixing in logic as i normally do)

lastly a question: do I understand from this thread that if you use a soundcard with seperate outputs (like my audiowerk EMI) the sound of the various channels will be better than when you'd only use the bus? (never tried that so far, but want to start using Live to play live now.)

cheers
Gert van Veen, Amsterdam

olafmol · Post by **olafmol** » Thu Mar 17, 2005 3:13 pm

QUAZAR wrote:no doubt that there's an audible difference in the soundquality of e.g. logic compared to live. i have to agree with everybody who complained about the 'muffled' sound of live.

what i don't understand though, is why some forummembers are afraid to render. I've never had any problems with this at all. (rendering in live, mixing in logic as i normally do)

lastly a question: do I understand from this thread that if you use a soundcard with seperate outputs (like my audiowerk EMI) the sound of the various channels will be better than when you'd only use the bus? (never tried that so far, but want to start using Live to play live now.)

cheers
Gert van Veen, Amsterdam

Hoi Gert,

first: still treasure some of your Quazar releases (the seven stars etc.), thanks for the great music and memories

about your question: there is indeed a difference between "summing/mixing in the box" and "summing mixing in analogue" ... this is the analogue vs digital mixing/summing that is mentioned earlier in this thread, and also the reason why lately a lot of passive analogue summing-devices like the dangerous 2bus are released. It of course depends entirely on the quality of your soundcard DA convertors, and more: the quality of your outboard mixing board. Just try and see what you like best. Of course, when mixing outside the box using analogue summing you don't have total recall anymore.

Olaf

mikemc · Post by **mikemc** » Thu Mar 17, 2005 5:32 pm

supster wrote: think what we're looking for are actual short music wavs or aiff (dont need to be more than 10 seconds in length)

That's what everyone wants, I think too, but it's not that straightforward

the resultant 'hearing' is very subjective (what are you hearing it through, your monitors have such and such a bias, my ears are cleaner than yours, what did you clean your ears with...)

The white noise test was a good idea.

There is an mda freeware plugin called test tone http://www.kvraudio.com/get/800.html. I only have Live and FLStudio, I could compare those. Wouldn't setting the output to cause Live to report 0db across a range of frequencies provide the "Live reference tones", then these setting could be loaded in other apps to get an idea of the variance?

I know one reason people might be afraid to render is that Live has crashed on me when rendering normalized. Turn normalize off, render works fine.

3phase · Post by **3phase** » Fri Mar 18, 2005 7:27 pm

QUAZAR wrote: lastly a question: do I understand from this thread that if you use a soundcard with seperate outputs (like my audiowerk EMI) the sound of the various channels will be better than when you'd only use the bus? (never tried that so far, but want to start using Live to play live now.)

cheers
Gert van Veen, Amsterdam

This depends on the desk you use with the single outputs...when its just for soundquality i wouldnt do it for live because it chews up more dsp power to adress multiple outs.. But you have to see the performance factor...when you have the bassdrum on an individual mixingdesk channel you easyly can mute it and change the Eq´s..much better than within the internal mixer of Life.. Therefore multiple outputs to an anlog mixer can be a good thing...

The statement me an others was bringing for singlechannel out was ment mainly for rewire input into another DAW...tThere you need lots of independent channels to adress plugins to the Live channels...
You get a better soundquality and latencie compensation this way...

Its interesting how many people identify the sound of Live as muffled...
I wonder how a guy like mister henke can ignore that...
It scares me a bit..because when the offical statement is that everything is perfect... Than it probably will stay like this.. However Live is ment as a performance tool and not as a professional production workstation. In this perspective the soundquality is good enough

mikemc · Post by **mikemc** » Fri Mar 18, 2005 8:06 pm

Its interesting how many people identify the sound of Live as muffled...
I wonder how a guy like mister henke can ignore that...
It scares me a bit..because when the offical statement is that everything is perfect... Than it probably will stay like this..

I have 'adequate' gear for some tests, not the best, particularly in regards to quality monitors. These tests were listened to with beyerdynamic DT-770s as I performed them using the mda TestTone plugin, they are the type similar to those used in adjusting analog systems.

Put the test tone plugin in an audio track.
Set the plugin level to 0db, sine wave output.
Stepped manually from 20Hz to 20kHz.

For all frequencies the display on the audio track channel remained level at the 0db "line" on the VU, with the fader aligned with that 0db mark.

For the master level fader, when the fader is set "right on the mark" there is a potential for clipping. The fader needs to be set in a slightly lower position than the audio track fader to achieve a steady 0db reading and to ensure avoiding 'red' clipping. Distortion from clipping is very noticable in the lower highs and mids.

Now, in the mid frequencies, I was able to hear a bit of "faint metallic warmth" at 0db but-- ok, is that the headphones, the sound card, the plugin... my tin head ringing from listening like an idjit to a pure sine tone when I could be having fun with clips... ?

so this is where the ol' oscilloscope could be useful to indicate funk in the waves a'la distortion(or not) and no I don't have one of those (I'm sure the Abes do and would not doubt that the official statement may well be borne out thereupon).

So if anyone is inclined, and you have some nice monitors and/or an oscilloscope, you might want to try repeating this test and seeing if you have the same experience of "faint metallic warming overtones".

Foir those afraid of rendering, I recorded this and rendered the output (44.1kHz 24bit) pulled it back into Live and dropped it into a track alongside the original test tone plugin track (turned down the master) identical readings in both audio tracks across all freqs, A/Bing I could not tell a difference between the two. At some point I will pull the rendered track into FLStudio, the only other app I have to see what it looks like there.

White noise set to generate at 0db measured 0db on the VUs.

At any rate, this stepped tones test would be one to try in Live and A/B with Cubase/Logic/Nuendo etc along with the white noise test.

supster · Post by **supster** » Sat Mar 19, 2005 5:38 am

figure i'll drag this back from the dead one more time to make a comment hardly anyone will read because its 20 pages deep in the fucking thread

but:

people spend all this energy and talk drooling about analog, idolizing it because its "warm" and not "too clean" and digital sounding.

Whatever Live does it makes the sound warm. I noticed this back in vs 2 before i was running specialty vsts like psp vintagewarmer and any real compression to speak of

really, bottom line it sounds awesome for the kind of stuff im doing, granted its not philharmonic chamber music but its all digital and it sounds warm and full

so whats teh problem?? (unless you are doing philarmonic chambers)

3phase · Post by **3phase** » Sun Mar 20, 2005 2:22 pm

mikemc wrote:
Its interesting how many people identify the sound of Live as muffled...
I wonder how a guy like mister henke can ignore that...
It scares me a bit..because when the offical statement is that everything is perfect... Than it probably will stay like this..
I have 'adequate' gear for some tests, not the best, particularly in regards to quality monitors. These tests were listened to with beyerdynamic DT-770s as I performed them using the mda TestTone plugin, they are the type similar to those used in adjusting analog systems.

I dont think that the phenomen can be catched just with freq response measurements...otherwise Ableton would be aware of it...
Actually sound measurement is a difficult thing... Especially the measurement of soundquality is still missing the wright measurement methods... spectral distortion measurements mybe give an indication... but still...if this would give an exact picture about soundquality almost any digital equipment would sound the same while lots of cult analog gear should sound dreadfull... I wouldnt know wright now how to measure what my ears tell me..otherwise i would do it... One for sure...you need an audio analyser in the range of an audioprecission or better to proove here anything...

3phase · Post by **3phase** » Sun Mar 20, 2005 2:29 pm

supster wrote:figure i'll drag this back from the dead one more time to make a comment hardly anyone will read because its 20 pages deep in the fucking thread

but:

people spend all this energy and talk drooling about analog, idolizing it because its "warm" and not "too clean" and digital sounding.

Whatever Live does it makes the sound warm. I noticed this back in vs 2 before i was running specialty vsts like psp vintagewarmer and any real compression to speak of

really, bottom line it sounds awesome for the kind of stuff im doing, granted its not philharmonic chamber music but its all digital and it sounds warm and full

so whats teh problem?? (unless you are doing philarmonic chambers)

You are maybe wright that this thread is going a long time...but more and more people state that there is a sound difference..If they see it positiv as you..as a warming factor, or negativ as a muffeling...
In the same time otheres like Mr Henke himself state that they cant hear a difference.. And when you listen to Mr. henkes productions you dont get the idea that this guy has bad ears at all..
So what is going on?
Is it maybe possible that the soundgeneration is not a standard feature and only happens on certain setups?
Is it maybe a hidden bug that is transported from one generation of Live to the next without beeing realised because nobody complains?
I think this should be investigated and therefor its maybe not too bad when this thread stays alive for a while... However..i ve said what i had to say..
its on others now to keep this topic up or not...
People that experiance the pheneomen maybe should report it.

regards
Sven