Live 6 on Quater 3 06

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"...the whole "audio engine" thread is a myth. I know that you are not going to believe this, but maybe then you should read some basic books about computer music. It will not only help understanding digital audio but also give tons of ideas about what to do with all these great tools !!!!!"



Citation :
Robert Henke wrote:
....2. Digital A versus Digital B....

In case 1 it is obvious that there are huge differences. An analog mixer contains some hundred transistors and each of them has a nonlinear transfer curve. The result is very complex distortion. On a good mixer some engineer did a great job adjsting the circuits in a way that this nonlinear behaviour sounds great. Also each D/A converter has an analog side and the same rules apply for it. Playing back a mix using one stereo converter will sound different from playing back each track with it`s own converter and then adding the resulting signal in a mixer.
We do not need to discuss here that there is a difference since this is obvious.

2. A summing bus in software is

A* a + B * b + ...

and if this is done with 32 bit or more the potential error is very low. Each software using 32 bit floating point math sound the same in this regard. Filters are a complete different issue. There are lots of concepts and they all sound different. Same goes for other DSP processing algorithms like timestrech, sample rate conversion etc. But the whole "audio engine" thread is a myth. I know that you are not going to believe this, but maybe then you should read some basic books about computer music. It will not only help understanding digital audio but also give tons of ideas about what to do with all these great tools !!!!!

Robert

Citation :
PostPosted: Tue Feb 25, 2003 6:59 pm Post subject: sound quality Dear Live Users,

A vew statements to sound quality of Live:

1. the timestrech changes the sound. this is true for every timestrech.
2. playing back a 44.1 kHz sample at any other sampling rate then 44.1 needs interpolation. this changes the sound. the HighQuality button allows for using a state of the art alogrithm for this task if desired. the same is true for transposing a sample.
3. playing back an unwarped 44.1 kHz at 44.1 Hz with no transpositition and no gain change and no FX will result in an unchainged signal passed to the soundcard. this will sound 100% the same in each audio application.
4. adding two or more sources in a digital system can result in slight differences if the system uses floating point or integers. most software use floats and i personally do not believe that anyone can actually hear the difference. Lives busses sound like any buss which does not contain EQ or compression.
4. Live´s delays use the simplest possible algorithm. if you think they sound fine- cool, but they will not sound different in Reaktor or MAX/MSP or Protools.
5. Live`s EQs in most cases are standard ones, nothing special but also not bad. you may or you may not like the sound, it may or may not be sufficient for your work, but thats why there are VST plugins giving you every kind of EQ you want. Some EQ`s in Live, like the Autofiler are using more sophisticated alogorithms - more CPU, but more analog-like.


conclusion : especially filters and compression does sound very different in differnent DAWs and everything else does sound the same.

Regards, Robert Henke / Ableton.