Ableton Live is a 16-bit DAW

[Tj Shredder]

As Live can’t know if a 3rd party plugin deals correctly with denormals (which would eat CPU for nothing), its the best way to prevent lazy programmed vsts to bring the DAW to its knees…
Proper gain staging is essential anyway, there is no real drawback…

Denormals are not really a thing anymore, especially with on-CPU handling for them (FTZ flag, etc.).
This should definitely be an option and not something baked in.

But there are enough plugins which are not maintained anymore and could drive the support crazy… Its not an issue if you know what to do… And stop calculating in that area might free some synth voices earlier than if you didn’t do that…

[EvilDragon]

That sort of stuff is better handled in the plugin anyways, since plugin knows better when a voice should be killed than the DAW (for one reason or another).

At any rate, I have like 400 plugins, quite a few of them are very old, and none of them have any issues with denormals, so that's quite a strawman argument IMO. What Live is doing should be an option, no question about it.

[Logga]

Though my level where it starts to gate is around -120db (no idea what that would equate to bit-depth noise-floor wise - 20 bit ?)

It's supposed to be -100 dB, that's what I saw, it's what users in that Ableton thread reported and Ableton support confirmed it too. But it's possible that there are other variables at play.
100 dB of dynamic range would be ~16-17 bit, depending on the sample rate. Obviously gating isn't quite the same as bit depth reduction, so the title of this thread is somewhat simplified.
But, especially with noise shaped dithering, 16-bit audio can reproduce signals well below -100 dB.

I don't know if this is really an issue, with so many chartbreaker tracks produced with Ableton.

Sure, and many hits were produced with even worse gear in the past, but that's a different discussion.
The point is that you'd expect modern software to not harm fidelity like this, at least not by default and without a way to completely disable it.

Yeah, it's kinda weird nobody's noticed this before.

I've done some searching and it seems that this has been added with Live 9, I found a thread about it from 2016.
But yeah, I would say that most Live users don't really understand what this is about or they don't care, so Ableton doesn't feel the pressure to change it.

[chk071]

I wonder now if other DAW's do the same.

[chk071]

Sure, and many hits were produced with even worse gear in the past, but that's a different discussion.

I don't know if "bad" really applies here.

[arkmabat]

There's a lot of aspects about this hobby that make me wonder, like how repackaging a vst inside another would be really simple to do. Also, where daws source their stock samples from. Lots of unknowns we may never know about.

[liquidsound]

I wonder now if other DAW's do the same.

No only that but, who knows what “other” thing are going on the other side of the veil “until” someone “just” finds out.

[Logga]

Well, if you find some other DAW doing silly things, by all means let us know.
I've reported many software bugs over the years. As users we all benefit from having more reliable tools.

[liquidsound]

Well, if you find some other DAW doing silly things, by all means let us know.
I've reported many software bugs over the years. As users we all benefit from having more reliable tools.

I've being using Live forever and never had a problem with this aspect.
But I also use other DAWs and as long as I'm producing and no one is complaining, I don't mind those dark valleys "under the rock" finds.

But if something is creating roadblocks in my production, then by all means, investigation is more than justified.

[chk071]

Well, if you find some other DAW doing silly things, by all means let us know.
I've reported many software bugs over the years. As users we all benefit from having more reliable tools.

I've being using Live forever and never had a problem with this aspect.
But I also use other DAWs and as long as I'm producing and no one is complaining, I don't mind those dark valleys "under the rock" finds.

That's how I see it too.

[.jon]

-110db is pretty quiet tho

[Logga]

And -120 dB is even quieter. But that's off-topic here.


Anyway, I don't want to convince all of you that this is a big problem. Everyone can decide how much, if at all, this bothers them.

I would only ask that if you are bothered by it, let the Ableton team know. If enough of us complain, maybe they'll listen.

[dubizer]

This is a non-issue.

[Guenon]

In my opinion, this is a textbook example of an issue that inspires people who aren't personally affected by it, to comment in the style of "it's a non-issue", "no real producer or anyone sane already complained about it", "a completely nonsense issue which never affected anyone to this date", "probably not something significant in electronic music production" and so on

Even when this completely rules out certain sound design workflows inside Live.

If you never work like that, and don't know anyone who might like to work like that with any material - cool, you are probably in the majority, hah.

However, the knowing tone of "therefore, it's insane if someone needs it" comes so easily with that observation. And it's unfortunate.

Sooo, yep, an example: I work in the games industry, yeah yeah. We like textures and drones and so forth , and occasionally I love "zooming in" on what happens to a signal at the quiet end, to get interesting evolving and gritty textures and whatnot. You can't do that in Live like in Reaper, for instance. It's great finding those hiding colors and then using them as layers in something else.

Here's the default preset of Zebra 2 going into Valhalla Vintage Verb, followed by extreme upward compression; after that, just a bog standard signal chain with EQ and a bit of pitch doubling and so on. The actual note that plays is just a very short one, and instead of Zebra, for most of the clip the actual sound source is just the tail of Valhalla Vintage Verb itself. No automation is used to create movement in the texture, it's all just the quiet movement happening in the VVV tail as is. The reverb length is set at eight seconds on the plugin GUI. You can't get the same colors just by dialing in a longer reverb; the point is raising the very quiet end-tail signal, with all the normally inaudible residual movement, to a loud listening level.

In Live 10, this is the extent of what you get until it cuts off:

https://soundcloud.com/guenooni/live10/s-XPYN3Ky8MgD

If you do the same in Reaper 6, you find this:

https://soundcloud.com/guenooni/reaper6/s-D0mlDl7i3fo

This is why I never use Live for things like this, hah. Even if you personally never use techniques of this sort (just imagine the extent of material one can use this for in creative sound design, when just a dull standard reverb tail gives you these colors), wouldn't it be just nice if any serious DAW could be used also for that, by those who do like doing it? Instead of calling it insane and whatnot. If something is insane here, it's the fact of not offering this as an option (imo imo).

[Guenon]

In any case...

BTW, best clickbait thread title award goes to...

I did laugh out loud at this comment . Indeed!