Ableton Live 9 announced

[billcarroll]

Here are the files. I'm including a text file with the key letting you know which file is which.

DAWs used:
Cubase 6.5 64 bit
Logic Pro 9 64 bit
Ableton Live 8.4 b8 64 bit

Same plugins, same sample rate and bit depth, and exported the same. I've tried my best to create 3 projects exactly alike. Had I used more latency inducing plugins I'm sure there would be a bigger difference. As it is I can hear a clear difference between the files. I didn't spend any time obsessing over the mix or arrangement, etc., I just settled on some rough settings across the board and made everything the same across all DAWs.

Listen once or a few times, pick your favorites in order. Post your list if you are brave enough. Then read the text file.

Don't be a complete douchebag and spoil things for everyone else by posting the "answers" from the text file. Or do be a douchebag, I don't really care

Enjoy listening. This is in no way scientific.

----------------------------------------
Here are the files (49.3 MB zipped download):
https://dl.dropbox.com/u/35936/3_daw_test.zip
----------------------------------------

A few things to note:

1. Timing gets much closer with a bounce to audio, during playback differences are even more clear
2. There are still real differences in the files and sound
3. I've automated the virus filter cutoff using the same points in each DAW
4. I put silence at the beginning and end of each file, they are all same length @ 133 BPM
5. All volumes are the same
6. Plugin settings are exactly the same
7. 3 instrument plugins are used: Maschine, Virus, and Trilian
8. LFO tool is used on the bass, and a high pass at 50 Hz
9. Nothing is panned, everything is dead center
10. There is no processing on the master
11. There is more stuff to note
12. I love numbering lists

I've thrown in one mystery file, same stuff just slightly different export, for fun as a control of sorts.

[hibidy]

Enjoy listening. This is in no way scientific.

It will likely be tomorrow when I do, but yeah, this is great! And yes, the "enjoy" part should be pronounced It's fun to learn things......even though the sonic police will be around shortly to tell you how wrong you are for even DARING to bring up such a thing!

[KBKB]

On the topic of PDC issues in Live: I think there is actually more than one issue, each have their own symptoms but they can all manifest in similar ways. I only described one of these issues. There is also the problem of the non-linear delay introduced by the anti-aliasing filters when using the EQ in high-quality mode (this is supposed to be fixed in Live 9) and there is a separate issue regarding PDC on return channels when using sends (there is a work around for this but I can't find it at the moment).

I think that PDC is difficult to address in Live due to flexible routing and the focus on real-time performance*. While it may seem like a no brainer to just "fix" these problems, I don't think any of us are familiar enough with Ableton's development process to say if it's even practical/possible to fix the underlying cause**. I'm not saying "just deal with it", I'm saying people should make their choices based on current functionality, not based on what may happen between now and the final release of Live 9. As I've said before, I really hope these issues get fixed in Live 9 but if not I will continue using it as I've done since v4.

Regarding DAW comparisons: I'm not gonna touch that one.


____
*Standard disclaimer: I could be wrong.
**Not to be taken as fact! Pure speculation!

Early live 9 beta testers report the PDC as being the same as live 8.

It's not fixed in live 9

[billcarroll]

Enjoy listening. This is in no way scientific.

It will likely be tomorrow when I do, but yeah, this is great! And yes, the "enjoy" part should be pronounced It's fun to learn things......even though the sonic police will be around shortly to tell you how wrong you are for even DARING to bring up such a thing!

I did the testing for me, and I've already learned a ton doing it. I learned some really useful stuff about Ableton, Cubase and Logic. I love this stuff.

One thing I discovered was Cubase plays nice with my Virus. Ableton and Logic take a bit to get in sync with the Virus sometimes, or vice versa, but Cubase seems spot on during regular playback and mixing. I also like the way Cubase handles VST instrument and midi tracks.

I learned a bit about using external instruments with Ableton, as well as how to force Ableton to bounce in real time.

Totally worth my time, no matter what others might think

[dusted william]

thanks for uploading Bill. When I get off my laptop speakers, I'm going to take a closer listen.

dw

[sockofgold]

----------------------------------------
Here are the files (49.3 MB zipped download):
https://dl.dropbox.com/u/35936/3_daw_test.zip
----------------------------------------

Awesome man, I am downloading now, but will have to check it out tomorrow. I'm going to stay away from this thread until that point so I don't get any spoilers. Thanks again! Will report back tomorrow.

[hibidy]

----------------------------------------
Here are the files (49.3 MB zipped download):
https://dl.dropbox.com/u/35936/3_daw_test.zip
----------------------------------------

Awesome man, I am downloading now, but will have to check it out tomorrow. I'm going to stay away from this thread until that point so I don't get any spoilers. Thanks again! Will report back tomorrow.

Oh, that's right, you don't like my pictures........sorry.

[Shabdahbriah]

Oh, that's right, you don't like my pictures........sorry.

That's YOU

... interesting.

[hibidy]

Oh, that's right, you don't like my pictures........sorry.

That's YOU

... interesting.

that's right SWEETIE!

(I love River Song, one of my all-time favorite characters!)

[andrelafosse]

Thanks for uploading - really nice production, BTW!

Some thoughts:

*******POSSIBLE SPOILERS FOLLOW, BUT NO SPECIFIC ID OF WHICH FILE IS WHICH

***************************************************************************

1) I correctly guessed which one was Ableton - it's a "flatter," more neutral sound, to me. Not better or worse, in my opinion, though I see the appeal in the subtly more "hyped" sound of the others, and/or how people wouldn't dig the Ableton sound as much. I also hear a slightly different "depth issue" - the Ableton clip has the drums a little more in front of, and distinct from, the arp pad, whereas the other three (to varying degrees) sound a little more "glued together."

2) The cutoff frequency on the synth seems to start MUCH lower on example 3 than on the other ones.

3) Importing the first two files into Logic on two seperate channels, panning one hard left and one hard right, and playing them, I didn't hear any kind of flamming or obvious differences in the timing or feel of notes. Nor do I hear this if they're both panned dead center. (Not saying it's not there, just that I didn't hear it myself after many listens.)

I tried importing files 3 and 4 into Logic as well. Logic says the sample rate on file 3 is 44.1, so it played back twice as fast, Chipmunk-style. File four wouldn't play at all in Logic for me. (All four files play back fine in iTunes.)

Thanks again for uploading this!

[grymmjack]

Seems to be for me. I've probably put 30 hours into it since Sunday and a) it works (a couple of crashes, nothing major) and b) it does what I want for the most part. AND that's just with live lite.

Again, I must take this time to thank ableton for making the x64 version and allowing ALL live 8 users access. This is really nice to have something that works w/o the limitations of single core like maschine (which would have been fine IF it was multicore!)

BTW. What a disappointment "launchpad" was. I mean, not velocity sensitive? Sheesh! I mean, I didn't expect it to be the worlds greatest controller.........but NOT velocity sensitive?

hibidy you're a guitarist right?

I've found that live was almost a perfect match for a guitarist

Un v9 the audio to midi functionality will let us use our guitars to convert right to midi notes. no need for a clumsy controller like a yourock, ezag, or the more elusive/expensive ztar

Ableton is the dream for me. I totally love it.

As a guitarist the session view freaking RULES. Lay down a rhythm to a kick track, lay down a lead on top, adjust and tweak.

What's great about Live is if global quantize is on and set to 1 bar every interaction you have with session clips will be completely locked to bars. This is fantastic workflow for a riffing guitarist. You arm your track and record what you're hearing as normal DAW, but you either click the little red circle on an empty session clip slot or press ENTER, start jamming, then press enter again.

I prefer to use the arrow keys to navigate the session view, and prefer to use the ENTER key to stop/start/play/record the clips. You can create discontiguous selections also (like excel) so you can do some really fun sophisticated real time session stuff.

The other great thing about Live for guitarists is the follow actions and the way clip groups work. Don't know about you but for me drums are always just a chore. With Live I can drag in a few betamonkey clips, intro, bridge, chorus, main verse, bridge chorus, outro, and then set each clip to use follow actions properly, by separating the intro and outro clips by 1 empty clip above/below the bridge, chorus, main verse, and so on are then a "group" and so "play 1st" follow action plays the first clip in the GROUP.

This makes knocking up drums extremely simple (almost like the old school session drummer in cakewalk pro audio).

Then you can record your session clips to the arrange view and tweak even more from there.

It might not be obvious to a new live user, but automation is super easy as well if you have arrange view visible as you tweak a control on your plugin live automatically switches to show you the automation lane for your tweaked control (assuming it's configured and available for vst paramater automation), this lets you very quickly draw in something easy, and it's similar to the ctrl-l learn feature in FLStudio that I really like.

Anyway glad to see you made the jump, I'm kind of good at Live so if you need help with anything feel free to PM me I've probably been where you are are and wouldn't mind converting you further

[billcarroll]

Thanks for uploading - really nice production, BTW!

Some thoughts:

*******POSSIBLE SPOILERS FOLLOW, BUT NO SPECIFIC ID OF WHICH FILE IS WHICH

***************************************************************************

1) I correctly guessed which one was Ableton - it's a "flatter," more neutral sound, to me. Not better or worse, in my opinion, though I see the appeal in the subtly more "hyped" sound of the others, and/or how people wouldn't dig the Ableton sound as much. I also hear a slightly different "depth issue" - the Ableton clip has the drums a little more in front of, and distinct from, the arp pad, whereas the other three (to varying degrees) sound a little more "glued together."

2) The cutoff frequency on the synth seems to start MUCH lower on example 3 than on the other ones.

3) Importing the first two files into Logic on two seperate channels, panning one hard left and one hard right, and playing them, I didn't hear any kind of flamming or obvious differences in the timing or feel of notes. Nor do I hear this if they're both panned dead center. (Not saying it's not there, just that I didn't hear it myself after many listens.)

I tried importing files 3 and 4 into Logic as well. Logic says the sample rate on file 3 is 44.1, so it played back twice as fast, Chipmunk-style. File four wouldn't play at all in Logic for me. (All four files play back fine in iTunes.)

Thanks again for uploading this!

*****************************************************
POSSIBLE SPOILERS FOLLOW, BUT NO SPECIFIC ID OF WHICH FILE IS WHICH

*****************************************************

Thanks for listening and posting your thoughts on what you heard. What you describe with the Ableton sound is essentially what I hear too. And make no mistake, I really love Ableton. I would describe Cubase and Logic as sounding a bit more clear and open, maybe more depth. The way I would describe it with Cubase is I felt I could hear through the bass and Arp to hear more detail in the drums. The bass also sounds less muddy and a bit richer or more distinct somehow in Cubase.

The drums are pretty forward in the mix period, and dry. I made sure they were the same volume across all files, but I wanted to make sure I could hear any discrepancies with the timing. I brought all 3 of the 24-bit/88.2 kHz files into Ableton, played all 3 files together, and they sounded like they were quite close in time.

During playback when producing them in each DAW the beats and "groove" actually felt different in Ableton compared to Cubase and Logic. Once rendered to disk, the timing discrepancies with the beats almost went away. I didn't have any plugins on Maschine.

In retrospect I should have used a bunch of latency inducing plugins, but I was blown away at an early stage by the differences I was hearing. The only effect plugins used were LFO Tool and a high pass on bass. I always seem to have timing issues using Maschine with Ableton, and I think that is really where this experiment started for me.

The odd file out is at 32-bit/88.2 kHz, while all of the files are at 24-bit/88.2 kHz. 32-bit might explain not being able to drop into a 24-bit logic project.

I agree completely re: cutoff sounding lower initially on file 3. That could be due to some difference in the automation scale between DAWs.

I really hope more people jump in with what they've heard like you have

[hibidy]

Seems to be for me. I've probably put 30 hours into it since Sunday and a) it works (a couple of crashes, nothing major) and b) it does what I want for the most part. AND that's just with live lite.

Again, I must take this time to thank ableton for making the x64 version and allowing ALL live 8 users access. This is really nice to have something that works w/o the limitations of single core like maschine (which would have been fine IF it was multicore!)

BTW. What a disappointment "launchpad" was. I mean, not velocity sensitive? Sheesh! I mean, I didn't expect it to be the worlds greatest controller.........but NOT velocity sensitive?

hibidy you're a guitarist right?

I've found that live was almost a perfect match for a guitarist

Un v9 the audio to midi functionality will let us use our guitars to convert right to midi notes. no need for a clumsy controller like a yourock, ezag, or the more elusive/expensive ztar

Ableton is the dream for me. I totally love it.

As a guitarist the session view freaking RULES. Lay down a rhythm to a kick track, lay down a lead on top, adjust and tweak.

What's great about Live is if global quantize is on and set to 1 bar every interaction you have with session clips will be completely locked to bars. This is fantastic workflow for a riffing guitarist. You arm your track and record what you're hearing as normal DAW, but you either click the little red circle on an empty session clip slot or press ENTER, start jamming, then press enter again.

I prefer to use the arrow keys to navigate the session view, and prefer to use the ENTER key to stop/start/play/record the clips. You can create discontiguous selections also (like excel) so you can do some really fun sophisticated real time session stuff.

The other great thing about Live for guitarists is the follow actions and the way clip groups work. Don't know about you but for me drums are always just a chore. With Live I can drag in a few betamonkey clips, intro, bridge, chorus, main verse, bridge chorus, outro, and then set each clip to use follow actions properly, by separating the intro and outro clips by 1 empty clip above/below the bridge, chorus, main verse, and so on are then a "group" and so "play 1st" follow action plays the first clip in the GROUP.

This makes knocking up drums extremely simple (almost like the old school session drummer in cakewalk pro audio).

Then you can record your session clips to the arrange view and tweak even more from there.

It might not be obvious to a new live user, but automation is super easy as well if you have arrange view visible as you tweak a control on your plugin live automatically switches to show you the automation lane for your tweaked control (assuming it's configured and available for vst paramater automation), this lets you very quickly draw in something easy, and it's similar to the ctrl-l learn feature in FLStudio that I really like.

Anyway glad to see you made the jump, I'm kind of good at Live so if you need help with anything feel free to PM me I've probably been where you are are and wouldn't mind converting you further

Yeah, I used live like a million years ago and then sold it. But I worked and worked and worked it here recently and it's done everything I need. Thanks for the info and the generous offer to help via PM

[sockofgold]

***MINOR SPOILERS, BUT NO ACTUAL GIVEAWAYS AS TO WHICH FILE GOES WITH WHICH DAW***


Well, after listening, I can definitely say that I hear a difference between the three. And I would agree that Live is probably the "flattest" and least pleasing of them all.

But honestly, I am just not entirely convinced that it means "Cubase and Logic sound better than Live." The skeptic in me wants to believe that they just handle their internal settings differently, much like how the automation differences resulted in the filter being in a very different spot in one of your bounces.

Interesting test. It certainly proves that using the same settings between different DAWs may not get you the exact same output, but I'm not sure how much more than that I am willing to believe as scientific fact--I still don't give any credence to Zimmer's claim that Cubase "sounds better" than other DAWs...



Here is my own test--it's a bit different sound than bill's.

It's a mix of plain old audio loops plus some VSTi's (ACE, Massive, and Superior Drummer). Then I sprinkled some random effects plugins around to try to mess up the PDC as much as possible (Voxformer, TB TimeMachine, The Drop, Alloy 2, TB Barricade, Etch, VRoom, TAL-Dub-2, and MFlanger). One is Live, one is Cubase, and one is Studio One.

I have my own opinions, but I'm curious to see if anyone else "hears" any differences. The waves certainly don't null, so they are definitely different. All are 24/44.1, and are slightly longer than bill's pieces. Drums come in around 30 seconds.

I am also not including the results, because I want people to post without having any chance to know which is which. I will post a list later on, though.

https://dl.dropbox.com/u/5976932/sockofgold-tests.zip

[hibidy]

One thing though, doesn't live have a "set" value for panning laws? I know we've had these threads before were pan laws have indeed changed perception in how a host "sounds"