Metatron72 wrote:Thin/tinny is the issue.
I've had issues with it since Live 5 going back to '05. Many personal friends same thing. And worse I've seen top flight producers in FM and CM UK magazines complain about the same thing.
The pattern seems to be perceived the same by all of us that notice it. The more you throw at Live tracks+FX the more this seems to be an issue. It doesn't sound terrible by any means, but I many times have used the same source one shots and my loops in other DAWS and the final render sounds better, rounder, and the separation is superior.
I do buy into the notion it's all binary zeroes and ones and theoretically this should not happen. I don't have the patience to render the same thing out of say Live, FL, Reason, Logic and Reaper (The main DAWS I have) and do a null test on the wavs.
But I still believe something is up with Live's summing. I think what's overlooked is no two DAW's have the same code/algorithms for summing/rendering on an offline bounce. To me this might explain why Live starts to sound worse the more you add to a session even in real time summed playback.
I've had minor MIDI drift issues with Live, but nothing serious. And when you consider how many events and tweaks Live's engine is juggling with the Warping Especially in my case , I have an 8 core so I use Complex Pro, the most CPU intensive warp mode and box the session in arrange view with my mouse and press "Hi-Q" for every wav. So that's a whole lot of calculations Live is juggling.
It's no deal breaker, but you know how attentive to detail folks like us are even in just a hardcore hobbyist context, so you do notice it.
It's not all black clouds I must admit. Sometimes I just whack the whole bounce through PSP Vintage Warmer on 2x oversample Fat mode, and make sure I use some extra quality plugs to compensate for the thinness and separation issues and the renders are much improved.
But you'd just prefer to not have add yet another layer of steps to keep your ITB ways sounding as good as possible. Especially knowing if you just did everything in say Logic it would be no issue.
Still as I alluded to, Live is my favorite software ever, then Reason, then probably FL. But I just use FL to make loops to use elsewhere with that great piano roll and pretty solid plug in hosting. I like the FX/Mixer setup too.
I really should go back to doing whole productions in FL, I haven't since around v.5. But it's a beast of a DAW and the architecture is so suited to an MPC mentality with pattern/song with the addition of more traditional DAW stuff implemented in a very unique and accessible way.
Those that see FL as a toy or not a real DAW are simply missing out.
