The state of the Ableton forum is terrible - it’s resembling more and more of 4chan. Luckily there’s a proper forum for Ableton DJs and there are quite of few users here too. Basically Ableton is crap-in-crap-out like any other system. I think it is the people who pirate the software and take no interest in learning to use limiters, compressors, warmers and such.
I still record all my mixes with Traktor due to it’s simplicity. I have a bad habit of fumbling frequently when I try to record a mix on Ableton. Mainly because I change the layout and mappings constantly, and I only make mixes live, not in arrangement.
Yeah, I have seen that in the Abes forum, I’m far from being a sound engineer but I don’t need a career to know what my ears tell me and for me it’s very obvious. I feel the difference just by playing some beats in either aplication, I don’t need even to think about it, it’s just there and makes me go with Traktor Pro every time, fuck the engineers! maybe they hear what they want to hear cause they bought the full suite version and don’t want to feel screwed after spending all that money, I don’t know, as I said, is like night and day for me.
Artists use Ableton because is the only software that allow them to translate their compositions to a live environment and play them like a DJ set, there’s no choice, so they think the program is great and get used to it’s crappy sound and don’t compare it with other solutions cause they simply don’t exist.
I made a comparison with two different songs (EQs at 0 and without pitching) on both programs, trying both complex pro and re-pitch in Ableton 8, and the difference I noticed was so fractional it made no difference. I’ll try later with pitching them a bit and I could try have my hifi-enthusiast musician friend to blind test two tracks. I’ll see later on with some compressing and warmer to see if it makes a difference (which should be kind of obvious..).
Can you elaborate maybe on what version of Ableton you tried and which mode? I’m not trying to be an Ableton apologetic, but just trying to see what this talk is about. As you said, there’s no choice in live set programs.
EDIT: I went reading on the subject. Lot of people seemed to say that the new warping method elastique pro, which Traktor uses, has helped with the sound quality. Apparently for many it has been the combination of using mp3s with older warping methods. I also recall reading about different encoders on Windows that make a difference. As Macs use Quicktime, perhaps that would also explain the absence of the issue for some?
Get whatever version of Ableton you want (but to be up to date 8 would be better) download the Traktor Pro demo (if you don’t have it yet) and just play some music in both apps, avoid keylocks (be sure that Ableton is on re-pitch mode and that traktor has timestretching deactivated by clicking on a little box with a musical note that is at the end of the deck’s full track waveform so it doesn’t remain yellow) to be sure that you are getting the best sound possible out of both programs and then after listen to both outputs return here and tell me that you hate Ableton.
I hate Ableton…when I just want to throw in a couple of songs and enjoy.
I tried this last night and this morning with 5 different songs. 2 of which were EDM and 3 not. I couldn’t make out a difference either with speakers or headphones. Both sounded equally good.
I think I’ll try again early next year at my friend’s place, since he has a nice soundsystem and proper monitors as well, and I could have him blindtest some songs.
What you’ve got going on there is called ‘confirmation bias’. You expect Ableton to sound worse, so it does.
The real test is whether you can successfully identify which audio stream comes from Ableton while blindfolded or similar (hint: you can’t).
The fact is (if you know much about how digital audio works), at a base level there will be no humanly-detectable difference between Traktor and Ableton. They both use ridiculously over-the-top internal audio engines that can produce sounds at a quality far beyond what the human ear can differentiate.
The main issues are: time-stretching and FX. One of the biggest issues I see with Ableton is that the default warp-mode is “beats”, which is optimised for percussive samples and butchers full tracks. Most people don’t RTFM, so don’t understand that they need to change some settings to get good audio when time-stretching. Ableton need to make this more explicit, and maybe change the default warp-mode.
FX is a trickier question. As a basic level, most of the FX in Ableton and Traktor are simple mathematical tricks, with deliberate imperfections in order to sound ‘warmer’, ‘brighter’ or whatever. Which one you prefer is a matter of taste. I think Ableton wins in this regard because it has a full suite of DAW-style FX you can chain together, but Traktor has more DJing oriented FX, so you can get the same end-result with less overall effort. Again, to each their own.
