ableton live 4

Basic Pitch · Post by **Basic Pitch** » Sat Jul 24, 2004 10:18 am

Unfortunetely as cool as live 4 will be, with out PDC it just would be too time consuming for me personally due to useing UAD, Powercore and the CW stuff, just too much latency with all those plygs running =/

I read something where a dev said they had no plans for it either, who knows, maybe with the amount of UAD and Poco owners coming about they could change there minds.

Cheers!

marcuspocus · Post by **marcuspocus** » Sun Jul 25, 2004 4:19 am

Live 4 is out NOW, on sale on their site.

powerpulsarian · Post by **powerpulsarian** » Sun Jul 25, 2004 8:34 am

I also think Live 4 looks very cool - but the lack of automatic PDC does cause some hassles if using XTC mode. Too bad.

powerpulsarian · Post by **powerpulsarian** » Sun Jul 25, 2004 8:37 am

By the way, I found this description of PDC, which really clarified it for me (thought it might help others):

"PDC stands for Plugin Delay Compensation. It is a term that comes up in VST documentation (i.e. "the new cubase full PDC audio engine")

It enables Plugins with lookahead capabilities to implement their ability to "see the future" by actually looking at the realtime input for its decisions, yet apply its operation upon the delayed output, thus appearing to react before the signal came in.

Although PDC's purpose is for pluggins to appear to violate the laws of "causality" (that is, a cause should always come before its effect) this is evidently not the case, because the way it works is by delaying the signal (much like the way TV broadcasters can bleep obscenities out of live shows, sending us delayed video, but acting upon the knowledge of the live video)

Keep in mind though that the audio engine in Project 5 as well as SONAR is fully delay compensated as well. It just so happens that DirectX has delay compensation built in. Because it is built in, there are no options or switches to "turn it on", it is always there (unlike VST, where delay compensation was originally dependent on users configuration, and apparently now it is fully automatic as well) (anyone please correct me if I am wrong on that)

Now: because delay compensation does not really "read the future" the bottom line is that synthesizers and real time input will be delayed by delay compensated plugins, because the plugin simply can't anticipate live user input. The "compensation" only makes a difference in the following situation: Suppose you have several *pre recorded* tracks playing back, if one of them has a "delay compensated" plugin, the net result is that ALL TRACKS become delayed by the same amount, thus keeping all tracks in sync with each other. If delay compensation capabilities did not exist, then only the track with said plugin would be delayed, and it would be out of sync with the rest.

Some delay compensated plugins have switches that turn off their delay compensated features (Like the Sonitus compressor, where the limiter is its only part that requires delay compensation)

And most delay compensated plugins only delay by small amounts (1 or 2 ms is quite common) and in that case, the added latency would be tolerable."

<font size=-1>[ This Message was edited by: powerpulsarian on 2004-07-25 09:38 ]</font>

Basic Pitch · Post by **Basic Pitch** » Sun Jul 25, 2004 11:14 am

That pretty much sums up PDC fair enough, but, have you ever tried working with DSP cards like a UAD or a Powercore with no PDC? Each plug adds roughly double the latency and wreaks havok on keeping track synced, hence the serious need for PDC, even with a calculator it gets confusing once you adds more than 3-4 plugs

Cheers!

powerpulsarian · Post by **powerpulsarian** » Sun Jul 25, 2004 8:43 pm

Agree. This means Live is really only worth considering if you don't plan to use XTC mode.

Spirit · Post by **Spirit** » Sun Jul 25, 2004 9:04 pm

So this is really only relevant to XTC mode ? It has no bearing on 'normal' SFP mode and using that together with VSTi ?

Basic Pitch · Post by **Basic Pitch** » Sun Jul 25, 2004 11:12 pm

For normal SFP mode I think it would be fine, but anything else like a UAD or Powercore spells hassle, with how common cards like the AUD are now I would have thought they would throw it in, hrmm maybe live 5 some day hehe, but for its intended purpose I think live is a great app..

Cheers!

valis · Post by **valis** » Mon Jul 26, 2004 1:56 pm

Powerpulsarsarian's PDC description outlines exactly why XTC Mode (or any DSP card) currently not work with any REALTIME performance software without introducing delays (making those parts out of sync).

Yet I don't see this as a detraction of Ableton Live (not supporting UAD/TC/XTC). Rather I see it as a strength of Creamware's SFP since it excels exactly at realtime routing, processing and synthesis. This is, after all, why it is purported to make such an excellent match for Gigastudio.