I'm just curious if anyone's used this and or has any feedback on it. I mean it looks like an ACID-type of joint but with more "on the fly" features. Thoughts anyone?

No, no thoughts.

i use it all the time.

excellent for many many things.. V2 introduced audio track recording also.

i use to play out live with mostly.. but have made complete studio tracks with it too.

thoughts would be that if just by live being installed it didn't crash logic everytime on load (pc) then i would be able to see what the fuck it does! i think the problem is rewire based, logic 5.51 doesn't seem to even like the rewire.dll in the system folder lol

I like it.I don't use it as much as I should,though.As jdg says,it's great for live work.The biggest drawback is no VSTi/DXi support,but there's ways around that.It IS both a ReWire master and slave,and using Reason for your real time instruments works well.Plus,you can load up Reaktor as a VST effect and use a sequenced ensemble inside Live as well.
Try the demo...
ew

I like it. I got all my orphaned 4 bar loops (you know exactly what I mean) soloed the parts and exported them. Got some pals to do the same, bring round a controller kb and we had a computer jam session.

Best thing that happened to Live is Bram's SupaTrigga (there's also a similar fx called colcutter, which i haven't checked). get the demo, and plug supatrigga to one of the tracks. try using it on the 'vinyl cut' samples, or the 'funky guitar'. and of course, on the drums. with live's easy to-use automation, and some sound-mangling freebies, i'm in heaven. now, if i only had 400$ lying around somewhere.

ttoz wrote:

thoughts would be that if just by live being installed it didn't crash logic everytime on load (pc) then i would be able to see what the fuck it does! i think the problem is rewire based, logic 5.51 doesn't seem to even like the rewire.dll in the system folder lol

No probs here on XP - other than performance issues.

I played around with it a bit and if your looking for something to use in a live situation I think it would be pretty good.Other than that it seems no better or worse than acid 4.0

I love it, and use it as my main audio sequencer, using loops made in Orion Pro.

I find it easy to work with, mostly intuitive, and deep. There's room to grow with it, and a good community forum at the Ableton site.

The effects I like In particular are "erosion" and "grain delay". Nothing sounds quite like them, and nothing is as easy to get these types of sounds from.

I think of Live as an instrument in some ways - specifically as a giant grain synthesizer, which seems to be what it is, as time stretching is done with grains, the size of which can be adjusted to taste. I confess to being taken with the aesthetics too.

I have owned a version or two of Acid, and I don't find the two programs very similar to work with. Simply, I use Live, and don't use Acid. To sum, it's my main instrument, with Orion as the source for loops. Check it out.

e.

opiadream wrote:

I played around with it a bit and if your looking for something to use in a live situation I think it would be pretty good.Other than that it seems no better or worse than acid 4.0

No better or worse? I think the just the fact that it supports VST plugins with full automation makes it a WHOLE lot better than acid. I also like the fact that you're not limited to one sound per track, like in Acid.

What it comes down to is that both programs have a certain amount of overlap, as well as their own specialty. For live performance there really isn't anything that comes close though.

acidpro is much better imho for song construction - very fast. ableton is like another here said - more like an instrument for playing and quick creativity

i think acid still has the all-round features that make it much better. but maybe not as trendy

FYI - I installed 2.1.1 last night (from 2.0.3) and it has huge performance problems for me under XP. Reinstalled 2.0.3 and it was working wonderfully again. 2.1.1 spikes my CPU horribly.

WinXP SP1
1 GB Ram
Athlon XP 2400+

I have 2.1.1 running perfectly on Me. Yees, and as a former Acid user I can testify that Live is LOTS better, versatile and useful audio sequencer--even for a non-live playing musician like me.

I used Acid almost exclusively for sequencing duties for for 4 years and made the complete switch to Live about 6 months ago. In my opion there is no contest. The single tool editing approach makes everything so much faster, and the full parameter automation has really added a lot of dynamic movement to my tracks.

Overall I think the best version of Acid was version 2, all the MIDI stuff they added afterwards amde the overall perofrmance of the application sluggish. I for one hope that Ableton doesn't go down the same road.

Scott @ AAS wrote:

Overall I think the best version of Acid was version 2, all the MIDI stuff they added afterwards amde the overall perofrmance of the application sluggish. I for one hope that Ableton doesn't go down the same road.

Absolutely right! as for me, I never even bothered upgrading to Acid4.

Live is the BEST money I ever spent in music software. I made more progress the day I bought with the speed of creating than I had in a year previously. It kicks the shit out of Acid, if you spend any time with it at all you will never go back. It's intuitve in every aspect. Highly recommended. And it's not just for live situations, it is a great way to come up with ideas and to arrange a song in a studio situation. Don't be put off by the idea that it is for live settings, I passed by this program for awhile because I was misinformed.

Tuur wrote:

ttoz wrote: thoughts would be that if just by live being installed it didn't crash logic everytime on load (pc) then i would be able to see what the fuck it does! i think the problem is rewire based, logic 5.51 doesn't seem to even like the rewire.dll in the system folder lol No probs here on XP - other than performance issues.

so you saying that it works and syncs ok with logic 5.51?
that's good news..

the time i had tested live it was version 1 demo, which gave me the problems..
maybe i should redownload..
also, is it rewire 1 or 2? logic 5 pc still only supports rewire 1 right?

ttoz wrote:

so you saying that it works and syncs ok with logic 5.51? that's good news..

Yep. I wouldn't know about Rewire 1 or 2 though. What's the difference?

Tuur wrote:

ttoz wrote: so you saying that it works and syncs ok with logic 5.51? that's good news.. Yep. I wouldn't know about Rewire 1 or 2 though. What's the difference?

and we're talking pc version right??

i don't know the exact differneces betwwen rewire one and two..i think alot of it had to do with midi implementation...??

Also, does live's cpu usage accurately measure in logic's cpu meter? are you getting any "asio overload" issues with it even when the cpu is low?

Lastly, what performance issues were you talking about with the latest 2.1 version?

cheers

ttoz wrote:

i don't know the exact differneces betwwen rewire one and two..i think alot of it had to do with midi implementation...??

Rewire2 added some features... most notable was midi implementation. For instance, I can rewire Reason into Tracktion, record midi in Tracktion and rout it to Reason and Im done. Before rewire 2, you could basically record performances done in something like Reason into your host, but you couldn't treat it like a true virtual instrument.

Ableton Live apparently is complied against Rewire 2, but it does NOT use the midi over rewire feature. You pretty much treat it like an old rewire app which IMHO, sucks.

ttoz wrote:

Lastly, what performance issues were you talking about with the latest 2.1 version?

There's apparently an issue with the 2.1.1 update and 'browsing samples' while the engine is playing. It causes the CPU to spike horribly. It's been a known issue apparently on Ableton's forums, but there's no fix in sight. I reverted back to 2.0.3, but that has an infamous rewire bug where it skips the first note.

Not very happy with Ableton Live lately. It could be so much more.

ageis wrote:

Ableton Live apparently is complied against Rewire 2, but it does NOT use the midi over rewire feature. You pretty much treat it like an old rewire app which IMHO, sucks

Hmmm...don't know what you mean by that.I can send MIDI to Reason instruments when I'm running Live-I use the Malstrom inside Live all the time.
ew

ew wrote:

ageis wrote: Ableton Live apparently is complied against Rewire 2, but it does NOT use the midi over rewire feature. You pretty much treat it like an old rewire app which IMHO, sucks Hmmm...don't know what you mean by that.I can send MIDI to Reason instruments when I'm running Live-I use the Malstrom inside Live all the time. ew

I meant as a rewire slave. If I use Live as a rewire slave and use midi to trigger parts, it's not sent to Live.

Live 3 coming up...

http://www.ableton.com/index.php?main=news-archive&sub=beta3ann