Ableton

Wqay too many reviews for such a beast of a DAW.

When I first came across Ableton Live many years ago I actually was disgusted by it: none of it was the ways I was used to (left track pannel, routing) and the colours were way too bright for my taste. And ten years had to go by to really take another look non it.

So 2 years ago I got Live 11 and 12 Standard with Max for Live. And what can I sa everything except one thing is a blast.

The Sampler: best stock sampler ever.

The stock synths and fx: just so great in design and capabillitys.

The MIDI fx: a bit overwhelming, but made for every unconventional idea you might have.

The browser: just the best of any daw (please fight me), it comes with colour coding taging, splice integration, groove save space and the ai driven "search for similar sounds" function (it's actaully a good use of ai).

The ways of manipulating audio are insane and I have yet to find a DAW that can match Ableton in that regard. The same goes for midi.

So what's the one thing that doesn't work well: latency free audio recording! Allthough they have the option to record any track latency free, this feature still doesn't work reliably (specially with bigger projects).

And if it wasn't for that it woulld actually be my main DAW.

Prisewise it's definetely mor on the heavy ite, but since they started their own rent-to-own option, it has become way more accessible (also the new tutorial mode is something every daw should have).

So, highly recomendable.

best computer sequencer of all time excited to see if other daw catch up but for now im happy with it, the abundance of unique and features make up for the od crash.

It has lots of nice features but is Unstable - crashes a lot, Does not handle Vst's that well.

Has bad plugin detection settings (why is it that hard to either detect or be able to add folders to detection instead of having to add shortcuts and other workarounds).

too expensive for what you get, for that price it should have been much more stable and resource efficient.

it has a lot of nice features that just don't matter if I can't have a session without it crashing.

Very Good, Great to use for songs and live sets! I use Live 11 pretty much every day to make music, and sets to play on a Sunday night.

Live started as application for live performances. I never did live performance, but I can imagine you need everything as quick and as agile as possible. With that in mind, they developed pretty unique app that was reliable and well suited for this purpose. (Thanx to it's clever session view thing.)

I believe it was around version 5 or 6 when people started to use Live for classic production as well. I guess main reason was unification of user interfaces used inside and outside of their studios. Around version 7, Ableton implemented better EQ, more cool devices and suddenly people found out, that it's in fact really good and solid DAW.

That quickness of performance tool just reminded. Everything is right under your fingertips and pretty much everything happens in one single window. That's what created Lives amazingly quick workflow. For example setting sidechain compression is question of 3 mouseclicks.

Next thing, that wows you, is its modularity. It's not pure modular DAW, but it has this racking option, that makes it really easy for you to get creative. Wanna layer X synths in one track? No problem. Wanna have several effects on one track working in parallel? No problem. There is not much of possible craziness you couldn't do with it.

Drum racks are amazing too. It's so logical. One track on outside and new track inside of it for every single hit. Easy, clear. Group tracks (available from version 8 I think) allows you to buss several of your tracks completely. If you need some conventional bussing or effect tracks, classic sends also available. ...and everything still happening inside of the one very window.

Unfortunately version 8 went a bit wrong as well. It's great version, best yet, but it has been around for three years or so. Other DAW developers worked hard on new versions. Some functions like vector automation curves, 64-bit instruction code support, or creative stuff like integrated pitch correction are painfully missing in Live. It's great on it's own now, but development should speed up a bit. So point down for that.

Anyway, I'm using Live as my one and only DAW for few years and having no intentions to change that. May be Bitwig can shake this opinion a bit, but that's question of future. Lot of DAWs claim they're quickest way from your brain to the finished track, but imho Live is only DAW you can really agree on that.