Ableton Live Lite 4 for E-MU - Any good??

[Bunnyboy]

I am looking at the EMU Xboard 25 midi controller - nice bit of kit that, and not that expensive

http://www.emu.com/products/product.asp ... tegory=805

Does anybody have experience of the cut down Live 4? Does it hose VST(i) in any way? Cause if it does (even 1!) I can use EnergyXT with it, er, live.

Used to have a version that came with my Audiophile 24/96 that was pretty good if limited. 1 VST(i) slot would be a godsend!!

(OT - Anybody know what the EMU Xboard 25 is like?)

[Bunnyboy]

Or am I chasing my own tail since I can configure a Live-style setup in EnergyXT??

[Bunnyboy]

anybody?

[braj]

My UC33e came with a Lite version and you can indeed use VSTis. I believe the only limitations were track count (4 audio, 2 or 4 VSTi, I don't recall) and you can't use it as a Rewire host (but as a slave yes).

It should be the same I figure. I would be stoked to get it for free.

[z15]

yep, the lite version has rather small amount of tracks, plugins you can instantiate on each track, etc... i guess you could do some little stuff with it but it's going to be pretty limiting.

and you can update lite to full version of live 4 (and get a live 5 key free if you do the update before 5 comes out) for like 250 euros or dollars so it's not a bad deal at all.

[braj]

Even with the limitations though, you can do a huge amount of stuff with the lite version. Just remember what a Portastudio was like, you are light years ahead of that! For free.

[z15]

true that braj, the lite ver may not be a hardcore music production suite but it'll still be very useful creative tool at least.

for the record, my first real touch to music recording/making 10 years ago was fast tracker 2 (i used with a crappy soundblaster clone) that could play back 32 tracks of samples / digital audio - i remember i was able to run way less with my slow computer at that point though and the amount of memory limited the size of samples a lot.

[braj]

I remember having to use 5 synths that weren't multitimberal all midi'd together, in out and thru, hooked into a C64 with Master Tracks with no linear view of your sequence, no real mixer, no audio, and bouncing back stuff thru a mono 8 track mixer into a four track lo-fi cassette deck blah blah blah. And that was pretty stylee at the time. I would have given $10,000 to do what the free Live4 Lite can do now. That's at least what all that gear, including cabes etc cost anyway. It is amazing to me as I get older how far we've come in 20 years.

[Bunnyboy]

If its got unlimited clips then that should be okay.

Indeed, music grear has decreased in price so much. apparently you could get the equivalent of the gear Trevor Horn had in the 1980s for about £4k nowadays via S/W and outboard

[braj]

Actually, I don't think it has unlimited clips. But regardless, you could save $150 off Live 4 by upgrading the Lite version