ableton live, look no further.

[paradiddle]

yes simpler and impulse (for drums) and sampler (in live 6 and it's a separate product). You'd probably have some fun importing beats from fl and mashing them up in live. The audio clips themselves can act has sample if you set their quantization to off and assign them to midi notes for example.

[dougsyo]

[yes, it's true that FLS and P5v2 can host VSTs while in rewire slave mode, but these are not the programs that Live is trying to compete with, or probably even takes much notice of].

My impression of P5V2 was it was aiming to be somewhere in-between Live and FLStudio. I tried P5V2 (got a good price on P5V1 and a free upgrade to P5V2), but ended up sticking with Sonar and FLS, I just ended up not wanting to put the effort in learn yet another host.

Doug

[stale bread]

does live have a sampler? i make mostly sample based beats with fl and reason cause they have dope samplers but i'd like to try live cause i hear good things.

ummm my friend. Live is in fact just a big'ole' sampler so yes very much is the answer to your question, it has three samplers and the whole thing is a sampler itself.

[jamester]

But I don't understand is why so many people program vsti's when rewire is available. Its like backwards thinking. Program for rewire, and vst's (other than vst effects) can go.

vst instruments however should be programmed for rewire (its just easier to work with).

I disagree with this 100%. If anything, rewire is more awkward to work with, as any rewired device has to be closed before closing down the host...you also have to reopen any file information in the slave device when re-opening a project. With VST all of this can be saved within the host program and restored just by re-opening the project. I absolutely loathe rewire and do not use it...the best thing the Propellerheads could do (for me anyway), is make a VST version of Reason, so that it can be used within a VST host, rather than connected via the 'virtual audio/midi cables' that is rewire.

That is my opinion. And what can Sonar actually do better than live? Not put tracks together, that is LIVE's specialty. That is what I enjoy doing (mixing tracks, making an arrangement). Doing that with sonar seems to be like going backward to a time when you had to do things just in arrangement mode. The session testing is what makes LIVE a powerful DAW.

For me it was the Arrange page in Live that stopped me buying it...the Session view is great, but when it comes to arranging a track, I just did not like the arrange view at all. Give me most other hosts arrange views over Live's any day.

xylyx - we are of the exact same mind, I agree completely with everything you said! :-0

headquest

The fact that they revisited Rewire slaving, but did not also take this opportunity to deal with the VST/Rewire slave issue gives a very strong indication that they are not interested in pushing Live as a "second program" any longer but are focussed entirely on promoting Live as a full-on DAW host.

Yeah, I agree here too. I think they've got their "eyes on the prize" as it were, after seeing how such a diverse user demographic has embraced their software. The issue will always be one of bloat though, as new features will always balance enhanced useability with increased problems/issues...and old schoolers are already thinking it's gotten "big enough", no?

Personally, I'm rooting for it. I still love Sonar as well at the moment, but Ableton was brave enough to break ground and tread new waters, whereas most established sequencers have mostly been refining the same old wheel over and over, rather than designing new methods of (musical) transportation...