Is ABLETON the best daw for audio manipluation?

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Tj Shredder wrote: Thu Apr 09, 2020 9:43 am
antic604 wrote: Thu Apr 09, 2020 9:24 am But Bitwig? The only thing I can think of that it has over Live in this area is the ability to edit audio right in the clips in Clip Launcher. What else??
Audio rate modulation! If you never used it you simply don't know what you are missing in terms of mangling sound. And then move it into the Grid, the possibilities will overwhelm you for the rest of your life...
If it does not inspire you, of course that would not help...
The video only showed what I would call a bit boring creating effects baked into samples. The two guys even did not bother to trigger samples with an expressive controller. That means each trigger sounds exactly the same. If you get into modulation, each trigger could sound a bit different, and much more alive. All that of course is also possible in Live, even in ProTools you could do that (beware though you would look very professional and dumb at the same time...; - )
What you're describing is sound manipulation, i.e. regardless of whether the sound is generated by samples or MIDI instruments, but "audio manipulation" is usually meant in a more narrow manner, i.e. sample editing.* In that sense, I fully agree that Bitwig is better at sound manipulation, but Live has the upper hand when it comes to audio manpulation - not so much because of features, but because of more streamlined workflow :)

* ok, I might've pulled that distinction out of my ass :D
Music tech enthusiast
DAW, VST & hardware hoarder
My "music": https://soundcloud.com/antic604

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This is a track I made with Reaper : lot of audio editing : bounce, cuts, reverse, ramp pitch, group items, FX per item, stretch, shrink ...
It would have been a pain to do in live.
https://soundcloud.com/tek-alfb/fight-the-corona

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dupont wrote: Thu Apr 09, 2020 10:07 am This is a track I made with Reaper : lot of audio editing : bounce, cuts, reverse, ramp pitch, group items, FX per item, stretch, shrink ...
It would have been a pain to do in live.
...
Sorry, but I cannot imagine a single reason why Reaper should be easier to handle in terms of clip handling than Live ... the lack of interesting timestretch modes alone makes it limited for me and in regards to FX per item I much prefer to explode the parts I want different FX on to seperate tracks and group them afterwards than to deal with per item FX...

It´s clearly possible in both of them but I cannot agree with Reaper having an easier workflow there...
Having to work in the arranger only because of not having an edit window is a zoom in and out nightmare in Reaper
Last edited by Trancit on Thu Apr 09, 2020 10:47 am, edited 1 time in total.

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Tj Shredder wrote: Thu Apr 09, 2020 9:43 am ... even in ProTools you could do that (beware though you would look very professional and dumb at the same time...; - )
It´s not about where it would be possible... with wonky workarounds it´s possible nearly everywhere...
It´s about what DAW offers the best fitting workflow and integrated features for this and this is clearly a topic where Live imho atm still shines over the rest of the world...

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Trancit wrote: Thu Apr 09, 2020 10:45 am
Sorry, but I cannot imagine a single reason why Reaper should be easier to handle in terms of clip handling than Live ... the lack of interesting timestretch modes alone makes it limited for me and in regards to FX per item I much prefer to explode the parts I want different FX on to seperate tracks and group them afterwards than to deal with per item FX...

It´s clearly possible in both of them but I cannot agree with Reaper having an easier workflow there...
Having to work in the arranger only because of not having an edit window is a zoom in and out nightmare in Reaper
Reaper has several timestretch modes...

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Trancit wrote: Thu Apr 09, 2020 10:45 am
Sorry, but I cannot imagine a single reason why Reaper should be easier to handle in terms of clip handling than Live ... the lack of interesting timestretch modes alone makes it limited for me and in regards to FX per item I much prefer to explode the parts I want different FX on to seperate tracks and group them afterwards than to deal with per item FX...

It´s clearly possible in both of them but I cannot agree with Reaper having an easier workflow there...
Having to work in the arranger only because of not having an edit window is a zoom in and out nightmare in Reaper
Reaper has several timestretch modes...
So you are stuck in the session mode ?
With the right shortcuts zooming is fast.
i Suppose you also have to zoom in live arrange view ?

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I'd say Live is good/fast at warping or quantizing audio . Probably quicker and easier than the other softwares , don't know if its lil brother BWS is as fast ? As for manipulation (sound design , mangling) of audio that can be done in any host .

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Trancit wrote: Thu Apr 09, 2020 10:45 amin regards to FX per item I much prefer to explode the parts I want different FX on to seperate tracks and group them afterwards than to deal with per item FX...
this is where it's all horses for courses, I can't imagine going back to cutting the audio up onto separate tracks just to apply different effects, that's how we did it in the 90s... ;)

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Trancit wrote: Thu Apr 09, 2020 10:50 am
Tj Shredder wrote: Thu Apr 09, 2020 9:43 am ... even in ProTools you could do that (beware though you would look very professional and dumb at the same time...; - )
It´s not about where it would be possible... with wonky workarounds it´s possible nearly everywhere...
It´s about what DAW offers the best fitting workflow and integrated features for this and this is clearly a topic where Live imho atm still shines over the rest of the world...
I was referring to the sample manipulation shown in the video the op posted. That simple stuff is as easy and fast to do in almost any DAW without wonky workarounds. For the more sophisticated stuff I would not recommend ProTools (or Live ; - )... But if you use ProTools for other reasons, as in any DAW, you can workaround almost anything with plugins...

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GaryG wrote: Thu Apr 09, 2020 12:44 pm
Trancit wrote: Thu Apr 09, 2020 10:45 amin regards to FX per item I much prefer to explode the parts I want different FX on to seperate tracks and group them afterwards than to deal with per item FX...
this is where it's all horses for courses, I can't imagine going back to cutting the audio up onto separate tracks just to apply different effects, that's how we did it in the 90s... ;)
In the 90s we did not have enough tracks to do such shit, we would select a bit of audio, do the mangling and rendered to disk immediately... Real time effects would have killed your machine man...
Late 90s btw. early 90s we had 8-track tape machines at best...

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GaryG wrote: Thu Apr 09, 2020 12:44 pm
Trancit wrote: Thu Apr 09, 2020 10:45 amin regards to FX per item I much prefer to explode the parts I want different FX on to seperate tracks and group them afterwards than to deal with per item FX...
this is where it's all horses for courses, I can't imagine going back to cutting the audio up onto separate tracks just to apply different effects, that's how we did it in the 90s... ;)
Never tried it in Reaper - what happens if you apply a time-based FX to an item? Does the FX tail get mixed with audio from following item(s) or does it cut at the item's boundary?
Music tech enthusiast
DAW, VST & hardware hoarder
My "music": https://soundcloud.com/antic604

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GaryG wrote: Thu Apr 09, 2020 12:44 pm
Trancit wrote: Thu Apr 09, 2020 10:45 amin regards to FX per item I much prefer to explode the parts I want different FX on to seperate tracks and group them afterwards than to deal with per item FX...
this is where it's all horses for courses, I can't imagine going back to cutting the audio up onto separate tracks just to apply different effects, that's how we did it in the 90s... ;)
In ableton I feel same way when I use 5-10 tracks for each different audio snippet for the small segment of the song. The most annoying thing is when you want to recycle these sound later you have to dive in to the group you nested and scroll 30 tracks up and down to arrange with the newly created tracks for different segment of the song. I am always going to pull my hair out with this chore. I can place them in a single track for example in FL :? The workaround is export that sound and put it on a new plane track near new tracks
Last edited by tooneba on Thu Apr 09, 2020 1:17 pm, edited 1 time in total.

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Audio rate modulation is brought up about Bitwig over and over. Every time, I go and seek out examples . . . and find nothing that doesn't sound like something I can already get to by other means. Anybody have a great example of a unique sound that audio rate modulation can create?

Back on topic, in Live's clip view, the edit button can be linked to an external editor. Linked to Audacity, the integration is smooth, as when you save the audio file in audacity, the clip in Live will be reloaded to the new version:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_qAbr-s ... e=emb_logo

That's going beyond Live. Do other DAWs have this feature?
Doing nothing is only fun when you have something you are supposed to do.

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dupont wrote: Thu Apr 09, 2020 11:29 am Reaper has several timestretch modes...
Yes, normal zplane and a lot of rubbish... no granular texture nor tone mode no beat mode, no resample/repitch mode ...
For being creative with audio this already says all...
So you are stuck in the session mode ?
What does this have in common to have to be in session mode???
While Reaper is lacking too of all the possibilities via the trigger modes are offering the Session View
With the right shortcuts zooming is fast.
i Suppose you also have to zoom in live arrange view ?
The trick is to not have the need to use a gazillion shortcuts for zooming if you´ve got 2 different windows...
You zoom once in the arranger for doing the cutting work and you have your detailed view in the sample editor...
On top of that I find that zooming in the time line is much more intuitive and better to handle in Ableton than in Reaper (there it feels akward) and there is no real substitute in Reaper with shorcuts as there are always 2 things necessary: Zoom AND Position... and this is where Reaper for me fails...

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