Is ABLETON the best daw for audio manipluation?

[dupont]

Thx a Lot guys I need to demo or get the intro of ableton!

Reaper seems very awesome and I invested some time with it. But no one can deny how user unfriendly for starters it is. I see their focus is not on shiny colourful ui but come on. Is it so hard to make it more beginners friendly to get fun to use it?
When I loaded reaper with many plugins it was maybe the best cpu saver I used so far. It is very cheap and u got crazy customizations. I just lost interest in it so far cause I didn't want to study it but make music.

Every daw has a learning curve I know

See Reaper as an investment. The learning curve is longer because there are lot of features you don't have in other DAWs.
You can make songs even with basic knowledge and you improve with the time and build your customisation day after day.
You can make serious work out of the box.
Once you master Reaper It is frustrated to work with other DAWs, you feel them too basic.
I use Reaper for techno tracks and lot of audio and plugins.

[dreamstate42]

Are you silly, that not what they want to hear. They want you to say Ableton is the best. You can lost time to give evidences, no, live is best because several fake producers said I use it and it is ultra promoted by corrupted music magazines. Have you noticed they never write about Reaper!
Reaper is far ahead, if you know how to use it, but ableton marketing is sooooo cool and all that fancy girls.

Of all the borderline fanatic comments I've seen about Reaper over the years, this one has to be my personal winner, blowing right past any kind of reason straight into conspiracy territory. Kudos.

[dreamstate42]

Thx a Lot guys I need to demo or get the intro of ableton!

Reaper seems very awesome and I invested some time with it. But no one can deny how user unfriendly for starters it is. I see their focus is not on shiny colourful ui but come on. Is it so hard to make it more beginners friendly to get fun to use it?
When I loaded reaper with many plugins it was maybe the best cpu saver I used so far. It is very cheap and u got crazy customizations. I just lost interest in it so far cause I didn't want to study it but make music.

Every daw has a learning curve I know

Agree with you here, the UI kept me away from Reaper for a long time, I'm customising Reaper a little bit at a time when I'm not feeling creative, maybe at some point it will actually become fun to use To me Reaper is a classic example of the "UI by programmer design pattern". Full of features, but far away from anything that would be considered "good UX".

[dupont]

Are you silly, that not what they want to hear. They want you to say Ableton is the best. You can lost time to give evidences, no, live is best because several fake producers said I use it and it is ultra promoted by corrupted music magazines. Have you noticed they never write about Reaper!
Reaper is far ahead, if you know how to use it, but ableton marketing is sooooo cool and all that fancy girls.

Of all the borderline fanatic comments I've seen about Reaper over the years, this one has to be my personal winner, blowing right past any kind of reason straight into conspiracy territory. Kudos.

You are so naive. Tell us more about companies who pay magazine to write about there products or artists who are contacted by devolopers to promote there products.
I know because I myself was contacted by a DAW company ...

[dupont]

Agree with you here, the UI kept me away from Reaper for a long time, I'm customising Reaper a little bit at a time when I'm not feeling creative, maybe at some point it will actually become fun to use To me Reaper is a classic example of the "UI by programmer design pattern". Full of features, but far away from anything that would be considered "good UX".

What final listeners care about UI ?

[Mushy Mushy]

I find it hysterical somebody named after paint is so dismissive of presentation.

[Trancit]

The question is, why would you have to print all audio snippets to another track just to tuck original tracks in a hidden place when you are using that tool for maximizing “audio manipulation” potential. It’s compromised workaround because you don’t need to do this in others daws that are having clip FX or channel rack.

I think you misunderstand me...

You work on a section of a song and want to add some different FX to parts of them, right??

No matter if you´ve got clip/item fx available or not, you have to split the items at this places anyway, don´t you??
The only difference now is that you try to work as much as you can on one track by using item FX while I add as many audio tracks as I need to spread out the different fx on them, let say 5...and I put the before cut audio parts which I want to treat seperately onto these tracks...

For my impression, my way has several advantages compared to item fx:

- you can reuse certain fx for multiple parts... with item fx, if you want 3 different parts to have a reverb you have to insert a reverb plugin to all of these 3 parts... 3 times more work, 3 times more CPU... would make only sense if you want complete different reverbs on them, which would be possible for my way...
Conclusion: My way is far more efficient in many situations

- Much more flexibility... I can use sends, I can place other audio onto the same track, I can do anything I like because my way is more "open"

- Much better general overview by treating one segment of the song atm...
Nobody can tell me, that it´s easy to keep a general overview by using many small snippets of audio with different item fx on a heavy edit... just selecting one of them forces you to zoom far in to be able to grab that piece...just to be able to edit it´s fx... I just select the track... that´s it...

Now about trying comment the quote from you:
This has nothing to do with either way you use...
In your example I answered to, you assumed having 50 items treated with different item fx running in realtime and you claimed if I would now use 50 tracks instead doing the same it would be scroll intense, correct???
Why on earth, would you work like this???
With any way you use, it´s better practice to commit to your work after treating it...

1. To save a lot of CPU... many audio mangling plugins take a lot of CPU and there is absolutely no reason to let 50 of them run in realtime on 5 sections of your song...
You treat a segment until your happy to let say make a break and then you bounce it to audio (call it freezing...whatever) and then you move on...

2. Did you ever noticed that sometimes it´s easier to commit to something than treating it over and over again... perhaps making worse and worse...
That´s another reason why...

With my way of splitting this onto different tracks, you select all of the items and /record/bounce them into a new audio file... done...now you got a simple file which you can perhaps mangle further or just let it play your changes as they are...
Now that your work is printed out... the hard way now would be to delete all the additional tracks to get rid of them and their fx... this would make it a bit harder to reverse if you find after longer time you made a mistake...
An easier way is to disable them that they do not take any further CPU and to get them out of your view you just hide them...
This way if you have to make a change just unhide them, enable them and your back to where you started...
The ultimate weapon!!!

This is just a better way of doing things for me...
Item FX are great (but not indispensable) if you just want to put a delay or reverb on a single part of an audio file to make it more interesting or for editing with melodyne (via ARA) but for intense mangling of multiple snippets it would be a PITA for me and you would miss many other advantages as I described...

BTW... nothing I wrote about ItemFX or not is about which DAW you use... I would prefer my method in Reaper or S1 any time...

[dreamstate42]

You are so naive. Tell us more about companies who pay magazine to write about there products or artists who are contacted by devolopers to promote there products.
I know because I myself was contacted by a DAW company ...

There is this thing called "Russell's teapot" (Bertrand Russell) that talks about the philosophical burden of proof. Simply put, if you make a claim, you need to provide proof. Also nicely described in "Hitchen's razor": "What can be asserted without evidence can also be dismissed without evidence."

Provide your proof, and maybe I will change my opinion of you being a fanatic.

[dreamstate42]

What final listeners care about UI ?

Is the final listener suddenly the one that has to use the software to make the music?

[Trancit]

Agree with you here, the UI kept me away from Reaper for a long time, I'm customising Reaper a little bit at a time when I'm not feeling creative, maybe at some point it will actually become fun to use To me Reaper is a classic example of the "UI by programmer design pattern". Full of features, but far away from anything that would be considered "good UX".

What final listeners care about UI ?

Come on...
It doesn´t matter to the listener but it does matter to the creator who has to work with it...
Now here comes the Reaper fanboy No.1

[Cinebient]

No.

[antic604]

...ableton marketing is sooooo cool and all that fancy girls.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mTfIvm6V3XE

Drooool

[tooneba]

The question is, why would you have to print all audio snippets to another track just to tuck original tracks in a hidden place when you are using that tool for maximizing “audio manipulation” potential. It’s compromised workaround because you don’t need to do this in others daws that are having clip FX or channel rack.

I think you misunderstand me...

You work on a section of a song and want to add some different FX to parts of them, right??

No matter if you´ve got clip/item fx available or not, you have to split the items at this places anyway, don´t you??
The only difference now is that you try to work as much as you can on one track by using item FX while I add as many audio tracks as I need to spread out the different fx on them, let say 5...and I put the before cut audio parts which I want to treat seperately onto these tracks...

First of all, the clip FX I know (in cubase) was offline and it doesn't consume realtime CPU at all.

For my impression, my way has several advantages compared to item fx:

- you can reuse certain fx for multiple parts... with item fx, if you want 3 different parts to have a reverb you have to insert a reverb plugin to all of these 3 parts... 3 times more work, 3 times more CPU... would make only sense if you want complete different reverbs on them, which would be possible for my way...
Conclusion: My way is far more efficient in many situations

As I wrote above CPU isn't problematic in clip FX. If 3 audio snippets are different you can use 3 different EQ/Filter/etc before the reverb if it was separated. That is the advantage of having different chain for different snippets. As for Channel Rack in FL it's is just outsourcing the mixer job to dedicated "Mixer" so the CPU efficiency is same as traditional way.

- Much more flexibility... I can use sends, I can place other audio onto the same track, I can do anything I like because my way is more "open"

You can use same FX as sends without CPU tax in clip FX. As for Channel Rack it's same as traditional way except the routing was done behind the scene by dedicated mixer. (No visual clutter by the pile of tracks)

- Much better general overview by treating one segment of the song atm...
Nobody can tell me, that it´s easy to keep a general overview by using many small snippets of audio with different item fx on a heavy edit... just selecting one of them forces you to zoom far in to be able to grab that piece...just to be able to edit it´s fx... I just select the track... that´s it...

I understand but my preference is treating items as a whole to let them correspond each other. That's why I want to visually line up items as much as possible to grasp how they are relating.

Now about trying comment the quote from you:
This has nothing to do with either way you use...
In your example I answered to, you assumed having 50 items treated with different item fx running in realtime and you claimed if I would now use 50 tracks instead doing the same it would be scroll intense, correct???
Why on earth, would you work like this???
With any way you use, it´s better practice to commit to your work after treating it...

1. To save a lot of CPU... many audio mangling plugins take a lot of CPU and there is absolutely no reason to let 50 of them run in realtime on 5 sections of your song...
You treat a segment until your happy to let say make a break and then you bounce it to audio (call it freezing...whatever) and then you move on...

Clip FX (which I know) doesn't tax CPU. In FL I use smart disable and I got powerful CPU, the CPU usage doesn't become an issue for me at the moment.

2. Did you ever noticed that sometimes it´s easier to commit to something than treating it over and over again... perhaps making worse and worse...
That´s another reason why...

With my way of splitting this onto different tracks, you select all of the items and /record/bounce them into a new audio file... done...now you got a simple file which you can perhaps mangle further or just let it play your changes as they are...

That's what I'm calling unnecessary compromising when you are using tool for "audio manipulation". It isn't required at all when you use clip FX or Channel Rack(FL).

Now that your work is printed out... the hard way now would be to delete all the additional tracks to get rid of them and their fx... this would make it a bit harder to reverse if you find after longer time you made a mistake...
An easier way is to disable them that they do not take any further CPU and to get them out of your view you just hide them...
This way if you have to make a change just unhide them, enable them and your back to where you started...
The ultimate weapon!!!

See, that's unnecessary screen estate managing process in clip FX and Channel Rack. You are doing the chore to bypass the hassle of dealing a pile of tracks existing just for 0.5 sec of many snippets.

This is just a better way of doing things for me...
Item FX are great (but not indispensable) if you just want to put a delay or reverb on a single part of an audio file to make it more interesting or for editing with melodyne (via ARA) but for intense mangling of multiple snippets it would be a PITA for me and you would miss many other advantages as I described...

BTW... nothing I wrote about ItemFX or not is about which DAW you use... I would prefer my method in Reaper or S1 any time...

I like working in ableton's arrangment view in surgical manner to create snare or kick. It works like a charm.

[whyterabbyt]

I think there's a good case for Ableton with M4L having the best potential for audio manipulation, since it can theoretically do just about anything that can manipulate audio. Because MAX/MSP can.

That said, for lots of audio editing, I still rely on PT. Or, these days, sometimes Waveform.

Obviously the 'best' tool for any given individual is the one that individual is most comfortable using, though. But that doesnt suit the sad fanbois desperately trying to bolster their own self-worth, though.

[Trancit]

...
First of all, the clip FX I know (in cubase) was offline and it doesn't consume realtime CPU at all.
...

Cubase is an exception here... (together with Waveform, but this is unuseable for many tasks (i.e. fx with a tail) )
This is a very nice feature of Cubase btw... but I heard it would be buggy... are the problems fixed???

In i.e. Reaper/S1/afaik Cakewalk clip fx are processed in realtime and every single instance takes the full amount of CPU all the time...
In these DAWs clip fx cannot be used as sends neither... it´s just a snippet of audio with it´s own fx... I refered to this way of working...