Is Ableton Live capable of...?

[pdxindy]

If you are in a high paced production environment, then the speed of doing repetitive tasks matters. If you are just doing your own thing at your own pace, then you can most definitely use Live for anything.

and I agree with ghettosynth... Reaper makes a great all purpose second DAW.

For years I did a lot of audio interviews which I then edited for broadcast. I used Reaper for this rather than Live. Reaper is faster, but Live can do it.

[xerix]

I think ableton live is good when ur travelling a lot and playing live shows and always produce on the go ( kinda like skrillex). It's really quick in automation and its audio warping is cool

If ur main workplace is in ur studio or bedroom I'de consider cubase, it's more powerful, organised and let's you get into the grains of the sound. The mixer is really defined and shows great visual representation of each track. It's also more stable IMO

[pdxindy]

I think ableton live is good when ur travelling a lot and playing live shows and always produce on the go ( kinda like skrillex). It's really quick in automation and its audio warping is cool

If ur main workplace is in ur studio or bedroom I'de consider cubase, it's more powerful, organised and let's you get into the grains of the sound. The mixer is really defined and shows great visual representation of each track. It's also more stable IMO

Yeah, but Cubase is not easy to whip stuff up like Live. Live's Instrument and Drum racks are exquisite! So fast and easy and creative... and the session view!!

[xerix]

Yeah, but Cubase is not easy to whip stuff up like Live. Live's Instrument and Drum racks are exquisite! So fast and easy and creative... and the session view!!

Yea ableton is quicker, but quicker doesn't mean better. I tend to find artists songs that use ableton are a lot less thought out and planned than cubase. Like...compare skrillex music to say knife party.
Skrillex= combination of weird sounds with no flow and chaotic
Knife party= aggressive sounding but still portrays a story or a theme and makes sense (IMO)
Cubase is great when u have a mental map of what u wana do

[paradiddle]

So if knife party would use Ableton and skrillex would use cubase, the roles would be reversed?

[ghettosynth]

Yeah, but Cubase is not easy to whip stuff up like Live. Live's Instrument and Drum racks are exquisite! So fast and easy and creative... and the session view!!

Yea ableton is quicker, but quicker doesn't mean better. I tend to find artists songs that use ableton are a lot less thought out and planned than cubase. Like...compare skrillex music to say knife party.
Skrillex= combination of weird sounds with no flow and chaotic
Knife party= aggressive sounding but still portrays a story or a theme and makes sense (IMO)
Cubase is great when u have a mental map of what u wana do

I think that this is more a function of how you use the tool than the tool itself. I have cubase and live and I think that cubase is just slow. It's too bad because I like a lot of features, but it just gets in the way more than it should.

However, if you start out working in the session view and hack your track together, it does have a tendency to impact your linear vision. I actually like Reason's workflow here more than I like Live.

If you start out in arrangement view, however, you think about your work more linearly.

[Mister Natural]

I think the most brilliant thing about LIVE is that(as Ghetto alludes to above) no two musicians use or learn to use LIVE identically. With practice; each finds his own way to express themselves

Myself, I couldn't live without SessionView as a means to cobble together separate ideas, separate threads of ideas into a whole piece. When I start to arrange it into one "song"; I'm constantly shuffling clips from Session to the Arrangement view and back again, experimenting with a thousand variations to arrive at an(always surprising) final arrangement. I think; the definition of "organic" composition for me

peace

[JonSolo]

Live is truly inspirational and capable of a great many things...including my last album done completely in Live.

Still, when I am working with audio, nothing compares to working with Cubase. Any time I want to work with physical instruments no thought is required...I click the Cubase icon. Linear recording such as orchestral stuff...Cubase.

This is not to say Ableton Live can't do it. I have a creative flow in Ableton Live with music ideas and writing that is second to none. Even working in Maschine is not as easy (especially with Push 2). But I just cannot ignore the ease of Cubase with the above listed project types.

If you can have both, get them. I have a plethora of DAWS- Cubase, Live, Reason, FL Studio, Maschine.... For linear stuff I rewire Reason into Cubase and it is bliss.

But if I am doing virtual instruments, and no orchestral....Live all the way (and I have done orchestral stuff in Ableton Live, but I just prefer Cubase).

[ghettosynth]

Live is truly inspirational and capable of a great many things...including my last album done completely in Live.

Still, when I am working with audio, nothing compares to working with Cubase. Any time I want to work with physical instruments no thought is required...I click the Cubase icon. Linear recording such as orchestral stuff...Cubase.

This is not to say Ableton Live can't do it. I have a creative flow in Ableton Live with music ideas and writing that is second to none. Even working in Maschine is not as easy (especially with Push 2). But I just cannot ignore the ease of Cubase with the above listed project types.

If you can have both, get them. I have a plethora of DAWS- Cubase, Live, Reason, FL Studio, Maschine.... For linear stuff I rewire Reason into Cubase and it is bliss.

But if I am doing virtual instruments, and no orchestral....Live all the way (and I have done orchestral stuff in Ableton Live, but I just prefer Cubase).

For instruments I find Reaper to just not get in the way as much as Cubase does. Really, I've tried to like Cubase. I think that what I don't like about it is too many icons and so you forget what they do if you aren't working with it all of the time.

But, it's just to messy for me, a bazillion windows, way too much clicking to set things up.

Keep in mind I never get anywhere near anything orchestral or anything resembling a score. Instruments is guitar and bass, some vocals, maybe a cowbell or a shaker. Drums once very ten years or so.

And my god does Cubase take forever to start.

[pdxindy]

Yeah, but Cubase is not easy to whip stuff up like Live. Live's Instrument and Drum racks are exquisite! So fast and easy and creative... and the session view!!

Yea ableton is quicker, but quicker doesn't mean better. I tend to find artists songs that use ableton are a lot less thought out and planned than cubase. Like...compare skrillex music to say knife party.
Skrillex= combination of weird sounds with no flow and chaotic
Knife party= aggressive sounding but still portrays a story or a theme and makes sense (IMO)
Cubase is great when u have a mental map of what u wana do

Cubase cannot compare the Live's Drum Rack or Instrument Rack. If I want to layer 2 synths, blend them together over a key range, use the modwheel to blend between them and so on. It takes literally seconds to setup. Live is like an instrument, and Cubase isn't.

and sorry... just cause you have a couple examples does not make your point valid in the general sense.

[Stan Navi]

I would want to use one DAW. I think while learnenig all Reaper, Cubase, Reason, Live, Logic Pro X etc., you loose an opportunity to write music. So with wich of them i can create pop-rock, idm-edm-glitch, orchestral music with good quality? Or maybe it's impossible with one DAW?

[ghettosynth]

I would want to use one DAW. I think while learnenig all Reaper, Cubase, Reason, Live, Logic Pro X etc., you loose an opportunity to write music. So with wich of them i can create pop-rock, idm-edm-glitch, orchestral music with good quality? Or maybe it's impossible with one DAW?

I think that a lot of us have more than one DAW because we did the circuit for some reason, not because we think that we need more than one DAW.

I started with Cubase 5. My friends recommended Cubase back in the day so it was more trusted to me, and, I really liked (and still do) the beat designer. My guy at the music store recommended Live, I should have listened. Cubase frustrated the hell out of me for a year with its instability. I couldn't get any music done because it kept crashing. Somewhere along in here I downloaded Reaper but didn't pay for it. I was using it with Ninjam and just as a general purpose audio tool.

When Record came out for Reason, I just decided to say f**k it and try something that was reported to be very stable. I managed to write more music, but I missed having access to Reaktor. Really, every other plugin I could live without, but it was a pain to use Reaktor.

When Max For Live was introduced that was the trigger for me to try Live. Somewhere in there Reaper had the upgrade sale for $40 but you only got through version 4 so I picked it up.

There are things that I still like about cubase and I've tried to get serious about it several times. I've upgraded it twice, I'm currently on 7.5, but I think that I'm done with it. We'll see. I haven't upgraded Reaper to 5 yet, but I probably will because of compatibility issues with using push with Reaper. I still use Reason and Live to write music, it depends a lot on how I want to work. I use Reaper to record multitrack audio from sterile kinds of sources, for Ninjam, and often as a sort of audio hub because I use reaRoute as my ASIO driver for other applications. I use Reason to record my own audio takes, e.g., playing acoustic instruments and vocals.

My advice is to pick the DAW that favors the workflow for you most used application and then pickup Reaper as well. Reaper is cheaper than many plugins for most users and is just super useful.

[xerix]

Cubase cannot compare the Live's Drum Rack or Instrument Rack. If I want to layer 2 synths, blend them together over a key range, use the modwheel to blend between them and so on. It takes literally seconds to setup. Live is like an instrument, and Cubase isn't.

and sorry... just cause you have a couple examples does not make your point valid in the general sense.

Exactly, I agree ableton is amazing at automation, audio warping and mixing/producing on the fly.
Cubase audio engine is much thronger though and it's midi handling. Keep in mind Strindberg cubase invented vst so their vst capability is very stable. It's just a much more powerful daw in general
To sum it up: ableton is for musicians, cubase is for musicians+technicians

[tooneba]

And PDC in Live is still half baked.

[xbitz]

Cubase cannot compare the Live's Drum Rack or Instrument Rack. If I want to layer 2 synths, blend them together over a key range, use the modwheel to blend between them and so on. It takes literally seconds to setup. Live is like an instrument, and Cubase isn't.

and sorry... just cause you have a couple examples does not make your point valid in the general sense.

MUX solved this long time ago ... create an empty patch only with macro knobs UI which ones can be automated directly with Cubase( or with some MIDI CC mapping(supported by MUX just a click) if u need remote control or clip based automation) then drop the rest into it



for easier access worth to drop the VSTs to UI of MUX for easier access and save the patch with them, nice and fast, fx patches can be built the same way just inside the mixer, MUX has key ranger/ channel splitter / multi-point envelopes etc. but Pizmidi etc. plugins also can be used (MUX has own sampler too which is missing from Cubase by default, it support drag and drop from Cubase ofc.)

Cubase can open/close all a track related VSTs/VSTis with one shortkey(or with one click) so if many VSTs are used than definitely faster then Live (if u can watch opening/closing windows constantly )

ps. if u need clips and patterns in Cubase worth to check Nora