Do you like the Live Instruments?

[beats me]

Most hot chicks are drenched in effects but most don't seem to mind if the end result floats your boat.

that analogy plays quite well.

I prefer my synths and chick to sound/look natural. the fake titty, tons of makeup, bleached hair look turns me off.

I brought it up because mcphable wrote

"I just can't get my head around the idea of why one would want to have to run Operator through another Live instrument or two AND THEN through a collection of FX just to get **close** to what the above demo software offers in a single instance of the plugin."
to each their own, just talking about phun stuff.


mcphable - definitely take a look at Sylenth, I bought it over Xmas last year and absolutely love it.

It's definitely a matter of taste, workflow, and how much control you want over something. There's many elements to creating music that some people find fun and exciting while others find those same things annoying and frustrating.

Some people act like effects are a CIA conspiracy created to distract you from how shit the dry sound is. Other producers feel the actual sounds play second fiddle to the effects. Would love to hear a Def Leppard, U2, or Rob Zombie album with all the effects shut off.

I think natural is a good word here or maybe even mellow. Plenty of great music can be made with the Suite instruments but 9 times out of 10 when somebody is asked about what IN YOUR FACE sound they used it's usually a 3rd party plug. Again, not everybody wants to use IN YOUR FACE sounds.

[akm]

I'm just guessing here, but with digital synths, the few audio plug in developers I've talked to say there's always aliasing (digital harshness) compared to analog synths etc., There are different ways to deal with that apparently. It seems like this is the reason why Ableton synths etc. sound a little less bright than NI software. People complain about NI sounding aliased and harsh all the time, I don't mind most of the time, but for instance the recently discontinued B4 organ had some artifacts on the upper notes that weren't really very organ like. I don't hear a lot of aliasing/artifacts in the Ableton Suite, and I do think in order to get that, both Ableton and AAS filter the output. All of this will disappear from software in another ten years with faster computers IMO. Just think of the difference between the original Reason soft synth and modern ones!

This is the kind of post I expected ))

This is the topic. I'm not talking about presets or making it nice with effects. I do everything myself, don't use the presets. I totally agree with Machinesworking, I clearly hear the filtering in Live's processing, and I don't like it. Wanted to know how many people agree, was sure it'll be much more then 1 person, I was wrong, most users like Live sounds. It is very subtle difference and cant stop one creating great music with Live instruments.

[beats me]

@Beats
no, what i mean by the drenched in effects thing is that people will compare an operator sound to an fm8 sound with lots of effects. I mean it as that it's not a fair comparison. like your analogy, is it fair to compare a chick all shined up and effected to a girl who just woke up? Not really, But im sure some would prefer the latter.

That makes sense, but some people react to effects heavy presets and plugs with complete horror. I really don't get that reaction. It's a weak argument.

I like the "just woke up" look (from what I remember )

[Jarvisimon]

I don't have any Live instruments other than Sampler but think that with some tweaking you can get a good sound out of most of them. I have just done some tunes using free VST's running through Live's effects and the end result is as good as my Native Instruments plug-ins.

Someone has pointed out that the distortion I use all sounds digital and they're totally right but in reality I like the sound of digital, even though digital is cleaner, it can be made to fit just as well and should be viewed with equal regard.

[d-track]

live effects and synths cannot be compared with logic.
BUT
operator is the best soft synth i ever used and ive used MANY. absynth is my second one.
sampler only needs a quality timestretch and i am sure it will be included in the next version.
live reverb is crap. but sometimes i like this cheap sound.

[luddy]

live effects and synths cannot be compared with logic.

I'm a long-time Logic user, and I have NI Komplete (5) also. When I got Ableton Live, the quality of its instruments was the thing that surprised me the most. Electric is phenomenal, Sampler is very easy to use, Analog and Collision are great.

To my mind it doesn't make sense to separate the effects from the instruments. The design philosophy of Live is to present the instruments, effects, and routing capabilities (like racks) as Lego blocks and let you snap them together easily. Competing packages (like Komplete) tend to have much bigger and more complicated instruments with integrated effects and routing. I prefer the Live approach hands down.

Among effects, I'm still amazed with Corpus. I have been able to get all kinds of very natural-sounding instruments out of it by sending various kinds of short impulses into it from Impulse, Sampler, etc. I love the Filter Delay effect for how easy it is to configure and use.

Among Logic's instruments, the thing I use the most is EXS24, because of the huge, high-quality sample library it has rather than for the instrument itself. I wish that Live's importing did a better job of pulling in EXS24 instruments. It seems to get the velocity layering, overall volume level and filter settings wrong a lot of the time, and they are hard to fiddle into position. Logic has some great piano sounds and many other beautiful instrument sounds in its EXS and GB libraries. That's the single biggest advantage over the Live instrument suite if you ask me.

Ultrabeat stacks up very poorly against drum racks together with clips and clip envelopes. To my mind, everything about making drum sounds is better in Ableton, from sound sources and effects to routing and sequencing. Hands down, no comparison.

Overall, I'm really impressed and surprised by Ableton's instrument (and effect) suite. I think it's quite underrated.

-Luddy

[d-track]

this is all about what kind of music you make and the way you want to do it.
live is the best daw for some kind of stuff, session mode is a must have for me but id prefer this combined with logics synths and effects (espec reverbs).
exception is logics sampler, ist terrible, unuserunfriendly

[leedsquietman]

What people are failing to realize is that if you buy Omnisphere, ALchemy, Zebra, Sylenth and other synths as discussed here, they are individual purchases ranging from 200 to 500 dollars. The Suite 8 as a collection of 4 AAS synths, 2 Ableton synths and the Corpus extension plugin is 350 bucks for the whole shebang. Thus the plugins have an average value of (not including Corpus) less than 60 dollars each. You wouldn't typically compare 2-3 hundred dollar synths to one for 60 bucks and have the same expectations, yet many of the Suite synths, especially Operator, Electric and Tension (for me at least), really punch above their weight and are comparable to 250 dollar synths.

So by all means, Just buy the regular Live and with the remaining 350 bucks you saved from the Suite, go ahead and invest it in a couple of great 3rd party synths, but you won't get 6 top line synths for 350 bucks - you could argue Ableton isn't providing 6 top line synths in the Suite, but for the money they give you a very wide palette of sounds, in conjunction with the other bundles EIC and content library sounds. The only other thing close is NI Komplete, which is an amazing collection, but NI have this habit of dropping the price to something really tempting, selling a bucketload in the next month, and then discontinuing things and bring out a new version which requires a significant upgrade fee.

And 3rd party synths in Live all need the extra plugin buffer, so are heavier on latency and more prone to glitching in some cases than the Live synths.

Live has always been a program to go a bit against the grain too, so the Suite synths kind of mirror that philosophy. But the choice is down to you - you can demo the synths for 14 days prior to buying and if in doubt, do the demo, but whining about them after the fact does nobody any good.

[leedsquietman]

BTW The Arturia CS80 through the Neve 88RS channel strip in UAD sounds SWEEEEET.

The Neve RS88 is an awesome plugin for UAD which gives MUCH of the character of the original gear to my ear. Arturia's softsynths are also the best vintage emulations and have super low aliasing. Although in Live, they are a bit of a nuisance (esp JP8V) because of the need to have the plugin buffer at 64 (if you're lucky) or 128 samples for them to play back smoothly. This is in addition to the audio buffer, which they need at least 256 samples (and often 384) to run correctly. In Cubase I can run them at 192-256 samples and without the extra plugin buffer needed in Live.

[Machinesworking]

What people are failing to realize is that if you buy Omnisphere, ALchemy, Zebra, Sylenth and other synths as discussed here, they are individual purchases ranging from 200 to 500 dollars. The Suite 8 as a collection of 4 AAS synths, 2 Ableton synths and the Corpus extension plugin is 350 bucks for the whole shebang. Thus the plugins have an average value of (not including Corpus) less than 60 dollars each. You wouldn't typically compare 2-3 hundred dollar synths to one for 60 bucks and have the same expectations, yet many of the Suite synths, especially Operator, Electric and Tension (for me at least), really punch above their weight and are comparable to 250 dollar synths.

Beyond that, you can purchase the Live Suite, Komplete 6, the Aturia collection, and Alchemy all for less than the price of a Virus Ti. It's really an insane amount of power.
Again, Tension and Collision have no comparison in Komplete or anything outside of the original AAS versions IMO.

[Tarekith]

I just bought a new TI2 because I was not having fun with Zebra2, Omnisphere or Synplant anymore. How crazy is that?

[Pasha]

I've heard the "drenched in effects" argument many times and I really don't get it. If it sounds great then who gives a shit? It's like some people want to take a shitty sound and attempt to make it sound great while others, for reasons I don't quite understand, want to take a great sound and reverse engineer it to sound like shit.

Most hot chicks are drenched in effects but most don't seem to mind if the end result floats your boat.

Silicon not allowed.

[Machinesworking]

I just bought a new TI2 because I was not having fun with Zebra2, Omnisphere or Synplant anymore. How crazy is that?

If it inspires you to create, then it's not crazy at all.

Hell I bought a Wretch machine, and half the people I show it to think I'm nuts for buying it. Cost the same as a Ti, is mono, barely can stay in tune and sounds like a cat being molested by a bass player playing through three distortion boxes. It absolutely inspires me every time I play with it.

[Pasha]

What people are failing to realize is that if you buy Omnisphere, ALchemy, Zebra, Sylenth and other synths as discussed here, they are individual purchases ranging from 200 to 500 dollars. The Suite 8 as a collection of 4 AAS synths, 2 Ableton synths and the Corpus extension plugin is 350 bucks for the whole shebang. Thus the plugins have an average value of (not including Corpus) less than 60 dollars each. You wouldn't typically compare 2-3 hundred dollar synths to one for 60 bucks and have the same expectations, yet many of the Suite synths, especially Operator, Electric and Tension (for me at least), really punch above their weight and are comparable to 250 dollar synths.

So by all means, Just buy the regular Live and with the remaining 350 bucks you saved from the Suite, go ahead and invest it in a couple of great 3rd party synths, but you won't get 6 top line synths for 350 bucks - you could argue Ableton isn't providing 6 top line synths in the Suite, but for the money they give you a very wide palette of sounds, in conjunction with the other bundles EIC and content library sounds. The only other thing close is NI Komplete, which is an amazing collection, but NI have this habit of dropping the price to something really tempting, selling a bucketload in the next month, and then discontinuing things and bring out a new version which requires a significant upgrade fee.

And 3rd party synths in Live all need the extra plugin buffer, so are heavier on latency and more prone to glitching in some cases than the Live synths.

Live has always been a program to go a bit against the grain too, so the Suite synths kind of mirror that philosophy. But the choice is down to you - you can demo the synths for 14 days prior to buying and if in doubt, do the demo, but whining about them after the fact does nobody any good.

+1
This is 100% true, and BTW depends on the music you create.

[Pasha]

I just bought a new TI2 because I was not having fun with Zebra2, Omnisphere or Synplant anymore. How crazy is that?

If it inspires you to create, then it's not crazy at all.

... I get inspired by some cheesy evolving patches on my 9 years old JV1010... so I understand.
However the wrench machine sounds.. MORE inspiring...