Ableton Forum

Drums- 95% with Absyth/Massive/Kontakt/Recording 5% with operator

synths- 100% Massive/FM8/Unique

pads/sound FX- 50/50 Absynth/massive and Operator

effects- 75% Ableton, 25% sugar bytes vsts

drums - 0% Live - 100% Maschine at the moment
synths - 0% Live - 80% Rob Papen / 20% NI or Camel Audio
pads - 100% samples or VSTs from wherever and effected by Camel Audio, Waves or Live plugins until it sounds good to my ears
effects - 10% Live including PureMagnetik Racks - 90% Camel Audio / Izotope / Waves Platinum / Etc.

Maybe 5% of sounds and effects here, if even that much.

ew

Effects:
50% Live: Compressor, Delay,
50% Other: Compressors (PSP, Roughrider, etc), Reverbs (Electrix), etc

Sounds:
15% Live: Operator, Puremagentik stuff
85% Other: Massive, FM8, Kore Soundpacks, FreeAlpha

Sounds: 1%. Some puremagnetik or sonicoture stuff but very rarely.
Effects: 2%. Occasionally I'll make a quick rack for live performance and keep it. If we include Max for Live sound design stuff then 5% higher.

I don't judge programs by bundled content. Live is all about the workflow for songwriting, sound design, and performance for me. I use Pro Tools for mixing and if I'm not being lazy tracking as well. That said, when you're starting out with "computer music" bundled content is super important and Live Suite was a godsend to me in that respect. As everything it's a matter of preference; the effects and instruments are quite good, I've just found other stuff I prefer. Live is nonlinear and modular, that makes it a desert island pick for me.

Sounds:
90% Live (incl. external samples played by Live's samplers)
10% External (Synplant, Microtonic)

Effects:
80% Live
20% external (Aether, Waves, Ohmforce)


I like the workstation feeling of live and getting everything out of one hand with Suite. Somehow frees my mind and makes me more creative... Live's instruments and effects are amazing as soon as you really get to know them.

Limiting myself to Suite's boxed content and not getting distracted by other VST's and different UI's helps a lot. I also own NI Komplete and a few other Plugins which are great but simply too much to keep the focus on composing. And I don't like just skipping through preset libraries...

Live's Reverb however is not too impressive (as mentioned often enought), so I rely on Aether here which sounds absolutely amazing.

BoxDJ wrote:Do you produce with your song mostly with Ableton sounds and effects or third party VST and and third party effect processors?

My productions are 90% Ableton.

100% Live and max itb

Sounds - 0%
Effects - 100%

I just use Live for launching audio clips with a Launchpad. My sounds sources are a mixture of field recordings / found sounds that I go out and record, cheap toy intruments, a Nintendo DS, and iPod apps.

I just use the built in Live effects partly because my laptop is so old and crap that it wont deal with anything too processor intensive. But mainly it's because, for what I 'create', the Live effects are fine. The Reverb could do with updating, but it's not like I need a super-realistic reverb for what I do.

Sounds 40%
Effects 80%

Sounds are pretty much all Ableton. Mostly Analog & Operator doing everything, haven't played with Tension at all though.

Effects are mostly Ableton, but got a 3rd party ones that I'll use over the Ableton equivalent. Not that I think Live's one bad, just others better suit what I want, like I could build up a rack to emulate tape delay, or use TAL-Dub or one of my hardware delays.

There are a few 3rd party vsts I'd like, but money is involved, which is something I don't have at the moment!

0% of sounds and FX.

I'd say I use Live 5% of the time.

Then 20% of the time is internet browsing, 25% watching BBC iplayer/4od, 35% general other procrastination, and 15% being asked by my wife if I could get on with the other things I should be doing!

I use live for nearly everything since I have the suite. The exceptions are guitar where everything runs through my guitar rig, but then has any additional processing done by live, or analogue synth stuff I tend to use my hardware Super Bass Station. I just feel I like getting a peice of hardware and messing with it til I can work it. If I mapped my keyboard better and messed about with them I might get more use out of the ableton synths better. I'm under no illusion that the Ableton synths/FX are good, but most of them aren't great. I just can't justify buying expensive plugins at the moment. Once my performance/practice/production is as good as it can get, then I'll worry about additional sound quality! I currently limit Ableton more than it limits me!

Sounds..probably never, maybe occasionally.

Effects..quite a bit but normally in conjunction with third party stuff.

I can't really give percentages as i'm just not that analytical

With me, the majority of the sounds are from plug ins (my only paid for Ableton instrument is Sampler) but I am quite happy with the supplied effects. Yeah I do use others but find that as long as you tweak things enough, you can get very interesting results.

Am wanting to update to 8 suite soon (it's now getting lots of thumbs ups from early 8 users), so look forward to using the extra suite instruments.

I hope they add some new crackers for Live 9 when they finally get round to public beta testing....take your time though Abe's.

the odd thing about this though is that although most posters prefer to use 3rd party FX and sounds, if Ableton took away the content library and dropped the Suite plugins, you can bet they will be much pissing and moaning about it.

Apart from Presonus Studio One (which is in it's first inception anyway), almost all DAWS seem to have been geared up to throwing in new synths, sample content and sound FX as a priority, instead of creative sound design elements or workflow improvements.

Cakewalk are probably the most guilty of this - since version 6 of Sonar, they have basically thrown in Z3TA+, Dimension Pro, Project 5 like step sequencer (and killed P5) and a bunch of mastering plugins. They are running out of ideas but have been desperate for the annual upgrade cash grab, so had to chuck in 2 previously primo synths which were retailing for $150 to $200.

You could say that Ableton have been pretty guilty of this too, since Live 6, where apart from the EIC content, much of their efforts has gone *with 3rd party help* to bundling extra sound content (Session Drums, Drum Machines, Cycling 74, Arcolite, Orchestral Instrument Collection or whatever) and the Suite instruments, plus new FX such as vocoder, overdrive, limiter and multiband dynamics.

This most definitely seems to appeal to noobs and to keep up with other sequencers such as Logic with it's apple loops and guitar sims etc. Because otherwise, many users discover better paid options and use it - anyone human being a case in point, his post alludes to being content with Live's fx, instruments and content but he has since outgrown it and moved on to 3rd party FX.