from a Live Users point of view?
one thing that I have found is that alot of people talking about live on various forums didn't really know what they were talking about, lots of statements like you can only use live for premade loops and the like, so I'm really curious about what the forum here thinks of the demo..
So Now that the Project 5 Demo is up, What's Your impression
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starving student
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After playing with P5 for a few hours I think I can post a few first impressions. These might change after I spend more time with it.
1. P5 brings a lot of nice standard DAW features with it - freeze, linked clips, groove quantize, channel strip presets etc. I hope we get these in Live 5.
2. The instruments and effects it ships with are nothing special, except perhaps for the new Dimension synth, which isn't included in the demo.
3. The Groove Matrix borrows heavily from the Live session view, but misses some crucial points. None of the crazy unlinked envelopes/follow actions etc. stuff you get in Live. Most glaringly, you can't record clips directly into the GM. This alone seems to completely kill the workflow I love so much in Live. The Live way of just organically pulling stuff together doesn't happen when you have to fiddle so much. You also can't just hit record in a clip and go. You have to set the length first. This makes P5 feel a lot more like Reason or Fruity.
4. The UI is fairly clean and efficient but the colors are too bright and washed out. Live does a good job of saving bright colors for essential elements of the UI and leaving the rest in more muted colors.
5. Piano roll seems even worse than Live's. You can't change the length of more than one note at a time, for instance.
6. Arrange view doesn't offer much beyond what Live does. No big daw features like markers and marker hotkeys.
7. The supposedly "gapless" engine, although better than Sonar, seems pretty gap-prone. Just changing presets in z3ta drops out the entire engine for an audible fraction of a second.
Overall, it seems like a nice, simple & inexpensive package for someone that doesn't want or need all the rest of Sonar or Cubase. It still doesn't come close to Live for actually playing live, and doesn't add enough higher-end DAW features to tempt me away.
Basically, close but no cigar for me. I might warm up to it more over time but I think this game is Ableton's to lose at this point. If they can achieve as much going from V4 -> V5 as they did from V3 -> V4 they've got nothing to worry about. I'm pretty reluctant to ever depend on a single-platform host again so Live wins on that score too.
1. P5 brings a lot of nice standard DAW features with it - freeze, linked clips, groove quantize, channel strip presets etc. I hope we get these in Live 5.
2. The instruments and effects it ships with are nothing special, except perhaps for the new Dimension synth, which isn't included in the demo.
3. The Groove Matrix borrows heavily from the Live session view, but misses some crucial points. None of the crazy unlinked envelopes/follow actions etc. stuff you get in Live. Most glaringly, you can't record clips directly into the GM. This alone seems to completely kill the workflow I love so much in Live. The Live way of just organically pulling stuff together doesn't happen when you have to fiddle so much. You also can't just hit record in a clip and go. You have to set the length first. This makes P5 feel a lot more like Reason or Fruity.
4. The UI is fairly clean and efficient but the colors are too bright and washed out. Live does a good job of saving bright colors for essential elements of the UI and leaving the rest in more muted colors.
5. Piano roll seems even worse than Live's. You can't change the length of more than one note at a time, for instance.
6. Arrange view doesn't offer much beyond what Live does. No big daw features like markers and marker hotkeys.
7. The supposedly "gapless" engine, although better than Sonar, seems pretty gap-prone. Just changing presets in z3ta drops out the entire engine for an audible fraction of a second.
Overall, it seems like a nice, simple & inexpensive package for someone that doesn't want or need all the rest of Sonar or Cubase. It still doesn't come close to Live for actually playing live, and doesn't add enough higher-end DAW features to tempt me away.
Basically, close but no cigar for me. I might warm up to it more over time but I think this game is Ableton's to lose at this point. If they can achieve as much going from V4 -> V5 as they did from V3 -> V4 they've got nothing to worry about. I'm pretty reluctant to ever depend on a single-platform host again so Live wins on that score too.
Bah! I was living in hope that it'd be the perfect VSTi host with that "device7. The supposedly "gapless" engine, although better than Sonar, seems pretty gap-prone. Just changing presets in z3ta drops out the entire engine for an audible fraction of a second.
chain"..... but to hear that if I try to load up anything I'm going to glitch.
-Ben
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anonymouse
- Posts: 627
- Joined: Sat Aug 14, 2004 2:33 am
MrYellow wrote:Bah! I was living in hope that it'd be the perfect VSTi host with that "device7. The supposedly "gapless" engine, although better than Sonar, seems pretty gap-prone. Just changing presets in z3ta drops out the entire engine for an audible fraction of a second.
chain"..... but to hear that if I try to load up anything I'm going to glitch.
-Ben
I love the new Project 5 "autoglitch" feaure. Saves me time in making my own glitches
... downloading the demo now.
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starving student
- Posts: 7129
- Joined: Thu Dec 09, 2004 6:13 pm
- Location: right here
..
I have seen screenshots of Project5 now. It does look like Live and the trailer looked like the Reason trailers, but missed the sexy sounds and just a better feel in general. It felt like a rip-off. Yes, me too want originality to be a trigger for checking new things. So this didn't get me interested to download the demo.
I am an old Sonar 2.2 xl user and that had a few serious issues in my opinion. The first Project5 version has ASIO issues on my system as well. I know lots of users love Cakewalk for stability but in my experience it was never stable enough for me. I did download Sonar 4 demo and the timestretching is really sounding great but I had instability issues staight away (for example editing a loop would lock-up the whole program).
Hopefully for a lot of users this will be good but for me Live's the best. One of the things I am very happy about is that most of the time my issues are reported, confirmed by other users and Ableton and solved in an update. Also Live's interface is the best around.
I am an old Sonar 2.2 xl user and that had a few serious issues in my opinion. The first Project5 version has ASIO issues on my system as well. I know lots of users love Cakewalk for stability but in my experience it was never stable enough for me. I did download Sonar 4 demo and the timestretching is really sounding great but I had instability issues staight away (for example editing a loop would lock-up the whole program).
Hopefully for a lot of users this will be good but for me Live's the best. One of the things I am very happy about is that most of the time my issues are reported, confirmed by other users and Ableton and solved in an update. Also Live's interface is the best around.
It glitches loading "device chains" quite badly...... This includes when it's
muted in Live.... It's a HD glitch where they are doing the stuff too fast and
not giving the audio engine the priority it needs.
Not all device chains glitch tho, only those which load more then 2-3 things,
or include the apeggiator along with a couple of other things. The smaller
ones load fast enough that they don't take presidence over the audio for
too long.
I don't have my Windows set to give background processes priority.... So
maybe that would fix this.... maybe not....
Also the demo includes a loud beep when used rewrited..... It's so loud and
so ear destroying that it makes me want to uninstall it right now and never
look at purchasing it ever again. I've had to turn it down so low that I can't
hear the quality of the sound at all just the general idea that it's doing
something.
Odd...... I don't know why they said you can't drag into groovematrix......
You can.... you just hit record again to stop recording and drag it. So this
means u could record into arrangement view, which would have the PDC,
then drag into groovematrix (if you really needed to) and play it back to be
dumped into Live.
Has a kinda cool section at the bottom where you can load MIDI files of
common patterns.... Like a filebrowser with categories.... So you can quickly
get a synth playing a repeating loop, which is in the pianoroll, but isn't yet
recorded in arrangement or groovematrix.... It's like..... Like you're playing
on the keys yet haven't recorded anything yet.... Just like u were playing on
your keyboard in Live but hadn't yet recorded anything.... Call it like a....
MIDI file looper in Bidule.... or a MIDI step sequencer....
Speaking of step sequencers.... You can switch the pianoroll from being a
MIDI setup where you draw notes of any given length, to a step sequencer
where it's more grid like.
After hearing the "Device chain" glitches I figured..... "How bout I just try
loading up a bunch of different synths.... see if I could just do that at the
start of a gig rather than loading things in the middle of it"....
I got to 12 tracks before it was running at 80% of CPU.... It took me
another 5 mins to manage to get enough CPU time to shut it down.
So what if I mute them as I go along? Is there any way they stop chewing
CPU when idle?.... nah.... Could hit 15 different switches to bypass
everything.... nah..... ok time to try background process priority.....
Nope still very glitchy......
So for Live performance use.......
hmmmmmmmmmmmm.......
Glitches make loading "device chains" at play-time impossible.....
CPU can't handle too many of the synths so you're better off loading your
favourite synths in Bidule or MAX then muting them to kill their CPU load
rather than trying to load a bunch of different things in Project5.
Groovematrix doesn't matter at all as we have a 500 times better one in Live.
PDC? Who cares..... Not at the expense of glitches and crap.
So what did I want out of it? I wanted to be able to load synth sounds that
included several different VSTi's mixed together, with effects.
What did I get? Nothing......
This isn't a solution for me, I'm going back to sorting out a method of
quickly switching to my favourite sounds in Bidule. Least with that I can stop
all CPU use, and keep the VSTi's loaded at all times to stop any glitching.
I was really wishing this "device chain" thing, with the added bonus of PDC
was going to make this my new VSTi host.... However the glitches are a
deal breaker.
-Ben
muted in Live.... It's a HD glitch where they are doing the stuff too fast and
not giving the audio engine the priority it needs.
Not all device chains glitch tho, only those which load more then 2-3 things,
or include the apeggiator along with a couple of other things. The smaller
ones load fast enough that they don't take presidence over the audio for
too long.
I don't have my Windows set to give background processes priority.... So
maybe that would fix this.... maybe not....
Also the demo includes a loud beep when used rewrited..... It's so loud and
so ear destroying that it makes me want to uninstall it right now and never
look at purchasing it ever again. I've had to turn it down so low that I can't
hear the quality of the sound at all just the general idea that it's doing
something.
Odd...... I don't know why they said you can't drag into groovematrix......
You can.... you just hit record again to stop recording and drag it. So this
means u could record into arrangement view, which would have the PDC,
then drag into groovematrix (if you really needed to) and play it back to be
dumped into Live.
Has a kinda cool section at the bottom where you can load MIDI files of
common patterns.... Like a filebrowser with categories.... So you can quickly
get a synth playing a repeating loop, which is in the pianoroll, but isn't yet
recorded in arrangement or groovematrix.... It's like..... Like you're playing
on the keys yet haven't recorded anything yet.... Just like u were playing on
your keyboard in Live but hadn't yet recorded anything.... Call it like a....
MIDI file looper in Bidule.... or a MIDI step sequencer....
Speaking of step sequencers.... You can switch the pianoroll from being a
MIDI setup where you draw notes of any given length, to a step sequencer
where it's more grid like.
After hearing the "Device chain" glitches I figured..... "How bout I just try
loading up a bunch of different synths.... see if I could just do that at the
start of a gig rather than loading things in the middle of it"....
I got to 12 tracks before it was running at 80% of CPU.... It took me
another 5 mins to manage to get enough CPU time to shut it down.
So what if I mute them as I go along? Is there any way they stop chewing
CPU when idle?.... nah.... Could hit 15 different switches to bypass
everything.... nah..... ok time to try background process priority.....
Nope still very glitchy......
So for Live performance use.......
hmmmmmmmmmmmm.......
Glitches make loading "device chains" at play-time impossible.....
CPU can't handle too many of the synths so you're better off loading your
favourite synths in Bidule or MAX then muting them to kill their CPU load
rather than trying to load a bunch of different things in Project5.
Groovematrix doesn't matter at all as we have a 500 times better one in Live.
PDC? Who cares..... Not at the expense of glitches and crap.
So what did I want out of it? I wanted to be able to load synth sounds that
included several different VSTi's mixed together, with effects.
What did I get? Nothing......
This isn't a solution for me, I'm going back to sorting out a method of
quickly switching to my favourite sounds in Bidule. Least with that I can stop
all CPU use, and keep the VSTi's loaded at all times to stop any glitching.
I was really wishing this "device chain" thing, with the added bonus of PDC
was going to make this my new VSTi host.... However the glitches are a
deal breaker.
-Ben
..
"I don't have my Windows set to give background processes priority"
this is a must-do in my opinion. audio-streaming is far more important that a menu showing up real fast. this might solve the glitching btw.
I am still not interested in Project5 though ....
this is a must-do in my opinion. audio-streaming is far more important that a menu showing up real fast. this might solve the glitching btw.
I am still not interested in Project5 though ....
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starving student
- Posts: 7129
- Joined: Thu Dec 09, 2004 6:13 pm
- Location: right here
nice unbiased review ben, question though, wouldn't the combination of the vsti/ fx chains set up with-n bidule work for your situation, those setup chains seem just to valuable to pass up for me. along with folder tracks, and the midi file/ arp /turn midi into arps enhancements, not to mention freeze, I'm gonna wait and see if ableton implements these things before I jump cause I use Live more for composition than Live pa and it seems like if you're primary is not Live pa project 5 may have an edge
If you only use Live in the studio.... or render and mix DJ style.....
It has some stuff for you..... I use Live3.... So I don't know much but Live4
VSTi hosting.... but this with PDC and the ability to recall sounds and
patterns so easy.... Is a good bonus. Like in Live3 I'm so often stuck with
an audio version of something, and unless I spent a good deal of time
saving all the synth patches I've used it's hard to go back. With Project5
you could go back fairly easy and change things.
The glitches also may only be when using it rewired, it doesn't make a
sound unless you have something playing in Live, so could be they've
optimized it for stand-alone use and forgot to test rewrite properly.
(Didn't checkout if it glitched when playing something solid in Project5 un-
rewired.... The nag beep just drove me nuts in the end)
So for studio use, it's got a few things that will save you some time.
For Live PA....
The features your searching for, look great on paper, but the glitches kill it.
-Ben
It has some stuff for you..... I use Live3.... So I don't know much but Live4
VSTi hosting.... but this with PDC and the ability to recall sounds and
patterns so easy.... Is a good bonus. Like in Live3 I'm so often stuck with
an audio version of something, and unless I spent a good deal of time
saving all the synth patches I've used it's hard to go back. With Project5
you could go back fairly easy and change things.
The glitches also may only be when using it rewired, it doesn't make a
sound unless you have something playing in Live, so could be they've
optimized it for stand-alone use and forgot to test rewrite properly.
(Didn't checkout if it glitched when playing something solid in Project5 un-
rewired.... The nag beep just drove me nuts in the end)
So for studio use, it's got a few things that will save you some time.
For Live PA....
The features your searching for, look great on paper, but the glitches kill it.
-Ben