Ableton Forum

Posted: **Mon Oct 08, 2007 4:00 pm**

There is no doubt the Logic Studio is a great value for all that you get (I don't think anyone can argue with that).

There is one very important thing to keep in mind with the Live costs...the new instruments are in partnership with other companies (i.e., AAS). This means that a portion of the money Ableton receives for each upgrade is most likely going to these companies (at least for the updates that includes the extra instruments). Apple doesn't have that issue since they own it all.

I love Logic, and I also love Live. And I end up using each for different things. So, I will probably end up getting the new version of Live.

Another thing about the included instruments...the AAS stuff is some of the most incredible sounding soft synths I have experienced. If you get the bundle, you will be getting the best in terms of quality (Ableton made a good choice partnering with AAS in my opinion). With the "Suite" upgrade you are getting an excellent value for these instruments compared to what you would pay for them as standalone versions. My issue is I already own the standalone versions so if I get the Suite, I am getting a redundant instruments (making the value not as good for me personally).

Posted: **Mon Oct 08, 2007 4:00 pm**

I find it odd that so many people are complaining about the prices.

We've had lots of discussions about whether they should include operator and smapler for free, or offer it at a greatly reduced cost.

Many people who don't want them argued that they weren't happy paying for the add on instruments.

So now we have the suite available, where you can get both for 200 euros, much less than before, with an extra 3 instruments and the drum machine pack thrown in. Or if you already have them, you get the three new instruments and drum pack for 160 euros, 40 euros each. All sounds pretty reasonable to me.

What I'm not sure, as someone who doesn't have much in the way of multisample CDs, is how much use Sampler is without the EIC? Is it worth getting the boxed version to get full use out the sampler?

Posted: **Mon Oct 08, 2007 4:02 pm**

kramerica wrote: It's not immoral for Apple to do this as it's just an example of fair competition in a capitalist economy. Apple is the Wal-Mart of DAWs right now and you need to decide if you want to support the "mom and pop's" DAW makers (Abes) or the "big box retailer" of DAWs (Apple).

Fair enough, but as a small business owner myself I compete with larger construction firms, and my price is lower, not higher.

Among other considerations of course. But it's just silly to get angry over Abes pricing structure. To try and argue that they should compete with Apple's strong arm tactic is just silly.

Not at all. The competition does help to set the price, that the nature of business. Like I said, I compete against larger outfits, and my price is roughly half of what they charge. Does that make me happy? no, but I realize that

A: the larger companies over charge because of perceived integrity and professionalism.

B: I have to compete with what they can offer. I'm small, and have limited resources, so one advantage has to be price.

Now this is the exact opposite of what Ableton are doing..... Love Live, but it's obvious that Ableton came up with this pricing scheme and made these deals with AAS without knowing that the main competition that offers a suite like theirs (Logic), was going to drop the price.
Stienberg and MOTU offer additional instruments, but they are available in universal plug in formats, VST AU etc. (not sure about Sonar, but their price is smaller than Ableton's as well)

I would seriously be surprised to see Ableton put out any more orchestral libraries for example. They have no staff notation, and no group functions. Kontakt 3 just came out with 17GB additional content.... the list goes on. Why on earth would anybody buy the Ableton library when it costs more than Logic 8 which has it's own orchestral library and notation editor? It only works in Live from what I can tell, and even the EXS24 sample library from Apple/Logic is easily translated to Sampler and Kontakt.

Now I'll get my regular upgrade to Live 8. That seems to be worth it to me, but I certainly am not going to buy into their content. The fact is Logic is not Wal-Mart, and Live is not a mom and pop anymore. They have as many employees as any DAW maker out there now; I doubt the Emagic team at Apple is any bigger.

Posted: **Mon Oct 08, 2007 4:14 pm**

Machinesworking wrote: The fact is Logic is not Wal-Mart, and Live is not a mom and pop anymore. They have as many employees as any DAW maker out there now; I doubt the Emagic team at Apple is any bigger.

The Emagic team may be similar in size to Abe's team in terms of manpower but Apple is a publicly traded company and therefore has LOTS of cash to do marketing tactics like this. Ableton is a private company with a lot less cash.

I agree about the construction industry in that smaller companies compete by offering their services for less. I was generalizing about Wal Mart, Apple, Microsoft, etc. but it's generally true about economy of size - the larger the resources of a company, the easier it is to drive down the costs of producing each unit.

Posted: **Mon Oct 08, 2007 4:19 pm**

kramerica wrote:Don't you have to believe in God in order to believe in evil?

No.

About the pricing... One dumbfounding characteristic of the majority of those posts that strongly argue against Ableton's pricing is this: if someone else sells a different product with more extras at a cheaper price, it seems to follow that the higher price of another product is absolutely too high. Usually this doesn't take into account the different structures of the companies involved, the actual differences between the products, and the continuing demand for both of those packages.

Ableton Live 7 costs 419 euros. It's a serious tool in its own right, and people are buying it. If you want extra content, you need to pay more. Bummer, huh? Now I should say, Logic is so cheap because Apple is a big... blabla... hardware... bla. The answer, usually from the people who strongly protest against Live pricing: "So what? They have every right to do so in a capitalist economy."

That's correct, but you can't have it both ways. If you accept that Apple is entitled to sell its DAW at break even prices, you shouldn't complain if another company sells their own software package at a higher price when people are still willing to pay that much for the functionality. They are completely entitled to do so, that's how supply and demand works. If there is demand for Live at this price point, you can't say it's "unreasonable" and at the same time say there's nothing wrong in Apple selling its DAW short.

Anyway, I do think the base price for Live and the upgrade price of 99 euros are within reasonable limits. I don't think any other package can replace it in my own workflow 1:1, and I'm certainly going to upgrade. I would think twice about buying some of the extras, however. (By the way, they were third party developed, not dramatically eating away the core application development time like some people have suggested). In any case, I estimated that you get around 50 gigabytes (give or take a few GB) of content with Live if you go for the suite. I'm quite sure I won't.

Posted: **Mon Oct 08, 2007 4:22 pm**

There is no doubt the Logic Studio is a great value for all that you get (I don't think anyone can argue with that).

There is one very important thing to keep in mind with the Live costs...the new instruments are in partnership with other companies (i.e., AAS). This means that a portion of the money Ableton receives for each upgrade is most likely going to these companies (at least for the updates that includes the extra instruments). Apple doesn't have that issue since they own it all.

I love Logic, and I also love Live. And I end up using each for different things. So, I will probably end up getting the new version of Live.

Another thing about the included instruments...the AAS stuff is some of the most incredible sounding soft synths I have experienced. If you get the bundle, you will be getting the best in terms of quality (Ableton made a good choice partnering with AAS in my opinion). With the "Suite" upgrade you are getting an excellent value for these instruments compared to what you would pay for them as standalone versions. My issue is I already own the standalone versions so if I get the Suite, I am getting a redundant instruments (making the value not as good for me personally).

Posted: **Mon Oct 08, 2007 5:31 pm**

kramerica wrote:Don't you have to believe in God in order to believe in evil?

How are we defining God?

Posted: **Mon Oct 08, 2007 5:32 pm**

noisetonepause wrote:
kramerica wrote:Don't you have to believe in God in order to believe in evil?
How are we defining God?

And evil?

Posted: **Mon Oct 08, 2007 5:38 pm**

Actually the existence of evil is one big argument aginced the existence of god.

http://www.royalinstitutephilosophy.org ... php?num=20

Posted: **Mon Oct 08, 2007 5:41 pm**

Machinate wrote:
noisetonepause wrote:
kramerica wrote:Don't you have to believe in God in order to believe in evil?
How are we defining God?
And evil?

I was really just prodding noisetonepause's relativist. The argument of whether evil can exist without an objective, universal truth like a god has been argued over for centuries and I'm not sure the ableton forum will solve that debate. But "bad", obviously, doesn't equal "evil". Perhaps this is for another thread.

Posted: **Mon Oct 08, 2007 5:47 pm**

kramerica wrote: Don't you have to believe in God in order to believe in evil?

No. Things are defined/verified by their opposite; the opposite of "evil" is "good", not "god". That's two completely different concepts, though part of religion's function is to incorporate mystical beliefs into the picture i.e., God is good, Satan is evil etc...

It might be more accurate to posit that one must believe that higher, supernatural deitys make us who we are, and so therefore one must believe in god to believe that some people were made good and some were made evil.

Personally I feel there are good choices and bad choices, but that nobody's inherently good or evil. Most of that comes from upbringing, not mystical creation issues. We are in full control of our choices, barring mental health problems.

So then, are the Live upgrade prices a good or evil?

Posted: **Mon Oct 08, 2007 5:55 pm**

The logic of the problem of evil

We can restate the problem of evil in more formal terms. The claim that the world was created by a God that is both all-powerful and perfectly good (that is, desirous of precisely what most of us consider goodness to be: heath, safety, fulfillment, personal integrity, love, peace, and happiness) would seem to be refuted by the existence of evil. Consider the following:

(i) a perfectly good God, by definition, would want to create a perfectly good world

(ii) an all-powerful God, by definition, would be able to create a perfectly good world

(iii) and thus if a perfectly good, all-powerful God exists, we would exist in a perfectly good world, a world with no evil (think of the idea of Heaven)

(iv) and yet evil exists in our world in tremendous quantity, and includes both physical evil (the suffering caused by the blind catastrophes of nature: disease, flood, drought, etc.) and moral evil (the suffering caused by the intentions of wicked people: murder, adultery, rape, deception, theft, etc.)

Thus it seems we must conclude the following: Either (v) God exists, but is not perfectly good, and/or (vi) God exists, but is not all-powerful, or (vii) God does not exist.

It should be noted, however, that the problem of evil only arises for those who claim that God is both all-powerful and perfectly good. Those who believe either that God is very powerful but not all-powerful, or that God is very good but not perfectly good, can avoid the problem of evil by saying that evil is either out of God’s control or is somehow part of God’s plan. But if one wishes to maintain that God is both all-powerful and perfectly good, the problem exists.

Posted: **Mon Oct 08, 2007 5:55 pm**

huffcw wrote:There is no doubt the Logic Studio is a great value for all that you get (I don't think anyone can argue with that).

There is one very important thing to keep in mind with the Live costs...the new instruments are in partnership with other companies (i.e., AAS). This means that a portion of the money Ableton receives for each upgrade is most likely going to these companies (at least for the updates that includes the extra instruments). Apple doesn't have that issue since they own it all.

Back to the analogy of my own business. If I need a JLG lift to get to certain parts of a building, I have to rent it. Other companies own them, thus driving my final price for doing the same amount of work down! In order to compete with a large outfit with all it's own tools, I have to offer value.

That, is my intention in this conversation, to point out that no matter how you slice it, Ableton was/is going head to head with 'all in one' DAWs like Logic with the the instrument collections etc. and I think they have made a mistake. Sure, some people will buy the content, but my opinion is that it's going to fall short of predicted profits. Apple dropped the bomb with Logic Studio, and people do have to take notice. Wal-Mart did in fact kill the mom and pop store in the USA.
I don't denny that Ableton have a right to sell embedded plug ins, but I think it's going to be even harder to justify the price when the premiere provider of embedded content is slashing prices, and has a reputation as a 'pro' DAW, not at all a 'Wal-Mart' DAW.

Posted: **Mon Oct 08, 2007 6:06 pm**

Updating Live's audio engine in no way means there was a problem with it before, or that your muddy mixes can be blamed on Ableton. According to this logic, they should never update anything because to do so is an admission that things weren't as good as they could be before. For all you know, it sounded as good as every other DAW out there, and now it sounds better. People have been making killer mixes on equipment less advanced than Ableton for a really long time. Don't blame your tools!

Posted: **Mon Oct 08, 2007 6:18 pm**

it's $120 to update, how cheap ARE you people?

Ableton Forum

Seriously, are you guys smoking crack?