Ableton Forum

I have made the step to LE6 from Lite. The following is a quote from Ableton about the restrictions of LE

Live LE is limited to twelve simultaneous built-in audio effects, eight built-in instruments, two AU/VST effects and two AU/VST instruments per project.

What does "simultaneous" mean in reference to the audio effects?

What is meant by the term "built-in..."?

What does VST stand for? (I can't find a glossary of terms in the manual)

I would very much appreciate some clarification. Many Thanks.

Perhaps simultaneous refers to the entire rest of the statement and not just audio effects.

I would assume built-in instruments means as opposed to VST instruments, on the base version of Live this would mean Simpler or Impulse.

VST stands for virtual studio technology and refers to third party effects and instrument plugins that are coded in that format. Mac also uses AU, audio units, which are similar and often come in both VST and AU formats.

you can have only 12 live plugs running at one time, whether this is twelve on one track or split up among tracks. you can only run 8 of lives instruments at once, and only two each of efx & inst. from 3rd party manufactures. google vst for indepth definition, but vst is a plugin format developed by steinberg, and available for most hosts/seq. vst is to steinberg as au is to apple, both do basically the same thing, but differently.

Simultaneous is referring to the fact that you can only have 12 of lives FX running at any one time in any single session. For example, you could have 12 FX on 12 tracks,, or 12 FX on one track, or two on six tracks and so on,,,

Built in is referring to the FX that are part of Live,,

VST stands for Virtual Studio Technology,, it refers to FX or instruments that you buy from other vendors to use in side Live. In this regard you might hear Live being referred to as the host and the VST being referred to as a plugin,,,

VST is used exclusively on PC's running some form of windows,, VST and AU's can both be run on a mac running OSX, however,, the VST's need to be mac compatible and usually also need to be universal binaries,,

Live LE also restricts you to only being able to have two instances of any VST or AU FX per-session,, this is also true of VST instruments or AU instruments,,

All of tis is true if running the plugs in real time,, i'm not sure what LIVE Le's limits are in terms of bussing or bouncing, or even if it has any track limits,, but you could probably get around a lot of the limitations by employing these methods to process your audio and then free up the plugins for use else where,,

edit:
WOW!! a deluge of advice,,

beats me wrote:

I would assume built-in instruments means as opposed to VST instruments, on the base version of Live this would mean Simpler or Impulse.

This is what I assumed. I would then have room for 6 more 'built in' instruments such as operator or tension etc the ones I would get from ableton, right? I therefore assume that I could have 10 instruments including the VST instruments, right?

This brings me to another clarification, namely the EIC1 pack. This is a collection of 8 instruments. Are these the same as Simpler and Impulse, or are these instances of the use of something like simpler?

Homebelly wrote:

Simultaneous is referring to the fact that you can only have 12 of lives FX running at any one time in any single session. For example, you could have 12 FX on 12 tracks,, or 12 FX on one track, or two on six tracks and so on,,,

So if you theoretically used all of the 64 audio tracks, 52 or more could not have any audio effects applied to them, right?

Why would you get add-ons to run in the crippled version of Live?
And where do you end up figuring you get 64 tracks?

hoffman2k wrote:Why would you get add-ons to run in the crippled version of Live?
And where do you end up figuring you get 64 tracks?

Why the hell not?

Would you rather rather simpler for all your bass and synth sounds?

There's been loads of threads suggesting good free instruments and effects (DB glitch, automat, karama fx etc.)

And I suspect you could bounce down a track to an audio file and reuse instruments and effects on other tracks. Would be worth checking this.

andydes wrote:

hoffman2k wrote:Why would you get add-ons to run in the crippled version of Live?
And where do you end up figuring you get 64 tracks?

Why the hell not?

Would you rather rather simpler for all your bass and synth sounds?

There's been loads of threads suggesting good free instruments and effects (DB glitch, automat, karama fx etc.)

And I suspect you could bounce down a track to an audio file and reuse instruments and effects on other tracks. Would be worth checking this.

My point was: If you're going to spend money on tension, analog, etc... Why not upgrade to the full unrestricted version of Live?

hoffman2k wrote:

Why would you get add-ons to run in the crippled version of Live?
And where do you end up figuring you get 64 tracks?

Live LE6 has 64 audio tracks and unlimited midi tracks, at least thats what the manual tells me.

My point was: If you're going to spend money on tension, analog, etc... Why not upgrade to the full unrestricted version of Live?

I am still in the early stages of commiting time and money to my little home studio. Although upgrading to the full version would be nice I have to spread my money around other things like external hard drives, RAM, midi controllers etc. Once I become frustrated by the limits of LE then I will upgrade.

gjm wrote:
I am still in the early stages of commiting time and money to my little home studio. Although upgrading to the full version would be nice I have to spread my money around other things like external hard drives, RAM, midi controllers etc. Once I become frustrated by the limits of LE then I will upgrade.

This probably isn't really the done thing,,
But in light of this statement,, have you looked into Reaper?
If your running a PC or have a mac that can boot into XP then reaper is a very cool linear recording environment with some very cool features,, and you can't beat the price,, last time i looked it was $50US for a none commercial license.

The OS X version isn't quite there yet,,

This way you could build up your hardware,, learn the basics and the language,, then move onto the full version of Live 7 when and if you feel the need,,

Of course,,if you are dead set on Live,, then there is no reason why you couldn't do some good work with LE,, i'm sure there are a lot of people on this board that started out with a lot less,,

gjm wrote:hoffman2k wrote:

Why would you get add-ons to run in the crippled version of Live?
And where do you end up figuring you get 64 tracks?

Live LE6 has 64 audio tracks and unlimited midi tracks, at least thats what the manual tells me.

My point was: If you're going to spend money on tension, analog, etc... Why not upgrade to the full unrestricted version of Live?

I am still in the early stages of commiting time and money to my little home studio. Although upgrading to the full version would be nice I have to spread my money around other things like external hard drives, RAM, midi controllers etc. Once I become frustrated by the limits of LE then I will upgrade.

My bad. Although I read LE, I still had the limitations of Live Lite in mind.
4 track limit. The horror...

Homebelly wrote:

If your running a PC or have a mac that can boot into XP then reaper is a very cool linear recording environment with some very cool features,, and you can't beat the price,, last time i looked it was $50US for a none commercial license.

I am actually in and out of the US for the next 3 weeks. I can't believe the prices here for gear ... Sooo much easier to set yourself up here than back in the land of the long white cloud (NZ).....AND there is alot more to choose from! rrrrrr what am I gonna but next?