Why I love Ableton

[nerveagent]

I have been a Live user since 1.something; now I'm on 7.0. Maybe I have been taking Ableton for granted a little too much recently. Let me tell you what opened my eyes to what is truly great about Ableton Live.

First, the Ableton website. I bought my first version and every version since straight off Ableton. That totally rocks. The site is professional and make shopping for the ableton product you want a breeze.

Second, the support. The time I went through a whole bunch of laptops in quick succession and ran out of serial unlocks ... the support I received and the rapidity of my unlock count restoration was first class.

Next, the product. The product has given me a little bit of niggle on PC and Mac over the years, sure. And there are a few different things I wish they'd improve or add to the app. But the core parts of the program are totally rock solid.

Now the clincher. The competition. I recently tried to use Native Instruments Traktor - just for digital DJing rather than production duty, obviously.

But Traktor, and Native Instruments, totally suck.

I tried to buy the damn product but the website was so crap, it actually prevented me from doing so (NI said later it was a bug). But for their crap website, I thank my lucky stars.

Because Traktor itself, is a piece of fucking shit. I don't mean because it doesn't have X feature or maybe Y could be implemented different or that it does far more than I really need at this point.

I mean it's fucking a big steaming piece of cat vomit lying on your brand new Persian rug type of crap.

It's BASIC AUDIO HANDLING is completely screwy.

I won't bore you with all the details, but my pain started when I tried to marry this P.O.S. with my brand new Numark DXM01 digital DJ mixer. It just doesn't work - Traktor that is. It will and it won't - but mostly, it won't - talk to the aggregated output device I created for the two channels of the mixer. No reason given. It just does or it doesn't according to no rhyme or reason I can determine. Ableton will. Every time. Heck even the fucking open-source Audacity will. Every fucking time.

OK so maybe it hates aggregated outputs (it's a Mac thing, PC guys). So why don't I try it with my spiffy FA101 firewire audio interface that I use with Ableton on GIGs .. i.e. solid, dependable, profession? Oh ... big mistake there sonny jim .. TRAKTOR WON'T TALK TO THE FIREWIRE INTERFACE EITHER!!!

But for the grace of a useless NI website, I'd be down a couple of hundred bucks for something that's useless to me.

I mean lets face it, this thing IS a fucking rust-ridden farm implement not a finely tuned sports vehicle.

I am cursing this thing to the high heaven. Time to burn my MP3 collection to dubplates and go back to the old fashion way of DJing.

Ahhh ... If only Live had just those couple of features that made it complete directly with Farmers Studio Implement 3 ... ;-)

Ableton, please release something that directly competes with Traktor. Otherwise, Ableton, please keep up the good work!

A satisfied customer.

(if anyone can suggest a reasonable alternative to Traktor please do).

[UKRuss]

Have you worked for Ableton long?

[blackthorn]

Topic should have been Why I hate Traktor!!

[nerveagent]

Have you worked for Ableton long?

I have never worked for Ableton. Although once I stayed in an apartment over the road from their office in the Schonhauserallee.

Yes maybe the title should be "why I hate Traktor" but then again the very bad experience I just had with it reminded of the most excellent experiences I've mostly had with Live. It's not until you see some really horrible thing do you realise how good you've got currently.

[logic_user99]

I'm a relative n00b when it comes to Live, but (as a far-too-long-time Logic user!) it does absolutely everything that I want.

Loops? Got it.
'Traditional' sequencing? Got it.
Audio manipulation? Got it.

I love Logic for it's sheer imensity, but Live just creams it. Even without the 'fancier' plugins that you can get for Live (Sampler etc) it's still wicked awesome.

Nicely.

[substance_g]

It's just conjecture on my part, but I don't think the two main music software companies in Berlin will start competing against each other in exactly the same product space.

[chrysalis33rpm]

If you hate Traktor so much, have you tried Serrato or any of the other several competitors products?

[doc holiday]

you forgot about hte amazing flexibility and ability to mold live to your own methods

[Precision]

Never used it personally, but Image-Line's Deckadance got some good reviews (http://www.deckadance.com/). Anyone prefer it to Traktor?

[nerveagent]

If you hate Traktor so much, have you tried Serrato or any of the other several competitors products?

I had a look at it, and I am considering it, along with the M-Audio one too. I don't really need anything like the vinyl control stuff though, that's too fussy and "high-end" for my purposes.

I'm actually trying to see if I can adapt Live to this use. But it doesn't look like you can take the A-B cross faders and assign each to a different output?

[nerveagent]

Never used it personally, but Image-Line's Deckadance got some good reviews (http://www.deckadance.com/). Anyone prefer it to Traktor?

Hey there, that looks cool, might give that a bit of a whirl - thanks.

[nerveagent]

The native Mac OSX version is in beta, please keep an eye on the Deckadance website for more details.

:(

[Precision]

Gah, sorry man - I didn't see that

Fingers crossed they get it ported soon.

[hambone1]

There's no competition for me.

Live is the only affordable solution that lets me perform audio, video, and lighting single-handedly live.