Studio One is leaving Ableton in the dust.

[Tarekith]

Studio One is half off today only.

[regretfullySaid]

"weloveyou"

[Angstrom]

strange -
there's no hint of a sale on when I look at their site.

http://studioone.presonus.com/


If I try and buy one http://studioone.presonus.com/shop/buy-studio-one-pro/

Studio One 2 Professional
Total: £323.63

that's the same as normal isn't it?

[regretfullySaid]

The coupon code is above

[marra]

I heard the lack of updates on 8 is due to a dramatic shift in Ableton's internals since they started on 9..

There's no looking back. The changed the game before, and they're about to do it again.

[abletony84]

Since we don't have access to their code, you can sorta understand the minds of the developers of Bitwig, Studio One and Reaper by the way they design their UI. All of them got this fancy, techno/trancy, wannabe-super-realistic-3D look to them (that people will get tired of in say 5-10 years). Ableton though is just plain and simple (good for at least 100 years). Seeing as how this is how Ableton deals with their UI, it is safe to assume they got the same kind of mentality when it comes to their code.

I realize though that competition is healthy, and that this thread is probably just meant as a tease to make Ableton work harder. But what do we know.

[jlgrimes]

It would be unfair to say Studio One blows Live in the dust. Some of the cool things in Live:

Instrument Racks.
Drum Racks. (Although Studio One's Impact isn't a slouch but IMO Drum Racks are more flexible and powerful).
Session View Sequencing (Studio One is a linear sequencer period).
Audio/Loop editing (Live IMO is still on top in this area).


Studio One does have some features though that seems better than Live:

1. Arrangement View Sequencing waasy better than Live's counter (IMO one of Live's biggest weak points)
2. Performance seems better in some instances but after saying that I have been able to crash Studio One. Live is much harder to crash (even though Live is a CPU monster). I haven't tried the 64 bit version btw. Live is very sluggish after 24 audio tracks. Other programs I work with Sonar, Reaper, Record, Studio One don't have this problem. I think Live use more ram than the others.
3. Prescence while a basic instrument is one of the best soundfont compatible players I've ran into. It is basically up there with Sfz in terms of compatibility but Prescences is better because you can still edit the soundfonts to a pretty tweakable degree with effects, basic filters amp/envelopes etc.
4. A mastering view (to be fair Studio One is the only DAW that have this).
5. The browser in Studio One seems a little more better, but that is being nitpicky.
6. Export to Soundcloud, Mp3 (not biggies but Sonar also have Soundcloud export. This just shows you where I think DAWS are going).
7. In general Studio One has more little things than Live that are harder to explain. Studio One works almost just like Reason (its sequencer), but with a much better piano roll than Reason. They really did try to take the great things about every program and put it into one, while still keeping the program from appearing uncluttered. In many areas they didn't try to reinvent the wheel at all. I think Live takes a more "reinvent the wheel" approach sometimes (TCP on the right of the arrange view? for example). If you learned sequencing starting in Live, you might not appreciate this point.


Other than that the programs are somewhat similar:



Reaper is also a great DAW but for different reason. Reaper is highly customizable and actually one of the best trackers I ran into. Reaper IMO would not only be a great program for tracking a band but for mixing one as well. Reaper does things that leaves all other programs in the dust but for midi compositions, it is somewhat unintuitive. Live is much better for composing (or Studio One).


If you can deal with Studio One's linearities though, it is a great DAW, that isn't lacking in much (haven't used it too much yet to find the details).

[Machinesworking]

Since we don't have access to their code, you can sorta understand the minds of the developers of Bitwig, Studio One and Reaper by the way they design their UI. All of them got this fancy, techno/trancy, wannabe-super-realistic-3D look to them (that people will get tired of in say 5-10 years). Ableton though is just plain and simple (good for at least 100 years). Seeing as how this is how Ableton deals with their UI, it is safe to assume they got the same kind of mentality when it comes to their code.

I realize though that competition is healthy, and that this thread is probably just meant as a tease to make Ableton work harder. But what do we know.

The GUI is the GUI, not the underlying code. Plus the reason most DAWs do not adopt Ablton's 2D look is because most people do no agree that Live is the best looking DAW. I don't mind it, I rather like it, but I judge no DAW by it's GUI but rather it's UI. In Live's case the lack of global keyboard shortcuts for everyday tasks like resizing the subwindow etc. doesn't make me love Live's UI. In short, Live is great, but it's interface is lacking and always has been. You may disagree but visit other forums and read the replies on Live's GUI.

[leipies]

I have to admit this thread has many points that are unfortunately true. Ableton provides the most innovative approach, imho, to manipulating music and rethinking music production. That being said though, coming from Logic Pro, I feel that Live sometimes, unnecessarily (or perhaps only unsuccessfully) tries to reinvent the wheel.

Dear Ableton devs,

-For God's sake where the f*** is 64-bit?! This is unreasonable! I don't care how many times this has been brought up... it's simply unreasonable for a professional DAW.
-Where is the MP3 export features? WAVs are impractical for quick emailing to exchange/collaborate.
-Why does the flat GUI have to be so reminiscent of Windows '98? (It is very important to be creatively stimulated, even visually, when creating music)
-As mentioned before, why can't I just click and move the play head?
-Why do the timeline markers for quarter, eighth, sixteenth, etc notes all look exactly the same?! It's not ergonomic or pleasing to the eye.
-Why can't I click and drag things from one instance of Live to another (to copy tracks, instruments, etc)?
-Why don't plugins have a quick copy/paste feature to transfer the settings to another plugin of the same kind?
-Why can't I color code the locator bar to mark structure changes in the song?
-Why aren't multiple take comps just put into a sub track that you can piecemeal together and combine for the perfect single take?
-Why is there no phase correlation meter/goniometer? Ableton has no built in way of letting producers know if their mix is out of phase or not.
-Why would the EQ not have a built in spectrum analyzer? Now making it necessary to open two plugins as opposed to one.
-Why is horizontal/vertical zooming into tracks not more intuitive? Utilize the mouse wheel + shortcuts perhaps?
-More shortcuts? Why is there no shortcut to mute MIDI notes like simply pushing 'M' in Logic? Which brings me to my final point...
-Menu diving is not conducive to a smooth workflow, please avoid it at all costs!


I truly believe Ableton provides some of the best foresight and innovative apporaches to music production, and in the end of the day that's why I ultimately switched over to Ableton. I truly do love what Live is capable of, but like I said please don't be so forward thinking that you forget to include some of the very basics that every good DAW needs. I truly think Live 9 will have a lot of these features and frankly I'm banking on it. If they neglect these features (or don't implement them soon) all the innovation is for naught as they will go the way of the dinosaur, and I will regretfully have to switch to another DAW.

PLEASE, please, please don't squander the awesome potential that is Ableton Live! Make Live 9 not only innovative but also... practical.

Fingers crossed!

[msintros]

for me it's about the lack of performance control options. live's greatest strength is, as the name suggests, its use as a performance tool. so it makes sense that the ability to control your performance in real time should be as well developed as possible. in terms of ability to automate absolutely any parameter, they have mostly got this covered but there are still many parameters which are inexcusably non-assignable: pitch for each clip, original speed of each clip, and several others.

there is also no ability to do more sophisticated modifications of these assignments. the best they offer is some control over the range. the fact that the premier performance software in the world doesn't allow any configuration of how these messages will be received: if you can't do it on your physical controller surface, you basically can't do it. single buttons that control multiple functions or step through different selections are simply not possible at the moment unless you buy max for live and write a device that will accomplish the task.

[luakasbravo]

Yeah this is right WTF!!!!!!! is going on!! with You Guys? Are You sliping there???? this is SO big shame !!! for Ableton , i'm user since version 4 and every day this tousend bugs in ableton drive me mad really , i'm pro musican and this is shame for whiole Team i give YOU ADVICE READE THE STEVE JOBS BIOGRAPHY AND START THINKING ABOUT ABLETON LIVE <<< this product used to change te market and the way of thinkging about music now it's just a third row player and honest user like me get nothing jsut crashes of this shit every day. sorry but whole day i'm tryin to finish track for big label and this shit do not work as it shoudl work...

[Capitan Mission]

Yeah this is right WTF!!!!!!! is going on!! with You Guys? Are You sliping there???? this is SO big shame !!! for Ableton , i'm user since version 4 and every day this tousend bugs in ableton drive me mad really , i'm pro musican and this is shame for whiole Team i give YOU ADVICE READE THE STEVE JOBS BIOGRAPHY AND START THINKING ABOUT ABLETON LIVE <<< this product used to change te market and the way of thinkging about music now it's just a third row player and honest user like me get nothing jsut crashes of this shit every day. sorry but whole day i'm tryin to finish track for big label and this shit do not work as it shoudl work...

Oh, listen "pro musician", if you have crashes every day surely you have something wrong. I use Live a lot of hours every day, I dont even install all the upgrades, and it works ok for me.
Your calling "shit" a piece of great software that helps thousands of musicians around the world, is so easy to be a id*ot... whts your contribution to the world? oh, yeah, you are finishing a track for a "big label".

[Machinesworking]

Yeah this is right WTF!!!!!!! is going on!! with You Guys? Are You sliping there???? this is SO big shame !!! for Ableton , i'm user since version 4 and every day this tousend bugs in ableton drive me mad really , i'm pro musican and this is shame for whiole Team i give YOU ADVICE READE THE STEVE JOBS BIOGRAPHY AND START THINKING ABOUT ABLETON LIVE <<< this product used to change te market and the way of thinkging about music now it's just a third row player and honest user like me get nothing jsut crashes of this shit every day. sorry but whole day i'm tryin to finish track for big label and this shit do not work as it shoudl work...

Oh, listen "pro musician", if you have crashes every day surely you have something wrong. I use Live a lot of hours every day, I dont even install all the upgrades, and it works ok for me.
Your calling "shit" a piece of great software that helps thousands of musicians around the world, is so easy to be a id*ot... whts your contribution to the world? oh, yeah, you are finishing a track for a "big label".

Just to balance this out a bit. 99% of the crashes you're going to have at this point after numerous updates are going to come from third party plug ins or hardware drivers. At some point it's up to us as end users to provide feedback to Ableton about what's wrong with your system. This means disabling all VST/AU's and seeing if Live crashes. There are plenty of ways to do this but the easiest IMO way is to disable all plug ins, if that works enable 1/2 of them, if Live still does not crash enable half of those and so on. If none of this helps and Live still crashes then it's probably a hardware driver in your configuration. Audio cards and MIDI/USB controllers are the first thing to check, but be warned it's not always what you think it's going to be. I had a version of Live and a recent update to a Logitech mouse driver that caused massive problems in Live, specifically with external sync to hardware. Never would have guessed that? and blamed Ableton for it because it only affected their DAW not the others.

On that line even with newer more stable mouse drivers for the Logitech Control Center, I'm using a third party mouse driver because fuck Logitech and their shitty drivers!

[H20nly]

^ +1 certain Logitech webcam drivers have been known to wreak havoc with audio as well...

... which is obviously Ableton's fault.

i recently had a hard drive fail on one of my computers... this too, was clearly a result of poor planning by Ableton.

[Machinesworking]

^ +1 certain Logitech webcam drivers have been known to wreak havoc with audio as well...

... which is obviously Ableton's fault.

i recently had a hard drive fail on one of my computers... this too, was clearly a result of poor planning by Ableton.

Well in the case that they know there's an incompatibility and do not make it known, or do not inform all their tech support people, then yeah, they get some blame for it.
Not all incompatibility issues that affect only one manufacturer are that manufacturers fault.
I guess the best example I can think of is MOTU and DP, when DP adopted Audio Units over continuing to press developers to develop their own MAS plug in standard, they coded their host support for AU absolutely to spec, and because Apple had in the meantime tweaked the AU plug in developer code to get Logic to behave properly with AU, DP had issues with some AU plug ins. Not at all MOTU's fault.