Live, rated in a shootout of 7 major DAWs

[jtdj]

What the heck, Ableton has no Cd-Ripper and no Mp3-Support! What a shame...

It's like saying "German cars are the best, why do people even bother buying french ones.."

ableton is an italien car..but no ferrari

Fiat then?

Cubase is Mercedes, FL Studio is VW, Logic is Volvo, Live is...Porsche...scr.

nahnah
Cubase is a BMW M Model; advanced & powerful, FL is a Skoda; improving all the time, Logic is like a Laika 400I; only available in left hand drive, Pro Tools is a Bentley; rock solid and the best and Live is like a Ducati, its only got 2 wheels and if u fall off ur dead!

[3phase]

What nonsense.
Live's instruments scored better than Logic's? Are you kidding me? That's Live's strongpoint, it's instruments? Logic's are about as good as you get.

And where does the routing flexibility come in? Live can route audio from any track to any audio track, route midi to any midi track. Even if we are only talking about traditional DAW deatures and not Live performance, it's still whacked.

but you cant store and recall these routings, so theire flexibility is in studiopractize rather a timeconuming overview loss.. live is really limited when it comes to work in multiple projekts.. its not good for changing enviroments and customers.. so no studio daw. and theese allways halfbaked compromized workaroundelton implementations make it appear more inferior as it actualy is and should be after such a long development time..
It really looks like that ableton has played it all slower than necessary to catch more upgrade cycles..
But while this might be smart on the biz side. Its not very good for the image because the whole product appears rather unsmart than. The poor developers..the world thinks that they cant even get simple midi functionality done properly and act on a lower lever than open source projekts.
Must be hard to work for a company that forces you to just give your half best...
Where any good design idea gets compromized.

Implementing everthing just half developed makes the program as complicated as with full developed implementations but the handling is slower and more complikated..
And all the extra work to do it wright.. All the workarounds and extra moves for the user..and the coders that earlier or later have to bring the implemtations to a civilized standard have also a lot of extra work.
I dont think that this is payed with the few extra upgrade cycles..

There is the word..what you dont do wright in the first place you have to do twice..
And therfore ableton continously dont has the resources to get ahead of the competition. They are doomed to run behind by their own politics..

[anybody human]

I struggle with my opinion of Pro Tools, and who knows what criteria they used for these rankings, but they have Pro Tools overall audio lowest rated and "audio environment" as 2nd lowest, barely above Live. Puzzling. I can't make any sense of that, whatsoever. It's file management is rated low also, for a program that people use to organize film scores, comping & mixing tracks & stems of entire orchestras. Who knows, maybe I'm not seeing the whole picture.

All that matters anyway is if the program has the features you need for what you do, and how well you know that program, inside out. Rankings like these can make for interesting reading I guess, in terms of food for thought.

[spacecat]

dont wanna drag this thread...

but...

nothing compares, nothing compares... to yooouuu, live, in jamming and pure fun:P

[bupper]

I think Ableton should concentrate only on session coz their arrangement view is light years behind most other DAWS, session view is the only reason most people are staying with them because this software is made for LIVE performance & it is there where it excels. Just need a text VIEWER that can show text & images. Videos are being sorted very well with vizzable.

[Tone Deft]

I think Ableton should concentrate only on session coz their arrangement view is light years behind most other DAWS, session view is the only reason most people are staying with them because this software is made for LIVE performance & it is there where it excels. Just need a text VIEWER that can show text & images. Videos are being sorted very well with vizzable.

if Arrange view sucks so don't work on it?

maybe I'm just not awake yet but sense not that makes.

IMO Arrange view is where the low hanging fruit is at, there's so much obvious stuff to add the path to add gobs of features is clear.

[bupper]

I never work on arrange view, I use ableton to play 'live' because (in my opinion I hasten to add) that is the only way to use it. Arrange view is miles behind nearly every other DAW. That is what I meant, I cannot be any clearer than that!

[3phase]

when this test would have been about stage software live would be the winner..even when i ve to admit that apples mainstage together with sequenced plug ins is not bad aswell

[Machinesworking]

Every time they post their "results" it's hilarious. Makes me realize that if I ever need video tutorials I'll be sure to avoid Digital Music Doctor.
So many serious limitations to these sort of tests...

Here's an example of why this sort of test sucks ass:

You want to set up a recording studio with dedicated mix desks with automated faders and zero latency monitoring?
Nothing beats Pro Tools there. That Sonar etc. scores higher as a "DAW" hardly matters in this situation, nobody really uses Sonar in a recording studio environment like they do Pro Tools, for good reasons, it's not as suited to the task.

I could go on, but these sort of "results" are useless, what would be useful is a comparison of DAWs in regards to specific tasks, film scoring, live performance, pro studio recording, composing, mixing, mastering, pitch/time algorithms... give us an idea of where a task based strong point for a DAW would be... Live would do pretty well with that break down.

[pulsoc]

From the article - this was interesting -

The Technology Life Cycle
So why would two major upgrades of market-leading DAW’s provide so little new functionality. One answer is that there is very little left for improvement in the current DAW model. There is a concept, the Technology Life Cycle, that has been kicked around in technology circles for years. Every technology, whether it’s telephones, computers, the internet, or whatever, has a life cycle. The most exciting time for a technology is in the introduction and growth phases. During that time new features create excitement and generate new sales. However, as a technology matures, the value of new features becomes marginal and interest wanes. When Microsoft introduced Windows 95, people waited in line all night to get into a store to buy a copy. Now when Microsoft introduces a new operating system the reaction generally runs from indifferent to negative.

It is pretty clear that most DAW’s have reached to maturity phase in the Technology Life Cycle. There will always be the Sonar and Pro Tools and other DAW fan boys who lobby fervently for minor enhancements and go "whoo hoo" when the next release arrives. But DAW’s no longer drive significant advances in digital music, and there is a real question as to how far can current DAW technology be extended.
Yet old technologies also have a habit of giving birth to new technologies. Out of plain old land-line telephony came cellular phones. Out of desktop computers came mobile computing devices. Will there be a new paradigm of making digital music or do we even need one? While I doubt it’s the total answer, products like Ableton Live, while it lacks some basic features of a traditional DAW, provide an intriguing glimpse into the future.

[kb420]

That shootout has been out for years, and I've never found it to be all that informative. It seems like something put together by a few FL Studio fan boys.

[rcpunker]

Not though is on the list, but, GARAGEBAND is and has it always been my DAW I can count on. I am to start to believe having LESS into my DAW is actually better on me as like GARAGEBAND.

[DJVespers]

Live is the only DAW that can do what I need my DAW to do. Doesnt matter how its rated.

^hva han sa.

Nicely said. Agreed.

[Todd OMG]

This is complete trash and a waste of everyone's time.

1. These "factually accurate" graphs are simply adding numbers together, without taking into account that the total is often greater than the sum of all parts. As an analogy, if a human being was broken down into raw elements we would only be worth ~$25 each.

2. These graphs do not take into account that the category of "Digital Audio Workstations" is not a black and white one. All DAWs are not equal, because they are not designed to be so. For example, Ableton Live is the kind of DAW that is designed to help you WRITE a song, while Pro Tools was built from the ground up to help you RECORD songs. Most often, if you aim to write on Pro Tools, or record with Live, you will find yourself frustrated and burdened by obscure workarounds. This does not mean your DAW is stunted, nor does it impose an obligation on either company to "fix" their DAWs to your needs - it instead implies that each DAW is a unique tool with a unique purpose. A beautiful fucking snowflake.

3. In real life, categories, scales and numbers rarely matter and do not affect us in the black & white way these graphs imply. This is platonic, high-school level "cause and effect" thinking. Let's say your computer is too old to run any of these DAWs, and instead can only handle a 10 year old copy of Reason 2, max. I am sure in your case you would prefer Reason 2 to any other DAW that would crash your computer. And if you are running a professional studio, I am sure "cost" does not come into the picture as much as it would a poor college student. Real life is full of these out-of-the-box, non-black-and-white scenarios that graphs like these fail to account for. But nerds and intellectuals seem to either think they do, or ignore the fact that they don't.

Nerds and intellectuals have a permanent love of putting all things, including art, in a box. That is why they are our enemies.

[Tone Deft]

"Excrement. That's what I think of Mr. J. Evans Pritchard. We're not laying pipe, we're talking about poetry. I mean how can you describe poetry like American Bandstand. Well, I like Byron, I give him a 42, but I can't dance to it. Now I want you to rip out that page. Go on. Rip out the entire page. You heard me. Rip it out. Rip it out! Go on. Rip it out. Thank you Mr. Dalton.

Gentlemen, tell you what, not just tear out that page, tear out the entire introduction. I want it gone, history. Leave nothing of it. Rip it out. Rip! Be gone J. Evans Pritchard, Ph.D. Rip, shred, tear, rip it out! I want to hear nothing but ripping of Mr. Pritchard. We'll perforate it, put it on a roll. Its not the Bible, you're not going to go to hell for this. Go on, make a clean tear, I want nothing left of it. Rip it out, rip! I don't hear enough rip!"


of course this page will be posted again in 6 months time.