Thinking of buying Abelton. Looper Help/DAW Recommendation?

[crewxp]

I'm thinking of buying Abelton. I have always wanted to be able to record something, press a button to have that loop, then play something else behind it on the fly. I feel my lack of knowledge on how to work DAW software prevents me from making music. I think this will help. Do yall mind answering a few of my questions?

1.) I can't get the Looper to work right. I press record using my footswitch across the room, but never know when to start. I always see it start recording at random times and my loop always has pauses in them.
2.) I have all these buttons on my keyboards, but only use the volume mixers!! I want to make full use of them. Can all programs do this? What are the most important controls you guys use to make efficient use of producing?
3.) What kind of ASIO card do you use? I have tried DirectX and the Integrated Low-Latency ASIO Driver, but they all have horrible latency or sound quality. I use my UX2 ASIO Driver, but I can't hear what I play using that through my PC Speakers. I have to hook headphones to my UX2 output to hear it across the room. Would like to listen to it via my computer speakers while I play.
4.) I can't decide on a software to use. I bought Cubase 5 Student version, but it doesn't have a looper and crashes sometimes. Abelton Live is good, but is only 32-bit and I can't get the Looper to work, I always run into memory errors too when loading too many samples. Can anyone recommend me a good software to use? Is Abelton a good choice even though its 32-bit?

VSTs I use: EWQL Symphonic Orchestra (memory intensive library), Guitar Rig 4, Addictive Drums
Kind of Music I make: Epic/EWQL/Hans Zimmer Type music.

My Setup: (attached)
Axiom Pro 66 Semi-Weighted keyboard
Yamaha synth keyboard/piano
(Above plugged in via USB Midi)
Ran Through Cubase 64-bit
(Above sound ran using UX2 ASIO Driver)

[daaa]

my guess is, that you have the setting of the looper to be tempo synced to the tempo of your track (it's called quantization) .
so the looper will never start exactly when you press the switch, but it will start on the beat . thus, the loop stays in sync with the track in ableton. check this in the settings of your looper.
so in order for this to work properly, you obviously have to play your instruments in the same tempo as the track in ableton.

if you want to use ableton only for the looper function, I would recommend you to omit going through a daw & just use a hardware looper. for example this one: http://www.ehx.com/products/2880
it can also be tempo synced (to your keyboard), via midi.
and you don't have to worry with drivers, etc.

[pencilrocket]

Don't forget to check out the looper called mobius. It's free and more feature rich than Looper.