Plogue Bidule, Reason, and Ozone help...

[maks]

Hi there. Im looking at purchasing live with the Ozone keyboard as it has a midi interface, midi keyboard and audio interface all in one. My first question is has anyone had any problems with the keyboard?
Second question is what exactly is plogue bidule? I've heard a lot about it but i don't know what it is. The other question is, i have a korg es-1 and an em-1... Would those be uselss with Live?
and my last one is how does Ableton compare to Reason?
I do alot of hiphop d'nb and garage.
Cheers

[paul]

I'm new to all this too, but that means I can't baffle you.

Reason and Live are very different.
Reason is a studio in a box, with sequencer, instruments, samplers, drum machines etc.
Ableton is just a sequencer, but a very special one. It can also record live audio and time-stretch stuff very easily which means you can match samples with diffrent tempos very easily, even on the hoof.
And you can trigger samples in any order, all in time with each other - that's where it becomes a Live instrument, rather than a classic timeline sequencer.
You need a sound source though - like Reason - to generate your samples, loops and audio. Unless you're just using library loops, in which case Ableton alone can do amazing stuff for you. Just with more limited effects than Reason I guess.

Dunno about your other questions.
Except that, as the Ozone is sold as a bundle with Live and with Reason by various people, it must do the trick. I'm getting one too. To drive Live with FL Studio (which is nice and easy to use).

[Kerrydan]

Second question is what exactly is plogue bidule? I've heard a lot about it but i don't know what it is.

In a nutshell, Plogue Bidule is an audio/MIDI VST host that allows you to draw the audio & MIDI connections between plugins and modules.

The reason that you see Bidule mentioned so often here in the Ableton Live forums is that it can work as a ReWire slave. This allows people to play their VST instruments (which Live doesn't support) in Bidule and have the audio transfer to Ableton via ReWire.

Of course, Bidule is good for a lot more than that. Check out the Bidule FAQ link in my signature for some more Bidule ideas and tutorials.
-K

[kpop]

Hi there. Im looking at purchasing live with the Ozone keyboard; has anyone had any problems with the keyboard?

Check the USB controller of your computer (look in device manager); if it is something other than NEC (like Intel), you should be fine. If it's NEC, you'll likely to have problems with Ozone. When working it's a great piece of gear. kpop

[Guest]

You need a sound source though - like Reason - to generate your samples, loops and audio. Unless you're just using library loops, in which case Ableton alone can do amazing stuff for you. Just with more limited effects than Reason I guess.
).

Live 3 can mangle the samples so much now - particularly with all that clip automation - sample offset etc, that for D&B (c'mon, let garage go original poster, it's had it's day!) you could do wicked D&B and I heard Mickey Finn on Grooverider's show radio1 a few months back sayin he uses live.......

just get live and either take your samples off vinyl or sample cds - even the ones that come with live can get loads of mileage

If you want another sound source I'd look at fruity loops - far more versatile as it hosts vsts, vstis DXis and rewire host and slave and its cheaper than reason with free upgrades for life!

Unless Propellerheads change their 'exclusive' all-in-one with no other compatibility than rewire slave policy, I wouldnt buy into it, it has no room for improvement or upgrade except when they release updates.

with fruity (or FLStudio) you can host the native instruments synths like absynth or reaktor - in fact you can use them in live with bidule or as fx and IMO the Native Inst. stuff is much better quality than reason, and you'll get alot more D&B bass sounds out of reaktor or absynth.

But apart from that, FLStudio has some pretty nice synths of it's own these days - but there are stacks of great vsti and dxi synths around now, so if you bought live and reason you wont have the option of getting new synths, but with Live and FLStudio you will......