Ableton Forum

looks like some folks were a little confused by the thread title.

I recently made an electronica album and 11 out of 12 tracks were done solely in Live with 3rd party vsts (such as Zebra, Massive, Analog Factory and Korg Legacy collection etc) but with some sounds coming from the EIC and stuff like trackteam audio's modmachines etc.

I bounced tracks and mixed in Cubase one track which had 41 tracks and was too cramped to mix well in the session view mixer in Live. I also did about 37 takes of a guitar track which were comped together to form the master track in Cubase because audio editing is quite weak in Live. But even in this track, almost all the arrangement was done in Live first.

For mix finalization/mastering though, I always use Soundforge and a bunch of vsts, regardless of Cubase or Live, I just find it quicker and easier to edit and process this way.

Live is my main composition tools since version 5

I use a couple of softsynths in it and I started using renoise and max a lot more since a couple of months.

Recently I started doing all my mix jobs in protools cause I have access to a hd system and some really hard to beat mixing plugins.


Live still the core and I don't plan to change at all

Not me. I really like Live, but there are too many "little things" about it which keeps me needing/wanting a second companion app - in my case, Reaper.

Things like:

- No track folders
- No track grouping
- Not being able to copy/paste multiple clips which don't line up with the first-selected clip
- Limited mousewheel/zooming
- No "bounce to clip" or "glue" in-track rendering
- No customizable key commands, to correct things like Split being Ctrl-E instead of the "S" button
- The scray and unintuitive file management

...and more I'm sure, that's just off the top of my head. For me, I'm coming from more of a "trad daw" angle I suppose, and that may be part of it. But I love Live for what it is, and it wouldn't take much for it to become my one and only. The past two versions have seen it grow leaps and bounds closer to "trad daw" ability...but it's not quite there yet I'm afraid.

Yup. that would be me. I used Cubase, have owned lots of different hardware synths, effects.. now I am all software. Live as the only DAW. it is just so easy and quick to work with.

i was a nuendo 3 head for years. done enough for what i wanted.

i got sick of hearing about this ableton this ableton that blah blah blah crap...


bought a cm magazine with a live demo, thought what the hell...


Absolutely speechless....


will never use another sequencer again!!!!

live changed my whole approach to making music

I recently scaled down trashing SampleTank and some other freewarez VSTi:

Drums : Impulse/MIDI & Sampled Loops from http://www.smartloops.com/
Guitar :My Fender Strat
Bass : My Cort Bass
Synth : Operator and JV1010 or Alesis Nanosynth when needed
Piano : JV1010 I'm evaluating http://www.truepianos.com/
Garage Band : I use GB via SoundFlower (not rewired of course) and I can have Acoustic Guitars/pianos that sound good enough for my needs

Now my projects look cleaner and manageable.
I think an HW module should be part of the setup, just in case you need a different type of sound.

- Best
- Pasha

Hardware junkie here

The only soft synths I use is Stylus RMX sometimes and Cameleon sometimes. I do use a bunch of VSTs, I also have Cubase 4 (as thats what I was using before I bought Live 6), but TBH I hated it to the point of allmost completely abandoning the use of a computer for music.

Me.

me too.

I think in a close future, I won't use VSTs anymore!

for the moment, I use surge, and fm8/massive (after sampling them, cause they AREN'T stable!)

I am involved in various projects and some of them require the extra features and functionality that Live does not afford at present.

For my electronic music project though I found Live satisfactory for 13 out of 15 tracks without needing to go to another sequencer.

The 2 it wouldn't work for ? 1 song with 41 tracks, Cubase was better because I have 2 monitors and could open 3 mixer windows on 1 monitor while having the scrolling arrangement view of the tracks on the other. The other track had some variable meters, changes of tempo from 4/4 to 5/4 and 7/8 which are all automatable in Cubase but Live doesn't have this feature. I am one of those people who would like to see this implemented in future versions of Live.

Cubase 4 is a great sequencer imho. But definately, from a point of view of composing and arranging tracks, Live kicks the pants off it, linear view sequencers suck the creative life out of you. (this goes for Logic, Sonar, DP and the rest, not just Cubase)

I tried a few times to go 100% in Live, including effects and synths (it's been my main DAW for awhile now). While yes you CAN get good results with all Ableton gear, I ultimately felt I needed better sounding EQ's and comps, so I reverted to using my 3rd party plugs for those. Synths too, the included synths (including Operator and Sampler) aren't bad by any means, but I wanted more flexibility so I added Zebra2 to the mix.

I understand wanting to scale it down to keep the writing process more focused, less hassle upgrading plugs and such too. I think Live is getting really close to be 100% on a completely professional level, but there's still a couple aspects that were a bit lacking FOR ME.

Used Live plus NI, Rob Papen, CamelAudio & Sonalksis plugs for a while... wrote everything in Live from start to finish... Have to say I'm not a fan of Live's FX - except phaser and autofiler, which are ok

I've recently gone back to Logic for mixing though... I export Midi files and audio loops and save FX and Synth patches once I've jammed and tidied my arrangement in Live. I just prefer Logic as a mixing environment... plus I've started summing my final mix externally using a mates sweet Logic/RME/Mackie desk setup... makes all the difference...

Just Live and of course my guitars, every now and then I'll use the microsynth. Pro Tools, Logic, FL Studio, all sitting in my old PC not being used. My 3 year old son uses that computer to play games at noggin.com.

I