Ableton Forum

dj superflat wrote:

some people love to fiddle with all sorts of FX, others just want to plug the right guitar into the right amp and go. similarly, some folk make incredbile records with gameboys, an incredibly underpowered mac laptop from back in the day or whatever, others have the sick work station with a cinema display, etc

Pardon me if i digress a bit. But It's nice to hear someone who comes from the laptop side of things, "get it"(dj superflat). I come from the pro audio/studio side. Faithfulness to gear/software is a scary thought. It's a big freakin orgy anyway and it should be. If you could tell what a track was made on just by listening to it then we would have some real problems to debate about concerning these issues. Or how about this; lets say one has faithfully used a program or gear for a long time and convinced others it's the way to go by proving there mastery on said program in written word. What would you say if the music made by that person wasn't very good? You would change your mind in a second! In music creation the ends truly justifies the means in the most positive sense. Just listen to Cody Chestnutt's "headphone masterpiece". An over zealous opinion about a program is a fart in the wind. It's kind of like convincing someone you know the best way to masturbate. Forget faithful, be a slut and don't spank the monkey too much.

not really much meat to this article, but it may interest some folks...an article from the beginning of 2006 on the new intel chips...

http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20051221-5818.html

Since I upgraded from Live 3.0 to Live 5.0, I have stopped using Cubase. I am a long time user of that product - all the way from PRO-24 on the Atari ST. Too much messing around for little to no gain in my view, too complex. I will admit that Cubase midi editing is heaps sweeter than Live's, especially for long manually played parts like I am wont to record. But over all this disadvantage is not such a big deal for me that I am forced to go back to Cubase. I like getting instant results with Live, I can try something too see if it works or not quickly and either keep or abandon it, Cubase gets in the way too much for this.

The intrinsic and most basic qualities that Live turns me on with is that it's a mega-sampler, with an endless sound/midi library, in which I can drop anything I want, onto any song or soundscape in an instant, or minor fuss. Most of that starts and ends up in Protools. Recording, mixing and mastering in protools is a dream. Writing and short recordings in Live are a blast. I don't bother with any other similar programs except sound making stuff. I picked Live as a second program to compliment PT in my total production package, so I often move a single song or certain idea bits in and out of PT and Live a couple times before a mix. It's never been easier and sounding so good.

"it's a mega-sampler"
Exactly I treat live more like an instrument and SX like a daw.

I use a lot of virtual instruments, so sometimes Live just doesn't have the horsepower to keep up. Crash, burn, recover, etc -- very tedious stuff, although I like the Live interface a lot. Really looking forward to the next Live that supports multiple cores (AMD 64 X2's on two computers here). But right now, Cubase has support for multiple cores, physical RAM above 2 gigs, and while it's awkward, VSTIlink on two dual core PC's is a lot of horsepower. So at times, Cubase just make more sense to use -- plus midi is much more powerful on Cubase. (Also pretty decent multiple monitor setups are possible)
And scoring, although not perfect on Cubase, is there when you need it.

Live can be all this and more someday, but, for right now, Cubase is also an essential tool for me.

I use Cubase for writing all my material, then export my tracks down to wav, and import the sections into LIve for playing live..

Theres no way that you could play out with Cubase smoothly, ie switching between songs within the set. Thats the great thing about live, where you can blend your song into each other....I love them both!!!