Ableton Forum

leedsquietman wrote:they're good products but who will buy when better softsynths exist for less?

There are soft synths that are more expensive, too, and hardware even more so...

Johnisfaster wrote:

JACKAL & HYDE wrote:and no choke makes it a pita.

put samplers polyphony setting to 1 and you then have choke, make a rack with multipule samplers if you want routing options.

this "choke" setting is actually the reason I'm going to be getting sampler sometime soon.

To me, those arent options, those are pain in the asses for $200.. I dont want to "make a rack" every time I want to use something properly. For $200, (like in Kontakt and almost every Sampler VSTi out there) you should be able to drag a sound to the next available key and give it its own output with no "Rack" inserted whatsoever. And throwing 30 Samplers into a Rack so I can "choke" the open hat on sampler 27 with the hat on sampler 7 is a slow un intuitive pain in the ass way to work and certainly not worth $200 imo. Even little samplelord can do everything I'm talking about for a mere $80 dollars http://www.samplelord.com/ and gives the user 16 x 16 outs = 256 stereo outputs. It would be like buying NI's Battery for $200 and then being told that you have to create a rack and drag an instance of Battery into the rack for every sinlge drum sound so you can choke them & assign seperate outs. If thats not a pita, I don't know what is.

JACKAL & HYDE wrote:

Johnisfaster wrote:

JACKAL & HYDE wrote:and no choke makes it a pita.

put samplers polyphony setting to 1 and you then have choke, make a rack with multipule samplers if you want routing options.

this "choke" setting is actually the reason I'm going to be getting sampler sometime soon.

I dont want to "make a rack" every time I want to use something properly. .

make the rack, save it, use it next time...

to me, dragging another instance of sampler into a rack is basically the same as selecting a choke feature in another pluggin. I mean it's a very brief mouse motion and a click, how is that really a huge deal?

When I saw how much you get with Logic Pro for the price, Ableton suddenly didn't seem like such a deal. Granted, Live does things no other app does for live performance, but as a studio DAW it seems you get a lot more bang for buck with Logic. I agree with J&H, there are sometimes very basic features missing, and it's very annoying. Of course there are workarounds, but would it really have been that hard to put in a choke, or mutiple outs? The "put it in a rack" solution seems like making excuses to me, and Live isn't priced low enough for me to buy into excuses.

That being said, I love that Ableton is such an incredibly awesome company, and I'm happy to support them. I'm sure they have priced their products as reasonably as they can for their business model. I'll be right there buying v7 when it comes out, but I'll have to be very very impressed with any new plugins, and with the upgrades for the 2 I've already bought, to throw down for that. I figure I've spent a little over $1000 on Live over the past 5 years...

Johnisfaster wrote:to me, dragging another instance of sampler into a rack is basically the same as selecting a choke feature in another pluggin. I mean it's a very brief mouse motion and a click, how is that really a huge deal?

My answer to this would be look at an instance of battery up with 60 sounds loaded in it with velocity layers compared to setting up the exact same thing using sampler. Battery sits there, one panel, mute/solo etc etc... Scrolling around that same setup in a rack using Sampler would look ridiculous and un neccesarly confusing. This is all my opinion, not trying to stand on a soapbox. I dont want to diss Sampler, I just wish it acted more like kontakt in the output and spread department.

JACKAL & HYDE wrote:It would be like buying NI's Battery for $200 and then being told that you have to create a rack and drag an instance of Battery into the rack for every sinlge drum sound so you can choke them & assign seperate outs. If thats not a pita, I don't know what is.

a reply I did some time ago..
the only thing I give you is the multiple outs..

-------------
It's all a state of mind..

Try to see Sampler as a modular module..
Try to see a Rack as an empty shell..

Features
- Load an empty Rack..
- Fill it with 20 Samplers..
versus
- Load Battery..
- Fill it with 20 cells..

Workflow
- Select a Sampler from the chainlist..
- Select a tab you want to edit in..
versus
- Select a cell in Battery..
- Select a tab you want to edit in..

CPU
- hardly notice any difference..
versus
- going up very fast..

Price
- 199 USD..
versus
- 300 USD..

you see what I mean?
There's hardly any difference..
Sampler can be Battery if you want it to..

ethios4 wrote: The "put it in a rack" solution seems like making excuses to me, and Live isn't priced low enough for me to buy into excuses.
..

see to me I think the put it in a rack solution is just part of the modularity of live, it takes 1 second to drop a sampler into a rack, probably just as long as it takes to set something to choke in battery or anything else. it's a different way of working but it doesn't seem any faster or slower and it doesn't seem like an excuse to me. it's 2 clicks. I mean people love building stuff in max because it's a modular environment, I think of live as sort of a modular environment where you set things up to do what you what it to.

Poster wrote:

JACKAL & HYDE wrote:It would be like buying NI's Battery for $200 and then being told that you have to create a rack and drag an instance of Battery into the rack for every sinlge drum sound so you can choke them & assign seperate outs. If thats not a pita, I don't know what is.

a reply I did some time ago..
the only thing I give you is the multiple outs..

-------------
It's all a state of mind..

Try to see Sampler as a modular module..
Try to see a Rack as an empty shell..

Features
- Load an empty Rack..
- Fill it with 20 Samplers..
versus
- Load Battery..
- Fill it with 20 cells..

Workflow
- Select a Sampler from the chainlist..
- Select a tab you want to edit in..
versus
- Select a cell in Battery..
- Select a tab you want to edit in..

CPU
- hardly notice any difference..
versus
- going up very fast..

Price
- 199 USD..
versus
- 300 USD..

you see what I mean?
There's hardly any difference..
Sampler can be Battery if you want it to..

exactly how I feel about it. and I'll put enphasis on the cpu difference because all NI stuff has awful cpu munching fat mouths.

Johnisfaster wrote:

Poster wrote:

JACKAL & HYDE wrote:It would be like buying NI's Battery for $200 and then being told that you have to create a rack and drag an instance of Battery into the rack for every sinlge drum sound so you can choke them & assign seperate outs. If thats not a pita, I don't know what is.

a reply I did some time ago..
the only thing I give you is the multiple outs..

-------------
It's all a state of mind..

Try to see Sampler as a modular module..
Try to see a Rack as an empty shell..

Features
- Load an empty Rack..
- Fill it with 20 Samplers..
versus
- Load Battery..
- Fill it with 20 cells..

Workflow
- Select a Sampler from the chainlist..
- Select a tab you want to edit in..
versus
- Select a cell in Battery..
- Select a tab you want to edit in..

CPU
- hardly notice any difference..
versus
- going up very fast..

Price
- 199 USD..
versus
- 300 USD..

you see what I mean?
There's hardly any difference..
Sampler can be Battery if you want it to..

exactly how I feel about it. and I'll put enphasis on the cpu difference because all NI stuff has awful cpu munching fat mouths.

Dead wrong there, sorry, but 20 instances of Sampler are going to make Battery look like the leanest plug in out there. Agree with J&H on this one, Sampler isn't worth it when compared to the competition, only advantage is samples are saved in a Live set, but for any of us who work with other DAWs, it's lacking.
Logic includes far better plug ins, and if added up in price, Live plug ins are simply not worth it, and make the package as expensive. That's not good.
To those that say Sampler and Operator are different products etc. well, so were all of Logic's instruments at one point, the rules were changed when they bundled the package, and I'm sure sales reflect that. I rarely hear people mention Sonar, Cubase, or Digital Performer around here, it's all Logic. Couple that with the fact that half of Live users are PC, and you can plainly state that Logic has made some cash for Apple, because they offer a complete package.
Sad part is 99% of what you can do with Sampler, you can do with Simpler or , until they get multiple audio outs, and choke groups etc.
Don't know why I'm chatting about this, I like third party plug ins like the dreaded NI and Zebra 2 better anyway.

live should be no more than £2.43

.[/quote] Dead wring there, sorry, but 20 instances of Sampler are going to make Battery look like the leanest plug in out there. :[/quote]

why exactly would you even need 20 samplers in a rack? seems to me like you'd need one for each item you want choked and then one for everything else, and then maybe a 3rd or 4th if you want routing options to other tracks. so maybe 3 or 4 at the most it seems to me for most actions and as many as maybe 10 for something complex.

appart from that, I still think 20 instances of sampler with a sample or 2 in each is going to be leaner than battery cpu but I could be wrong. it's not even the cpu meter that bugs me when using NI stuff it's just simply how sluggish everything becomes even with the meter moderately low the program starts moving all slow and opening presets takes 3 minutes at a time.

Johnisfaster wrote:

pabloaugustus wrote:A method I use while traveling without my beloved laptop and working a friends computer is to use live lite, and then export the midi clips with a name describing the sound used. I then email the clips and when i get home can put my song back together. Its a great technique when traveling and bored/inspired but without your beloved software.

word, live pricing is gettting crazy, especially with all the plugins costing so much money, and when other DAWs are adding value to their product without increasing price. I'm glad someone clarified.....when software protection is bypassed it is said to be 'cracked' not 'hacked'. e.g. the .exes that remove protection are called cracks....hacks are clever exploits, like the crazy stuff you mofos do with live on a regular basis!!

-pablo

the other thing is this, you mention lives pricing getting too high when you consider the pluggins prices. but those are additional products and shouldn't be considered at all. if you're going to consider the price of their pluggins as part of the upgrade price then you might as well start saying "lives upgrades are so expensive, I mean every year it's a new version of the software AND they release a new hooded sweatshirt and hat which just adds to the upgrade price"

I'm not talking about using live on a computer I will use on a regular basis, I'm talking about when I'm traveling, like I do often, and am using a friends random computer for a few days that'll I'll never use again later. It just gives me a method to be creative and use the results when I get home.

I'm not trying to denegrate ableton or the product they make, I bought it love and use it I'm merely commenting that I do not like the changing pricing structure with 6. I never said I considered the price of the plugin as part of the product.

Poster wrote:

JACKAL & HYDE wrote:It would be like buying NI's Battery for $200 and then being told that you have to create a rack and drag an instance of Battery into the rack for every sinlge drum sound so you can choke them & assign seperate outs. If thats not a pita, I don't know what is.

a reply I did some time ago..
the only thing I give you is the multiple outs..

-------------
It's all a state of mind..

Try to see Sampler as a modular module..
Try to see a Rack as an empty shell..

Features
- Load an empty Rack..
- Fill it with 20 Samplers..
versus
- Load Battery..
- Fill it with 20 cells..

Workflow
- Select a Sampler from the chainlist..
- Select a tab you want to edit in..
versus
- Select a cell in Battery..
- Select a tab you want to edit in..

CPU
- hardly notice any difference..
versus
- going up very fast..

Price
- 199 USD..
versus
- 300 USD..

you see what I mean?
There's hardly any difference..
Sampler can be Battery if you want it to..

I have a Battery kit loaded into Live right now. 63 cells loaded with multisamples. CPU at rest is 2%, (I'm talking Live's CPU meter here; not Battery's) and with 18 notes of polyphony going on at once, I'm seeing maybe 7%. It's rising maybe 1% for every five notes polyphony I add to that.

Where's this CPU munching you're talking about? I sure as hell don't see it...

ew

yea, i do about the same with battery and usually sampler saves me 3-5% cpu. hell, i jus do basic sh!t with both samplers and i don't need anymore.

the only thing i like about ableton's sampler over battery is that in sampler u can zoom in on the wave form much more.