Logic Studio 9 vs Ableton live 8 Suite

[focusrite]

The only complaint...there is no multi-take recording. That is a feature that even Garageband has.

Sad ain't it...

It has it, although it may be a bit different than in other applications.
If you record in an Arrangement loop, each take is captured in the clips that are currently recording. Each time the loop reaches its end, a new loop is added to the same Audio File.
When done recording, you can select the take you want with the loop braces, crop the file and you're done.

Thanks for explaining that!

Supa Ninja, this is the best statement I ever read about Live and so fucking true!

Thank!

I've been using Live for 2 years now. Before that my day job was mixing with Pro Tools. When I decided to quit and go all out with production I fell deeply deeply in love with Live... until things started getting serious. I'm falling in love with Logic now and the two together are priceless. Live is so much fun and so flexible and fast... until your track counts start piling up and you start stacking instruments, 5-6 automation lanes on 1 track and most importantly MIXING. I've found it gets very claustrophobic and frustrating to the point where finishing a track feels like trying to organize the electric slide in times square. That's where Logic comes in. Logic is logical, powerful and smart and is DESIGNED For major high track count projects. Live is DESIGNed for live performance - whipping up tracks on the fly. It all shows to me when I get deeper and deeper (not everybody though). In any case, starting a track is always the easiest part of making music. Live is so fun at this and so poor at finishing I almost just start making more goddamn tracks. Finishing it is always hard hard WORK. Logic pays the bills when you need to get organization, multiple windows, quick contactable automation windows as a keyboard shortcut, moving tracks vertically in the environment to visually guide you through completion. If your spending as much time as me at this, fung shui has a huge impact on how your track actually comes out in the end. Its like dating a girl. Live is sexy, hot, flexible, fun, but after a while, and after life gets serious together you start to notice things that drive you insane and and pisses you off a lot. Logic is kinda plump and serious and she wear glasses and is a neat freak, not as fun, the sex is alright but she's there for you when things are getting heavy and serious and she's flexible as hell. She will go through the necessary steps to make sure it comes out RIGHT. And no matter HOW many arguments there are out there are about sound qualty, live sounds the way it looks when you go above 30 tracks. It sounds... claustrophobic even on the bounces and I find mix levels don't always seem to be accurate with what I remembered mixing. No matter how many tests there are there's trust issues to my ears (and many more on the internet). And trust is everything when you start spending stupid amounts of time on making music. I lOVE live though, but she'll piss you off and make you lazy (probably the source of A LOT of sound issues is its so easy to throw shit in there on the fly that when your dither/sample down, it shows. But my EARS still don't trust the punchiness). I say if your serious about music, (and your not making minimal tech or shit with low track counts) go Polygamy. Learning and spending money on both pays off down the road big time. If its just for fun, than my opinion says stick to Ableton.

Agreed that makes a lot of sense.

[UncleAge]

The only complaint...there is no multi-take recording. That is a feature that even Garageband has.

Sad ain't it...

It has it, although it may be a bit different than in other applications.
If you record in an Arrangement loop, each take is captured in the clips that are currently recording. Each time the loop reaches its end, a new loop is added to the same Audio File.
When done recording, you can select the take you want with the loop braces, crop the file and you're done.

This is true but it's not just different, it's kinda lame. I won't harp on it because it is what it is. But if Live would at least put each "take/loop" into it's own clip (thus audio file) the whole process would improve a bit, imo. With that said, considering that the program is meant to be for live situations I'm not so sure it's high on the to-do-list. It's definitely another one of those grey areas that exist between using Live for performances vs. studio use. And I should have clarified that when I stated that it was a bit sad. Thanks for the clarification h2k.

[perplex]

I actually used Logic for a good year, before I found out about ableton live. I LOVE live for its ease of use! Everything is just.....simple!


but why oh why doesn't it support SysEx messages? I have synths that beg for this feature! That's why I still use Logic also, because it supports SysEx, and also the arrangement of Logic is better when you have a lot going on. Ableton can get kind of crowded and unorganized quickly.

[UnCL0NED]

+1 for Supa Ninja's comparison.

I've been using Live for a few years now. Last week I tried to make a song for the first time in Logic.

Inspiration doesn't come so easy in Logic, because it's so straight forward. But the 16 bar loop I have now, I just started to mix (polish) in Logic to check the possibilities. I have to say that it really felt as a relief to mix in such a structured manner.

I have always felt, like Supa Ninja, a bit claustrophobic in Live when it came to mixing the song down, making it hard to start this process at all. In Logic it feels I have more control over and a better overview of the mixing process and I can make the whole sound better much more easy.

This weekend I want to try and remix a song in Logic, I mixed a while ago in Live already. I have a feeling it might just be the (new) way to go for me: Create the sounds and loops in Live and mixing it down in Logic.

[3phase]

Björk (or actually her crew) has both Live and Logic on stage: http://www.apple.com/pro/profiles/pollard/index2.html

This is a question I'm constantly thinking about. There are really annoying things with Live. But on the other hand, I've used Logic and Cubase before and the ALSO have really annoying things. You can't have it all in one program, some other program almost always does some of your favourite features better.

this is not quite true because when you forget about the flex time feature that was first introduced by Acid when i recall it wright its mainly the question.. pattern based versus timeline based workflow..

And how to combine this two.

to keep it short the best daw that ever hit the market perfectly has combined this two with very possitive results on the workflow.. the deceased Opcode Studio Vision.. the best die young...

An allmost perfect daw that actually prooved that its possible to mary the pattern based and the timeline concept without compromize.

As much i like the session view in ableton live to quickly scetch up things..as critical is the session/arrangement view interaction.. it dont has seen any improovements since L1..and we all know what the drawbacks are.. like scene to to arrangement conevrsions and back..or arragement versus clip automation ..

Also one of the biggest dawbacks in live is that you cant really work on and include older projekts in one file withaout major hazzle.. THat gets in your way for compiling albums and live sets..

Opcode studio vison was perfect with that.. you was actually able to run op to 9 differnet songs on different speeds simultaniously if necessary..

For people that dont know studio vision..its basically like cubase.. but the main window of cubase is just one pattern .. so yo have a complete arrange window as one pattern, and you can record a sequence of theese patterns.. just like the clips in abletons clips along the timeline ito another arrange/pattern windowm..


So in opcode studio vision a clip was a complete arrange window .. so in lives terminology a clip where you was able to record sequences of other clips into..on as much tracks as you needed.

nested clips/arramge windows... with independend sync and tempo settings !!!

studio visoon felt more like flex time as any later sequencer did,.. tehy all wre limited in relation to opcodes really great initial concept..

And thats actually the concept modern daw´s have to get back to.
evrything else is a compromize.

Actually each of the now market dominating DAW´s can and should develop into this direction. Add arrangers for the arrangers..

or in lifes case having a meta clip concept that allows to load one complete projekt into a single track.. like a grouptrack but with own launch clips that allows to do global edits on all included tracks.. to get it a bit further than that what studiovision allowed in the mid 1990´s...

I really hope Ableton has unified the audio midi clips in L9 ..as it should have been implemented from the start, because that would be one key element to develop into the direction that a clip can be anything even a whole arrangement with unlimitetd tracks and own tempo sync settings.

Like so often the future was yesterday.

[spektralisk]

Actually each of the now market dominating DAW´s can and should develop into this direction. Add arrangers for the arrangers..

or in lifes case having a meta clip concept that allows to load one complete projekt into a single track.. like a grouptrack but with own launch clips that allows to do global edits on all included tracks.. to get it a bit further than that what studiovision allowed in the mid 1990´s...

Yeah that would be great indeed and I think that something like this has been already implemented in Final Cut Pro X. I watched presentation yesterday and they introduced something called compound clips. They can store other clips (audio/video) in them, whole clips arrangements in them etc. and you can still go inside them and edit contents. This really simplifies a work flow and makes content reusable much easier.

I wonder if something like this will appear in Logic Pro X (if it's released).

[nylarch]

3phase coined a new term - -

"dawbacks" :: everything you hate about the program you use to make music

He is also the official spokesperson of the dawbacks of Ableton Live. btw I just encountered one of Logic's main dawbacks....the dreaded "system overload".

[Jstz]

I've been using Live for 2 years now. Before that my day job was mixing with Pro Tools. When I decided to quit and go all out with production I fell deeply deeply in love with Live... until things started getting serious. I'm falling in love with Logic now and the two together are priceless. Live is so much fun and so flexible and fast... until your track counts start piling up and you start stacking instruments, 5-6 automation lanes on 1 track and most importantly MIXING. I've found it gets very claustrophobic and frustrating to the point where finishing a track feels like trying to organize the electric slide in times square. That's where Logic comes in. Logic is logical, powerful and smart and is DESIGNED For major high track count projects. Live is DESIGNed for live performance - whipping up tracks on the fly. It all shows to me when I get deeper and deeper (not everybody though). In any case, starting a track is always the easiest part of making music. Live is so fun at this and so poor at finishing I almost just start making more goddamn tracks. Finishing it is always hard hard WORK. Logic pays the bills when you need to get organization, multiple windows, quick contactable automation windows as a keyboard shortcut, moving tracks vertically in the environment to visually guide you through completion. If your spending as much time as me at this, fung shui has a huge impact on how your track actually comes out in the end. Its like dating a girl. Live is sexy, hot, flexible, fun, but after a while, and after life gets serious together you start to notice things that drive you insane and and pisses you off a lot. Logic is kinda plump and serious and she wear glasses and is a neat freak, not as fun, the sex is alright but she's there for you when things are getting heavy and serious and she's flexible as hell. She will go through the necessary steps to make sure it comes out RIGHT. And no matter HOW many arguments there are out there are about sound qualty, live sounds the way it looks when you go above 30 tracks. It sounds... claustrophobic even on the bounces and I find mix levels don't always seem to be accurate with what I remembered mixing. No matter how many tests there are there's trust issues to my ears (and many more on the internet). And trust is everything when you start spending stupid amounts of time on making music. I lOVE live though, but she'll piss you off and make you lazy (probably the source of A LOT of sound issues is its so easy to throw shit in there on the fly that when your dither/sample down, it shows. But my EARS still don't trust the punchiness). I say if your serious about music, (and your not making minimal tech or shit with low track counts) go Polygamy. Learning and spending money on both pays off down the road big time. If its just for fun, than my opinion says stick to Ableton.

These are the exact same issues i stress in my reply's to other posts... I know i may seem to rant somtimes or sound like a little b%¶¢h ....but im not an english major, an may not sound(in text) how i would sound in person (calm).

You nailed it on the dot. ....and i think it says alot that ALL over the internet you have people trying to explain with metaphors and even all those phlipity tests (lol) ..the same exact experience, "Once you start getting really serious"

....and then you also have TONS of ego's that get hurt by the "serious" remark cause they feel its directed towards them (a better definition can be made on this).

Like i always say... 'we all think were the shit till we hit the sewer' ...well i dont always say that lol. But im saying we think were doing some real serious shit until we hit another "level"..... and when you reach like 6-7 (years/months in between them....it depends) levels you look back at comments you wrote with a little bit of embarrassment / or at least acknowledge the ignorance.

Example:
I for one taught myself everything mostly.. well, from looking it up on the internet. .....so its been a rather selcetive course in audio/production/engineering. I didnt even focus on Mono/Stereo capability till about 2 years ago. And once i found out about checking in mono (and all the nights of studying this subject) ...everything came together ie: New Level.

not trying to go off topic... but alot of people on here APEAR to be replying sensibly.... but really there only a few years in. Some just copy/pasting articles for a reply to 'sound' like they know there shit. (ive never done that....but have seen)

Its Very Very true.... Ableton is the BEST there is @ writing music. (for most in this generation) ...but anything beyond writing really should be done in a more profesional daw. So many wierd things going on with ableton. Lies in the manual / cover ups / processes going on that you dont even realize until its to late. ...Like "Consolidating" I used to consolidate EVERYTHING once i reall started getting organized ya know... nice and clean blocks:) But guess what ?!?! Ableton Automatically (and you cant change it...from what ive learned) "Normalizes" anything you consolidate. Its part of the process. ...I dont know about you, but I dont want to normalize unless i "want to normalize" haha. That tells you right there that theres something really amatuer going on in the backround. If this had to be FOUND by users... what else is going on? that eventually leads to that rounded/dull sound in an attempted professional ableton mix.

Im talking about a mix that you could apply everything you see in Dave Pensados ITL's .....a knowledgeable mix ya know?

Today is my first time trying to bounce to ableton. Ive written the whole track/Arrangement ...but held back from using any sends/automation as ive learned from other users this add to the problem discussed.

p.s. Logic Takes sometime to learn (took me about 2 months everyday...still trying to get the flow i had with ableton)
but its SOOOOO wourth it. Use Both ..work differently ...get to that higher level... always ....forever

peace / respect

[jasper]

I'm going to jump out on a limb here and say that Live is better for live performances.

Let me make you a spreadsheet for the rest of your points quickly:

Live - Can record
Logic - Can record

Live - Can sequence
Logic - Can sequence

Live - Can make electronic music
Logic - Can make electronic music

Hope that helps??

Guys...Anything from a 1992 windows pc to your cell phone can do all those things too.
Logic's a tad more advanced than Live