Ableton Forum

I upgraded to Snow Leopard and Live 6 started crashing. Bummer. Well, not quite, because Live 8 has tons of stuff that seems to make it worth upgrading. So now the question is, which version to go for? The download for 8 is $200, suite is $360, suite boxed is $430 (with the awesome upgrade special that Ableton has going on right now).

The $$ difference is not a big deal for me right now. The main thing is, I want to get the best value for the $230 difference between Live 8 & boxed suite 8. For sound generation I have Reason 4 & an Alesis Fusion. More presets would be nice but I'm definitely not limited in terms of what I can program with them - just limited on time! Live Suite appeals to me because I *really* like the Live interface over all, and having the Ableton instruments built-in can make working even faster and more fun. One thing I'm curious about though is whether the boxed suite comes with many loops? Would be nice to have a big loop library to use as a starting point.

Right, so, I'm definitely upgrading to Live 8. The question is whether I should go for the suite upgrade (boxed or download), or if that money would be better spent on other VSTs / sample libraries / loop libraries. With the discount right now it seems like a *hell of a deal* but as I said I think I have plenty of sound generation power w/ Reason & the Fusion. Plus I'd have to spend a lot of time learning all the Live Suite instruments.

btw at present my setup is Reason+Live+Fusion. I only have the stock sounds for all of them, never downloaded a sample or loop library or anything like that, so I could def be missing lots of good stuff.

What do you guys think?

If you have Live you can demo the Suite instruments.

You can download the demo version of Live 8 and try it out and the additional Live instruments in the Suite for 14 days. This way you can gauge how useful the additional content in the Suite is of use.

I am personally holding off for Live 9, I don't think it will be too far around the corner but I guess we'll learn more in January at the NAMM.

oh one thing I've considered is just going with Live 8 and using the saved money to get Recycle. But I'm wondering if Live's slice-to-midi feature make Recycle less valuable?

Demo it and find out for yourself !

It's a useful feature in Live though. It's not as full featured as Recycle but good enough for most applications.

k will do

So re: Live 8 suite...it comes with all the software instruments, and the boxed version includes EIC & session drums. Are EIC & session drums just big ass sample libraries? So basically suite boxed is a bunch of software instruments, and a big sample library. Is that accurate? What does it have in the way of loops?

Turns out EIC is not exclusive to the suite, but rather is part of the boxed set (basic live and suite).

I've demo'd suite some. Wasn't drawn in enough that I want to plunk down the cash for it. Reason rewired to Live works great, and there's plenty for me to learn & play with still.

As a bonus, I discovered that the slice-to-midi allows you to slice based on transients rather than just time spans. No need for Recycle!