Ableton Forum

So recently I have been using Ableton live rewired with Reason 4, but honestly I cant stand the workflow. Automation is a nightmare in rewire mode and keeping track of two documents can get tiresome. I was debating to get Komplete 7, but people have told me that NI's synths are cpu hogs and are less stable compared to Reason. I have a macbook pro with 2.4 Ghz i5 core, 320 Gb HD at 5400 rpm and 4 Gb of ram. Can my computer handle the Komplete 7 package smoothly? If not ill probably just upgrade to Reason 5. Any suggestions would be great.

thanks

I have an idea... how about you download the demos and answer your own questions!?!?

People love to hate native instruments for some reason, but their stuff is pretty good, IMHO.

Unfortunately, you don't have demos for every product they make but you have Komplete 7 players which is free and that you can download here : http://www.native-instruments.com/#/en/ ... ?page=1589

It should give you a pretty good idea of what to expect on your particular setup.

i run ableton suite and & komplete 7 on a 2.4 dual core acer laptop with no problems.

http://www.native-instruments.com/en/su ... -versions/

just about all of the major players are there.

I love the sounds in Komplete. I used to do Reason 4, and then live suite 8,

Reason 4: Didn't like the sound of the sampled instruments, and the workflow just makes me want to kill myself. I basically just stopped using automation.
Live suite 8: preset browsing is not fun or rewarding, to my ears (in a rock/pop context). I mostly use session drums A LOT and new instances of Operator or Analog. Also drum machines is quite useful.

Komplete: LOVE the presets. Very easy and fun to use the tagged browser to find what you want and then use the macros to tweak it. With basic knowledge of the synths you can alter the sounds to just what you were looking for.
I'm on a White MacBook, 1.8ghz 2gb of ram. CPU hog. Guitar rig is the worst for me. My new workflow is to add the synth, get what i want and then immediately freeze and flatten. I then use the audio clips and filter those with Auto Filter or whatever. This way automation is written into the clip and ties my hands from ENDLESS tweaking.

PITA i know, BUT it keeps Live VERY snappy, and you can break the rule if you need to for important parts, putting your CPU to work on the most important thing. A more powerful machine and this would be a different story for sure.

What i've starting doing with guitar rig is have one input channel with GR on it, and then set up other channels with GR's output feeding them audio. So i lose "reamping" type capability, but i'll gladly trade that for a non sluggish DAW. Keeps the progress happening and then it stays fun. I like the idea of "old skool" recording when your guitar audio COULDN'T be changed. You got what you got. I apply that to the synths too and i have a lot more fun.

good luck with your choice! I would recomend the free players or demo's or whatever they have. Always see for yourself.

Native instruments stuff is not especially cpu intensive these days. In fact, some of it is incredibly light on cpu, like fm8 or Absynth (using features from before version 5!- Absynth presets from V3 and before are crazy light). Yes, most NI plug-ins are heavier than Reason devices, but almost all plug-ins are heavier than Reason devices. And yes they might be slightly less stable than Reason, but Reason is probably the most stable thing out there. As soon as you get into plug-ins, you add an element of possible instability/conflict between plug-ins and DAW. But to be honest, NI stuff is pretty stable these days. I can't remember the last time an NI device crashed Live.

And yeah, using Live with plug-ins is much more satisfying and convenient than using rewire and reason. Who wants to open and save two different apps for a single song... no thanks.

Dude ur hip to clip envelopes and such right? Could that be like running matrix into those eqs?

Agreed to each his own. If u like the approach definitely do it.

M4l to control reason? You are CRAZY dude haha love it!

Agreed, the automation issue with rewire is a pain in the ass.

But in my experience I recently started "rediscoverying" reason as I did use it alot when I was a cubase user. Since using Live I had moved across to more VSTs, especially the Komplete VSTs.

Since recently revisiting Reason I have no idea why I moved away from it, there are lots of patching options and even when you do get into it you feel you are only really scratching the surface of what it can do. Although that being said there is a general way of doing things for each module in Reason which makes it easier to get your head around. As ShelLuser mentioned you can lose yourself patching away with comninator and get some great sounds its all about layering.
Redrum drum is definately my prefered method of making beats and Malstrom is great for evolving pads and ambience.

Komplete on the other hand, you have alot of plugins and great sounds but keeping in mind there seems to be a different workflow for each plugin which to me makes the learn curve larger. Massive is great for bass and sequenced patterns though and I have managed to learn alot about it.

At the end of it is what works for you. If I had to choose only one, I would go with Reason as it is what I am used to and the workflow is easy for me to understand.

ShelLuser - I would love to here more about your Rewire M4L device. Sounds like a winner.

i moved from cubase to reason and then to ableton and started with ableton and reason rewired.
Didn,t like the workflow off saving ableton and reason songs togheter so i moved to Ableton with VST,s.

distaudio wrote:Komplete on the other hand, you have alot of plugins and great sounds but keeping in mind there seems to be a different workflow for each plugin which to me makes the learn curve larger.

Agreed, 100 %. That's a bit unfortunate that the learning curve is so steep (for the synths, the samplers, battery and kontakt are pretty intuitive), but there's a lot of power in it and the factory sounds are really amazing IMHO.

ShelLuser wrote:Can't say I share the semantics but each to his own

While I agree that automation is different in a rewire setup its also what I like about it. Different approaches; different workflows and as such different results. I always try to keep both separated; automations in Reason should be handled in Reason and vica versa. Not always feasible; its why I'm busy building a M4L device to control Reason from within Live, but it works so far.

But then again, I'm also one of those guys who loves to spend several hours on patching up a combinator So the whole background is immediately different; I like tweaking to get some sound results.

And well, Thor is just... Not Operator

Reason simply can do stuff you can't do in Live. Like controlling two PEQ2's (2 band EQs) with a Matrix device. That can give you some very heavy sound effects, undoable with Live (that is; without M4L ).


Alas; back to your question...

I don't think there's a problem here. Absolutely try the players for yourself. But if its quick results you're after I think you'll enjoy Komplete. It allows for massive tweaking (not quite comparable, but still..) and comes with a massive amount of presets. And the sounds are quite nice too.

Your setup should be able to cope just fine I think.

I've been using Reason in just about all my songs, since- like many others- I'm very comfortable with the Reason workflow. And Thor is just amazing. Could you explain what you're doing with M4L to control Reason within Live? Live of course has the External Instrument device, but it would be really neat to have more control of Reason within Live rather than relying on automation. I'd really like to set up a lot of my projects for the stage and without such control I'm just going in circles.

...both !!!

Ah, I never got an email notification for any replies.... Have you had any luck lately? I'm really looking forward to seeing the end result. Let me know how it turns out!

ShelLuser wrote:

jonno128 wrote:Have you had any luck lately? I'm really looking forward to seeing the end result. Let me know how it turns out!

Well, my blog post (link) from last year basically sums it up...

Well, I'm really to plan on picking up on this not too long from now. Esp. since there have been quite a few updates to M4L so far, and I'm curious to see if those might help me to get this thing further on the road.

Very cool stuff! Very insightful blog as well. Only problem is that my only controller is a Novation Remote SL, which obviously has way less controls than the APC40. Just being able to control Thor in Live would make my life so much easier, even if it's just controlling filtering and envelopes. Although I have very little knowledge using MAX/MSP, it seems like you've already made some significant progress and your workflow is more or less there. I'll definitely be checking out your blog for future updates. Best of luck!