Ableton Forum

I've decided to give live another try after a couple of years away from it. The Memorial weekend discounts motivated me to upgrade from live 6 to the live 8 suite.
I'm hoping the audio quality is improved since I last used it & I'm looking forward to using all of the instruments that come with the suite.
I haven't installed it yet as I'm waiting until I upgrade my laptop's HDD. I've been using logic & maschine in the interim & plan to integrate live with those.
Are there any tips you would have for me? I can't afford MAX yet but it looks cool.
What are the best things about the live 8 suite in your opinion?
I'll be both composing EDM & performing in a DJ style with hopefully live instrumentation too.

Thanks

azmills wrote: What are the best things about the live 8 suite in your opinion?

the music that you will be making with it

welcome back =)

Another one - I'm in similar shoes. I've been using other stuff mostly, but jumped on the 33% discount offer. Thrilled to be back, and considering the negativity I'm amazed at how responsive and rock solid Live 8 has been so far, after two days of near continuous use. Happy times...

I'm still on live 7, non suite.
Best upgrade since live 6: drum racks, hell yeah. It's a nice workflow just for individually eq/compress/reverbing all my drums separately.
Never been tempted by suite, prefer external vsts to get the sounds I want, even for eqing.

I was around when Operator came out as a single product, a couple of years before the Suite existed... At that time however I was not especially pleased with the purchase or impressed by Operator, and though I wanted it as a "completist" I did not end up using it at all.

However, the improvements to Operator in Suite 8 are fantastic, and make this a synth that I can now see myself using a LOT more.

Also in the Suite I'm fond of Electric - which is based on AAS Lounge Lizard. For me this is still the best virtual Electric Piano instrument around, and its great to have it fully integrated into Ableton. Analog also sounds brilliant (but is very CPU intensive). Tension hasn't been a "go to" instrument for me over the past 3 years since it came out, although it is worth exploring. And I've not had the time yet to really check out Collision, but I have high hopes for that one....

headquest wrote:Another one - I'm in similar shoes. I've been using other stuff mostly, but jumped on the 33% discount offer. Thrilled to be back, and considering the negativity I'm amazed at how responsive and rock solid Live 8 has been so far, after two days of near continuous use. Happy times...

It took over a year to get it to the point Live 8 is at now (not to mention some serious bug fixing efforts a few months ago that halted development)

A lot of the negativity was warranted, and one of the reasons things are more 'solid' now

So cotdagoo,
Would you say things are solid now? Anything that still needs work?
What are some of your favorite things about the program's latest incarnation?

azmills wrote:So cotdagoo,
Would you say things are solid now? Anything that still needs work?
What are some of your favorite things about the program's latest incarnation?

For me things are pretty solid. Still get the occasional hiccup now & then, but for the most part I'm happy where things are at.

Others aren't so lucky, but a lot of it comes down to hardware configuration, 3rd party VSTs and how much you're pushing the program. I regularly have 30-50 tracks in an arrangement after fx & edits and can leave my session open for a day or two without worrying (still saving frequently though!).

If you're coming here from v6 there's definitely some handy features added. Grouping tracks was a huge one, but I've also had a few issues since v8 came out with groups getting corrupted or routing somehow getting messed up, but this hasn't been an issue lately. I don't have the suite, and haven't used the new instruments since playing with the v8 beta but I imagine there's plenty to keep you busy over the next while

Coming from v6 some other big improvements include the new Groove Pool, surely the best/easiest way any software has implemented this idea. Also the slicing of audio clips into drum racks/MIDI is fantastic, with slice to transient, slice to warp marker, etc, all there. Timestretching is improved with the new Complex Pro mode, and there are new automation tools including separate lanes, and clip fades/crossfades.

Overall it all feels a lot more slick to me, less a scratchpad/performance tool, more a proper DAW. Sure there's still some improvements I would like to see added (e.g. better MIDI editing tools, such as an info line for making precise adjustments, MP3 export would save time but isn't so necessary, and I would really like to have proper MIDI file import/export including tempo track...)

Not to mention the routing is phenomenal and group tracks, not to mention the addition of max for live which is incredible.

welcome back to Live.

welcome back to the living..