Ableton Forum

Hello fellow Ableton users and what not! I'm here to present yet another question for the masses

Let me start by saying a bit about myself and how this question came about: I go to an audio school where we strictly use protools. At first I was weary of the idea because I am extremely interested in music production and I was always told Ableton is the ideal DAW for my interest ( little do I know ). After months of using protools I have began to really love the workspace and been questioning where my heart lies. I never disliked ProTools, I'm just an amateur when it comes to DAW's,.

Now I I understand that EVERYONE is different when it comes to something like this and one DAW really can't be that much better than the other, because it all comes down to preference.

But that doesn't stop me from asking: Why do YOU choose Ableton over another DAW? What do you get from Ableton that you wouldn't get from ProTools, Logic, FL, ETC!

I'm very curious.


TL;DR?: why ableton ?

locknar wrote:i chose ableton because i like how they put out an updated version and then they remove it.
no other daw can do that. i like originality.

LMAO....too funny - but true for recent update that was yanked for a problem...

I tried it due to a friends suggestion many years ago (3.04 days - not long before 4.0 came out) and I had come from Acid 4.0d and I loved their track crossfades (SIMPLEST one I have ever seen when working with loops/clips) but lack of really any MIDI Support/VSTi back then. And of course, my area where I usually 90% of the time is Session View. I like being able to work up progressions, make a copy, tweak it again, copy, rinse/repeat down a track for say, drums, 2nd track synth stuff, rinse repeat of what I did in the drum track, fire them off randomly myself, use Follow-Actions (not sure if any DAW has this except maybe Fruity Loops?) or Scene launching, VSTi support, piano roll MIDI editing, etc...and been using it pretty much since then. If I recall I also did my 2nd and 3rd CD releases entirely in Live with minor audio work in Sound Forge (and a Split release and other compilation stuff). I like Session View, I don't DJ/do club stuff so Push (while cool) is not for me nor is APC40/20 or Launchpad. But it's cool we have that tailored to our software.

Mike

when i bought version 3 it was because i felt in love with session view, and i kept on upgrading ever since. not 100% happy with live yet but i know it inside out, it enables me to quickly put down some ideas and i like the gui very much. integration with external hw such as ext instr. and ext audio fx are also very good for the way i work, and max for live was a quantum leap for me, even i still haven't ventured into building devices (and probably never will).
so.. essentially for session view, even if nowadays i start almost every project in maschine standalone i export everything and start playing around with my loops in session.

My first try with Live was a kind of SHOCK.
I found i can record phrases (in a track) one after the other in a vertical concept, so i can play them in whatever order!

If you consider that you can do this with ALL the tracks (instruments), you will find that this is impossible to do in the other DAWs.

The concept is not DJ only, and in fact as a guitar player i found a TON of new ideas only using that method (i'm speaking about the session view for those who don't have Live).

With the other DAW i was forever blocked by an horizontal timeline which is now prehistory for me. In fact you can't hear how it sounds let's say track 1 from 30" to 45" with track 3 from 63" to 88".

The vertical concept is just the start, you can move the musical ideas to the traditional horizontal arrangement to do last touches.

Try it to join the shock

cheers
dan

Like other I chose it long ago and have been updating since v3.

Session view
Racks
Midi Track Routing options
M4L
Control Surface blue handing
the modularity that allows users to use Live in many different ways

Ableton Live is the only daw with a very well thought concept and philosophy behind it. Log, Cubase, Protool, Reaper, Sonar and Studio One all adapt to the previous hardware paradigm of recording and console mixing. probably only Renoise and Reason share Live design from principles.

Live made huge advancements in workflow with session view, the GUI and racks.

Session view i by far the greatest innovation, and the reason this DAW is superb for EDM.

That being said the GUI with it's 2d graphics, no windows and no skeumorphism was also an innovation, many people complains about it but in reality it is by far the most ergonomic of all daw's. And ergonomics matter.

Last Drum racks, racks, macros and warping make Live quite capable on it's own for sound design and composing. The the introduction of M4l brought a whole new dimmension and gave emphasis to the creative side of Live.

I choose Live cause it's well designed and offers abetter workflow for me, I just hope they never abdon the principles they started with.

I didn't choose it, it chose me, I am The Chosen One!!! In reality, I really like the work flow and ease of use even though I'm still pretty new at it.

tastypants wrote:Why do YOU choose Ableton over another DAW? What do you get from Ableton that you wouldn't get from ProTools, Logic, FL, ETC!

1. Session view. It's a huge help to me at the beginning when I don't really know where a song is going yet. It makes it very easy to try out different things and variations of ideas without creating a total mess of the workspace.

2. Device view. I like that I can always see the details of all the devices and effects on a track without having to expand a bunch of sub-windows. (Of course, this falls down a little with third party VSTs and AUs).

3. Max4Live.

4. Push

5. The no b.s. look of the native synths and effects. I'm probably the only one who will say this, but I like that they don't try to look like some real world hardware device. (Again, this doesn't apply to 3rd party VSTs and AUs).

Caveat: I've never used PT, and it's been many years since I used FL or Sonar. I keep trying to like Logic, but it never seems to stick.

--
Moose

I first got into Live around version 4 I think, the one that added MIDI for the first time. I had been watching it since v1 with interest, but I was quite happy with Cubase at the time. Then I made the jump to a laptop, no longer wanted a dongle, and took a deep look at Live. Realized I could use one tool to write, perform, and DJ music, and combined with the new flexibility the laptop brought, I was set.

For awhile.

Live certainly fills all of those rolls, but over time I began to miss some of the most speciliazed functions of other tools I had used before. These days Live is something I turn to when I just want to quickly capture audio as loops. Sometimes to prep to transfer to my Octatrack, other times as a way of quickly sketching out a DJ track order for a new mix. I like being able to quickly move chunks of audio arround to hear different combinations or orders of them, Live is the only tool that does this so smoothly.

I still mess about in Arrange view and write tracks in Live now and then, and occasionally when I need to do some detailed timestretching I'll go that route as well. I'm just so used to warping tracks in Live, that even though most other DAWs have the exact same functionality, I still reach for Live first.

Not really using it for DJing or playing live anymore though.

I like the understated, minimalistic presentation. This applies to everything from the clean visuals to the straightforward, simple naming of the devices. I also love the fact that quick, efficient workflow is key and more important than any other consideration and despite all the updates the software never became bloated.

Now minimalistic and understated doesn't mean it should look ugly on my laptop. I can't wait for Retina support.

It's good for happy accidents that can be recorded re-arranged easily as well as getting down semi finished product before chopping it to hell again and ending up with something far more interesting. Then you can perform it live all from one program. So mainly the audio processing and live aspect.

the workflow, the workflow, the workflow.

live nails this in a way that no other DAW touches. first and foremost due to Session View, but there are many other functional aspects that aid workflow as well: the left-to-right visualization of the plugin chain (nice to see this in Renoise, too), Clip Envelopes, automatic warping of imported clips, an excellent array of native FX, clicking on a parameter automatically loads its automation lane, and a zillion things I'm forgetting at the moment.

did I mention Workflow?!

I´m much more productive with it because it works as it should. I don`t have to think about it and I`m able to(n) concentrate on the important parts, the music, not "wrestling" with the software.

i like because of it's detail oriented comping and the complex curves system.