Ableton Forum

hi guys. always loved Live. been using it since version 2 but was testing already at version 1. version 9.5 has a simpler to die for but...

...i left you guys recently for Presonus Studio One (as many of other people begin to do). it doesn't matter how much i love Live. i'm also a graphics designer and i can't stand the GUI anymore. i think a DAW of this magnitude should at least give it's owners a choice. it's amazing that after so many years i need to hack my Live to change the colors because the given choices are quite terrible for a professional DAW.

please do consider making some kind of "skin" option or at least an alternative and i'll be running back like an orphan would to his newly found mom, because my productions just doesn't sound good to my ears through my eyes

If you're switching DAW (Digital AUDIO Workstation) because of the way it looks, you're doing it wrong. Live's workflow is second to none. I'd recommend focusing on the things that matter.

You have different skins available in the Preferences...

Yeah there's like 8 skins in preferences. One of them actually kinda looks like studio one...

Monolake, that's the one I use.

AlexGodbehere wrote:If you're switching DAW (Digital AUDIO Workstation) because of the way it looks, you're doing it wrong. Live's workflow is second to none. I'd recommend focusing on the things that matter.

I couldn't agree more with that! When I've started with live a few years ago, I didn't like the design - but now I appreciate the simplicity which makes it more save using it live. Having a workflow which makes it easy to run in a live situation - that is something which wouldn't be possible with fancy looking black knobs etc.

VenTon wrote:hi guys. always loved Live. been using it since version 2 but was testing already at version 1. version 9.5 has a simpler to die for but...

...i left you guys recently for Presonus Studio One (as many of other people begin to do). it doesn't matter how much i love Live. i'm also a graphics designer and i can't stand the GUI anymore. i think a DAW of this magnitude should at least give it's owners a choice. it's amazing that after so many years i need to hack my Live to change the colors because the given choices are quite terrible for a professional DAW.

please do consider making some kind of "skin" option or at least an alternative and i'll be running back like an orphan would to his newly found mom, because my productions just doesn't sound good to my ears through my eyes

Ableton does make small enhancements to their GUI.

Version 9 they made some Subtle changes which improved the look. 9.5 even made some more slight changes with more waveform resolution. They pretty much already have skins (which allows the color scheme of Live to be changed), although many of them focus on the color gray. I think other folks make color schemes you can import into Live as well.


That said many folks love Ableton's GUI. IMO, I think Ableton has a very functional GUI and usually when I want a different mood, the built-in skin choices tends to provide them. I think their look is fine and can't think of much improvement.

VenTon wrote: ...i left you guys recently for Presonus Studio One (as many of other people begin to do). it doesn't matter how much i love Live. i'm also a graphics designer and i can't stand the GUI anymore. i think a DAW of this magnitude should at least give it's owners a choice. it's amazing that after so many years i need to hack my Live to change the colors because the given choices are quite terrible for a professional DAW.

As a ui/ux/visual designer I found Studio One 3 much less intuitive than Live. There is no way to know what coloured box with text (or icon) is a button and what is a label/title. I just couldn't bring myself to use it.

Live is also flat but it is much more clear because they have unified styles for ui elements.

It has some great features though, but I think they wen't too over the top with the flat aesthetic in the latest update. Their plugin directory with thumbnails of the plugins is excellent! I would love it if Live would feature something similar in the future.



I'm not saying Live's UI is perfect. It could need a serious facelift, but I wouldn't say Studio One is nicer.