Ableton Forum

I plan on buying both but I just wanted to hear some differnces that anyone has encountered.

Apples and oranges, really. I personally dumped Logic in favour of Live, others love the two together.

Machinate wrote:I personally dumped Logic in favour of Live

Ditto.

yep, me too
seems already like ages ago; all those different screens and things I kept thinking of; as long as it runs it's ok, but I don't understand half of it...
I only have Live over a half year though; understand about 80% I guess..
changed my life (and music)

when i was using logic , i used to beat my wife and kids. now that i use live , i dont beat them. the lack of bruises says it all

logic is a bit of a beast to get used to, but has some handy features synths, and plugins, live is easier to understand and lets you do some stuff with samples and loops that would take a life time with logic. and lets you really jam with some sounds and try heaps of different ideas really quickly.
i use both rewired logic is good if i am looking for a specific sound, live more for experimenting and arranging. logic is great for mixing especially the compressors, reverb, enveloper, delays etc.

hope some help

I use Logic only when I really need to ... when doing some serious MIDI editing or recording, bouncing down MIDI tracks to audio and sometimes when I run out of CPU juice in Live and get frustrated. Logic's big, big bonus is that it is supremely CPU efficient.

I've been struggling with getting Logic Express 7.1 working. It seems straightforward up to a point, and has a boatload of features, but I'm still finding it hard to get up and running easily. Up till now I've been composing MIDI strictly in Reason and recording audio with GarageBand. I've gotten used to both programs' relatively consistent, easy user interfaces, but from the audio side of things obviously GB is extremely limited. Then I move to Logic and nothing works exactly the way it seems it should, For example, trying to set up ReWire so I can record MIDI to Logic, play back MIDI to Reason, then pipe audio back to Logic requires you to draw a squiggly diagram in the Environment. The resulting MIDI track in the Arranger has no record-enable button (wha?) so it's unclear that hitting Record on the Transport will achieve anything. When I record MIDI parts, I see a little score (whaa?) in the Track Contents where I expect to see piano-roll notation (which does appear in the Edit screen, thankfully). I record audio parts, go to the Audio window to double-click one to edit it, and get an error that the part 'has no audio object!'

OK, I realize, I'm a clueless noob. But I've bought Logic 7 Pro Power! and read the 522 page PDF manual, and still, I had to learn more or less by trial and error or by going to 3rd-party websites and forums, because none of the documentation explained exactly how to do anything useful, only described what each object was supposed to do, not how to use it in context of 'how people might typically use it'.

I've heard people say over and over, that Logic is 'the best value for money' because of everything bundled with it - the synths, plugins, amp sims, etc - but that 'you just have to get used to its way of working' - well, that's what's so frustrating, that all that power is there, but I can't easily get to it.

On the other hand, Reason and Live make me feel like making music is really easy. I've been playing with the Live 5 demo for a while now and there's very little about it that seems obscure or hard to understand. I realize it's not as insanely configurable as Logic, but then I don't need it to be. Setting things up so that I could ReWire MIDI and Audio to and from Reason was a breeze.

So my question to you all is, what functionality would I be giving up if I dumped Logic and moved to Live 5 as my main ReWire host/sequencer/DAW? What would I have to buy, in terms of 3rd-party plugins/AUs/VSTs etc to make up for what's missing?

i dumped logic for live for the very reasons you identify. nothing was easy, and there was tons of functionality i didn't need (so the complexity was wasted). as for all the synths, i've got reaktor and think the combination of operator and simpler suffices in any event. nor are there any logic FX that i really miss, and i wouldn't trade any of them for beat repeat.

Superflat, thanks. Yeah, I can get almost any synth sound I need out of Reason - I've become really good at programming the Subtractor and Malstrom. I keep reminding myself, I do have real outboard gear like a k2000, guitar fx like a sansamp + various other boxen...All good enough for songwriting, and when it comes to doing pro-level overdubs, mastering and mixing I'd prefer to take my tracks in to my friendly neighborhood ProTools HD shop.

How's the audio clip editing in Live? I really just need to be able to normalize gain and do trimming; I do have Peak LE so I suppose I can also use that in a pinch.

Also, I'm not sure, but can you import ReCycle loops directly into Live? Logic converts REX files into Apple Loops. Of course I could always trigger them from inside Reason if I needed to, but I'm just curious - with so many REX and now, Apple Loop format samples on the market, it might be useful to have them available in Live itself.

i just rewire reason into live, setup a rex machine and record the rexloops to another channel. dump reason and tweak tweak tweak away. in live i can slice up beats with the newly recorded rexloop and the impulse even easier than with the rexplayer, so i just use rexplayer to play em.

aj_kandy wrote:Superflat, thanks. Yeah, I can get almost any synth sound I need out of Reason - I've become really good at programming the Subtractor and Malstrom. I keep reminding myself, I do have real outboard gear like a k2000, guitar fx like a sansamp + various other boxen...All good enough for songwriting, and when it comes to doing pro-level overdubs, mastering and mixing I'd prefer to take my tracks in to my friendly neighborhood ProTools HD shop.

How's the audio clip editing in Live? I really just need to be able to normalize gain and do trimming; I do have Peak LE so I suppose I can also use that in a pinch.

Also, I'm not sure, but can you import ReCycle loops directly into Live? Logic converts REX files into Apple Loops. Of course I could always trigger them from inside Reason if I needed to, but I'm just curious - with so many REX and now, Apple Loop format samples on the market, it might be useful to have them available in Live itself.

precision editing in Live is kind of not there for me at the moment. I like to work at sample level at times and that's definately a no go, especially with the problems Live has in the arranger when there are too many clips (it slows down when copy/pasting).

it also does not have rendered effects meaning you cannot just apply a compressor or a delay to a chunk of audio the way you can in pro tools and cubase lets say where you select a piece of audio and right click and add your effects and its processed there and then without needing a realtime plugin.

normalizing isnt there, but gaining is easy as you just select a clip and go to its 'clip properties' and adjust the clip volume from there.

I used to have Logic, now I don't

my boy said it best, it's a matter of how your brain works

Linear view
arrange view
session view
vertical view
sideways
up and down
etc

I think unfortunatley you're just going to have to get your feet wet and see for yourself - demo, demo demo

oh and you cannot import recycle files into Ableton - it's on the feature request page though

a

If you could only get one, it would come down to these two questions:

If you wanted realtime stability for performances: Live.

If you were more interested in getting out ideas than mastering them: Live

If however, you are a keyboard player and all you need is one sound at a time: logic has some incredible instruments, when played one at a time.

If you have all of the patience in the world, are the type that writes out everything in adavance, takes impecable notes, and simply wants to realize a premeditated vision with absolutley no messing around, Logic, and a crate of aspirin/meth-amphetamines might help you realize your ideals all of the way through the last mastering phases.

Well put LOFA!
Depending on your desires/needs, you could always go Live + Logic Express and buy some 3rd plugs/vstis to use in both with the difference. Other than the built-in plugs, there ain't an enormous difference for most people functionally between LE and LPro.
FYI I'm a former LPro owner who sold it for Express and some $ for other toys so I guess I would say that.