Ableton Forum

Does anyone know if you can import either of the following formats into Live:

- Sony Acid Pro 6
- Cubase SX 3


Cheers, Simmo

no

No you can't do it or no you dont know?

This sux. Nowdays I'm considering buying Cubase 4, because many people work with it (I'm a sound engineer) and I got to be able to recieve such projects. However, I prefer Live's mixer much better but I can't import OMFs into live. What's the point of making live support video and not adding OMF importing capabilities?

Ableton, hear this,
Your mixer is better then anything but PT, just because it's more like an analog console, sort of. If you supported OMF, made a few adjustments to the mixer (all tracks fold/expand, inserts view, soloing etc.) and improved editing, window management, and a "genertic remote" substitue, all this maybe as a Live varaient, then I really think you can take this product up.

I, for myself, am tired of Steinberg clumsy interface and limiting mixer (what's all the crap with the routing they got there?) and of Digidesign, which costs you an arm and leg for anything half decent.

what are you talking about? Live has amazing routing compared to Cubase but it's mixer is terrible in comparison - the metering, on track EQ in expanded view, being able to call up 3 mixer windows and resize it all, colour code it and just the general responsiveness of Cubase's mixer plus it's much easier on the eye GUI make it my choice for mixing, I usually rewire or import rendered files to mix in Cubase, which also has a better sounding audio engine according to some (I don't necessarily agree with this).

OMF support would be nice but omf is quite a flaky format anyway and is definately not a 100% reliable method of transferring files across any platform, remind me of cv/gate sequencing before MIDI, great when it works but prone to drift and messups on a fairly frequent basis.

You can at least import the rendered audio files into Live and remix from within, although I get your point about settings being lost and everything but it's not like you can open up Sonar projects in Cubase or vice versa either, ditto Logic. OMF might be useful sometimes but not always in any of these conversions.

I think the creative workflow of Cubase is not good.
In cubase you can't route anything to anything. You can't route a group to another group, unless "higher number" (who's the idiot that came up with that), can't send a FX channel to FX channel (come on it's so fuc'n basic guys), not mentioning side chaining is a pain in the ass! It ain't perfect in live as well, but you don't have to do that "5.1 group" nonsense.

I mix with BCF2000 and it's great in Mackie mode. I have the BCR2000 as well and it kicks ass for assining "specials" quickly.

I also think that the stock EQ in Cubase is quite bad, so I don't use it and don't care if it shows.

Metering is not very important to me. I try not to look when I mix, the less I look, the more I hear. I record and mix for ~-10dbfs peak so I feel safe. For each his own.

I don't care too much about mixer views, I never understood what's the deal. I prefer seeing it all tracks minimum width but with access to inserts on the strip. It's not available in live's mixer, which is too bad. I still have to see if I can live with it for big projects.

I live when you choose a channel, all of its viewed plugs are shown on the other window. Cubase interface sux, it's so unelegant.

Cubase has its pluses, but I find it too far away from simple and basic concept of Pro Tools, which still has to be perfected, and I think that Ableton should take most of Live's features and transform it to a new product that has some analog/PT thinking invested into it, and compete with protools as a VST capable product which doesn't limit the hardware choice, and cheap. They have done most of the work already.

And about OMF: you get OMF from the video editor once he is done. It's not the most advanced format in the world but it works and it a station for most movies made today. It's good enough to transfer multichannel audio with all the waves at the right place, with fades. What else do you need?

well I agree with you about the routing and the stock EQ in Cubase (although Live's old eq wasn't much to write home about either, thankfully eq8 is an improvement). Cubase works great with mackie control and all the inbuilt midi templates for operating synth patches. Cubase also works well with external fx. I have never felt much of a need to route a send to a send but I can understand the sonic possibilities that can be opened by allowing it and agree Steinberg have failed miserably in this regard, the users have been crying out for this and sidechaining etc for years.

I guess the look.gui is a personal preference but Live's mixer view is prone to giving me brain cramps, esp. if you have more than 20 tracks. With Cubase, the 3 mixer views is very handy for multiple tracks, especially if you're running a laptop and not running 2 or more LCDs etc. Or you can have all your audio tracks in one view, MIDI tracks in another view and say rewire or fx channels in the 3rd view. I'm quite a visual person so I like this and have gotten used to it, so Live seems lacking in that respect.

Now don't get me wrong, I love Live. It has liberated me from the tyranny of the arrangement view timeline. It's on the flyness and improvisational tools rule my world. But when I am ready to mix, I do sometimes render and import to Cubase or rewire as the arrangement view is also not the best in Live (especially only viewable 1 automation lane).