Review and Discussion of the Ableton Live

[admin]

Review of the Ableton Live
Adds Acid and Sonar like Loop facilities to Cubase and Logic
by Rich the Tweakmeister

Can be read here:
http://www.tweakheadz.com/reviews/revie ... n_live.htm

Get a price: http://www.zzounds.com/a--3745/item--MDOLIVE




Excerpt:

There's lots of programs that deal with loops these days on the PC platform. Of particular note is Sonic Foundry's ACID, which is a mature excellent application. You might wonder if any company could top ACID, for it's flexibility and sheer ease of use. Along come the Ableton Live, a relative newcomer, distributed by Midiman. (Though the product is marketed by M-Audio does not mean you have to have an M-Audio card to run it. It will run on any soundcard that works in your system. Back to Acid, At first glace, the products look similar. Both let you paint loops along a track; both automatically compress and stretch the loop to fit the project's BPM (tempo) and have a facility for auditioning loops from hard disk. Then I peered a little deeper into the Live, started tweaking stuff up, using the FX, bouncing tracks around, recording and tweaking audio and using the extensive MIDI trigger functions.

This program is a tweaker's delight. ACID can't touch it in terms of this. The depth and intensity of the effects and their ease of use--real time, or automated--gets five gold stars from me. If you are into loops and need to be on the cutting edge, the Ableton Live is for you.

[Tweak]

To discuss the Ableton Live, Please Post a Reply to this topic. Thanks!

[djken]

Hey Tweak, Here is the scoop. Specs: Dual PIII 733, 1 GIG Rambus PC800 Ram, Soundblaster Live (saving up to get a MAudio 1010), Cubase SX, Ableton Live 2.

Just bought Ableton Live 2 and it is totally awesome. After playing for a few hours as a stanalone I decided to try it using Rewire with Cubase SX as the Master and Live as the slave. I can hear it fine but when I went into Mixer view in Cubase it shows up on Bus 2/3. When I enabled ReWire it also had options of Bus's (2/3, 4/5 etc) instead of Tracks. Is there a way to have it show up on a Track instead of a Bus? And if so, how do I go about doing that? The meter levels show up just fine on the Mixer but they are assigned to Bus2/3 and not one of the Tracks. I'd like to be able to (if this is possible) arm Track 1/2 or 3/4 or 5/6 (whichever ones it is assigned to) and then record it into Cubase. The BPM sync's up nicely and it sounds great. I think I'm missing a configuration somewhere. Do I have to re-route the Bus's to Tracks? If so, how do I go about doing that. Thanks in advance for any assistance you might be able to give on this.

DJ Ken

[Tweak]

Rewire does not work the way you want it to. The pipe only goes to a bus, and the only way to record it is to use the audio mixdown in SX with that bus soloed.

[oakstroke]

I have read the reviews, and Live 2 sounds intriguing. I see that it records audio. Could a person working alone and multitracking get by with this as his only audio sequencer?

Curious

[Tweak]

Probably could. It's not a conventional way of multi-tracking, but it is effective. Once learned, it would be powerful. There's no midi recording though.

[oakstroke]

I think I'll download the demo and check it out. I have Reason, so the two of them might be enough for my needs.

[DjSoY]

doesn't work on my rewire...can't here anything when looping things

[DjSoY]

Sorry for my message...I was supposed to say "doesn't work on my CUBASE SX....can't HEAR anything when looping things"

[cathochic]

Hello! First Post! Great Site!

Ableton Live 3.0 is the program which got me back into recording. It's capabilities reach far beyond my expectations of loop software. It's rewire abilities are very much improved, as well. It works flawlessly on both my PC and my Powerbook G4, and the licencing allows me to install them on both, as long as I'm not using them simultaneously.

Being a tool for live performance also means I can create something and take it on the road.

[Tweak]

Could not agree more. I am loving it. Just updated my review (top of page).

[rasputin]

Could not agree more. I am loving it. Just updated my review (top of page).

This is a cool topic (about my favorite software) but it's really time to come up to present; Live 4 was just released a few weeks ago and it's come quite a ways since 2002...

r.

[drjimuk]

As well as recording my bands I make electronic music. So far I have been running programs like Fruity Loops and a little E-jay since I mainly do it for fun. I have just been asked by a net label thing that likes my work to put an album together and they will sell it for me So now i'm looking for a few more professional tools to get some better results!

Could someone explain or give me a link to somewhere expaining the advantages of useing live re-wired into SX... What can you do? How much of a leap is this setup from Fruity loops/ejay? (flexiblity i'm hoping will be miles ahead) Would you say this would be the best setup?

Thanks
Jim

[Tweak]

The advantages are:

1. real time timstretch
2. the unique live effects
3. the ease of use of working with loops

Cubase can't do any of the above easily.

4. You can use it without cubase as a real time remix/dj/dance music creator.

[art]

I'm in love with ableton [why dont i marry it?] .

I'm still very new to electronic music, and tho i have used cubase and cool edit in the past this is just awesome.

And now that version 4 is out it can do even more stuff that progs like cubase can do, like midi and vsti integration.

I'm loving it, the session view is so fun to use as you run around firing off all your clips.

I'm having no problems, just wanna learn up on it now!

matt

[dc]

aaah ok , I feel not alone anymore , ... on the other topic ( first ) Im am the only one who loves ableton,

ableton is ease of use, it is a verry pro sequencing instrument with a lot of capabilities, it supports everything, it rewires my favo production program reason without installing a rewire ddl. etc, ....


o men I just luve it so much

[naram]

i have just started using live 3 and i am having some issues. 4 sum reason when i drag new wav clips into the session tracks other clips seem to disappear. also when i save live sets often when i reopen them clips dissapear aswell. is this to do with preferences or do i need to reinstall the software?

[aeon]

^do you get a dialogue box asking whether you want to 'remove unreferenced samples' when you close the app / leave a Live set? if so you want to say 'no', because Live stores clips independently from their root audio/midi source. in other words if you use a sample called 'kickdrum.wav' in your Live set, all the information will be extracted from the .wav and then altered (any&all changes you input to the sample, e.g. tempo, transpose, eqing etc.) as a separate file, the 'referenced sample' iirc.

anyhoos, Senor Tweakarinho, any chance of an update now that Live has sprung gaily forth into iteration number 5? there are funkadelic new features including

- auto warp & complex warp mode
- clip scrub & nudge functions
- file search
- track freeze (cpu saver!)
- vastly improved MIDI shizzle e.g. preview, quantization, note deactivation etc.
- beat repeat, a totally awesomtastical beat shredder
- generally more cool stuff

i'm a recent convert to live and wanted to re-register on studio central to give a headsup to people: if you (like moi!) bought an m-audio product that came bundled with 'Live Delta' (essentially a stripped-back demo), please be aware that you can now upgrade to the full version for just EU199... which is just over half price!

so far i'm utterly engrossed in the unique compositional approaches that Live facilitates. it makes me think about my 'dance' music in a completely different fashion, it sounds great even with the granular resynthesis that is a necessary element of the warp feature, it's super intuitive and has the best GUI in the bizness imho , and if you want to compile a home mix CD it's superlative DJ software as well... i'm also really enjoying using it as a multitracker for recording songs, classical compositions and anything that takes my fancy. plus it's got to be the honeybeez's shiz-knees for live PAs!

perhaps someone who has experience with Live5 and actually knows what they're talking about (i.e. not me!) in the realm of digital audio could offer us some informed commentary? with version 6 on the way soon it can't hurt to get stuck in to some of the excellent additions/improvements that have taken place since El Tweakero's initial post.

[aeon]

i've just realised parts of that post sound rather like insistent demands - i honestly didn't mean them that way at all, i'm just interested to hear what any of the resident heads here have to say about Live 5

[furlano]

I'm loving Live 5 right now. It's ease of use coupled with efficient time warping tools really suit my needs. It's so easy to flesh out different song structures by swapping "clips".

I haven't delved too much into either Impulse or Operator yet, so I can't really say anything informative

[mseerob]

Hey there users, I downloaded Ableton live demo and its a great great program. My question is, is this program mostly for doing live show performances or is it just as good for music production and vocal recording as you would do on cubase or logic? I love this program but it would suck a lot if the program was mostly just for live performances.

[Tweak]

Well, it does not matter how you get there, but that you get there in terms of making music with software. The Live is not as "complete" as Cubase, but some will find it easier to use. Its effects and real time triggering of sequences makes it great for live work, but given that you can record these triggers it is valid for detailed construction as well. The Live is very much a loop based composition tool at its heart, though it has expanded into the domains of the larger sequencers.

The bottom line is--does it inspire you? If so, that is value.

[aeon]

My question is, is this program mostly for doing live show performances or is it just as good for music production and vocal recording as you would do on cubase or logic? I love this program but it would suck a lot if the program was mostly just for live performances.

it's a standalone solution as well. with full midi and audio hosting, a gorgeous mixer, etc. etc. you can sit down with nothing but an idea and end up with a 'finished' (subjectivity alert!) tune.

i use it as a basic multitracker when i'm recording my own classical stuff. and i also use it as the sole host for my electronic music - for which it's awesomely, entirely capable.

it's really, really not just for 'live' performances. if you got bandwidth i'd recommend heading over to ableton.com and checking out the videos and screenshots to find out more.

anyways, Ableton Live 6 is forthcoming, featuring goodies like

- instrument/fx 'racks'
- Deep Freeze, which is an enhanced version of the freeze track option
- EQ8

and various bits and pieces. i'll be buying the upgrade once it's available and will happily put a review up, but i don't really know what i'm talking about because i'm not uber-familiar with Logic, Sonar etc.

[Geeklover]

some of the articles on the newest ableton suggest you can record midi thru it........am i reading this correctly?

[aeon]

some of the articles on the newest ableton suggest you can record midi thru it........am i reading this correctly?

what do you mean exactly? sorry i don't understand!

you can use ableton to record midi from a controller or even with the computer keyboard. you can also use external midi hardware like synths etc. the same as you would in any sequencer.