Ableton Live 4.0.4 Vs Cubase Sx 3.0.1 Battle

nitty gritty · Post by **nitty gritty** » Fri Dec 17, 2004 4:51 pm

I'm an sx2 user interested in trying out ableton live (just got the demo downloaded).

Anyone got an opinion on sx3 compared to ableton??

Sx3 new functionality looks kinda similar (though it seems, less as impressive?).

Any ableton users on planet z??

Spirit · Post by **Spirit** » Fri Dec 17, 2004 6:57 pm

I've flogged the Ableton demos and never been quite excited enough to buy. I was almost ready to get Live 4 when I read on the Ableton forums about lots of people unhappy with the render quality. That really put me off...

Post by **garyb** » Fri Dec 17, 2004 7:33 pm

just record the mix in realtime, in another app or another channel.....

nitty gritty · Post by **nitty gritty** » Fri Dec 17, 2004 7:38 pm

Realtime play is the best thing about ableton n'est pas?

darkrezin · Post by **darkrezin** » Fri Dec 17, 2004 8:22 pm

Maybe they mean the mixing engine.. it sounds like absolute poop to me (thin and lifeless). That's not to say that functionally Ableton is bad - quite the opposite.. it's really innovative and fun to use. But I just can't handle that flat, lifeless sound of the mixer. IMHO it's a similar situation to Propellerheads Reason - it's low quality mixing in order to facilitate good performance on crappy laptops. Maybe I'm just spoiled with mixing with Logic and SFP.. but the quality of mixing with any potential new host is very important to me.

nitty gritty · Post by **nitty gritty** » Fri Dec 17, 2004 8:40 pm

I was thinking as an intuitive compostional tool that could be re-wired to cubase or even through scope to cubase.....Or would sx3 be the better option in the first place....Hmmm

next to nothing · Post by **next to nothing** » Fri Dec 17, 2004 9:54 pm

well, its two different apps completely.

Ive been trying Live at a friends studio, and and must say for electronica, Live is a good tool. it makes it easy for you to compose/import MIDI loops, and work your way from there. Its a brilliant "groove engine" to form a scetch of what you want to do, and make the "skeleton" for the song.

However, both composers who use that studio export the final miditracks and audiofiles they make with Live. They use live for transforming ideas to reallity, then they load the skeleton into Logic or Nuendo (sometimes even ACID) to finalize their work (two guys, different favourite sequencer).

They havent complained much about audioquality, they say its more because of the workflow they are used to finalizing a track. They claim Live is much more intuitive for their "jamming" part of making tunes, but they never use it for finalizing.

And from what ive seen, its a great creative app.

Just a few words.

<font size=-1>[ This Message was edited by: piddi on 2004-12-17 21:57 ]</font>

borg · Post by **borg** » Sun Dec 19, 2004 5:00 pm

i don't really know about live's audio quality. i almost always do the mixing in scope or hardware mackie (laptop with live/RME to desktop with scope or hardware mixer). Live's summing could be better imho.
indeed, lots of people seem to rewire Live into Logic/SX/... especially the people leaning towards more traditional song writing stuff. people doing electronic music don't seem to bother at all.

but... i haven't had so much fun making music since i started working with ableton Live. it's really 'open', as in 'totally not traditional'. i'm more into bizare sound exploration, so what is true tradition accepted as a 'good sound' is of no hindrance to me. since i normally don't end up with finished products (too much playing with scope stuff), i'm not that much of a good person to judge the overall sonic performance.

i like it a lot... since buying Live two years ago, i only have opened cubase to get to my older projects.
but again, i don't consider myself a serious musician/producer.