I find Live is so much faster to use, for anything from banging out a quick melody or drum pattern, to fancy, complex audio and midi routing.
But for arranging and editing songs, I prefer Logic. In Live, arrangement view always feels cramped, even on a big screen, and I have to keep switching back to session view to see the mixer view.
But with Logic, the standard horizontal track view feels great, even on an iPad.
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Thank you so much for taking the time to provide such a thorough and thoughtful response. Very, very helpful.
I do like that Bitwig (and recently Logic) both have a āsessionsā view, but for some reason I tend to forget about Logicās session viewāI guess I am used to using Logic the āold wayā (arrangement view). Session view is also starting to appeal to me more as a song generation tool after having purchased a Hapax hardware sequencer.
There was a time when I did all my song composition stuff in Logic. It grew old, stale. I bought a bunch of hardware hoping that would be inspiring (also bored during the Pandemic). It was great fun, still is, but I am not putting songs together anymore (just āin the studioā sessions that are fun, but donāt really go anywhere). The fact that I bought Bitwig and have been playing around with it for a few years tells me that I definitely want something more inspiring back āITB.ā As you point out with Live, I also like that Bitwig, like Live, allows me to see more clearly the chain of devices and effects all at once and arranged in a sensible way. When using Logic, I use two 27" screens, with the arrangement window and mixer on one screen, and then separate windows for various plugins on the other screen, but it gets messy and confusing fast.
Iād say this is true about Logic. You can go into its library and find many pre-created sounds based on Logicās own instruments and channel effects. I pretty much never use these. Instead, I have a pretty large library of third-party plugins. Although I do like being able to select from a wide variety of channel presets that have various audio effects combined for certain sounds, mostly for experimentation and as a starting point. Does Live have something like this, where audio effects chains already exist that you can select for a track?
It would be lovely if we could put the mixer meters in the spot where devices usually go. I accept the Arrangement view, but I donāt like it.
I usually just have the mixer open on my second monitor - hit Ctrl+Shift+W, then put that second window on your other screen, hitting Tab will switch the views between each screen.
One thing I wonder about is how if Logic has more and better stock tools and sounds, does it fall down on the writing side (if at all, maybe it doesnāt?) Does Logicās linear setup create a different kind of creative environment that maybe encourages you off-grid a little? If we take mixing out of it completely, is Ableton is easier/better in every aspect of the creative process, or does Logic compete here at all? I have found that when I did my (admittedly limited) dabbling in Logic, especially with presets - it was quick and easy to find a certain sound or vibe becase so many of them are pre-bundled in those stacks of effects. But what I also found was that Abletonās big strength is in dealing with automations and such with all the automation lanes; which I found a little fiddlier in Logic.
One hunch I had, having used Ableton for the last 9 months or so, is that Logic perhaps takes more time to get going on a project - but once you want to actually finish something, maybe the mixing tools encourage a focus that wins you that time back?
Yeah it does (kinda.) So each synth comes with a selection of presets. Some of these are ārawā if you will, with the building block of the synth sound alone. But the vast majority come in an Instrument rack, usually with 8 macros pre-mapped for tweaking, along with effects. These are broken down into categories like Evolving & Atmospheric etc. This is good, but there isnāt an easy way to store and manage your favourites like there is in something like Pigments or Komplete Kontrol. You can create folders in Collections, but that is one aspect of the browser that can be cumbersome if you like to save a long list of presets. In the end I stick to the raw browser as-is for simplicity.
I think whatās closest to what youāre looking for here is that Ableton also has a set of Audio Effect, MIDI effect and Instrument racks all pre-set up to do certain jobs. Within just the audio rack section thereās stuff for amp simulations, distortions, mixing/mastering and all sorts.
Thanks, that explains things pretty well. This is not something I am terribly concerned with anyway. I tend to strongly prefer to take a synth preset, tweak it on my own, and then after getting things where I want, add various midi and audio effects building them up one-by-one. I do this on the computer, and then do more or less the same thing with my hardware instruments, to varying degrees, deepening on what itās best at and the UI (for instance on the Waldorf Iridium, I often start with an intiilaized patch, and then build oscillators, modifiers, filter shapes and effects until I have something I like).
Saturday
nothing secretive or esoteric, just been in love with ableton for so long
Has anyone else experienced performance issues with Live 11.3.2?
Since upgrading Iāve been having problems with projects taking forever to load to a usable state (Live keeps halting intermittently), seems to be related to how itās analyzing the waveforms, which usually takes some time, but itās never been this bad (or disruptive) before.
Also Iām getting a lot of CPU spikes and weird clicks/pos when working with a lot of plug-ins, but the measurements all look fine. Iām mostly using Fabfilter stuff (in the middle of some production work), so pretty reputable tools in use.
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Yes, many people having issues with audio waveform drawing bringing the system to a crawl until itās finished analysing. Bug with the .asd files being rescanned for the changes to Warp maybe. Pretty bad.
Same hearā¦thought it was my laptop model but it has , as you said, not like thisā¦my CPU indicator lights up orange if i add a second plug-in.
Iāve had serious issues. I said in the Push 3 Users thread that I would consider 11.3.2 unstable. Iāve had multiple crashes of Ableton (first time ever encountering that) and also things not loading as expected. My Push 3 is not working at all at the moment anymore (USB connection is seemingly faulty) but even using Live by itself I have encountered things like high piercing sounds coming from tracks that are stopped (in which case I need to close and re-open Live entirely).
Yes to the weird cpu spikes, but I actually had those with 11.2.x as well , despite being on an M1. Even one track running one third party plugin will do it, depending on the plugin. It has made Ableton nearly unusable unless I stick to stock tools and m4l.
Getting some weird/glitchy stuff as well, and I only use stock devices.
I have a feeling Ableton as a company is in āoverwhelmedā mode right now, and Iām sure the Push is what caused that. Letās hope itāll stabilise sometime soon.
Does anyone know if Live 11 has a feature similar to Logic Proās Smart Quantize?
If I am reading correctly, I use the grooves for this since I can set the quantize % how I want and then the notes just move closer to the grooves grid lines and not the actual grid.
Also the quantize in ableton can be set to a low % if you want.
My interpretation is that Logicās smart quantization is doing something a little more sophisticated that what the quantization amount does. But I havenāt explored Liveās grooves yet ā Iāll look into that.
If you donāt mind a related question ā is there are way to āstretchā a MIDI clip that takes into account the internote spacing? Say Iāve got a three bar clip and I want to turn it into a four bar clip (or vise versa). By hand I could add an extra bar and move groups of notes and stretch notes in a manner that maintains their relative orderings but with increased internote spacing and length appropriate for four bars. Is there a plugin, M4L tool, or other way to automate this sort of manipulation?
Im not sure on that, but I bet someone here knows.
Definitely mess with grooves though, its a very powerful feature of Ableton.