What a pickle!

[conscientiousobjector]

Guys, I am looking at swapping from FL Studio which I have used since the beginning of time to Live Suite. I have tried Live before but it frightened me having to relearn the basics again.

What do you think? They have a 25% off and a free update to Live 9.


Mmmm!

Help me out guys please before I part with some money!

[V0RT3X]

Guys, I am looking at swapping from FL Studio which I have used since the beginning of time to Live Suite. I have tried Live before but it frightened me having to relearn the basics again.

What do you think? They have a 25% off and a free update to Live 9.


Mmmm!

Help me out guys please before I part with some money!

Well I am a bit biased, since I use Ableton live as my only DAW. If you plan on getting into Live I would avoid buying suite unless you want the physical modelling stuff. I personally avoided the physical modelling synthesizers since they use quite a bit of CPU and are fiddly to mix with. Also I would much rather just use samples and my VSTs, but this is my personal preference. If you need physical modelling sounds *Which are designed by Applied Acoustic Systems btw* they are nice to have, but IMO they are not really that essential or worth the price of suite.

Also the Extra effects that you get with Suite is not that great too. In my opinion the greatest things you do get with suite is

Max for live *Which is incredibly powerful!*
Sampler *powerful sampler which can load a ton of 3rd party libraries*
Operator * Super powerful Additive/Subtractive FM synth, that is light weight on CPU*
Analog * This is an AAS created Virtual analog and can do vintage synth tones really well!*

However if you have a good Virtual Analog, or FM synth, or Sampler then you don't really need it. I personally have Kontakt, FM8 & Synthsquad to replace the need for Sampler, Operator & Analog.

I could have bought Suite, but I just bought the 9 upgrade + Max for Live which is more than enough for me, but this is because I have other instruments as well. I think Ableton live is a really easy system to create drones with, but it does take a bit of time to wrap your head around the clip launcher. Once you realize how much "live" power you have it's really fun!

The ability to save automatons per clip is pretty amazing too and great for sound design! The built in warp algorithms for stretching audio is also pretty amazing too! It might not be as smooth as the Izotope time stretch that you can buy for Logic, but it is pretty good! You get a bunch of granular functions, and more than enough FX to work with.

-= Some of the built in instruments you get with standard live =-

The simpler sampler is basically like the NN19 sampler in Reason. You can drag a single shot audio file and play it on your keyboard. It has a a bunch of features on it that every basic sampler should have and the sound quality is good! If you want multi-velocity layered samples then look to Sampler or get Kontakt :P

Impulse drum sampler is kind of like Redrum but without a sequencer and is really basic. No multi-sampling here, you just drag in a sound and you can set a bunch of parameters to it.

One of the most powerful things in Live is the Drum rack which basically turns live into a MPC, and lets you have a huge amount of drum sounds to work with. Another nice thing about live is the real time groove module. So if your clips need a bit of groove you just drag and drop a groove template into the clip you want and bang it will apply groove in a non-destructive way to it in real time.

Version 9 will incorporate very high end algorithms from Cytomic for the bus compressor & the 8 band parametric EQ so you'll have the basics for mixing and mastering covered!

Another thing 9 will feature is curved automation which should have been in live a long time ago! But this will be great for smooth filter sweeps and stuff.

Overall I think it is a really powerful program, but it comes with it's fair share of flaws.


-= Some of the noted CONS =-

- If you need a system with proper Plugin Delay Compensation then Live still has problems with this. Im sure it will get fixed soon enough, but tons of people complain about this one! I personally don't care since I stopped rewiring into live. I only ever noticed it when rewiring with older versions of reason. Version 6 of Reason rewired into Live is rock solid and the timing is solid!

- Another one is that the automation grids in the master track lanes have no "snap" function unless you draw on it with the pen tool. This means, that you can't grab a point that pre-exists and drag it to another area on the grid and get it to snap to it. This might be fixed in version 9 but so far I am not sure. This just means you need to use the pen tool to draw where you want the parameters to start to get perfect automation timing! It is more tedious than anything imo!

- The built in dithering algorithms are kind of basic, so when you export stuff I would recommend using a better dithering system like Ozone. However this is only really important if you work at 96khz and need to dither down to 44.1khz etc.

- No built in pitch correction! You can get tons of great 3rd party solutions for this though!

- The midi system is basic at most, but it still gets the job done! Don't expect complex midi control like Cubase or Logic has. It also does not have Notation, in case you read music.

-= It also comes with tons of PROS =-

- Ability to play your projects LIVE! Yes this is one of the biggest features of live! You can literally remix a project on the fly using the clip launcher!

- 32 Bit Audio freezing and capture! When you record you are always getting the best quality you can work with, and the playback is very quick!

- Non-destructive editing!

- Automatic BPM detection for clips!

- Live audio warping engine!

- Built in Loop slicer like Dr Rex! Also Live can load .REX files!

- Tons of DSP friendly FX that are pretty good quality!

- Easy to use system once you get the hang of it!

- Load a video into live and work with a soundtrack to it!

- Tons of 3rd party controllers out there guaranteed to work with it!

- Max for live lets you basically write your own controls, fx, instruments if you know cycling 74 Max. However there are TONS and TONS of awesome 3rd party devices to use with Max for live!

- Rewire support if you need to rewire Reason or FLStudio in or out of Live. If you rewire FLstudio as the Master, then you can use Live as the slave and record into FLstudio as you play live! However this only works with audio clips. Another awesome aspect is that if you have a slower computer that Rewiring Reason 6 into Live is like a match made in heaven. I was getting a incredible amount of CPU headroom while working with Live/Reason setup.

[robojam]

+1 for ReWire - even if you take time to learn Live you can still go back to FL if you need to and then cut the umbilical cord once you're completely comfortable with Live.

[Nemo]

Make that +2 for ReWire.

As for FL... I'm familiar with both apps and I think you'll like using Live. Don't they have a demo that you can try out?

@Vort3x... haven't the delay compensation and snap been addressed for Live9 or no?

[S1gnsOfL1fe]

Dive in and go for Live!!!

I've echoed this a bunch of times here on the forum, but I have Live envy from time to time...because I currently don't use it and see how awesome it is. Not that Pro Tools 10 isn't awesome, it is...but the things you can do in live are pretty cool too. If I were you I'd put in the time and learn it, quickly, before anything else happens. I had a free groove3 membership I scored that just ran out but I saw they have a bunch of videos on there on how to use Live so if all else fails, you can buy a 30 day membership to Groove3 and you'll be set.

I went through a DAW change last summer (Digital Performer 6 to Pro Tools 10) and it took about a full month for me to feel comfortable and another 2 to finally, as robojam said, fully cut that umbilical. Plus, you never fully have to "leave" a DAW...it's not like your license disappears...you just change your creative workflow and get back to what's really the goal anyway, making music.

[V0RT3X]

Also if you need any help, I can offer what knowledge I know!

[conscientiousobjector]

Thanks guys, your help is much appreciated. I have downloaded the trial edition to see what it is like - a mindfield at the moment. There is that Bitwig DAW coming soon so not sure. Live is tried and tested though.