Who's using Acid or Ableton to kick some ass?

[fross]

Acid looks like a serious tool, especially with all the loops available. What kind of things are you guys doing with these programs and what do you like or dislike?

[Ruphus]

What I disliked on Ableton live! is that you apparantly can´t bounce to a mono track.
What is very nice however is its zoom option. Would be great if sequencers like Samplitude had something like that.

Ruphus

[Bastiaan]

I am sorry...but i think it isnt that hard to turn a stereo-track into a mono-track. Quite easy to do in protools, and i guess in other DAW's too.

The combination with something like Reason and a rewire client (or is it host; i always mess it up...)well.....;what i mean is protools with reason for example. That will give you all the advantages of both applications packed together with tight integration. I think the same goes for ableton live/protools as i believe live is a rewire program too

[Paul Turpin]

I'm using Ableton Live for Live Performance with my band. I love it. I have lots of original loops on the Live Grid that I use for different subsections of the song. We can change the length and even tempo of the tune and I make live follow us. I usually create all the loops in ProTools HD from live improvisations. I fine tune the right loop and then export it and load it into Live. Sometimes I'll use a
"found" loop and twist it beyond recognition too. I use the effects inside Live as well as some moogerfoogers. Its great. I have Live version 3 but haven't delved into the new features much. I'm currently running Live on a G4 12" (the ProTools rig is on a different computer in my studio). I'm going to get a new I/O box soon and hopefully an external knob and fader controller.

I would never use it as a multitrack recorder. But thats not what its really for (and I've got ProTools 6 and Logic and DP4 anyway).

[neoverse]

I like live a lot. I have done many a jazz remix where I just flew all the tracks in and sped up and slowed down the music (within reason) as needed. reason with live is a lethal combo. I can't imagine that pro-tools will not have some form of "elastic audio" in the future. the ideas just to good.

[Paul Turpin]

pro-tools will not have some form of "elastic audio" in the future. the ideas just to good.

Doesn't need it now that you can just rewire Live to it.

[neoverse]

Originally posted by Paul Turpin
Doesn't need it now that you can just rewire Live to it.

Yeah, I still think it's something that they (digi) and all daw makers will eventually provide. It will be a fundamental feature like snap to grid.

[Ruphus]

Originally posted by Bastiaan
I am sorry...but i think it isnt that hard to turn a stereo-track into a mono-track.

No need to be sorry. It wouldn´t change the fact that it needs a superflous step to do anyway. The more tracks you had to treat the more disturbing it gets.
Also you can´t import a mono track into it. It doubles it automatically if I got that right.

The combination with something like Reason and a rewire client (or is it host;

If you mean the sequencer where Reason would be intergrated into, that would be the host then.

Ruphus

[fross]

Can someone explain the fundamental differences between
Ableton and Acid?

[Paul Turpin]

Can someone explain the fundamental differences between
Ableton and Acid?

Well the big one of course is that Acid only runs on PC's and Ableton runs on Macs.

In addition - Ableton was designed with Live performance in mind - it is also highly DJ friendly. Acid seems to be designed more like a traditional studio/songwriting & recording setup. Acid is something to provide the instruments you don't play in order to help you work on a song. Live is more geared towards twisting and effecting sounds to make them abnormal and creatively processed.

Both of them started as a way to make two things that come from different tempos play together and sound half decent despite being stretched.

I must note that these are the impressions of an Ableton user and a Mac only user - but I'm trying not to be biased. I would never use Acid because they have publicly stated that they'll never release it for Mac.

[BrianT]

I had the first copy of Acid 1.0 in Nashville. And I've been using Live (now at 3.0) for about 6 months.

Acid is simpler, very efficient, and predated Live by a couple of years. There is no way you would ever need a manual with Acid. It's one of those programs that you are using effectively about 5 minutes after you first see it. One fatal flaw is that it has never synched as a slave worth a crap. Successive passes in sync are off by +/- 10ms or more. No Rewire either.

Live is far less intuitive, but actually far more powerful. You will need to read the manual to get the most out of it. For some things, it's a tad slower, but once Live is mastered, it's really no contest, with Live doing many things that are either difficult or impossible with Acid.

If I were in a big hurry and wanted the most instantaneous and simple writing tool, just to find a loop and write a song using it, I would boot Acid. But for anything more ambitious, it's Live all the way at this point. Rewire alone is a huge advantage. With Live 3.0 and the addition of complex envelopes applied to nearly any parameter, faggetaboudit.

In talented hands, either app can do amazing things. I recently flew to LA and overdubbed a very well known and respected drummer on an album. High end room, no expense spared, blah, blah, blah. We ended up using the Acid tracks he was supposed to replace, instead. Nobody can believe it's loops. They all think it's that drummer, having a good day.


Regards,
Brian T


P.S. Acid might, just maybe, sound a little smoother when stretching drums. It has this midrange "thing" that you can spot once you hear it, but somehow it really works in a track.

Being a freak, I spent some hours pulling up the same loops in both apps and laying the results into various songs I was working on. I slightly preferred the sound of Acid (seemed a little punchier), but not enough to offset Live's features.

[jho]

Live 3 is also a KILLER one-shot sample player. Live 3 has velocity sensitivity for the clips in session mode. I am using it both for loops and for live sample playback, aka drum machine. It's really fast and easy to zero in on the part of the sample you want to play, stretch or loop. The ability to audition stuff on the fly and very quickly assign clips to midi notes and knobs is unprecedented.

You can certainly export to mono and import from mono. To export to mono ,when you render to disk it will ask if you want to convert to mono. For importing or recording in mono, click on the buss (looks like a bus!) at the bottom right and choose stereo / mono etc.

[Ruphus]

Originally posted by jho

You can certainly export to mono and import from mono. To export to mono ,when you render to disk it will ask if you want to convert to mono. For importing or recording in mono, click on the buss (looks like a bus!) at the bottom right and choose stereo / mono etc.

Maybe now with version 3. With 2.1 at least a mono channel was doubled to stereo by default at import and when you chose mono for recording it would merge both signals into one track which would correspondingly result into overs and from there be useless.

( I think to remember even Ableton advising then to mute one side of the stereo channel or pan hard right or left or something thelike, which to me appeared like no good solution.)

Maybe I didn´t manage to explore 2.1 right, but that´s where I got to even after trying quite some time.

Ruphus

[vartan k]

LIVE! is my most fav program to come out in years. i cant say enough about it.

[jho]

Originally posted by vartan k
LIVE! is my most fav program to come out in years. i cant say enough about it.

Ditto!!

[shapemod]

Live is a killer programm!

Ideal for Djing, bastard-pop and producing via ReWire with Logic!

[drumzy]

any chance live will be rewireable to samplitude any time soon?

[Ruphus]

Sometime in the coming year. That´s at least what Magix told me.

[carmen]

no need to wait for rewire tho. use mtc or midi clock to synch and replic.net/~ix/x/jsndbus.dll to send the audio into samplitude, with this you can get up to 16 stereo pairs...works great for me at the stock 256 sample latency and my computers almost 3 years old...just make sure theres no audio files on the soundbus tracks in samplitude. not sure how useful live is, when you can do most of the same stuff w/ the timestretch mouse mode and snap to bars etc..but it works nonetheless.