Pro Tools LE vs. Ableton Live 5

[ccastillo123]

I currently run Pro Tools LE 6.7, MBox1, 15'PowerBook, OS X 10.3. My process is I usually import a track I'm going to sample. create several regions, rename them, and export as 16 bit AIFF. Import them into Battery 2 and work with my Trigger Finger and the Midi track on pro tools.

I love the way the Midi is laid out on Pro Tools. The quantizing templates are great. I also love the Playlist funtion for sequencing. Another big reason why I use Pro Tools is the Audio editing features. where you can tab through the wave file and easily select loops and samples.

Now I've been playing around with Ableton Live 5 Demo (All features except save and export). At first, recording directly from my turntable into Live is easy. I do not even need the MBox. Now where I lean more towards Pro Tools is the way they manage the selections and keep regions in a playlist manner on your right hand side. Does Live have a similar feature? Can you tab though your wave file?

In the Midi side of things, How good is the grid display. Is there an internal metronome click. How good is the quantizing. Is it as flexible as Pro Tools? I would like to hear what you guys have to say. Because right now I'm thinking of buying Live and using that to make music.

[cjp76]

Ableton Live 5 is not really in the same league as Pro Tools LE when it comes to audio waveform editing. As I'm sure you know, if you have gone through the tutorials in the Live demo, the big way of working with Live, is with clips and setting the start and end points of clips (among other things ...). Live is not really meant for in depth waveform editing.

Having said that, Live is amazing in terms of experimenting with different loops and clips. I've found that Live inspires me more from a experimentation point - and I get many more happy 'mistakes' that turn into songs. The 'Session' view in Live is amazing.

I typically capture and edit any samples in Pro Tools LE and then export them into Live to be used as clips. Using the warp feature you can pretty much bend anything into shape for what you need.

These days I am using Pro Tools more for audio editing and less for songwriting ... Live is taking over with that - it's just a much more creative environment for me.

In case anyone is wondering, I use a Digi002R with Live and it works flawlessly. Audio, midi and even spdif all funtion perfectly. I am on Tiger, 10.4.2 with Live 5.

Thanks,
Chris.

[mindnoise]

HI,

listen to cjp,

PT is for recording and editing to get a mixed finished, Ableton is a LIVE/creativity tool.
PT + Ableton is mighty team!

You don´t drive to work on your lawnmower also, just because it usess gas and has wheels, do you?

regs

[dfusion]

Look at the developers of Live. I feel Live reflects their personalities quite a bit. The guys at Ableton are very much into 4/4 glitchy experimental techno music. The midi editing in Live is structured very much around the simplistic approach of sequencing. I also feel the plugins reflect that sort of "weirdness" as well, because they have some very strange and unique sonic capabilities, especially useful for dance music but somehow useful for just about anything, in an experiental kind of way. Many musicians find this a refreshing asset.

Overall Live is a great program with only few user complaints, but mostly praise. If you're a solo artist writing your own music it may be the perfect platform. I think this is where Live wins over a lot of people. Live 5 does support Mackie Control and since Live has automation this is a good thing. However, one thing I miss is that you can't stack multiple take in Live, only overdub or erase. Trying to do vocals in Live is not ideal either.