Ableton good for working with MIDI ?

G.E.PRODUCTIONS

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I know that people who use ableton are mostly sample based and I'm really intrigued by its audio editing tools and midi mapping.But how good is it for a composer who works with VSTi 90% of the time ? I know usually it's all about personal taste but how is the midi/piano roll workflow compared to other DAWs? Is it just as good ?
 
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Better man, Ableton is hands down my favorite especially if you are working with VSTs. Saving your effects racks is so easy and the piano roll/clip launching and overdub are so simple compared to other daws. There are a boatload of awesome sampling tricks too but as far as working with midi man if you are looking at live you are on the right track. Try it for yourself tho thats how you will know
 
I have the demo but the interface is very intimidating so I wanted to get some opinions from people who have been using it before I start spending time to learn it.
 
ive switched over to ableton myself but i do find myself going back to the godly piano roll of fl studio everyn once in a while
 
Live's piano roll is fine but people tend to love the one in FL. I personally don't like how Live handles vsts they just eat up too much cpu. There are freeze tracks sure but personally I don't like having to do that.
 
Live's piano roll might lack the finesse and certain special functions found in the likes of FL (although Live 9 addressed some of these shortcomings), but it's very quick to work with, imo. It does rely heavily on learning the keyboard shortcuts - otherwise it might feel pretty clunky.
 
It depends mostly on which plugins you use.Some barely need CPU power while others like Cinematic strings in Kontakt will kill your CPU if you have more than 10 instances opened at the same time.
 
just curious... what are you running to come to this conclusion? on my lappy (i7 machine with 8 gb of ram) i could run a endless amount of synths i.e. reaktor, omnisphere, massive, absynth, fm8 but not so heavy usage of large sample libraries... i.e. abbey roads drums with scrabee basses, electri6ty... on my vista machine (desktop i7 machine with 8 gb of ram) i am able to run pretty much anything i throw at it... on my window 7 machine about 3 months old (desktop i7 machine with 16 gb of ram) i never even think about cpu usage with ableton live 9...

i am just wondering what you are running to have to freeze tracks... i use less intense vsts on my lappy but never froze a track... on my desktops i could never remember freezing a track...

i wrote this song on my lappy using using just sampletank and live 8 32-bit (nothing much just showing a friend you do not have to spend a lot money to make music)... cpu was only at 6%... i know Sampletank is your go to vst just do not understand the cpu issues in Live...

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---------- Post added at 06:42 AM ---------- Previous post was at 06:40 AM ----------



this is so true...
Ableton has stated a few times that it uses more cpu with vsts because of something to do with their live performance features. I am also comparing it to how much cpu Reaper, Sonar, and Studio One use for the same vsts. Also let's remember that samplers are going to use a hell of a lot less cpu than a synth or higher end fx unless they are made well with full on oversampling ect. For example if I pull up the IKbritish channel plug in with oversampling on I can run about 15 of them on audio tracks before cpu becomes a problem with Ableton on my core i7 2nd gen laptop. Vs in Sonar I can run 60 with the same settings. Same with FXpansion's bloom. Diva and Monark. Ableton is a solid DAW I love it its why i use it but its not the most cpu friendly DAW around. That title right now belongs to Reaper.
 
Yep I can agree on the heavy keyboard shortcuts...but I really prefer that anyway I hate using the mouse or touchpad if I dont need to.
Ctrl+D, Ctrl+I, Ctrl+Shift+Del, Ctrl+U, Shit+Up/Down, B. I usually use those in the midi clip view cant really ask for more...before I wanted to duplicate the duration of the loop and not just the notes and they added that in 9. Then they also gave us double and half tempo which was another big thing. I wish they're was a shortcut for it though.

The CPU usage is kind of weird at times...I usually dont go to high...but I dont like to use cpu intensive plugins neither just for the reason of problems later on. See I looked at stuff like Diva, Diversion...but I wouldn't run it and if I did it would be like the first or second synth I throw in and frozen after. I find once I get around 80-85% I need to bring up the buffer...Every once in a while a plugin might have a bug and might spike the CPU and say something crazy like 2895% like wth lol. From my experience its smoother in other Daws I tried Sonars engine gets on my nerves so I'll skip that but Reaper and S1 yep a lot smoother, but honestly its I rarely find myself complaining in Ableton. When I was new to Vst's I would have to much synths and effects on...you kind of learn how to narrow stuff down and make it effective utilizing resources better after a while.
 
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