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I've been a long time Logic Pro user. Since the updates to Logic slowed to a trickle I've also been using Ableton Live a fair bit. I've always appreciated Logic

I've been a long time Logic Pro user. Since the updates to Logic slowed to a trickle I've also been using Ableton Live a fair bit. I've always appreciated Logic's clean, well laid out interface (as opposed to say, Cubase) and its general sense of respect for the intelligence of its users. Unfortunately it seems Apple has gone in the direction of Garageband-ifiyng Logic; pushing it towards amateurs who want to easily piece together their musical ideas from other people's sounds. The interface is dominated by the flashy new features such as the 'Drummer' and 'Drum Kit Designer' which effectively let you combine a limited set of preset drum sounds with a limited set of preset drumming styles. The result is a similar 'toy' feel to that of Garageband. Professional tools for creativity afford the user the ability to manipulate, combine and repurpose them in as much depth and complexity as user can manage, so that they may seek out new forms, rather than just creating pastiche rehashes of existing ideas. It is apparent from the direction Logic has taken that it is no longer aimed at the professional market, but rather more to the 'Prosumer' category, who aspire to be 'Pro', but who still need a lot of hand-holding. The most displeasing change I've noticed so far is that the 'bypass' button on each instrument and effect, which neatly fitted in with Logic's formerly clean and understated visual style, has now been replaced with a large glowing on/off 'light'. It is succinctly represents all of the changes across the application which discard neat and elegant design for absolute naive ease of use. I have a feeling I'll be using Ableton more from now on.

bti 13y ago
What kind of music do you make? I've been wanting to try Ableton out but it kind of looks geared toward working with samples and MIDI. I mostly record guitars and all my instruments live with a mic. Is Ableton appropriate for recording and mixing recorded music? Would you say it is as powerful as Logic Pro 9 (my primary DAW)?
- ThomPete 13y ago
  A friend of mine did the music & soundfx for FarCry 1 and the latest Hitman game. He's used bot protools and logic but used Ableton for Hitman. So yes you can do the same with ableton.
- stringbot 13y ago
  I've recorded all kinds of music in Ableton. The main thing you have to cope with is Ableton expects you to work with a constant tempo on a grid, although it doesn't force you to in any way. It's very easy to just record straight into it like any other multitrack DAW and turn off all the grids and quantization. I'm still a fan of Logic Pro and will most likely buy the upgrade. My workflow gravitates towards Ableton for grid-based compositions (I do a lot of electronic music) and Logic for anything where I'm recording "real" instruments like guitar and vocals, because of Logic's great comping workflow.
- mambodog 13y ago
  I make mainly hiphop beats and some experimental stuff, as well as recording and mixing hiphop artists. I've also recorded acoustic stuff. I would generally say that Logic would be a better choice for recording (though Ableton does have that capability). It's mixing and routing capabilities are fairly easy to use in simple cases, but it's more difficult to create complex setups than in Logic. Where Ableton really excels (other than for live performance) is in productivity of compositing and production when working entirely within the application. It could be compared to using digital painting applications to create a work of visual art entirely in software.
scrumper 13y ago
Your comment is a bit like free jazz: it's all very impressive on the surface, but it doesn't really mean anything and ultimately one feels like it was just an exercise in ego massage. Logic has long had a home in the 'pro' world at the songwriting and demo production stage. You'll be hard-pressed to find an engineer in a commercial studio doing tracking or mixing in anything other than Pro Tools (though they certainly exist), but Logic has a healthy following with artists themselves. When viewed through that lens, the changes made in this version are a pretty natural progression for the software: for the most part, they're aimed at the writing and tracking process. With that in mind, the 'Drummer' feature is less 'Garageband-y' than it might look: it's a considerably more flexible alternative to the giant pool of pre-recorded beats (Apple Loops) that Logic has had for a long time. Such a tool is pretty useful to the songwriter putting a demo together, to the music-for-picture composer, to the ever-growing army of artists who ship off near-completed songs to musician-for-hire studios on the web. I'm sure I'm not the only one who's heard those loops in commercial recordings (often in TV music, which is composed under deadlines to tighter budgets). I'm looking forward to being able to have my temporary backing rhythm follow the sections of a song: far better than trying to find a matching loop or building a beat from scratch when all you want is to lay down a guitar part and focus on developing your idea. Your argument about the bypass button is just silly. If you have a bunch of plugins open on screen at once, it's obviously better to be able to see, at a glance, which ones are on or off. The old way made that harder. Clearly you have never sat for half an hour tweaking a compressor, certain of the improvement it was making, only to realize the damn thing was in bypass the entire time. I can see more Pro-oriented things in there than you: a redesigned channel strip that reorients itself according to signal flow. Meters that work. A scriptable MIDI processor. Flex pitch, or whatever they called it. I also see a crisper UI and a clever way to facilitate interaction with complex instruments and plugins (the Smart Control macro thingies). Of course, I'm just an amateur, so I suppose my opinion doesn't count. I suspect that you are too, but perhaps I'm just more comfortable with it. ----- EDIT: I guess my long-winded point is this: why does it matter whether you think the program is becoming 'easier to use' (the horror); all that should matter is whether the new features are meaningful to you, and whether it breaks anything you need at present. I work in enterprise software by day, and our UX team is constantly looking to consumer software and devices for usability ideas. There is absolutely nothing inherently bad about making something difficult become easy to use. It cuts down on errors, makes people happier, decreases stress, and makes them more productive. All of these things are just as valuable in the studio as they are in the accounts receivable office. There is nothing 'pro' about making life difficult for yourself.
illicium 13y ago
> pushing it towards amateurs who want to easily piece together their musical ideas from other people's sounds Ableton Live is even more centered around building music around loops and samples. Obviously you can track and mix recorded instruments in it just as well, but the live composition view (as opposed to the more traditional, linear arrangement view) that gives Ableton 50% of its name cannot be understated.
coldtea 13y ago
>I've been a long time Logic Pro user. Since the updates to Logic slowed to a trickle I've also been using Ableton Live a fair bit. They never slowed. Logic had like 9 point updates, some with impressive new features (64-bit, OSC, etc). >Unfortunately it seems Apple has gone in the direction of Garageband-ifiyng Logic; pushing it towards amateurs who want to easily piece together their musical ideas from other people's sounds. The interface is dominated by the flashy new features such as the 'Drummer' and 'Drum Kit Designer' which effectively let you combine a limited set of preset drum sounds with a limited set of preset drumming styles. The result is a similar 'toy' feel to that of Garageband. No, it's not at all. Actually you never even get to see the "Drummer" and the "Drum Kit Designer" unless you need them. The Drummer is basically nothing more than a kick ass intelligent drum plugin, like Strike (by Digidesign), Studio Drummer (NI), etc. Logic has all the power of Logic 9 AND tons of new stuff besides. In fact, for recording, playing and adjusting your own ideas, it has more power than ever, with new instruments, new editing functions (the melodyne like thing for one), MIDI mangling, Bass amps, etc. The "using other people sounds" is such a small part of Logic that what you write doesn't even make sense. A meager few GB library of loops, that were there always. In fact, if anything, it's the opposite: Live was from the start touted as an easy to use app to mange loops and beats, sampled or bought. It's very core is about mangling loops and keeping them in sync. And it's mostly geared towards electronic music, where "using other people's sounds" is a very big thing. Of course it has since added MIDI and other stuff, but Logic was an is an all around DAW -- and it's the one you see in most professional studios with the exception of Pro Tools (or, sometimes, alongside PT).

bti 13y ago

What kind of music do you make? I've been wanting to try Ableton out but it kind of looks geared toward working with samples and MIDI. I mostly record guitars and all my instruments live with a mic. Is Ableton appropriate for recording and mixing recorded music? Would you say it is as powerful as Logic Pro 9 (my primary DAW)?

ThomPete 13y ago
A friend of mine did the music & soundfx for FarCry 1 and the latest Hitman game. He's used bot protools and logic but used Ableton for Hitman. So yes you can do the same with ableton.
stringbot 13y ago
I've recorded all kinds of music in Ableton. The main thing you have to cope with is Ableton expects you to work with a constant tempo on a grid, although it doesn't force you to in any way. It's very easy to just record straight into it like any other multitrack DAW and turn off all the grids and quantization. I'm still a fan of Logic Pro and will most likely buy the upgrade. My workflow gravitates towards Ableton for grid-based compositions (I do a lot of electronic music) and Logic for anything where I'm recording "real" instruments like guitar and vocals, because of Logic's great comping workflow.
mambodog 13y ago
I make mainly hiphop beats and some experimental stuff, as well as recording and mixing hiphop artists. I've also recorded acoustic stuff. I would generally say that Logic would be a better choice for recording (though Ableton does have that capability). It's mixing and routing capabilities are fairly easy to use in simple cases, but it's more difficult to create complex setups than in Logic. Where Ableton really excels (other than for live performance) is in productivity of compositing and production when working entirely within the application. It could be compared to using digital painting applications to create a work of visual art entirely in software.

scrumper 13y ago

Your comment is a bit like free jazz: it's all very impressive on the surface, but it doesn't really mean anything and ultimately one feels like it was just an exercise in ego massage. Logic has long had a home in the 'pro' world at the songwriting and demo production stage. You'll be hard-pressed to find an engineer in a commercial studio doing tracking or mixing in anything other than Pro Tools (though they certainly exist), but Logic has a healthy following with artists themselves. When viewed through that lens, the changes made in this version are a pretty natural progression for the software: for the most part, they're aimed at the writing and tracking process. With that in mind, the 'Drummer' feature is less 'Garageband-y' than it might look: it's a considerably more flexible alternative to the giant pool of pre-recorded beats (Apple Loops) that Logic has had for a long time. Such a tool is pretty useful to the songwriter putting a demo together, to the music-for-picture composer, to the ever-growing army of artists who ship off near-completed songs to musician-for-hire studios on the web. I'm sure I'm not the only one who's heard those loops in commercial recordings (often in TV music, which is composed under deadlines to tighter budgets). I'm looking forward to being able to have my temporary backing rhythm follow the sections of a song: far better than trying to find a matching loop or building a beat from scratch when all you want is to lay down a guitar part and focus on developing your idea. Your argument about the bypass button is just silly. If you have a bunch of plugins open on screen at once, it's obviously better to be able to see, at a glance, which ones are on or off. The old way made that harder. Clearly you have never sat for half an hour tweaking a compressor, certain of the improvement it was making, only to realize the damn thing was in bypass the entire time. I can see more Pro-oriented things in there than you: a redesigned channel strip that reorients itself according to signal flow. Meters that work. A scriptable MIDI processor. Flex pitch, or whatever they called it. I also see a crisper UI and a clever way to facilitate interaction with complex instruments and plugins (the Smart Control macro thingies). Of course, I'm just an amateur, so I suppose my opinion doesn't count. I suspect that you are too, but perhaps I'm just more comfortable with it. ----- EDIT: I guess my long-winded point is this: why does it matter whether you think the program is becoming 'easier to use' (the horror); all that should matter is whether the new features are meaningful to you, and whether it breaks anything you need at present. I work in enterprise software by day, and our UX team is constantly looking to consumer software and devices for usability ideas. There is absolutely nothing inherently bad about making something difficult become easy to use. It cuts down on errors, makes people happier, decreases stress, and makes them more productive. All of these things are just as valuable in the studio as they are in the accounts receivable office. There is nothing 'pro' about making life difficult for yourself.

illicium 13y ago

> pushing it towards amateurs who want to easily piece together their musical ideas from other people's sounds Ableton Live is even more centered around building music around loops and samples. Obviously you can track and mix recorded instruments in it just as well, but the live composition view (as opposed to the more traditional, linear arrangement view) that gives Ableton 50% of its name cannot be understated.

coldtea 13y ago

>I've been a long time Logic Pro user. Since the updates to Logic slowed to a trickle I've also been using Ableton Live a fair bit. They never slowed. Logic had like 9 point updates, some with impressive new features (64-bit, OSC, etc). >Unfortunately it seems Apple has gone in the direction of Garageband-ifiyng Logic; pushing it towards amateurs who want to easily piece together their musical ideas from other people's sounds. The interface is dominated by the flashy new features such as the 'Drummer' and 'Drum Kit Designer' which effectively let you combine a limited set of preset drum sounds with a limited set of preset drumming styles. The result is a similar 'toy' feel to that of Garageband. No, it's not at all. Actually you never even get to see the "Drummer" and the "Drum Kit Designer" unless you need them. The Drummer is basically nothing more than a kick ass intelligent drum plugin, like Strike (by Digidesign), Studio Drummer (NI), etc. Logic has all the power of Logic 9 AND tons of new stuff besides. In fact, for recording, playing and adjusting your own ideas, it has more power than ever, with new instruments, new editing functions (the melodyne like thing for one), MIDI mangling, Bass amps, etc. The "using other people sounds" is such a small part of Logic that what you write doesn't even make sense. A meager few GB library of loops, that were there always. In fact, if anything, it's the opposite: Live was from the start touted as an easy to use app to mange loops and beats, sampled or bought. It's very core is about mangling loops and keeping them in sync. And it's mostly geared towards electronic music, where "using other people's sounds" is a very big thing. Of course it has since added MIDI and other stuff, but Logic was an is an all around DAW -- and it's the one you see in most professional studios with the exception of Pro Tools (or, sometimes, alongside PT).