Subject:Ableton Live vs Sony Acid Pro

Posted by: Illogical

Date:12/11/2007 11:54:07 AM

Hi Guys,

Due to all the stability issues that continue to plague Acid Pro over a year after its last update, I've all but given up on the program and am looking for a new DAW. Ableton Live is especially appealing to me, but I haven't used it nearly as extensively as Acid Pro and am wondering what significant features I might be losing (other than all the crashing) by switching to Live.

Your thoughts?

And if there's another DAW you might recommend that is more similar to Acid Pro than Live, I'd be keen to hear about that as well.

Thanks, and happy holidays!
iLL

Subject:RE: Ableton Live vs Sony Acid Pro

Reply by: alltheseworlds

Date:12/11/2007 1:35:25 PM

N the dark days of AP4 to AP5 I switched to Sonar. Sonar is a great app and extremely flexible and deep, but as soon as Sony released the quite wonderful AP6 I came back. I haven't used Sonar now in months.

Subject:RE: Ableton Live vs Sony Acid Pro

Reply by: SHTUNOT

Date:12/11/2007 4:16:23 PM

Where are you finding Acid unstable? Whats your workflow like that makes it break/crash? Midi/vsti? Recording audio? Rewire? How big is a typical project for you? [track count/plugins used,etc...] Are you trying to run native vst plugins or UAD vst plugins?

Honestly if you want a better opinion on this I would ask in all the other daw forums instead of this one. I'm sure there are people there that will fill your head over why they stopped using acid for their "xyz" app.

IMHO I say you get LIVE and rewire them both together. What else would you really need? ;)

I'm going to be using AP6 and reason 3 alot more now. Best of both worlds if you ask me. I'll be upgrading to version 4 after a few more updates come out as well as some extra cash able to be put aside.[damn holidays...;)]

Ed.

Subject:RE: Ableton Live vs Sony Acid Pro

Reply by: Illogical

Date:12/11/2007 6:34:23 PM

I have crashes with EVERYTHING. Even in bare bones projects using nothing but the sony plug-ins that come with the program, a few loops, and maybe one of the included soft-synths (eg Kompakt AP edition, or the B4 that came with AP5).

I hadn't been into making music for months, and then when I really thought about it I realized that it's because every time I sit down to make music, I get 25 minutes into something and then FAIL. That grating granule loop noise that threatens my woofers as the catastrophic crash awaits my ctrl-alt-del just sucks the life out of whatever inspiration I might've had.

At least when AP4 crashed, it saved my data. This one, maybe 25% of the time at best. Great features, cool interface, but it's no fun driving a posche if it breaks down every 500 yards.

And I KNOW I'm not the only one...I spoken to and read posts from TONS of people who all find the program unusalbe because of the crashing. To the people it works for, more power to ya, but this program is so unreliable on my system that I can't use it any more.

Subject:RE: Ableton Live vs Sony Acid Pro

Reply by: bnjenter

Date:12/11/2007 6:43:32 PM

I'll think you'll find that many of us are not experiencing what you seem to be going through. In the past when I have found the kind of problems you mention and others are not, I found it was time to rebuild the software on my computer and give it a fresh start from the OS on up. If you then continue to have these problems, you may well want to explore other software, but I have found many times it was not the software, but the rot that had crept into Windows after a period of usage. If you are unstable with Acid at this point in time, you may well experience the same with Ableton, Cubase, Sonar, or many of the other applications as well.
Good Luck
Bob

Subject:RE: Ableton Live vs Sony Acid Pro

Reply by: Illogical

Date:12/11/2007 7:02:40 PM

Yeah, but I had this computer originally set-up ONLY for music, with nothing at all on it except Acid Pro, Sound Forge, CD Architect, and my other plug-ins and loops.

It crashed quite a bit back then too. And it still does.

I dunno, I don't use re-wire, I'm not really pushing the CPU at all, and even when I stick with the (not so great) plug-ins that come with the program, I'm getting FAIL after FAIL.

Like I said, glad it's working for some, but I know I'm far from the only one who's had these experiences.

Here's a question: Do you work from zipped projects, or only from standard ones. I almost always use zipped ones so everything is all in one place, and I have everything load into a temp folder on a completely clean partition of my hard drive. Any chance that could lead to more failures than using non-zipped files?

I doubt it, because I also get loads of crashes before I've even saved a project one way or the other. But that's one of the few things I've wondered if it might make some difference somehow.

Subject:RE: Ableton Live vs Sony Acid Pro

Reply by: SHTUNOT

Date:12/11/2007 8:56:56 PM

Well if it crashed quite a bit back then you were using obviously a earlier build. But I don't get what you mean by working on a "zipped"files?

How are you storing them? Why zipped?

Why are you using a partition? How many hard drives are you using?[speed and connection:serial ata?]

Wow now I'm really confused...here is how I do it...

AMD athlon XP 3200.

2gigs ram

3 hard drives...OS,audio,audio

1 external HD...backup/storage.

Presonus firebox soundcard using asio connected via firewire.

My OS drive I have partitioned 2X with win XP Pro sp2[all updates]
First partition only audio stuff installed.
Second I use for the rest...internet,etc...

I store ALL my loops,vsti samples[ie:BFD drum sounds],music,recorded audio on my second HD.

The last one I only use for recording to for projects.

Is this how you are doing it? If not how is it different?

AP 6 is not perfect...not going to lie to you. But if all you are doing is just loops with minimal cpu intensive plugins with hardly any midi??? You got me dude.

In the end I recommend getting Live cause you could always write with both like I said before.

THE only sure fire way to know if it's the software or your system you need to get another app to work with to know for sure.

If I were you though I would do a fresh install of your OS first before you get anything else. Then try out acid again...Still problems??? Go get something else.

HTH.

Ed.

Subject:RE: Ableton Live vs Sony Acid Pro

Reply by: JohnnyRoy

Date:12/12/2007 4:53:22 AM

> How are you storing them? Why zipped?

I believe this is the .acd-zip format which ACID creates from Save As... ACID Project With Embedded Media (*.acd-zip). It takes all of the media that you use in your project and ZIPs it up into a nice neat package that you can take to another computer and have all of your loops go with it. Very handy, especially if you work on multiple PC's. I can't tell you how many times I've opened a regular project only to find that it can't find the original loops it used because I reorganized my media drive. (I hate when that happens)

As far as Ableton Live goes for an ACID user, I spent several hours one night going through thier tutorials with a limited version that I got with a piece of hardware and it is NOTHING like ACID. Totally unintuitive and difficult to use interface for an ACID user. I immediately uninstalled it. Your time would be far better spent stabilizing your computer to run well with ACID since that is the application you like.

~jr

Subject:RE: Ableton Live vs Sony Acid Pro

Reply by: Illogical

Date:12/12/2007 6:36:13 AM

You're absolutely right about the zip thing...that's how I save(d) all my projects, just to make sure everything was there when I opened up a project.

As for Ableton, I've been messing with the demo and I fully agree it is initially a lot less intuitive than Acid, but once you figure out how to do something, I find the workflow very slick and well-integrated. Often I'm surprised how incredibly simple a task turns out to be, but again, it's only easy once you know how.

Main thing is that I haven't had a single crash yet...which is very, very nice.


As for the suggestion to rebuild the OS...just not worth my time at this point, as I have too much work put into it. Every other program works fine, so to tear it apart on the off-chance it might make Acid crash less just seems a waste. I'd rather spend some money on a new program that I've already seen work just fine on my machine.

Subject:RE: Ableton Live vs Sony Acid Pro

Reply by: alltheseworlds

Date:12/12/2007 1:52:14 PM

Just to be sure: You HAVE tried reinstalling Acid haven't you ? This simple act seems to solve a huge amount of problems for people. Certainly worked for me when I was getting some odd crashes a while back.

Only takes a few minutes.

Subject:RE: Ableton Live vs Sony Acid Pro

Reply by: thirdnostril

Date:12/12/2007 3:08:08 PM

Have you used any other apps on your computer? What luck?

Subject:RE: Ableton Live vs Sony Acid Pro

Reply by: jumbuk

Date:12/12/2007 4:01:03 PM

I second Johnny Roy about Live. I am sure it's a good program, but I didn't find it intuitive at all. I am not ready to invest the time and effort in learning a complete new environment.

I respect your frustration at having AP6 crash all the time. I had the same thing with Gigastudio for years, and it really does take away the incentive to make music.

The obvious question - if AP4 worked Ok for you, why not just keep using it and forget about 6? The upgrades have been useful to me, but there is nothing about 4 that stopped me in my tracks before 5 and 6 came out.

Subject:RE: Ableton Live vs Sony Acid Pro

Reply by: DKeenum

Date:12/12/2007 4:05:32 PM

I vote for rebuilding your computer, but I think you might want to look at hardware issues: sound card, video card, motherboard, etc. I think your problem is bigger than acid.

I use acid pro 6 and almost never have crashes, and I have pretty big projects. I usually run acid and SF at the same time.

Subject:RE: Ableton Live vs Sony Acid Pro

Reply by: kbruff

Date:12/13/2007 4:31:51 AM

my short opinion:

Feed ACID rendered loops, little chunks that you plan to loop / crop / stitch and render. I find doing my midi composition in other applications to be easier. But arranging my acidised audio in ACID to be good. Even though the time for project loading is still an issue for me.

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KB