Re: komplete vs. ableton

[Per Boysen <perboysen@gmail.com>]

That's indeed a subjective question so ok, here's a subjective answer ;-))

Like Andrew said, Live and Komplete are two different things and it
really is hard to compare a DAW host application with a bunch of
instrument plug-ins. I think the instruments that come bundled with
Live sound pretty lame compared to the instruments that comes with the
Komplete bundle. You could of course buy extra Live instrument
plug-ins that sounds excellent but that will cost you as much as Live
+ Komplete in the first place. Guitar Rig has excellent effect routing
options built into the actual plug-in. Of course you could easily set
up those routings in Live (except for envelope follow fixes) but IMHO
nothing in Live sounds as good as GR as for guitar type distortion and
effect processing. However, personally I like the sound of Amplitube 3
better, so I'm all off side here anyway. I own Kontakt 4 and think it
is the best sampler available today. If you plan to go deeply into
sampling that would be a good investment. I just got the version 4
upgrade and was amazed how stable and CPU efficient Kontakt is now.
And it also sounds better than version 2 that I had before. This
sampler has indeed evolved over time! Still not as CPU efficient as
EXS24 that I run in Logic (in the studio) and Mainstage for live work,
but that one is just a "low cpu workhorse" and doesn't have the deep
sampler functionality you get with K4. So you get great sound with
Komplete - although Absynth still is a CPU chewing monster that people
love for the sound of it.

The reason I can see to buy Ableton Live of today would be that you
really want to get busy with signal routing in that particular
environment. Many other hosts offer equal routing capabilities but the
point with Live is that everything is up front. You don't have to
create modules and patch them up, just mouse around and make choices
among drop-down menues. In that sense it is extremely visually
oriented. You can set up loops of audio, you can set up loops of MIDI
that drives synths, you can set up loops of control data that drives
effect parameters or any aspect of the track mixer. But Live is
fundamentally designed as a playback system. It excels in DJ or remix
oriented performance but is not very good when it comes to realtime
capturing of live audio input. Mobius may cover up for that, but then
you have the sync issue which is different depending on which one you
like to sync to which one (MIDI clock "try-to-catch-up" game or
plug-in sync that makes Mobius less fluent). Finally, you might want
to buy Live because you also want to buy and work with Max For Live
and create your own plugins.

My final subjective view on this is on the bundled plugins and audio
fidelity of Live. I've been using Live since version 3 but always
achieved better sounding mixes when mixing in Logic. It feels like the
effect plugins simply are better in that DAW. And you get high quality
instruments bundled, not having to shell out a lot of extra money.
Since they added Mainstage to the package I prefer that appl for live
work rather than Live. I think I even prefer Bidule (under Windows)
rather than Live. But that is from a live looping point of view,
typically running the Mobius plugin as the tempo master center of the
rig.

You should try to imagine what you want to do and post some more
specific questions. Or downloads the manuals and read them. Live's
manual gives a total understanding of what you can do with the
application.

Greetings from Sweden

Per Boysen
www.boysen.se
www.perboysen.com


On Wed, Mar 17, 2010 at 1:22 AM, james fowler <twostroke@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> i know this is a really subjective question, but what are people's 
>thoughts on the these two?  i'm really torn and the demos unfortunately 
>don't really let you dig in and see what's what.  maybe for people 
>who've spent some serious time with either...what are your praises and 
>complaints.
>
> i really like the samplers (kontakt and battery) in komplete and live.  
>i prefer mobius, so the looper in ableton doesn't matter.  komplete just 
>seems, um, deeper.  any and all input is greatly appreciated.  all of 
>this will run inside of bidule.