Hello,

So far I have been recording all my stuff on Abelton Live Lite and it has actually done me quite well so far as I like a very simple, stripped down approach.

But one major looking problem exists for me. That is the amount of plug ins you can use. you can only use 4 plug ins, which limits my eq and mixing possibilities. This is especially true for drums and vocals. I use Amplitube to.

It also has a limit of only 8 tracks per live set.

I cannot really afford live. I even have a 25% discount offer that expires at midnight, but the money is still a lot.

Alternatively, do you have any tips for how I could comfortably live with just 4 tracks.


A second question: I am thinking of buying Abbey Road 70's drums. In this software you can eq, add effects to and mix your drums. If I use this in Ableton can I tweek my drum mix in 70's drums instead of using the controls in Ableton? I know you can do this in Amplitube.


Thanks for any tips. I really like Ableton already from using Lite. Is Intro a worth while upgrade? I can get it for around £60.

Should I buy Live Intro? You may choose only one Yes Nah, its not worth it.

Votes accepted from (04/03/13 12:00 AM) to (No end specified) View Poll results

If you are happy sticking with the cut down version, use it to your advantage. 4 plugins is plenty for some styles of music and it forces you to be more creative. You could always bounce tracks with effects. There have been many great albums made in the past with only 8 channels and only 4 aux for effects.

Secondly, Abbey Rd drums are amazeballs. Yes they do have their own EQ section. Now that they are the Drummer versions they come with (from their website):

"Create the perfect drum submix completely within the instrument! Each of the updated ABBEY ROAD DRUMMER Series provides a dedicatedMixer Section and a range of high-quality studio effects, including tape saturation, convolution reverb and three big-league effects: a top-qualitystudio EQ, a high-endstudio compressor and the awe-inspiringTRANSIENT MASTER."

The other reason you may want to consider one of the full versions of Ableton Live is the warp algorythms they include are probably better than Intro.

Check out the Ableton site today at they just released version 9, so the Intro version may have some cool new features that 8 did not have.

BTW, I use Ableton Suite and Abbey Rd 60s and 80s drums.

Cheers!

Thanks. Great answer. I would love Ableton Suite but it is an overwhelming amount of money atm.

Ableton have taken their site down because it has so much traffic.

I am looking for the details for Live 9 Intro.

What is 80's drums like? I automatically moved towards 70 drums because my music has a big 70's influence. Hendrix, Zeppelin, Purple, Allman Brothers.

My usual line up in a song consists of Guitar, Vocal, Bass Guitar and Drums (Midi). I also some times use Electric Organ (Midi) and Harmonica (real).

Edited by jkielq91 (05/03/13 12:21 PM)

Could you use a channel strip plug-in, something like iZotope Alloy or Ozone to effectively increase the number of plug-in slots available? They normally do a free time-limited demo so you could see if it works for you. That way even if you do choose to upgrade later you'll still have something useful.

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Not much in life worth running for. Or from.

I have never heard of a channel strip plug in before. How does it work?

Do you put the channel strip plug in on a track and then put plugins in the channel strip?

A channel strip plug-in usually consists of a gate, EQ and a compressor, which means it is three plug-ins in one. You don't need all sections active, just the ones you require.

With regard to your question, I have recently got Live Intro but not used it enought to tell you if it is vastly better than Lite. I would suggest you save your pennies and get one of the full blown packages in a couple of months.

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http://soundcloud.com/richie-royale
http://www.mixcrate.com/richieroyale

Quote Richie Royale:

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A channel strip plug-in usually consists of a gate, EQ and a compressor, which means it is three plug-ins in one. You don't need all sections active, just the ones you require.

With regard to your question, I have recently got Live Intro but not used it enought to tell you if it is vastly better than Lite. I would suggest you save your pennies and get one of the full blown packages in a couple of months.

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Thanks for the info. I will check it out.

Have you thought of mixing to stems? First you mix drums, then bass, vocals, etc - then you print the result to a WAV and load them in another, final, project (or another intermediate one, of course) and so forth. This would at least kind of double your plugin count (four in the original tracks, plus additional four that you can use for the stem), which isn't bad - and then you can even add more just by printing the wav and reloading. Bit more work but if buying a full version is off the table, it can be pretty effective - plus you learn quick to use plugins only when you need 'em. Personally, if I have more than 4 plugins on a track start to look at them with suspicion, but then I ain't a pro either, so who knows what's right..

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http://www.silver-spoon.org - It's just music
..and the FB page

Quote CS70:

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Have you thought of mixing to stems? First you mix drums, then bass, vocals, etc - then you print the result to a WAV and load them in another, final, project (or another intermediate one, of course) and so forth. This would at least kind of double your plugin count (four in the original tracks, plus additional four that you can use for the stem), which isn't bad - and then you can even add more just by printing the wav and reloading. Bit more work but if buying a full version is off the table, it can be pretty effective - plus you learn quick to use plugins only when you need 'em. Personally, if I have more than 4 plugins on a track start to look at them with suspicion, but then I ain't a pro either, so who knows what's right..

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Good idea.

What plugins would you use and how do you use them?

I use amplitube for guitar and bass, which is often three plugins. Then there is drums. 4. But vocals then need doing, which is another plugin.

I've just bought Abbey Road Drums 70s and am impressed. I run it in Live 8 and have mapped all the drum names using an instrument rack with lots of chains.

Within AR drums You get a full set of effects plugins built in on every instrument - Snare, Kick etc. Sound quality very good, articulation very good. Does take a bit of time to load tho

Hi there

intro and lite and pretty much the same product. You will run into similar limitations. Upgrade to Live or Suite. Even at 25% it's better.
of course you can look at the readers ads and Gumtree or Ebay for anyone selling their copy of Live/Suite.

I used Lite and Intro but soon upgraded to Suite.
However, if you get Live you really should get Sampler as there's so much that can be done with it when you get into Racks.

I would also suggest that the sheer number of racks freely available on the net and made by users is pretty amazing and you lose out on using these if you're using the stripped down versions of Live.

To be able to live with four tracks requires that you bounce down tracks and effects. You need to get good at making production decisions. It's the way it always was with tape based systems, especially four tracks, and Live Lite/Intro is no different. Of course you have the advantage of saving changes incrementally so that you can always go back and undo a decision.

Hope that helps.

Hussein

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Hussein Boon: http://www.husseinboon.co.uk
Soundcloud: http://soundcloud.com/hussein-boon