I’ve been an Ableton dabbler since about v5, but never dedicated time to learning it fully. I kept straying awa6 to other ‘nicer’ looking DAWs, like Cubase and Studio One. I’ve recently come to the realisation that I think this is because I find the Ableton visuals entirely uninspiring, particularly the mixer, which is very much a personal thing, I appreciate. However, I do find Ableton ‘easier’ to produce and compose in, in terms of using MIDI instruments and so on.

So, I’m just wondering, does anybody use a combination of DAWs at all in real time, i.e. ReWiring one into the other. I am not talking about composing in one DAW, e.g. Ableton, and then exporting stems into and DAW to mix and master the audio files. Instead, I am talking about using Ableton as the composing DaW, and have the audio feed into another DAW to carry out the mixing elements.

I’m just curious before I explore the possibilities of trying to combine Ableton Live Suite 11 and Cubase Pro 12 in this way….

 

hi Bunford,
rewire is a thing of the past. live 11 and reason 11 both dont support rewire anymore. i took a quick look, cubase 12 has dropped it too. sorry, youre too late

 

instruments + Kilohearts Snap Heap combos in different in Patchwork instances (which is able to reopen them, so no needs workspaces) is very similar

the creative and mixing process can be separated nicely I like it, this is how I use Cubase

ps. skins are here
https://audiosex.pro/threads/skins-for-kilohearts-phaseplant-snapins-plugins.57703/

 

Last edited: Jul 28, 2022

Gah. I thought I’d read something about Propellerhead dropping it.

Is there any other alternative ways to connect two DAWs? Is there something possible using Ableton Link? I assume it’s possible with something like Virtual Audio Cable?!

Just had a look and seems Cubase users have been asking for Link implementation since 10.5: https://forums.steinberg.net/t/ableton-link-sync-with-cubase-10/132247/6

it also seems like competitors like Pro Tools, Bitwig, Reason, Maschine have implemented Ableton Link too, and weirdly Steinberg have for the Cubasis app, but not for Cubase?!?!

https://www.ableton.com/en/link/products/

 

Last edited: Jul 27, 2022

Ya I started with Fruity Loops, then switched to Reason for awhile, landed on Ableton for a couple years and then moved to Cubase. I love Cubase as my main DAW, honestly it's my favorite DAW and I've used alot of DAWs, but lately I've been VSTing FLStudio into Cubase. I just love FLStudios Sequencer / Pattern Style. I've tried probably around 20 different sequencers and nothing can give me that free-flowing workflow like the sequencers in FLStudio. It's probably just familiarity and having started with fruity loops. Anyway though having it tied into Cubase helps bring out my creativity and makes it so easy to mess around and come up with new ideas, while still staying focused, grounded, and organized (Which was a problem for me in FL). I try to use Reason's rack sometimes in Cubase, but everytime I use it I realize it's usually something I can already do better in Cubase or FLStudio and there's no real reason to use it other than to switch things up or for "funzies". On a second note I really hope they come out with an alternative to ReWire because lately I've been wanting to use certain plugins that are only available in Ableton.

 

Don't ever try to understand why Steinberg make the decisions they make, you'll literally break your brain trying lol!

I've used Cubase as my primary DAW since around 2000, and as much as I find it very comfortable and efficient to use, it's also an endless source of frustration, mainly due to the fact that Steinberg are a really quite customer-unfriendly company, and pretty much do whatever the fuck they like, while ignoring both he majority of user requests/bug reports, AND a seemingly infintely stubborn refusal to fix (or even fully acknowledge) some longstanding issues, some of which are bugs / missing features which have continued across 8 or 9 major releases.


As regards linking Ableton to Cubase - as others have correctly mentioned, Rewire is dead tech now. Years ago I used to Rewire Reason into Cubase to use as an instrument rack, but tbh I always found it to be a very cumbersome way to work.

I'm not that familiar with Ableton Link, but any time I've been working on really any kind of linked DAW setup, I've just found it slowed me down, as you're constantly having to shift gears mentally, and remember which bit of your workflow is in which DAW.

The only type of this kinda setup that I've found to be even half-tolerable is some VSL systems, the kind you use for large-scale scoring projects. IF they're done well, they can be pretty seamless, but yeah, for me personally the whole Rewire-esque setup is more of a pain in the ass than it's worth.

Ableton does have some cool stuff that pretty unique to it, but if there's something I wanna use, I prefer to just bounce a track over into Ableton, do whatever I need to, then bounce it back. On a fast system it only takes a few seconds anyway.

 

I was determined to do something similar, except into Reaper. Live's session view gels with my creative workflow, but I like Reaper for everything else. I had also started jamming remotely with friends using Ninjam, and wanted to use session view as a sort of multi-instrument looper and send them on a track-by-track level.

I tried Voicemeeter and Virtual Audio Cable but they didn't fit the bill, I can't remember why exactly.

Ultimately managed to get a nice setup going just using my audio interface's routing, so this would depend on your hardware's capabilities.

First, it has a loopback feature, which many do. This is essentially a virtual stereo input/output to which you can assign a DAW Out in the interface's software for this purpose. Then use that DAW Out on a Live track and then use the Loopback In on a Reaper track.

Second, it has optical ADAT in/out connections. I wasn't sure if this would work at first, but simply plugging both ends of a single cable into these allowed me to route a bunch more DAW Outs to the 8 ADAT outputs so they were available as ADAT inputs 1-8 in Reaper. Pretty sweet!

Third, and not the most ideal option, you could use any open hardware outputs and physically cable them back into any open inputs on your unit. This would require open Ins/Outs obviously, and also go through an extra DA/AD conversion. It's not uncommon to do this for reamping or running through outboard gear though.

You can further sync the tempo and playback between Live and Reaper with a neat program called LoopMIDI (unsure about it working in W11). This will create a virtual MIDI port which will show up in the MIDI devices in both DAWs. In Reaper there's an option to send the clock to it, then in Live set it to sync and turn on the External Sync Switch.

Again this all depends on your hardware. It's worked beautifully for me.

 

I use ReWire with Logic still from time to time. Can't remember how, but there is a setting you can change to make it still work on AL11 despite them deprecating it