Good question. Better, but no. All have latency. It is not noticeable in some and more in others.

 

I've said my piece about apple and Logic. it's OEM "coded" software. it's cheaper than any other option. Maybe I am getting too old for living dangerously, and I would put the Cadillac tires on the Cadillac. Running Ableton on an M1 is like paying 300$ extra to put new Horn Fluid into the Cadillac.

I bet in 6 months all the "paying Ableton customers" will be defending Cubase.

 

Maybe you will be right who knows?
The work I do demands a workflow based system so you'll have to take that up with Ableton, FL, Reaper and Bitwig users.

 

Yes, Reaper will outperform any DAW on any system. That is a fact not an opinion.

 

Reaper purely as a DAW for bands, EDM, loops, slicing and base mixing/mastering is really good..
Reaper falls over and perpetually crashes with a 128 piece orchestra recording simultaneously with plugins in every main bus and that is fact, not opinion, and why no major million dollar studio uses it as DAW of choice, because it is not workflow based and still has some external hardware compatibility issues. It underperforms there atrociously.
It is one thing to put 128 samples into separate tracks and something else to simultaneously record and process that many tracks from a 128 channel desk.

 

Last edited: May 21, 2022

OP is making beats not recording a 128 piece orchestra so your response is irrelevant to this conversation. I guess its good to know but 99% of modern producers can't and will never record a 128 piece orchestra anyway lol...

 

You are possibly correct but the ambiguity of your below statement required answering,

 

Oy - what about the rest of my band - who's gonna record "the One to Eight Fuzz Bunnies"

Spoiler: Oy - what about the rest of my band

 

@sex!
Bars n' pipes! enjoy! :-D
https://youtube.com/clip/UgkxOu0aoxsUHqG9sulUquhupsg37xoaKrkh

 

I love your sense of humour. I was tempted to answer "Roger Rabbit was available but he's busy chasing a woman in a red dress"....
Better get back to topic ....

 

I'd say give Logix Pro X a try before ableton, logic has better instrumens, effects, compressors. Also, Logic has a nice step sequencer which FL has as wel.

 

OK, back to topic (a bit) - that 128 piece orchestra.

I'm still of the mentality that 'almost any modern DAW is good enough' for 'almost any task'.

I did once record an orchestra. After we shuffled the dinosaurs out of the orchestra's favourite rehearsal hall, I set up a mobile 16-track studio - all analog, in a hopelessly non-sound-proof adjacent room.
We did have a very very valuable pre-lunch 90 minutes of 'orchestra just rehearsing' to explore microphone placement.
In an attempt to be as adventurous and as thorough as possible, we used 8 stereo pairs of mics (our limit), as strategically placed as our naivety would allow. Then we recorded after lunch - 'one take' of course! We had plenty of time later to play with mixing and eventually ended up simply ignoring a few of the stereo pairs that we had recorded. FX? NONE whatsoever! - and everyone liked the result.

I reckon, today, a dedicated capable engineer, armed with decent mics, a portable mixer, a high-end audio interface, and a decent laptop (ok and a ridiculous amount of cabling), could use almost any DAW to get a recording of an orchestra that most people would say - that's fine. Just pay attention to finding the right mic placements and balancing the precious room ambience and you're good to go. I expect to get shot down in flames by every modern techie that thinks hundreds of tracks are essential but I believe history says otherwise.

Of course, many or most modern music production processes bear very little resemblance to 'live recording', but I still think the same attitudes are appropriate, i.e., understand techniques, and use skill, to squeeze the best out of whatever tools you have available - today's tools are just NEVER the limiting factor - we're spoilt for choice of equipment that we can use to get it right (or falsely blame when we screw up)

Now back to important 'off topic', that was NOT Roger Rabbit chasing the woman in a red dress.
Look closer - it was Lois Lane still wearing his Easter Bunny outfit to evade the security cameras.

 

Yes I'd agree with that analogy unless you get an Orchestra that has a microphone on every instrument - They do make the snap-on ones and they're very popular. (and good) Then you need a DAW that is geared for handling multiple tracks simultaneously. The newer laptops and the Workflow-based DAW's can handle it. I reckon Ableton could too. It also depends if the Producer wants every track or trusts the engineer to mix on the spot in groups - many do not because if the group recording is not what the Producer wanted, they know they are stuck with it.

As for Lois Lane, better not tell Superman as he was out of town at the time.

 

Last edited: May 22, 2022

Every DAW can track
But now try to MIX those 128 tracks on FL Studio or Ableton ... good luck with that
Grouping s*cks, Mixer s*cks ... a nightmare

I'm more and more in "general use" DAWs (Logic, Cubase, Studio One ...)
BUT i totally understand others needs.

When i need to mix a cyber metal orchestral 32+ tracks, it is NOT going to be on Ableton/Fl Studio

 

The best way to know if switching to ableton is worth is just to try it. But if you're thinking of switching to a new DAW, I would recommend you to try several ones and then, decide to take the step of getting into the new one. I used Ableton years ago, but then, when I got sick of all the crashes and all the problems (or lack of functionalities) it had for me (no option to view multi midi patterns, some problems with synchronization of some tracks, couldn't run 32bit vst if you were using 64bit Ableton and vice-versa, ........), I started trying another DAWs and I got finally in touch with Bitwig Studio, which was perfect for me in many aspects, being cheaper than Ableton, as well. So, best way to know: try it for yourself. Try ableton and others as much as you can until you find what fits your needings.

 

Agreed - and therein lies one of the modern dilemmas in using today's brilliant tech.

Do I submix already or do I demand that everything stays separate? and mix later?

Do I perform this part and go for it and get it right - this take?
or should I record 20 takes and then micro-pick-and-choose?

- The fabulous luxury of not needing to make our minds up - just defer to later.
- The curse of not needing to make our minds up - just defer to later.

I wouldn't want to go without today's flexibility.
Nor would I want to not experience that pressure of 'just go for it - get it done'.
Allowing projects to get too inflated and balloon out of control - with 100's of tracks is something that I've enjoyed
but now I prefer to avoid that - the closer to 'being live' the better.
All just evolving personal preferences.

 

Last edited: May 22, 2022

On a Mac Logic would be my first choice, Ableton maybe second.

 

Ableton for one major reason....Racks!

All jokes aside, I came from using Protools way back in 2002 while studying audio engineering. Like ArticStorm a friend gave me a copy of live 4. Installed it and immediately hated it. Considering I wanted a better work flow, I decided to open it up again and just give it a try. As I played with it more and more I found features which surprised me more and more. 20 years later I'm now still using Ableton and never looked back.

 

Ableton Live 11 (and 10 to an extent) crashes at every chance it gets on my machines while 9 is rock-solid.

Do you use bank/program changes via MIDI CC? Ableton Live doesn't support them whatsoever. The only ones you get are the very, very first ones in the queue. All the subsequent ones get lost.

Switch to Logic, trust me. I put up with Live for nearly 5 years before switching and I wish I had never started using it.

 

Last edited: May 22, 2022