Pro Tools vs. Ableton Live

Every audio engineers has their own preferences on which DAW to use or which ones are the best. Each DAW is best in its own way and in this blog I will talk about the DAWs I use and my thoughts on it. As I have been a pro tools user for a year now, recently I was introduced to Ableton live 9 and using it for a while now. There is no doubt that both the DAWs are great and unique from each other which makes me wanna use both.

I think Ableton Live is more useful for Live performance and great for creating some awesome loops. Live is really easy to use compare to other DAWs out there especially for the newbies like myself. The varieties of option to manipulate any sound and create something totally different, for example creating sound fx from the kick sample by just one click. The simplicity of Ableton Live makes it more fun and easier for the producers to show their creativeness. Where Pro tools is one of the best DAWs for editing and mixing, Live is good in creating new electronic music and loops.Again, by not suggesting or going too deep about which DAW to use and which is the most preferable, they are equally useful and I will be using both in the future. Here are few interesting points about differences between Pro Tools and Ableton Live and also some shortcomings of both.

- Plugins

The varieties of default plugins Pro tools provide and in different categories that opens the lists for EQ, Delay, Reverb and so on is something i like the most about this DAW.

- Instruments

This one goes to Ableton Live, as it has sampler instrument that is great for creating sample based music or loops. You can also use computer keyboard when composing or creating melodies. Another great Instrument worth mentioning is operators as you may have read in one of my previous blogs in where one can create their sound sample by manipulating waves, ADSR, etc. and can come with interesting sounds. This is kind of a set back in pro tools.

- View

Pro tools has a neat and clear view than Ableton, It has proper and big mixer view, you can also make it big or small according to you preferences. When you import any audio files it keeps the name of the track, where in Ableton it’s audio1, audio2 and so on. You also see all plugins and sends applied on a track at a same time. In this case it might get bit confusing in Live as I had issues in figuring out.

- Key mapping

Something i recently realised that in Live there is an option for key mapping where you assign your keyboard keys to particular functions like for playing certain tracks, on and off switches, putting track in mono, etc. which i cant do it in pro tools.

- Extra files

One “extra” minus point in Ableton that whenever you ran and drop your audio files it creates an .asd file which is not actually a big thing but once you open your finder folder it is filled with files with same names, .asd and an audio file.

- Location of Bounced files

Pro tools is very organised in the matter of keeping one whole project in one folder, When you open new session It creates one folder that contains all your audio files and bounced files and when you create new session, it will make whole another folder. In live it only remembers the last bounced project you worked on and saves your bounce file in previous session folder.

So, In conclusion Both the DAWs are equally great. They are very unique and different from each other, thats why i use both. i create music in ableton and protools can be used for live recordings and mixing especially. I also prefer mixing both the DAWs may be by using Rewire plugin that can connect ableton session to Pro tools.

References

"Ableton Live User Changes To Avid Pro Tools". Pro Tools Expert. N.p., 2016. Web. 11 Aug. 2016.

"Ableton: Sound Design | Sound On Sound". Soundonsound.com. N.p., 2016. Web. 11 Aug. 2016.

"Avid Pro Tools 12.3 | Sound On Sound". Soundonsound.com. N.p., 2016. Web. 11 Aug. 2016.