I’ve had my eye on buying Ableton Live for a while, but given it’s massive price tag and my shallow wallet, I haven’t been able to pick up anything but the demo. (The temptation to just download a cracked version has loomed in my head, but I can’t in good conscience use cracked software)
Anyway, now Ableton releases Ableton Live Intro for $100, which fits my budget much better than it’s siblings. But, it obviously has fewer features than the other guys.
Since I know nothing about Ableton (my copy of Ableton Live Power is being shipped right now), when they talk about things Intro doesn’t have, it’s like reading a foreign language.
Can anyone tell me if this is a good purchase or if it would be a waste of my time?
Otherwise I’ll just save my money for a few months and buy Live. They offer discounts to college students so I could pick up the full version for $269.
the two big differences would be the 64 track maximum, and the fact that it does not have the complex or complex pro time-stretch algorithms. The complex/complex pro warping is what gives ableton the best time-stretching, the other two methods of warping are kind of boo boo.
Intro is very limited on the effects as well. I think it eight total in a project. So if you do a mix with 12 tracks, you can only put eq on eight of them!!!
Live intro is to limited overall to be at any use.
There’s not really a cheap way to get into Ableton and the limited versions are a letdown to djs.
You could think of
a: buying a full version with a friend (as you can get license for more than one computer and I recall it wasn’t against the EULA), or
b: buying Ableton 7 (it’s still sold and officially supported)
c: buying someone’s license from Ableton forum, eBay or such
EDIT: d: buy a controller that comes with a version of Live, which you can then upgrade to Intro. I think Launchpad comes with LE version and costs 150ish.
I’ve been using Intro for the last 6 months or so (well, LE upgraded to Intro), and I think it’s been a great purchase. I use it for DJ’ing and remixes- gradually moving from simply mashups to more remixed stuff with instruments, hopefully eventually will broaden my knowledge enough to start producing from the ground up.
To address a few of the concerns:
I haven’t had any real problems with the warping - it may not be fantastic but it definitely does the job.
It’s true that you’re limited to 12 audio effects, but combined effects panels only count for one. For example, the “DJ Master channel” has gain, reverb, a filter, and 3-band EQ but only counts for one effect. You can also run multiple channels of audio through a return track with an effect on it, getting an effect several tracks for the price of one (also saves on CPU power).
Oh- and you can only use one license between computers that aren’t enabled at the same time. You need to disable one before the other one will work - fine for a producing desktop and DJ laptop but it doesn’t really work if you want to split a license with a friend.
There are tons and tons of included instrument samples, and while you only can have 8 ableton instruments, that may be plenty for you.
If you’re working on something and really need more than that, you can always render what you have, save as an audio file, and then play that over another set of 8 instruments.
Given that you can get a discount on the full version after buying Intro, I would definitely recommend it.
Oh and one other note: If you do end up with Live 7, know that the warp markers are slightly different, which means if you eventually do upgrade to 8 you might need to adjust all your beatgridded tracks. Even in the few months I had LE (same system as 7), I warped enough tracks that it was a pain in the ass to adjust them again to fit 8 (the system Intro uses).