Why I think I can comment: I’ve used a lot of software. At one point, when I was shopping for a DAW, I demo’d just about everything that would work on a Mac: Pro Tools LE, Logic, Ableton Live, Cubase, Digital Performer, Reason, and a couple that I’ve forgotten. Since then, I’ve also used Pro Tools HD, Renoise, Reaper, Ardour, and Record.
Why you should take what I say with a grain of salt: I haven’t produced anything of note, just some bootleg remixes that I was kinda happy with and some original stuff that’s never quite done until I get sick of it and start something else.
The top 3, for me, hands down are Logic, Pro Tools, and Ableton Live, not necessarily in that order. You’re not asking about Pro Tools, so I’ll ignore it.
Ableton is the DAW that I have the most experience with by far, but it’s not currently installed on my system. I think it’s perfectly valid for DJing, and it’s great for playing live. Some people love it for production. Personally, I think it takes forever to do anything. It doesn’t have score-based midi composition, a feature I really like. Its signal routing is different from basically everything else out there, which has both its perks and problems. I don’t think it handles 3rd party plugins–from strictly a GUI perspective–very well at all. It can’t really use multiple windows: multiple plugin windows, yes…not multiple of its windows, which basically means that you can’t easily use multiple monitors with it if you ever want to, say, put your edit/timeline/arrangement view on one monitor and your mixer on another, which is something I very much want to be able to do whenever I can afford it. You might not. And if you’re buying Live Suite, it’s included instruments and effects are mostly pretty damn good…but it’s got some gaps. Live Suite also costs like $700 for a download.
Logic is less pretty IMHO, but it makes up for it with it’s keyboard controls and a few specific features: the inspector is great for showing important mixer channels easily without wasting too much screen real estate. The multiple windows and the way to manage them (key commands, midi/HUI controllers, or configurable window groups) makes it a bit slower to set up and a lot faster to use once you learn how to do that and learn how you want to use it. Its editing is more powerful, though more complicated. It has some features that make working with audio a lot more convenient. Flex Time is IMHO easier to use than Warping. Its included plugins might be better, with the exception that its instrument GUIs are mostly unintelligible. It does come with a TB-303 replica that sounds pretty good and is easy enough to use. And, Logic Studio costs $500, comes with more instruments than Live Suite, and comes with Space Designer, one of the leading convolution reverb units on the planet…along with an impulse response utility to be able to measure the reverb characteristics of a space.
If you don’t need all that, Logic Express is the same program, minus a few of the more advanced plugins, Main Stage, the convolution reverb and delay, and their conversion/dithering stuff that doesn’t matter anyway…for $200…that still comes with several software instruments that sound good but have really crappy GUIs.
Even if you buy Logic Studio and Reason (Logic and Ableton Live both can act as ReWire masters), it only costs $100 more than a download of Ableton Live Suite…or less than a boxed copy by like $50 IIRC.
Given the choice between Ableton Live and Logic…Ableton is just too damn expensive for what you get. Logic offers more stuff for less money, the ability to use better control surfaces, the ability to run TDM plugins and use the Avid DSP cards if you’re ever in a pro studio (Logic Studio only, not express).
Logic is just plain a better deal economically.
But some people swear by Ableton because of the way it works. I don’t think it’s worth the money.
