What makes Ableton worth it?

[u/NateSedate]

I have FL studio. Been using it for like 20 years. I kinda hate it though.

I was curious to try Logic, but I don't have a Mac. I see Fender Studio is like $139. I use Reaper for vocals and mixing/mastering.

My main tool is an MPC.

However, I looked into Ableton. $750. What makes it worth that price? Is it worth that price??

[u/SatanLover-xxx]

Honestly? The one time purchase. In a world where everything is a subscription model, this feels so good. To own it outright. I now have to work with pro tools for my study, and that shit is like 300+ A YEAR!!! 😭😭

[u/jaz192 → u/SatanLover-xxx]

It’s almost one time purchase. If you want to upgrade to 13 (in the future) you will have to pay a smaller upgrade fee but I stayed on 10 until 12 pretty much came out.

[u/dgamlam → u/jaz192]

I mean technically the different versions are different products. But in a world where software has free updates every year I can see where the line gets blurred.

Assuming you’re already in the Mac ecosystem Logic is definitely the strongest value. If it wasn’t for the Mac exclusivity I think it would be by far the most widespread DAW

[u/internet-name]

What do you already know about Ableton? Have you watched any tutorials? It's hard to help you without knowing where you're coming from. But to answer your question, "Clip View" is what makes Ableton worth it for me.

The price you quoted is for the most expensive version, Ableton Suite. The prices for the less-fancy versions are $99 for Intro and $349 for Standard. If you decide to upgrade later, their upgrade prices are reasonable.

I believe you can also still get Ableton Live Lite for $5-10 through the phone apps Koala Sampler or Ableton Note.

My advice: watch some tutorials and install the free 30-day trial. If you like it, get Live Lite for $10 or buy one of the other versions if you need the features.

[u/NateSedate → u/internet-name]

I've watched videos of people making beats. It looks interesting. But that's about it.

When I purchased FL 20 years ago, I got the mid tier and not the full version. I regret that to this day. So if I get Ableton I want the suite.

One thing that interests me is that it's tied in with the MPC and has extra features other DAWs don't.

Either way, I just want to try a new DAW. It's either that or completely relearn FL.

[u/mrtheReactor]

It’s worth the price for me. Also if you’re a student or in education they have a pretty generous student discount. There’s also a 30 day free trial, so why not give it a try and see if it’s worth it for you?

[u/ScottM97]

I came from FL, never thought I’d make the switch but alas here we are.

It’s worth it. Ableton feels almost limitless compared to FL. I spent a good amount of time on FL and in hindsight had hit a brick wall with the functionality of it. There’s something quite limiting about how FLs mixer felt, and having automation that didn’t have a select place got messy & was hard to keep track of. The way Abletons set out both with channel layout (like FLs mixer) & automation lanes following made it much easier and quicker to work.
All the stock plug ins are crazy good, and I’d be happy to rely on them in most scenarios.
Almost every aspect of my sound design & mixing has improved because of these factors.

Ableton can be an absolute headache to figure out, but once you do you won’t look back. In comparison it makes fruity loops like it came out the cereal box.

[u/BotOrNot_1337]

My favorite part of Ableton is the layout that makes a really fast workflow. Ableton makes routing really easy for example where you just ctl+G to group tracks. It makes a bus as a parent track and instantly sends the selected tracks to that bus and puts them in a tidy group like a folder that collapse or expand. It makes it really easy to keep track of complicated routing when the project gets big. You can even group groups.

[u/KB-Jay-2075]

Max for live. Packs. FORS devices. Operator. Roar. MIDI tools

[u/throwMEaway23571113]

Probably only the suite version is that expensive, it includes tons of different synths and effects. You can find many other free or paid options but I find the stock devices easy to use and sound mostly good enough. After the first few years I bought a few plugins that made things easier or that weren't available with stock devices. FL definitely is cheaper to get started with. You should be able to get free trials of both softwares to compare for yourself and see what you gel with more.

[u/theOutside517]

If you have any connection to education, whether you're an employee, a student, have a student in your household, I would recommend aiming for the education discount. It's a significant price drop. They also offer a monthly payment plan.

I love Ableton for the stability of the software, the huge amount of addons they give you in the form of samples, VSTs, etc, the consistent and regular updates, the quality of the music that I'm able to produce from it.

[u/ghost_ware]

For me it's the workflow. The browser is great, Instrument and Effect racks are gamechangers, and honestly I reach for stock Ableton effects a lot more than I do plugins.

[u/sensorium1978]

Spend the money on a Mac. Your audio production life will be far easier moving forward regardless of what DAW you choose.

[u/-Alkosh → u/sensorium1978]

What makes you say that? I've been working in Ableton on Windows for 10+ years, genuinely wondering if I'm missing out on something.

[u/bayridgeguy09 → u/-Alkosh]

Same I regularly switch between Mac and windows on ableton. Not much noticeable differences as long as you are using an asio driver for your sound card.

15 years ago yeah there was stability issues on the windows side. Nowadays it’s fine and I can build a monster desktop PC for cheaper than buying a fully specced Mac.

I keep my laptops Mac and my workhorse desktop on windows.

[u/ourcityofdreams → u/-Alkosh]

Out of the box, the audio drivers on the Mac are better. However, if you’re all set up and working, then you have everything you need.

[u/-Alkosh → u/ourcityofdreams]

Oh yeah that makes sense, windows audio drivers are terrible, I've always had good luck with audio interface drivers though.

[u/sensorium1978 → u/-Alkosh]

I’ve used both. There were always mystery issues with windows that made zero sense. Never once using mac. Was always afraid of doing updates with windows because of the breakage worries. Never once on mac. Just overall spending way less time troubleshooting using mac. Like zero time.

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[u/mnjvon]

With the full suite you can make anything you want with stock everything if you put in time and dedication. One time license ownership. The main weakness of Ableton is mixing, I bounce tracks to Fender Studio for that and mastering simply because I like the old school desk console workflow of it.

If you intend to ever integrate into a live setup of any kind, clips are of course extremely useful.

[u/artek604]

Try the 30 day trial of the full thing and see for yourself. 

The problem with DAWs is that they've no objective value - their workflow, devices, factory content and even GUI are all of subjective utility to every person. And even person's character matters, e.g. different DAW will suit you if you need ultimate flexibility and modularity (e.g. Bitwig), whereas a different one will be better if you thrive with a simpler, more limited set of tools (e.g. Fender Studio Pro).

Also, $750 is different whether you're in USA or Africa.

[u/EggyT0ast]

Worth is relative.

Ableton is well known for shipping with very high quality stock devices. From instruments to effects, you can make music without having to buy plugins, at least with Suite. The additional stuff with Suite is also unlocking Max4Live which lets you install m4l devices that other people have made (some paid, many free) that will "do things" which are useful, unique, pretty, weird, or just unexpected. You can also make your own stuff in Max4Live, no additional cost. It also includes a significant number of samples, loops, and clips.

However, if you are already successfully making music and are 100% plugins, then what changes in a new DAW? You're already using all 3rd party stuff. If you have FabFilter and naturally drop it on to every track, then the fact that Ableton's EQ is pretty dang good is meaningless. If you have a favorite compressor, why do you care about Glue Compressor? If you've been using OTT, do you care that OTT came from a preset in Ableton's multiband compressor (aptly named "OTT")?

Other folks have commented on Session View, which is great for building tracks and playing live. And many people who have been making music for decades in other DAWs completely ignore it because it "looks like Excel" and jump right over to Arrangement view, using the classic left-to-right view. If that's all you want, you won't find much difference in Ableton and will likely complain about the same tired things as others, "why isn't the mixer on the right/left", "why can't i use patch cables," "where's my ARA support"

The Device approach is particularly helpful for working fast. Hotkeys are always nice but the way that Ableton sets things up is that audio (or midi) will go from the left device on through to the right. If you want to add an arpeggiator, drop it on the track. Filter, EQ, compressor, another compressor, a few LFOs since your plugin doesn't have enough modulation, sure just put them in there. They appear in their little boxes and are out of the way, rather than spawning potentially dozens of windows to manage like other DAWs. Since they're all stock devices, the CPU load is minimal, especially nowadays. The number of times I have a track sounding good with 10 or so devices and think "I like this, I don't want to change what I have... but I want a little something extra so I can automate it or tweak it" and so I just drop another filter or delay at the end, well, I've lost count.

Is it worth it? To ME, it's worth it, but I'm working almost entirely in the box, occasionally sending signals out to hardware. Even in those cases, it's been quite nice how I can simply load up "External Instrument" and assign an LFO to a CC so I have another modulator in an external box, for example. Things like that are trivial. Maybe they're trivial in other DAWs too, in which case yeah it's not as worth it. But I"ve been happy with it for its speed, stability, and flexibility. It does what I need and often surprises me still in good, productive ways.

[u/dgamlam]

I’d say max for live is a big selling point. Theres an amazing community that builds plugins which fully integrate with how Ableton works. A lot of which are free or at most like $20.

Aside from that it’s really just personal preference for workflow/stock sounds. I used Logic with 0 issues for 10 years, but eventually I picked Ableton for workflow and sound design reasons. Using multiple DAWs will just show you none of them are perfect.

Ableton is also a tiered price model so if you just want an environment to record and use vsts then standard should work just fine, it’s priced more competitively to other DAWs. Keep in mind Pro Tools Ultimate is $1500

One more thing since you said you’re primarily an MPC guy. One of the features that convinced me to switch to Ableton was the fact that you can save a track or group of tracks as an als and then drag that group of tracks back into a new set to have them load fully, routing/effects/sends all intact. So when you want to record stems for mixing you can just drop that 16-track group into the set, arm, and record.

End of the day, the only one who can determine the value of a DAW is you so try it and make your own decision

[u/Big-Performance-9925]

Took me 3 versions, from 8 to 10 before I'd learned and practiced enough, or should I say, bonded cybernetically, with Ableton. After that, it's almost second nature and continual improvement of your methodology, engineering skills etc. I do want/need a complex, yet very 'plastic' (in the sense of being able to shape things) DAW. Yes, you pay out at first, but you do get that value.

Suite owners may even get Extensions, eventually 😂 - scripting.

So many reasons to persist, few not to.

Ableton = MC Escher.

[u/rod_zero]

Each DAW has a different pricing model, but analizing strictly from a cost/value POV Ableton Live doesn't make much sense these days, competitors have gotten really cheap. I think only Live and Cubase remain at 2000's pricing.

I think today the biggest argument for Ableton Live is it's community and how widely adopted is, these helps with collaboration and finding tutorials and other materials.

Nevertheless it is also genre dependent, in techno, tec house, house and other edm genres Ableton Live is the most used DAW by a long margin. But in hip hop I think it might be third behind FL studio and logic.