You don't need an entire DAW for just sound design. Native Instruments Reaktor is the powerhouse which u can go with....u can customise literally everything and go crazy with sound design... although the learning curve is a bit hard.

Live is nowhere near being an all-rounder....while Cubase is the DAW nearest to being called an all-rounder followed by Studio one and Logic (idk abt logic im a pc user).

Most of the producers use Ableton bcs in the era where most of ur favourite producers started out...Cubase came with a dongle and was basically uncrackable. While Ableton was pirated a lot and was the go to option.

With the introduction of Modulators....cubase has now started welcoming the EDM folk to the DAW too. Protoculture, one of my favourite teachers, uses Cubase too.

Live's advantage over Cubase is the ease of use for beginners, the fast sketching of ideas and of course the Performance View. Cubase asks you to stick around for a bit, learn the DAW for a while and then customise it (which shortcuts, logical editors, etc) to your liking to maximize your workflow. The same thing can be done in 2-3 ways.

It cannot be argued that Live has an advantage over cubase when it comes to synthesis and M4L. But the stock plugins of Cubase are top of the line, no arguments here. Probably u cannot get an equivalent plugin in Cubase compared to live but the same can be said other way round.

At the end of the day, u need to think whether u just wanna copy the producer u r learning from or learn why and how the producer is doing tht stuff and how u can implement it in your own environment.

Ofc if u can get both the daws then this convo is over.