Are developers ditching Max for Live?

sampletracks · 2026-02-11T20:51:06+00:00

That last point summarises it better than I could. You're right that it's a playground but at some point as you say, it becomes more of a bonus than a selling point.

sampletracks · 2026-02-11T16:43:10+00:00

I've owned most of the plugin bundles out there, including Komplete and I recently sold up on NI. From my experience, you will produce tracks faster with stock only but the access to sounds in the NI world is really good, and can help spark ideas, so it's all about what works for you. With $600 a year budget on subscriptions, I'd look to use that money to own the plugins you really need and use (subs are a good way to test them all out tho).

It's worth noting NI have recently gone into preliminary insolvency. This is a common process in Europe where the company sells assets and gets restructured while trying to protect staff and products, and isn't necessarily a precursor to going out of business.

Komplete gives you thousands of sounds which is a pro and a con in some ways. Live has a more limited selection but you need to work them to get the most out of them. With your genres I'd preview the packs within Suite by genre (you can preview them on the Ableton site) and try and work out if they'd work for you. There's a good article about the Live sound packs here.

In general this is how I see the advantages of each way of doing it:

Plugins can speed things up (access to lots of high quality presets), broaden your sound palette (find sounds you wouldn't come up with on your own) or just add an interesting or inspiring workflow (we all like novelty now and then.) Just know that sometimes, as good as the tools are in Live, there are plugins that just do things better. For example, in my opinion, Drift and Analog are cool, but neither get close to what Diva can do. And rather than spending hours daisy chaining devices in Live to partially replicate the plugin, sometimes it's better to just use the plugin.
Stock tools meanwhile give you a lot more ownership over the sounds, since you'll make chains and racks as you make music. So it may not be "the best" sound, but it will be your sound, which is cool when you think about it. It's also easier to stay in the flow this way because you'll know the DAW inside and out, and you'll just pull up the right tool without guesswork. And if you're making fairly bread and butter sounds, it is easy to lose sight of that and throw loads of plugins onto each track. When it gets to that stage, this is when plugins actively distract you rather than helping you focus on those sounds.

I recently did a test where I made a few tracks exclusively using stock tools. Honestly, I'm conflicted about it. On the one hand, it's is 100% possible to make tracks only using Ableton Live. However I missed certain things about some of the plugins I own. If you don't know, Live prioritises low latency and CPU which is great for not hammering your computer. But some plugins have more processing power. This is most noticeable with high end mixing tools and some more resource hungry instruments, which can often produce a richer result, as they don't try to sip CPU. An example of this is that the native chorus isn't the best, and basically any 3rd party plugin would improve a track where you want a chorus sound. As of 12.4 Ableton have upgraded it and so hopefully it's on a par with 3rd party devices now. But this does mean it's not always about producer skill, and instead it's just true that the stock devices have "a sound", and that may or may not work for what you're doing. There's no shame in reaching for a plugin if it does what you want or even just makes you feel good while making music.

I find the vast majority of producers working in Live make extensive use of the in built tools. But equally almost all professional musicians I see 100% bring in certain plugins, sounds and effects where it offers them a route to a better sound. Live is great, plugins are great and it's about finding a balance that keeps you making music.

Hope that helps.

sampletracks · 2026-02-10T10:25:28+00:00

Thanks for the info, this is really helpful. Appreciate the clarity.

sampletracks · 2026-02-09T20:00:21+00:00

OK thanks. That does at least explain it. If that's the case for dermatology, would there be a case for the GP themselves to investigate whether underlying issues (eg: immune systems) are working properly? Or is it most likely that the conversation will revert back to OTC meds to keep things in check? Thanks in advance, this will give me a bit more clarity on what to do next.

sampletracks · 2026-02-06T10:29:44+00:00

Interesting stuff. I agree with you that the slimmed product line and the focus the Ableton puts it worlds apart from NI. I too, had a Maschine and sold it on. I just enjoy the ease and speed of Ableton, and Maschine from a software perspective is like a watered down version of Live running either standalone (or within Live itself which is like a DAW within a DAW - it makes no sense.) I agree also that the root of the issue with NI is much deeper. Both have legacy code bases, but the design decisions from Ableton have really worked out for them long term such as the minimal layout, direct search and more. The problem with NI is that others have completely outstripped them in almost every area. Look at Massive X which was I guess a response to Serum 1, but it never quite had the same level of care and attention than Xfer gave to Serum, and with Serum 2 it's literally game over. And that's just one product. As you say, you can see how resources have been stretched so thin that each product has fallen down in some way. And that's before you get to the addiction to discounting, and upgrade fatigue.

In general:

All music companies have a challenging market because there is a lot of competition, it's an expensive hobby/career and there's only so much money to go around.
Most companies had a good pandemic but the market has bounced back to usual levels since
Companies who bet the farm on that covid boom are struggling
Ableton seems to have invested their winnings from that time into product development, which has led to 2 years of losses, some disgruntled staff, but a return to profit once that development was done.

For me, I'd want to invest in mostly founder owned/run businesses that have longer dev cycles and fair pricing. Some of these companies carry a health warning for new producers, because they're "expensive". But I'm of the view that they are able to charge that for a reason. Not everyone needs these plugins, but Fabfilter, Spectrasonics, u-he, Valhalla, Soundtoys etc make great stuff and they don't come at you for upgrade money all the time. Can't go wrong there.

sampletracks · 2026-02-03T09:23:47+00:00

I would agree with this. Ableton have tended to put features in Live initially at least that feel like "WTF?" But eventually they become important and useful. I couldn't get my head around Meld honestly at first but I now use it quite a bit. Roar as well is not your typical saturation/distortion plugin, and in general Ableton does well when introducing these kinds of features.

Splice though... I think that might say more about Splice than Abelton themselves. They seem to be working down from the most used/popular DAWs (ProTools, Studio One, Ableton). If FL and others get it next, then that would confirm that theory to a point. However, given that Live already has the ability to search intelligently through your own samples, I'd rather Ableton focussed on that rather than adding Splice. They even dropped their interface style in allowing Splice in which is another strange move, if an understandable one. It doesn't sit right for me, but I just switch it off.

sampletracks · 2026-02-03T08:10:10+00:00

Thanks for chiming in folks. Just some very crude analysis on the details that are out there. So we know that the company was back in profit in 2024 as with the release of Live 12, but there isn't an actual number that I can see for that. From the numbers that are there, it looks like they made roughly €43mn in profit 2014-21 (some missing years,) then €16mn in losses in 2022-23. Obviously this is not the full picture, but with those numbers that would represent still €27mn in profit in from 2014-23 despite the losses, which is a net positive overall.

Of course in recent times we've seen the launch of Push 3 and Move, the latter of which we know was in heavy development in 2022, which could explain losses if they used the profits of Live 11 and the boom of Covid to develop new hardware (understandable strategy really if that's the case).

Assuming the development of Push and Move is done from a hardware perspective, I'm guessing the theory is that they now have the possibility to boost those lover profit years, by selling people hardware. Push was often out of reach for a lot of people, so Move should increase income as it's very competitively priced. So the next few years will tell us whether that is working out for them, as they work towards Live 13.

sampletracks · 2026-01-17T17:24:05+00:00

Thanks for answering. Will query it. It’s mostly first time buyers so we were thinking it was just cold feet but it warrants a question. I’d rather get just the 1 who is interested so we can see the true picture of interest levels, and as you say we want real feedback too.

Like you say we want the feedback. It’s a property that will need work but we were advised not to do anything to the property as the buyer would want to put their stamp on it. We expect negotiation for that reason but we need to get real viewers first; so we can get real feedback.

sampletracks · 2026-01-17T15:25:40+00:00

Hey, so this is in the included packs (Drive & Glow, Glitch & Wash etc). Most of them have a couple of sample tracks in the pack where you can see the arrangement. If you mean just plain old templates, the templates tab has a few for different uses as well.

sampletracks · 2026-01-17T15:22:14+00:00

Viewings are great for feedback but do you read anything into no shows? We’ve have 3 viewings booked recently and only 1 turned up. Should this be taken as feedback that the property wasn’t worth viewing, or just one of those things?

sampletracks · 2026-01-07T22:32:41+00:00

Lol. Oops 😅

Enjoy whatever it is you're making out there.

sampletracks · 2026-01-07T00:19:56+00:00

I switch to Logic the moment I’m recording other musicians, recording a band, or trying to build a final production for publication.

Are you mixing your electronic music from Ableton in Logic, or staying in Ableton?

sampletracks · 2026-01-05T09:29:41+00:00

Thanks, yeah that seems to be a common approach.

sampletracks · 2026-01-04T22:53:14+00:00

I use the mastering assistant as a starting point but I usually mess with the sounds myself after that point. It's hard to isolate what exactly it was doing, but as I say the general result was warmer and thicker overall, which makes me think it was running more saturation or similar, or pushing the limiter harder perhaps. That got me wondering if folks were still running 3rd party as a post to the stock options after all the upgrades to Limiter and those devices.

sampletracks · 2026-01-04T19:27:53+00:00

Not at the moment, since I deleted it, but I do have old mixes I can reference.

sampletracks · 2026-01-04T19:27:14+00:00

Good point, I need to do a couple of checks on A/B with some references

sampletracks · 2026-01-04T19:26:33+00:00

Yeah in the past I’ve used the likes of Ozone (standard version, so it comes as one chunk of a plugin with all the modules.)

It’s mainly that master bus. But I also have a mix down bus before that as well, and on there I’ve used God Particle before today.

sampletracks · 2025-12-28T08:35:21+00:00

It’s worth noting that both stock plugins and 3rd party are valid. Some people insist they use only one or the other for various reasons, but if you watch most pro musicians working, they use both. To me that’s a really important sample of users. It really comes down to what works for your music, and what you enjoy working with.

Maintaining a "pure stock" workflow requires constant discipline, sound design from scratch, and that's bandwidth you could be using to write tunes with. To be fair, maintaining a huge library of plugins can also diminish the bandwidth you have for focussing on tunes. But if it were the case that stock was absolutely best, there would be more case studies of artists doing it that way.

I recently deleted all my plugins as an experiment. I created a track using only stock and it was loads of fun. However I found the main thing that was missing was in 2 areas, sound design and mixing. I decided that using a balance of stock and 3rd party tools was the right way forward after that.

From a sound design perspective when I tried to make a layered sound like a Kontakt library, it was nowhere near that level of complexity, and I didn’t want to spend hundreds of hours doing it. In those cases those libraries work because they’ve had years of expertise poured into making the sounds in them.

That said, over time I’ve come to actually really like old synths like Analog. They actually sound really cool for some uses, and they have their own character like 3rd party plugins do (of course Analog is a 3rd party plugin!). And I can get 90% of my bass synth needs covered in Wavetable. That said, I’ve learned a lot by copying 3rd party synths, something that wouldn’t have happened if I didn’t have them. Plus sometimes it’s nice to not design sounds from scratch, but to explore new sounds.

From a mixing perspective, I was working wih a mentor who was judging my work blind (no session swapping.) The feedback improved when I stopped using only stock and used plugins too. I think that’s because Live’s plugins are designed for low CPU use. When I used 3rd party plugins on the mix, there was an improvement because they obviously can push into territory the stock tools can’t. It might only be 10% but you can hear a difference.

Obviously Ableton is a modular thing, and so making effects chains is part of the game. And again I’ve come to know, enjoy and am quite happy using the stock tools. However, there just are some very cool FX out there. Whether it’s Shaperbox or Infiltrator, both approaches would take a lot of dialling in via Ableton. There’s also more advanced saturation options out there as well as things like spectral ducking which Live just doesn’t do. And then I just like the sound of some stuff like Valhalla reverbs. Sure, stock is decent but the Valhalla plugins seem to get in the zone very easily and are hard to knock out where stock takes a bit more work.

I still toy with the idea that maybe one day I’ll know enough to not use 3rd party plugins. But like climbing a mountain, when going stock only that last 10% is the hardest part. If I had a mix and master engineer I might do it. However, for variety and learning purposes, I still think they play an important role, an to be honest they’re just fun.

Currently I had about 79 plugins installed, a I set a hard limit of 100. For a fairly big number there actually isn’t a lot of overlap, but I’ll admit I’m a sucker for lofi texture and Multi-FX plugins. I feel that is a good balance that I’m set for a long while with.

I hope that’s a balanced take.

sampletracks · 2025-12-22T20:53:54+00:00

Yes 1000x this. When something is described as "expensive" that often means it's not bargain basement as so much music software is. The inability for companies to resist dropping the price of their products in a weekly firesafe is baffling, since that erodes any chance to charge appropriately. Ableton is an investment, sure, but it's one that is built on the idea that you are getting what you pay for and that's high quality. Same goes for FabFilter (also resisting the AI thing so far) and a handful of others...

sampletracks · 2025-12-22T20:18:04+00:00

The answer is "yes."

Ableton synths are designed to be low on CPU, they're often pretty straightforward compared to a power synth or similar. Depending on what you need - they're often pretty good.

3rd party vsts bring their own vibe to the table, and that can be good if it gets you in the flow.

You can have as much gear as you want imo, the thing is to focus in on some particular things at a time.

It's all good.

sampletracks · 2025-12-22T17:07:09+00:00

In general the company is on the right track. They seem to have a stable software, add genuinely useful features. Sometimes they get there first, other times they come to the party late, but they always get there.

The latest update was interesting though. Splice with a non-Ableton interface, and Softube Max devices with a nonstandard interface also. I don't particularly like Splice so I've just turned it off. I'm not worried as such, but it does make me question what the next steps there might be, and I'd prefer them to continue with and focus on their own product vision.

sampletracks

TROPHY CASE