I got serious this year about doing more recording. For quite a while now, I’ve used SonicFoundry Sony Acid Pro as my Digital Audio Workstation (DAW). It’s been good to me, but more recent versions (especially version 5, the latest I’ve used) have become cumbersome and slow on my, admittedly cheap, hardware.
Friends of mine, especially Steve, have been singing Ableton Live’s praises to me for a long time. So I tried out the demo and really liked it. I also liked that they make it for Windows and for Macintosh, since I’ve been thinking of switching (or, really, switching back) for a while.
Last night, I finally took the plunge and bought Ableton Live 5.2, which means I get a free upgrade to version 6, which comes out later this month. Since I already owned Live Lite 4 (it came with a MIDI keyboard controller that I purchased), I qualified for an upgrade rather than the full price (which is steep). I unlocked it last night and started playing with it. And I’m stoked. It’ll take me some time to get as familiar with it as I was with Acid, but I think its going to be worth it. And it already outperforms Acid, based on my limited testing.