ez, all.
just wanted to chime in on this great topic and give you my perspective. i just played a show this weekend using only live, a 12" g4 and a remote 25. IT WAS INSANE. i can't say enough great things about using live live. so flexible depending on what you want to get out of the program.
1st off, i was booked to play an out of town gig that would be at a rather large club and a pretty well paying gig. i was asked to play a 1 hour set of just my original tracks. i made a live set using just 2 tracks which i would drag my songs into. on each track i added the new dj EQ and an autofilter. on the master track i loaded it up with practically every other live plugin except for the compressors and dynamics style plugs. and i threw on a waves C1 for main bus compression. on the 2 send tracks i loaded the first with a destroy fx buffer override and the second send with my favorite pluggos. dirty mangling.
so for the past week i got everything warp marked and set up the remote 25 to control every aspect i thought would best in the live situation. 2 sliders for track volume, 6 knobs for EQ (3 bands for each track), 6 buttons for EQ kill switches, 2 knobs for track sends, 6 sliders for wet fx levels, the xy pad for filter cutoff and res, 3 buttons to select each track (track 1, 2 and master), a button to activate loop mode, a button to return to arrangement, and a button to stop all clips. then i practiced my ass off until i had the set down perfect.
then a day before i had to leave for the gig, the promoter calls and wants me to play for 3 hours instead. whoa. i was about to freak out but decided instead to get out all of my favorite records, digitaize them, go through my cds and rip them onto my powerbook. i made a huge pot of coffee and put got set to warp marker enough tracks to fill 2 hours +. let's just say that if any of you want to get good at warp marking, just sit down and do it straight for a few hours
you'll be knocking em out in no time.
so onto the gig. it went flawlessly. it was the most fun i've ever had playing out. djing or live shows. i was looping bits, adding fx, killing EQ, flawlessly blending, dropping loops in, filtering builds, etc etc.... for 3 hours. the crowd loved it. the promoter loved it and wants me back there every month now.
so a big thank you to ableton for making such a user friendly and flexible tool. i can't wait to play more shows now. being able to bounce back and forth between my own tracks and records i love is incredible.