Live Lite 7:useful or not ?

Mau65 · Post by **Mau65** » Wed Aug 27, 2008 5:45 pm

Hi to you all,

As many of you out there, i've found a copy of Live Lite bundled and easily upgreadable to the latest 7 version. Version bundled with my Oxygen 8 V2 was 6.
I'm looking out for a good replacement for my Pro Tools Le/Cubase 3 SE system especially to use with my laptop and Live seems to have the right features. Prices for upgrading are very expensive for both my opinion and my pockets... Further, cannot understand why not a Lite to LE cheap upgrade, but i'm not here for marketing but for music.

Can you please tell me about your use (if any) of this "mini" version of the software ? It's possible to do complete songs or it's just a "save enabled" demo version ? It's better to use version 6 or newer 7 ?

Thanks in advice for your patience, i don't ask you a Live mini-course (included lessons are more than enough) but just a real world possibility of use for this software...!

j2j · Post by **j2j** » Wed Aug 27, 2008 6:14 pm

Live Rocks,

I learned on cubase, used to own tracktion, have fucked with PT and Logic... Live just really fits the bill... Not quite as complex as a tracker, but still great for vertical composition, not so modular it is totally confusing- but still with rack capability. Average to above average built in fx, and extremely stable on my computer.

Mac os x, book pro, 2.2 c2d...

My favorite thing about live is how it helps you compose electronica in a way no other program has worked for me...............................

That said... +-, I don't think live would be my first choice to record bands... And I am not totally thrilled with its midi. And it does have a few key things it needs... And nope it is not " bug free " v7 can be glitchy, but that seems to go when I verify my permissions.. Could be a mac thing.....

mrsakitumi · Post by **mrsakitumi** » Wed Aug 27, 2008 6:58 pm

if i remember from a previous live lite version(I had Live 4 Lite with myFW410) , Live 7 Lite will probably be seriously limited, even though you'll be able to save.

not to be confused with Live 7 LE (which is kind of like Cubase SE to SX).
i think Lite is limited to 8(or 4?) audio tracks, 2 midi tracks and a few fx at a time when in a project.

it's mainly bundled for you to dabble in the potential of Live and get you hungry for the full, unlimited version with a tempting upgrade price.

worked for me
8)

Tone Deft · Post by **Tone Deft** » Wed Aug 27, 2008 7:00 pm

maybe stay with 6. definitely run it on a dual core machine (at least 1Gb RAM, 2GHz processor, IMO.) Mac or PC, doesn't matter.

Live 7 has some new features but 6 is more stable and lighter on the machine.

tips:
- always leave the help box open in the lower right corner of the screen, I LOVED that feature when I was learning, still do actually.

- open the pdf of the manual and use the search feature, the index of the Live manual kinda sucks.

- in the view with all the little boxes (session view)... those boxes are called clips, vertical columns of clips are tracks, all tracks share the same FX, only 1 clip per track and play at once.

- horizontal rows of clips are called scenes, scenes can be named to contain bpm and time signature settings

- hit tab to go to Arrange view, this is the traditional view. a track can only have info playing from arrange or session view. check the manual on the 'return to arrange' button (top center of the GUI.)

- click on a clip (not its play button) to open Clip view at the bottom of the screen. this is where you set warp markers (time stretch to synch up ANY song to another, like mashups), draw in envelopes, and apply Follow Mode (check the manual, great tool for hashing out songs.)

generally people sketch things out in session view then drag/drop or bounce things to arrange view.

you can drag and drop just about any file type to and from the Live browser, sets can be dragged into other sets, FX, all kinds of stuff.

'collect all and save' is the safest way to save your songs, but it takes more disk space.

you can expand the track faders (drag up on the top of its GUI section) to see more detailed volume info.

check the tips n tricks section, look at the stickies there, TONS of great information.

hth

Mau65 · Post by **Mau65** » Wed Aug 27, 2008 7:34 pm

Many thanks to you all, especially Tone Deft for your precoius tips !

On my Vista laptop, both 6.0.10 and 7.0.10 works fine, i'll prefer 7 version because i can choose inside 8 tracks limit, if i should use midi or audio, in my case, i prefer use all midi tracks and then rewire all to Pro Tools LE to further midi/audio processing.

It's seems to me Ableton products it's one f the most complete sequencer on the market. It has one feature i really love for notebooks: the chance to use pc keyboard instead of a real keyboard to put down fast ideas on the fly, beautiful ! Only FL studio has (as far as i know) the same feature, but not so powerful as in Live.

I'm looking for a "second" software to use with my laptop, and the most probable choice is Live. I cannot put other 299 € for a full upgrade, i've spent a lot of money to buy my little home studio (from guitars to plug-ins) and for now, i would like to "explore" the 8 tracks and few plugs options the Lite version has to offer...

For now, another thanks for your kindness !!!

Tigersharc1 · Post by **Tigersharc1** » Thu Aug 28, 2008 1:54 am

Mau65 I'm in the same situation as you. I have FL Studio XXL 8 and found myself really interested in Live Lite when I got it with my MPD 32. For me all was well with Live Lite until just recently my system just would close a session for no reason. All was working just fine and for no reason my sessions would crash. I have a Dell Inspiron 1721 with 4 gigs of ram. I didn't change any configurations or add new software so I really don't know what the conflict is. The bottom line is I really want the full version but I don't want to invest and then start having stability issues. I'm wondering if it is Vista personally. I would suggest really using as many features as possible with Live Lite to make sure your system doesn't have any hiccups. Also if anyone has suggestions on how I can fix my set up that would be much appreciated.

landrvr1 · Post by **landrvr1** » Thu Aug 28, 2008 2:10 am

Mau65 wrote:Hi to you all,

As many of you out there, i've found a copy of Live Lite bundled and easily upgreadable to the latest 7 version. Version bundled with my Oxygen 8 V2 was 6.
I'm looking out for a good replacement for my Pro Tools Le/Cubase 3 SE system especially to use with my laptop and Live seems to have the right features. Prices for upgrading are very expensive for both my opinion and my pockets... Further, cannot understand why not a Lite to LE cheap upgrade, but i'm not here for marketing but for music.

Can you please tell me about your use (if any) of this "mini" version of the software ? It's possible to do complete songs or it's just a "save enabled" demo version ? It's better to use version 6 or newer 7 ?

Thanks in advice for your patience, i don't ask you a Live mini-course (included lessons are more than enough) but just a real world possibility of use for this software...!

I used Live Lite 6 for about a week before purchasing the full version of Live 7. I started out thinking, 'meh. Lite is fine for me. Don't need the extra tracks, drum racks in 7, etc etc.' I think you'll find as I did that it's an amazing piece of software, and that the limitations of the Lite version will soon become a pain in the ass. Especially in the limited track count.

It's not that you can't do great things in the Lite version, but the awesome range of capabilities offered in the full version opened up so many more creative possibilities.

Money's tight, but start saving up. Isn't there a full 7 demo available? Give that a spin. Lite is cool, but the differences are astounding.

...

Pasha · Post by **Pasha** » Thu Aug 28, 2008 8:21 am

Unlike other demo-you-cannot-save DAW Live demo lets you actually use the product for 14 days if you register a good opportunity to test.

- Best
- Pasha

Mau65 · Post by **Mau65** » Thu Aug 28, 2008 1:49 pm

For Tigersharc1:

have you installed Service Pack 1 in your Vista laptop ? If not, i believe it's the right thing. After i've installed SP1, a lots of problems has gone away from my notebook.

Hope this helps

donnydonny · Post by **donnydonny** » Thu Aug 28, 2008 7:53 pm

IMO, I think Live Lite is the most useful "lite" product out there. It has very basic recording/midi functionality that can go a long way if you're really not doing too much. Just recording a guitar or vocal or keyboard? Live Lite can totally do that. The only time that this seems valuable or has the "wow, this really does a lot!" factor is with a musician who's just getting into recording and doesn't really have a lot of other gear (hw or sw). Once you get into anything at the intermediate level, this because too feature limited and you get into either the full version of Live or Logic/Cubase.

Mau65 · Post by **Mau65** » Thu Aug 28, 2008 9:02 pm

Hi donnydonny and thank you,

I believe you're right. I'm considering using Live Lite 7 on my laptop as a "notepad" before write-down a whole story with my Cubase SE 3/Pro Tools LE 7.4 which i can rewire to. I've understated Ableton, i admit. I've found a "workaround" for the 8 tracks limit that, for now, is useful for me. I'll use my copy of SampleTank SE (...another se...why i'm so poor ?) which has some very nice sounds and a built-in mixer for effects and the Lite effects on the only return channel, for now it's enough to start. In the future, i'll consider an upgrade...

Live Lite 7:useful or not ?

Live Lite 7:useful or not ?

Re: Live Lite 7:useful or not ?