Sonar for creation, Ableton for live work

Hi there,

I've used Sonar for many years, primarily for creating backing tracks and and looper tracks to play and sing over for live performances.  I am happy with Sonar, and like X1.  However, it doesn't IMO lend itself to live work.  The Matrix could be a great live tool with a couple of improvements (asked for them but not holding my breath), and the load times for the playlist are way to long for switching songs.

I have been using an RC50 looper for a lot of my show, and Windows Media player for regular backing tracks.  I recently got an RC300 looper for the extra time (3 hours) hoping to be able to put all my backing and loops on it - simple and flexible.  However, I sent it back as it has some fatal flaws.

What I am looking for is someone who uses Sonar for creation and Ableton live for performance.  I know that it has a looper, but I am not able to test in on any of the giveaway versions as they do not include it.  So if you are out there I would love to hear from you.

Cheers

Grif

tlw


I use Live8LE for live work sometimes but looping MIDI to hardware synths rather than looping audio, and generally triggering pre-programmed sequences rather than live recording than looping. I don't know about any purpose-built looping plugin in Live, but all versions of Live can record and loop audio on the fly by recording into a slot then triggering it - which can all be automated.

The length of the loop does have to be pre-set though.

I must admit that on the whole I vastly prefer Sonar's way of doing MIDI to Live's, though that could be because I use Sonar much more so I'm more familiar with it. I definitely prefer the Cake plugins to Ableton's though.

Clever people set up all kinds of internal routing within Live to record and trigger multiple loops, overdubs etc. The Live forums and tutorials have a lot of very useful info on this.

For what I do the Matrix view would probably work OK - only it can't send MIDI to external synths.....

Thanks tlw.  The looper came out in 8.  I have now found that there is a demo of the whole product - not just the light versions, so I'll check it out.  The matrix would be great for live work with some simple enhancements - mainly adding "loop end" to the stop options.


Does anyone have any suggestions for making the play list more efficient?  The time switching from one song to the next is long, and I don't have than many jokes to tell in the silent spaces :)
Cheers


Grif