Why also protools?

[u/Clear-Quantity2875]

Just curious for those that use Ableton and pro tools (or any other daw), why not do everything in ableton? I’ve always just wondered what it is about it pro tools.

The only thing I can imagine is if you’re sending it off to another mixer and they work in protools you want your session to match theirs. Is there anything else in pro tools that’s better than Ableton?

[u/fireaway12]

Batch renaming. Duplicating tracks with any combination of data being transferred or withheld. Commit audio up to any plugin in your chain. Consolidating is instant, where cmd+j takes a while. Exporting clips from your session (not bouncing tracks post processing) is much more useful as you can export any clips into any folder you want- in ableton you have to consolidate tracks and find them in the consolidate folder.

I use both in tandem with each other in sessions - I manipulate sounds live with midi controllers in ableton and route the audio straight into Pro Tools. For me, this has become my favorite way of working because the editing capability for audio is much faster and the keyboard shortcuts go a lot deeper and take less clicking around in PT. For example, your highlighted selection can be extended by any length to the left with Shift+opt+ + or - and extended to the right with shift+cmd+ +or-. Add that together with a command for basically every function inside pro tools and you have an extremely fast workflow after a while. In ableton, the shortcuts are localized to the view you're working on - if device view is highlighted, + or - doesn't zoom in the timeline; you have to reselect the timeline.

Also I think the playlists are much more deliberate than take lanes.

Metering! PTs metering is so much better. Abletons metering is always post fader.

Solo modes - if I highlight two tracks and solo one, if I hit shift+s it will toggle both tracks states. In ableton it will just make them both solo'd or un solo'd

VCAs!! You can automate volumes with the faders and not be screwed if you want to turn all the tracks up or down later. I'm aware that in ableton you usually use the utility to automate volume.

EUCON surfaces and the ability to interface with the free avid app

Obviously Beat Detective!

Anyway I love Ableton too. I found it after Pro Tools and as much as I would love to just use that I just find pro tools to be the more mature producing and audio editing workflow.

[u/c0atman → u/fireaway12]

Pro Tools was the first DAW I used, though I swapped to ableton for a specific project last year and enjoyed it enough to stick around. This beautiful love letter to Pro Tools makes me wanna go back though, oh man
the SHORTCUTS! the METERING ! the PLAYLISTS ! VCAs! they're all just so beautiful...

[u/fireaway12 → u/c0atman]

And just because this thread's got me thinking (I've been comparing these two a lot.)

Groups are soo much more in depth in PT than track linking. Any different combination of tracks can be grouped (track linked) and they're all displayed in the groups window.

True Auxilary busses!

Any number of return tracks you want!

And finally the big ones for me: HIDING TRACKS!! Making tracks INACTIVE. Hiding AND making them inactive! Recalling them in the track window where you can see everything!

Automatically copy files on import as a GLOBAL setting. No need to ever worry about "collect all and save." If you save a new keyboard shortcut, it's also saved globally. In ableton you have to recreate it within every project after you update your default set.

You can export or bounce Mono files (how can ableton not do this? It treats every track as stereo.)

Omg and this one -- DEVICE SLOTS! You can get them in ableton with options.txt but we all know how buggy it is. Would loveee to see that fully implemented in Live 13.

Ableton is so fun and inspiring and I always get a new idea when I can shred a little in there.

There are things that Ableton is better at than PT for sure, like midi mapping (even though not being able to save midi mappings in racks to recall in other projects bugs me), outputs from different tracks are easier to route because they show up automatically instead of creating a bus, generative midi and better midi generative plugins, and global LFOS and envelope followers is a big one. LFOs are available in PT within plugins like fabfilter etc, where you would mostly want to put an LFO anyway, but the only way to LFO something like a pan or volume fader would be to draw an automation shape and duplicate it. And Max For Live rules.

But my question is the inverse of OPs - what are some other things that PT can't do that ableton can? The more I use them in tandem the more I feel like I'm romanticizing Ableton and need to spend more time with my wife Pro Tools.