Pro Tools, Cubase & Ableton Live have been the three softwares that shaped me as a Sound Engineer/Producer. We haven’t bought Pro Tools for the new studio yet, so this leaves us with the other two, and I said to myself: why not enjoy the best of two worlds? Rewire!

So, accepting having to use Cubase as master and Live as Slave, I embarked on this new adventure!

Surprise #1: Control surfaces are disabled while Ableton Live is in Rewire slave mode. Hmm…my AKAI APC40 to the trash…but I can map it to Cubase as well! You do it…

Surprie #2: Well this wasn’t really a surprise, but I will keep this format for the sake of drama…VST plugins can be used only in the master application, so this means that if you want to use VST plug ins on your Ableton tracks you need to map them to a dedicated bus, that are fortunately quite enough (64).

Surprise #3: Putting a track in solo in Live can drive you crazy, and there is no way around this. Gotta switch to cubase, solo the Rewire master/bus, solo your track, and then un-solo them both…

Surprise #4: This one is the real killer…once I had different timelines: three minutes in Cubase equaled 3:50 in Live, and I had to actually test them with a stopper watch to see which one was correct (it was Cubase)… that one literally drove me crazy, and I have no idea why it happened.

Having said that, there are still some things that are really comfortable in this method, especially if you need to work fast. I find that auditioning samples in Live is much faster than Cubase and Cubase has the vary audio function that is essential if you have vocals. So, there’s the compromise!

Good producing to all,

 

Yoni