Ableton can be used in all the scenarios where music production is required. Whether it be professional studios or if it is home productions. It can be used almost anywhere as the features of this software can fit almost in any place. It is also used by professional teams in big companies for marketing and presentation music. I cannot think of any scenario where this is not well suited. If you're making music the professional way, Ableton is the ladder to success.
Highly recommended for voice over recording and editing. Great for splicing together several different recorded files to create a final track. Our voice over talent typically sends us their unedited recordings with multiple recordings of the script. Then we can listen to the different versions to select the best fit for our client. We just select the sections we like and copy them into a new file, then continue to add the sections until we have the final voice over. It is easy to tighten up or stretch out the recording to better fit our timeline.
We have not used WavePad for recording live music so not sure how well it is suited for that. If you need multi-track editing you will need another product. MixPad makes a nice companion.
VST Plugin Management - Once you get 100s of VST plugins, it is a major pain to keep them all organized.
Replacing Moved WAVs - When you move the WAV samples, there is the ability to auto-search and replace, but it rarely works. Most often, you have to manually replace the WAVs.
Latency - The ability to autocorrect sync issues due to sound card latency is supposedly a feature offered by Ableton Live, but I have not been able to get it to work correctly, and often have to fix the latency issues myself.
Freeze Occasionally Doesn't Work - Theoretically, you can freeze any track to bounce it to a WAV, but sometimes these WAVs end up blank. This happens with the Access Virus TI-2, for example.
Clicks at Loop Points - Due to quickfades, loops sometimes have clicks in them, particularly if they have a lot of bass frequencies.
WavePad only works with a single audio track. NCH does offer MixPad for multi-track editing. We also use MixPad occasionally to mix background music with voice.
Easily handles basic audio recording and editing. Advanced editing features are there but if you don't already understand audio editing you will need to watch some of the provided videos to learn how to use the tools.
I haven't had to reach out to support yet, but they're great at keeping me abreast with updates, compatibility issues, new features, and tons of videos on how to use the software. I feel like they're helping me success by giving me tools I can use in my daily work.
Ableton Live has just the right feature set for electronic music production. It offers more professional features than GarageBand, while not featuring the level of hardware integration or other high end features that you find in Avid Pro Tools. However, I prefer Ableton Live over Avid Pro Tools for electronic music and loop-based or sample-based music production. Pro Tools is great when you are in a studio that has the hardware and you are laying down track after track of recorded audio. But Pro Tools does not have any features to help with songwriting, production, composition, or arrangement. Ableton Live is made with the creator in mind so it has features like the Live view, as distinct from Arrangement view, which allow the creator to easily mix-and-match different sounds and arrangements as a way of discovering what works and what doesn't for a song. Pro Tools is better when the song is already written and you just want to record it, but Ableton Live is better when you are still searching for the eventual arrangement of the song and want to experiment with a lot of different options
We ran across WavePad years ago and used it for some simple music file edits. Cutting out some parts to make it fit better into the time slot. Audacity was recommended by a friend and we installed it and give it a brief try. We didn't find anything bad about it but came back to WavePad.
We are able to work with local voice-over talent and amateurs and that allows us to keep our cost low to our clients.
WavePad is so inexpensive that is pays for itself on the first project. The Master's edition is less than $100 and the standard edition is less than $50.
