You obviously haven't used Ableton.
Maybe I should have made myself more clear, "I have Ableton" = "I use Ableton". Strange that you assume I haven't used it, then you pretty much go on to make the same points I did: that it's a great program but the focus is different, etc.
The only thing I simply can't figure out how to do is to quick switch between setups the way I do between "patches" (setups) in MS. If I have 100+ songs I play live (1 setup per song), how would I set that up? As far as I can tell, Ableton wants you to use the "Project" system, which is basically just a folder with individual files that need to be loaded every time.
Let me be clear, by "Patch", I mean groups of Chanel Strips. Every "patch" I setup in MS usually has between 3-10 channel strips, and I make heavy use of alias CSs. I even have a patch called "RACK" where I put my most common CSs, and then make aliases of them for the individual songs. That ways I don't have a separate "Piano" instance for ever song I play piano on (that would be absurd). I also have a complex midi-routing procedure I do in Max/MSP before I hit MS... but that could be easily taken to Ableton too, so that's neither here nor there.
BTW: I really HATE the fact that Apple calls setups "patches", it's really confusing terminology. In traditional synthesizer lingo, a "patch" is one sound (in MSs case, a Channel Strip), and then every synth manufacturer uses a different term for groups of patches: Setup, Set, Mix, Performance, etc. So, in my previous and current statements, when I'm talking about "patches", I'm really talking about Setups/Mixes of patches, and I use 1 for every song I play.
That make more sense?
