When Logic Pro X 10.5 showed up to the party attired with a Live-tastic new feature list, we geared up for a faceoff!

Apple Logic Pro X and Ableton Live 10 are two of the most popular music production applications in the world, and as of May this year, they’ve got far more in common than just their version numbers.

Before the release of Logic Pro X 10.5, Live’s Session View gave it a creative angle all its own, but with the promotion of the Live Loops Grid from GarageBand iOS to Logic, that differential has been flattened. Not only that, but Logic Pro X 10.5’s new Sampler and Quick Sampler plugins are positively brazen in their similarity with Ableton’s Sampler and Simpler devices, while the remade Drum Machine Designer is more than a little reminiscent of Ableton’s Drum Rack.

Once upon a time we knew where we stood with these two qualitatively individual music software heavyweights, but now the similarities are enough to make the undecided DAW buyer’s head spin. So to help you decide which is most deserving of your hard-earned cash, over the next few pages we’ll pit them against each other in an eight-round, no-holds-barred battle. Before we start, though, a few points of note…

First, in the interest of parity, we have to put forward the Suite edition of Live 10 for the ’Instruments’ and ‘Effects’ rounds, as the Standard edition doesn’t make for a fair comparison with Logic, shipping with far fewer virtual instruments and effects. That also introduces the complication of Max For Live - a Suite-only add-on to which Logic has no counter attack, but that any prospective Suite buyer may not actually want or need - and can’t fail to have a bearing when we get to the ‘Value for money’ section, as Live 10 Suite costs over two and a half times as much as Logic Pro X.

And second, in case it needs saying, if you have no intention of switching to Mac, all of this is entirely moot, as there’s zero chance of Logic Pro ever being made available on your computing platform.

Let battle commence!

MIDI composition

ROUND 1

Logic Pro X’s history as a MIDI sequencer stretches all the way back to 1992, when it started life as Notator Logic, so it should come as no surprise that it offers a lot more in the way of MIDI manipulation than the newer, wilfully minimalist Ableton Live. Although all the essentials are in place - including quantise and groove extraction, audioto-MIDI conversion, multi-clip editing, and a solid array of MIDI plugins - Live’s MIDI facilities appear meagre compared to Logic’s rack of handy Inspector-based MIDI shaping controls, powerful MIDI Environment, multi-faceted MIDI Transform module (enabling humanising, randomising and more), Audio Units MIDI FX, Score Editor and more versatile Piano Roll tools.

In Ableton Live, less is more…

For most Live users, however, none of that matters - the MIDI programming paradigm, and the contemporary producer’s technical expectations, have changed a lot since the 90s, and most won’t even be aware of the things that their DAW is ‘missing’. Indeed, Ableton have done a sterling job of keeping this fundamental part of the system free of clutter. Very rarely do we find ourselves wishing for any specific MIDI editing feature in Live that can’t easily be worked around - with the possible exception of an event list, as being able to filter and alter MIDI data numerically would be hugely useful.