Agreed, during track creation I’m almost always hi and/or lo shelving things with the occasional surgical notch reduction when something (usually distorted) has a freq that hits wrong.
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Printing audio is nice!
As an additional method you can also freeze tracks to free up CPU
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Another random thought on this bundle discussion, and I’m aware this particular point is a heck of a rabbit hole depending on what DAW you all use.
Something I’ve heard is that Ableton is less good at the mixing/mastering side of things. Naturally the “stock tools are fine, learn them first” is a well worn path that has a lot of sense in it. But would it be fair to say that what these mixing and mastering bring to the table for Ableton users is the ability to level up the mixing/mastering and therefore not have to leave Ableton for mixing?
What triggered this thought was the semi-regularly circulated theory that a lot of (or at least some) producers make tracks in one DAW and mix in another. I never knew where this came from although interestingly when I picked up a Samples from Mars pack I noticed this blog post. Here these folks are kinda going for the “make in Live, mix & master in Logic” thing…
It might be that nearly 10 years on this has changed a bit, but is there anything in this? And could the mega bundle of content within Logic be seen as a mixing bundle in and of itself, given how competitively priced it is. A different way of looking at it but something that piqued my interest given the fact that it comes with a range of well regarded mixing tools but also a bunch of musical content & instruments.
*exits the rabbit hole
There’s a lot to unpack, but I’ll take a stab at it.
Ableton has improved greatly for being able to mix and master in Live, even using stock effects that have been added and improved to get someone to a final product.
Live is still missing some mixing concepts like VCAs, but you can work around this or just live with it not being there.
You don’t have to leave Live, but there’s some things that are stronger in other hosts like editing. Live is really built around Session view. The arrangement view has seen many improvements to once again make it easier to never leave Live, but you’ll find multi-tool editing in other hosts like Logic, ProTools, Reaper and more.
Once again, it’s not that Live can’t do it, but it might be easier in other hosts.
Easier is also a relative term because if you’ve never used another host outside of Live, you’re going to spend more time learning than doing and it’ll take a tax on muscle memory.
It’s definitely worth using the native tools in something like Live before exploring elsewhere for new plugins.
They’ve put so much effort in improving and adding tools that are more than effective. Most of the tools introduce zero latency so these are things you can use while still building a track out (if that’s your thing).
More than 10 years ago it was definitely worthwhile to use Live as a sketch pad or performance tool and then mix master in another host. That’s not necessary depending on your needs and familiarity or just a personal preference. Some people still like a change of environment to mix in because it’s breaks up that lack of objectivity… but you certainly don’t have to switch to get good results.
That’s a hell of an answer, especially since we’re basically in the realms of folklaw! Thanks. At this point, I’ve barely mixed in anything and I’ve got my eye on some training in the stock tools only for that reason. Looks like enough time has passed for the difference to be small enough not to matter.
EQ8, Saturator, Compressor, and The Glue. There’s the Utility tool with mono below certain frequencies. You can build your own multi-band tools with Racks.
Definitely plenty to use. These are quality tools.
After a while you might start to look to augment these with coloration tools, or maybe you want more insight or a dynamic EQ, or maybe you’re doing so much mixing that how quickly you adjust things matters more than having things natively.
It should take plenty of time before you get there and you won’t be sacrificing quality while doing it.
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FL is best for mastering as you have the Soundgoodizer 
That’s how I did it for the first 6 months.
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utility is the one thing always on almost every channel, controlling stereo amount or mid side, mono bass, phase reverse are must have just to tame the sound per channel. amazing tool.
combined with lfo or envelope follower it can be sidechain as well or a stereo effect.
glue has the soft clipping built in, works great on crushing perc loops.
yeah stock plugins are very capable, lots to learn for real.
I also really like iterating through the racks in the Core Library, just to hear what they are doing to your sound and when you like something you can open the rack and see inside what’s doing the thing you like.
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The Ableton Drum Buss is an excellent ”channel strip” as well!
It has a bass booster, saturation, compressor, transient shaper etc
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