Hello steemians!

DAWS(Digital audio workstations) and ITB(in the box) producing techniques in recent years have seen a tremendous increase in usage as the primary way of creating music. This is not surprising, considering the fact that using a DAW in a home studio is far more affordable than going out of your way to buy an analog console, all the hardwares that come with using analogue, and finally room treatment and consideration that comes with old school analogue style studios.

When talking about DAWS worldwide, two DAWS which are instantly recognisable are FL studio and Ableton live. This may or may not be connected to the fact that these two DAWS are used highly by electronic musician and even a few notable hiphop musicians.

Both DAWS possess a unique set of features, as well as similarities that they both share.

The Idea of DAW wars is so an individual searching for answers on which DAW is the best etc, can be able to get a layman view of how they both operate, their advantages and disadvantages.

Other than that, I am simply having fun and creating content that could be useful to someone, and useless to another person.

Ableton or FL studio?

When deciding on what DAW to use as your first DAW, the idea you should focus on should not be the fanciness, or amount of plugins that they both boost. Heck, you shouldn't even be bothered about what their maximum sample rate is, because your audio interface, your processing speed, cpu and/or gpu etc determines how high you can bump that buddy.

No, when choosing your first DAW, you ought to look at how the user interface, the DAW layout, and the shortcuts etc can affect your workflow

The ability to work quick, efficient, and smart should be your number on priority when choosing your first DAW.

In Nigeria, the most widely used DAW is fl studio, it is often times the DAW that people use to produce their first song. This isn’t a marketing gimmick, the fact that fl studio is very easy to pirate help spread the software to all corners of the globe, Africa and Nigeria included.
In same Nigeria, I happen to know only a handful of producers who use ableton live. Even the famous ones use cubase/logic/fl studio to produce.

For those that have been in the industry for long, cubase, pro tools are what is used to ‘’mix and master’’ most tracks. You'll be hard pressed to find a Nigerian song not produced, mixed and mastered with any of these software I mentioned above.

Fl studio Vs. Ableton Live -- Price, Requirements and learning curve

Ableton live is my favourite daw, but shelling out $750 for the full version is out of the window, at least until I am a bit more boxed up.
The Intro version of Live 9 starts at $99, while the standard version starts from $449.

On the other end of the board, fl studio has 4 packages, ranging from $99 to a whopping $899.

The one major upside to this is the fact that image line, the parent company of fl studio gives free lifetime upgrades.

Requirements

At a minimum, Fl studio and ableton live can run on windows XP upward, though I would suggest you upgrade to windows 7 if that's all you can afford. That upgrade could help a thousand times in performance and fluidity. An intel i7-8700k laptop or desktop is quite good for music production.

To run ableton suite(full version) you might want to have about 60GB of space left on your harddisk to accommodate the sound packs that would be installed.
Both softwars need to have asio4all or any other audio interface driver to work on that laptop/desktop.
Without Asio, no sound gets in or out.

[Edit]
Well actually you can use your laptops or dextops direct sound input, but from experience, you're going to have latency issues, a mono output, and a lower sample rate.

Difficulty in learning

I hearby put it forward that fl studio is quite easy to learn. I believe I learnt fl studio in 3 days, and I started jamming out tracks that I wouldnt show to anyone alive now.

There are abundance of resources online on how to use fl studio, each and every aspect of the software has probably been talked about online.

Ableton live also has a large following, so it is expected to find resources for it online as well.

While fl studio gives 4 drum tracks to start with, ableton drops you in an empty abyss. Apart from that, learning to use the sctoll bars, learning to use the piano roll, and many small minor things can take time.
On fl studio, the piano roll is just right and I can create melodies easily thanks to the full length keyboard layout that they have(ableton live doesn't have a full keyboard layout).

In nigeria, where the one way to learn as a producer is to look at what others have one, fl studio seems to shine real bright because this is exactly what everyone uses.

If you are in Nigeria and you are considering going into music production, I suggest you learn fl studio, even if you don't like it, you'll be able to share projects, get easy help and learn faster because everyone uses it.

Pros and cons

These days, all DAWS are super good and exciting, but ultimately, they all fall short on several aspects.

Fl studio is as bleak as can be, its interface, despite haven been given vectorian skins lacks any form of colour.. While the way the daw looks doesnt affect the daw setting, a visually exciting DAW could ginger(increase moral of) the individual.

Or should I mention the fact that session view on ableton live is a great way to quickly jump into a creative mode.

Handling ram and CPU

Both Daws are maginficient, though they lack when it comes to the mixing aspect.

For example ableton live becomes sluggish for me when my track count gets to the 50's range, fl studio dies a little faster, around 40 tracks. Though this limitation is due to my laptop specs, my protools on the same laptop can take about 60 tracks before dying on me. This is tracks without any plugins on it mind you, once I start trowing plugins, especially intensive ones like isotope and kontakt, let's just say the laptop starts to run a little hot.

Personal work ethics

Ableton live is also somewhat geared towards quick and efficient working style, and that is why I like it. Any loop, pack, kit, sound, even plugin presets from other projects and midi information can easily be gotten with a quick search into the browser folder.
Add this to the ability to time stretch loops, change samples and manipulate samples using the sampler, and you have one powerful tool for remixing, DJing and live performance.

Fl studio, simply doesn't function like this. Fl studio is more in tune with creating set patterns/loops that can be placed anywhere, and recalled at any time. Fl studio also doesn't feature an interactive browser, one of the biggest downsides to using it.

Fl studio though, allows me to quickly drop a drum pattern every single time. I tend to create more drums and subsequently more afro beat style song using fl studio.

Rewire capability

When it comes to rewire(connecting two daws) fl studio and ableton both have the ability. Most times, I will rewire my fl studio and ableton live in protools. Either that, or I connect my fl studio inside ableton live using the fl studio vst plugin.

Plugins

In terms of stock plugins, fl studio is a little less ram and processor intense, I have been able to load the equalizer, compressor and limiter on virtually 40 tracks without losing much CPU power, whereas, glue compressors, spectrum analizers and eqs will eat you up in ableton.

They both have the essential stock plugins and then some. Equalizers, compressors, limiters, auto pan, flanger, delays, reverbs, distortion, can all be found in both.
Ableton live shins in that it has something called midi effects.effects that affect a sound before it reaches an instrument. With which you can change scale, create appegios, vary velocity etc.

In terms of instruments, fl studio has a massive addictive synth, while ableton has a more powerful sampler.
All in all both software are great, I use ableton more because I tend to manipulate audio a lot, something which fl studio will not give to me.

The other pros and cons can be found in the picture.