What is the defining criteria of when to use one or the other? Ive seen both being used but are there advantages tied to either that makes it more suitable in certain situations.
Also question for Phil or anyone that as watched the deep tech house tutorial - Why are some of the drums separated out to audio clips?
many thanks
I’m not sure about that but i think that Impulse is older than Drum Rack… and is not really useful anymore since Drum Racks exists.
They probably leave it for backward compatibility and maybe for simplicity for noobs producers… Impulse is easier to understand and to use than Drum Racks… and i suppose it is more CPU friendly but it’s definitely not as powerful as Drum Racks.
the guys here from SA still use impulse alot though
they are seperated into their own audio tracks so that they can have their own channel and you can further refine the sound of your kick/snare etc etc individually instead of the whole
Impulse offers a simplicity that can be lost sometimes with Ableton’s Drum Rack. That, plus Impulse comes free - the Drum Rack is a paid add on (I think).
I would personally stay away from Impulse. I haven’t used it in a while but here is the deal…
With Impulse, you have 8 individual pads. I don’t remember if the parameters change once you select the sound, but whatever. There is a saturation control that once you turn it on, you can only control the drive? Whats up with that? Why would you want so little control? Wouldn’t you want to try out different saturation models?
You have that option with Drum Racks!
Want to control the release, sustain or the attack? Think again! All you can control is the decay, pan, and volume.
You can with Drum Racks!
Want to modulate the filter cutoff in Impulse? Think again! You cant!
But you can in Drum Racks!
Also, there is no LFO in Impulse. No pitch envelope in Impulse. No Portamento in Impulse.
So, why again would you use Impulse when you have greater flexibility and better routing capabilities in Drum Racks?
I have no idea.
On a side note, I have a friend that works for Ableton that says that Impulse doesn’t give a correct sonic representation of the sample being used. I haven’t tried it for my self, but I take his word for it. Its just too limiting here guys! Learn Drum Racks! It is VERY VERY VERY VERY easy and you have a wealth of choices to craft your sound!
I prefer the simplicity of impluse… the workflow is faster and there are some unique features.
its quicker to adjust decay times and there is no proper “one shot” mode on drumracks (simpler)
Random pan and pitch and filter which can give a great organic feel to hats and snares making them sound less robotic.
Drum racks is cool if you want to build big kits with fx setups etc.
Impulse is cool for getting kicks snare and hats going
Cheers All
And happy Friday:)
You will get fast at Drum Racks too. You shouldn’t sacrifice power for simplicity. That leaves you with alot to lose. Besides, you can route the individual samples to other tracks and bus them, however, this is more work than its worth. Especially when a Drum Rack is like a Parallel rack! You can put effects easily on each individual sound within the rack. All your bussing is done for you in the background by Live.
I find it depends on what I’m looking to do. I use Drum Racks to build new drum sounds (eg. layering different kicks, snares etc.) and kits, then resample these down to use them either in Impulse as a simple kit to use, or just keep them in the original Drum Rack. I have to agree with Phil though - I do still like the simplicity of Impulse. Drop it in and go.
I often just drop samples in to an arrangement, so I can see where things are 
Very fast too
I had no idea about the differences as I’m new to Ableton and Producing in general. Impulse looked fine till I realised that you can effect each individual sound in Drum Racks and I saw this video
- YouTube
It’s simple but still a lovely sound.