by sph on 11/11/20, 3:34 PM
As a UI and UX nerd, one thing I really love about the digital music production scene is that software companies writing DAWs and VSTs know their audience and strive to give power users all the tools they need to be as productive as possible. Knobs, curves, programming (Max for Live), integration with external tools.
In other fields of software development instead we dumb everything down to the lowest denominator, and power users can't be at their most productive because we're scared of complexity and build around the casual, computer illiterate user.
Imagine what Ableton would look like if they were only optimising for the user that wants to put a couple of pre-made loops together and call it a song.
by munificent on 11/11/20, 11:27 PM
Ableton Live is my absolute favorite piece of software right now. It fills me with a joy I haven't felt since I first learned HyperCard or Photoshop. It's just marvelous. In fact, it's
so good that it makes it harder for me to finish music since I keep tinkering on things. But I can just sink hours into it without noticing the time pass.
It's so easy to get jaded with software these days because of freemium apps, dark patterns, social media apps hijacking human psychology to drive up engagement, etc. Ableton Live reminds me that software can be beautiful and empowering, and how good and natural it feels to just pay money for a well-crafted product.
by breakfastduck on 11/11/20, 3:31 PM
They did it. They finally added comping.
I would be buying the upgrade if that was the only feature but there's so many!
by shwoopdiwoop on 11/11/20, 4:25 PM
I love the UX of Live, and especially how it seamlessly integrates with Push 2 - really a joy to use. It does offer a great amount of depth in terms of capabilities for power users, but always refers back to basic UI concepts that can be applied to many different contexts.
What truly amazes me though is the stability of the platform. Yes, it's great for home recording and casual use, but the same application is used as a core piece in live performances with huge audiences. There's not a lot of "consumer" software out there that I would trust with that. Ableton Live is certainly one of those.
by xriddle on 11/11/20, 3:45 PM
Not to thread-jack, but are there any worthy open-sourced competitors to Ableton? I'm just getting into DAWs and was thinking of buying Ableton Live but haven't had the time to explore/compare other options. My musician buddies all tell me not to waste my time and just buy it.
by varispeed on 11/11/20, 4:25 PM
It seems like they say nothing whether they optimised their audio engine. There are a couple of low hanging fruits that they avoid to pick for some reason that would vastly improve the performance. For example they could enable wrapping the VST plugins in their own separate processes. That means the operating system scheduler would be able to distribute the load on available cores in a more efficient way than Ableton currently does. Another is that when you have two tracks using the same send, then all paths that lead to the send with the send included work on the same core that means you can easily run into issues if you use more demanding plugins. Here the solution would be processing the tracks in parallel up to the point where it goes to the send - this could actually be solved by running plugins in separate processes.
One more feature related to performance improvements would be ability to freeze tracks just partially and freeze entire groups.
I think other features added are great, but they are kind of useless if you can't play anything because the audio engine can't keep up.
by d883kd8 on 11/12/20, 1:35 AM
I started out with Sam Aaron's Overtone, which completely blew my mind and reignited my musical interest. I got to a point where I was scratching the rough edges of it and I didn't want to follow him to Sonic Pi so I moved on to Ableton. It's awesome, leveled up my production game but the one thing I miss is the workflow of composing in a CIDER REPL, totally unbeatable. Guess I could just export the midi ... but I decided to buy a keyboard and learn to play keys.
This is the music I make[1]. The older, more piano-based songs are written in Overtone, and you'll here where they change up to be more textured and electronic sounding when I got into Ableton
1: https://soundcloud.app.goo.gl/FCnh
by throw_m239339 on 11/11/20, 8:05 PM
Minor workflow improvements, but frankly not enough to get me pay for the update. The audio comping is nice. What I'd like to do is being able to run live as a VST inside Cubase, like FLstudio for instance. Cubase handles most of what I need for production and does it way better than Live, Live is more a creative tool than anything else, especially when it comes to complex studio setups with multiple monitoring, it is where Live completely fails.
by blhack on 11/12/20, 5:22 AM
I'm surprised at how many HNers seem to be into ableton. Very cool!
Just curious: do you guys buy the full version? It's so expensive that I've never been able to justify it. I actually have been using the free version that came with a midi controller I bought a few years ago, and even that has been great.
(I'd rather spend the money on hardware synths)
by arvinsim on 11/12/20, 3:52 AM
I wonder if Ableton 11 is already compatible with the new M1 Macbooks.
by joeevans1000 on 11/12/20, 2:36 AM
Be aware, that in reality, for live performance, you have to buy a costly Push device. This is if you want to create live loops of a specified length and have them start playing automatically. They crippled this feature in the DAW so that you have to buy a Push. They could have allowed you to do this without a Push in many different ways. There is a third party tool called BinkLooper which gets you there, sort of, but it's not like what they worked out with their Push. I don't want the Push on stage and I don't want to spend what is basically the price of Live all over again (plus have another expensive thing to have to upgrade again and again).
by aldanor on 11/12/20, 1:09 AM
Now if ONLY they added things all other DAWs have - say, a mixer where you could see all your attached plugins at once? Try mixing a 100-channel project with a few plugins on most tracks where you have to click on the track first to see which plugins it has.
I'm completely baffled at why they can't just accept some standard designs that have become common practice over time and integrate them into the UI.
(I'm aware of the Options.txt hack which is unreliable and I'm not even sure it works with the latest Live 10)
by S_A_P on 11/12/20, 3:34 AM
I have a love hate relationship with Live. Its 95% exactly what I want, and there is so much great hard and software integration. But beyond making a few cool loops of stacked elements I never seem to make a song with it. I CAN make music with other apps, so I just dont jive with Live. However, I feel like I just am perpetually 1 'aha' moment away from it being my go to DAW, so I keep upgrading it. So yes, I just bought the upgrade to Live suite 10 which gives me 11 for free...
by AlwaysBCoding on 11/11/20, 4:15 PM
Something I find interesting is that they're adding built-in entropy to this update. You will now be able to set the probability that a MIDI note will fire in a melody. Or set a range of probabilities for the velocity value of a MIDI note. I'm sure that you will be able to map the range probabilities to the ADSR of synths etc... I'm curious if that is more of a novelty or will actually be a valuable tool for exploring ideas.
by eyelidlessness on 11/11/20, 4:07 PM
I haven’t recorded for years, but when I first used Live I fell in love with it instantly. Two of these features (tempo following and velocity chance) are compelling enough I may get back behind a guitar. They were ideas I had years ago and considered trying to build myself but I had no idea where to begin. Good showing, Ableton!
by jermeh on 11/12/20, 2:44 AM
I absolutely love playing around on Ableton, and this update has me excited for those randomization/naturally themed effects they're adding.
One thing I love about sound design is playing with randomization and effects to make really quirky sounds, and those new devices and features are gonna be a blast for me.
by rvense on 11/11/20, 4:15 PM
Huh, cool. How long before those spectral tools are as cliche as Beat Repeat, though...
by galaxyLogic on 11/11/20, 3:45 PM
I have version 9 and have difficulty figuring out how to do simple things with it. Like how do I take an existing MP3 recording and make it one of the tracks but synchronize the beats with those of the existing tracks?
by deeblering4 on 11/11/20, 10:50 PM
As a drummer the follow feature looks super interesting and useful!
by tokamak-teapot on 11/11/20, 3:58 PM
What are the upgrade prices like? I might like to buy it, but I don't want a huge bill for upgrading every major version.
by andrewmcwatters on 11/11/20, 9:30 PM
The Spitfire Audio additions are a really compelling competitor to the Vienna Symphonic Library.
by jtxx on 11/10/20, 4:12 PM
wow, I'm so hyped for the improved tracking capabilities
by inakarmacoma on 11/11/20, 3:54 PM
MPE?
by adamnemecek on 11/11/20, 4:02 PM