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Ableton Live 11

ableton.com

11–20 of 268 posts

Re: Ableton Live 11

#11
post #6

They did it. They finally added comping. I would be buying the upgrade if that was the only feature but there's so many!

What is "comping"?

It's short for "composite" recording. As in, mixing several takes together to form a single one with the best bits of all of them.

Strictly speaking you can already do this using multiple tracks, but having a dedicated workflow will make it much easier.

Re: Ableton Live 11

#12
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?

Re: Ableton Live 11

#13
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.

Re: Ableton Live 11

#14

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?

Drag the mp3 onto an audio track, and turn on / adjust the warp settings to set it to the correct tempo.

Re: Ableton Live 11

#15
post #4

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, an…

music and animation are often very nice to users

Re: Ableton Live 11

#16
post #13

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.

There is nothing remotely close in the OSS world. You might find you prefer a different DAW, workflow-wise, but Ableton is A+ at what it does.

Re: Ableton Live 11

#17
post #4

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, an…

You'd end up with GarageBand. It all depends on the target audience. If you have a piece of software meant to be used by experts, it should be powerful enough that it doesn't restrict them.

I disagree that software has a tendency to dumb everything down to the lowest common denominator, simplifying and automating things is the purpose of software in the first place, but there's a huge amount of software out there that is as powerful as it needs to be. To name a few examples: Blender, DaVinci Resolve, almost everything Adobe makes, and JetBrain's IDEs.

Re: Ableton Live 11

#18
post #4

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, an…

> 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. It would look a lot like FL Studio, which caters more towards that end of the market.

FL Studio is quite powerful, though it does seem to cater more towards electronic music production and live sets. I don't think I've ever seen anyone use pre-made loops in FL Studio that wasn't an absolute novice.

GarageBand on the other hand...

Re: Ableton Live 11

#19
post #4

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, an…

I don't think people do that because they're scared, they do it because "power users" don't build unicorns in most verticals.

Re: Ableton Live 11

#20
post #9

They did it. They finally added comping. I would be buying the upgrade if that was the only feature but there's so many!

Seriously. That alone has been one of the big things keeping me firmly in Logic Pro's camp. I'm also glad they're starting to add more instruments to the default package (notably, finally; a proper 'Upright Piano') - as the value proposition of Ableton Standard at $400 vs Logic Pro at $200 has been extremely one-sided in Logic's favour for many, many years now. I do understand, of course; I'm strictly speaking as a M…

It looks like a good update, but I'm starting to give up hope on seeing ARA2 as a feature... :-(

Something that wasn't a problem for $200 Logic Pro or even $60 Reaper (with their two-person dev team).

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