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Ableton Live 11

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Re: Ableton Live 11

#51

Post by afandian »

sph wrote: 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 remember using Ableton Live v3 back in the day. Compared to MOTU Digital Performer (which had plugins which could put windows anywhere) and Reason (which took skeuomorphism about as far as you could possibly go) its minimalism and modality of the UI seemed restrictive. But probably very sensible for live performance. Feels like they prefigured mobile user interfaces by some years.

Re: Ableton Live 11

#52

Post by adamnemecek »

cedex12 wrote: post #48
adamnemecek wrote: post #31

I've been working on an IDE for music composition. I'll be launching soon http://ngrid.io I setup a discord channel the project https://discord.gg/a5ttYuG

sounds nice but the page has no content to speak of: a bit disappointing.

It's not ready yet so I can't show you videos yet.

Re: Ableton Live 11

#53

Post by shwoopdiwoop »

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.

Re: Ableton Live 11

#54

Post by varispeed »

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.

Re: Ableton Live 11

#55

Post by mhh__ »

xriddle wrote: 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.

DAWs, especially ones like ableton, are one of those types of software where they aren't that difficult on paper but the entropy of one is high enough you need a team of people to get going in the first place

Re: Ableton Live 11

#56

Post by dntrkv »

sph wrote: 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…

It really depends on your product and your intended audience. Ableton is not built with the intention that any average Joe can jump in and be productive from day one. Compare that to Garage Band, which is dumbed down because it has a different audience.

I think with virtually any software out there, there are tools that cater to both audiences.

Re: Ableton Live 11

#57

Post by mhh__ »

varispeed wrote: post #54

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…

Bitwig already does that with VSTs IIRC

Re: Ableton Live 11

#58

Post by shwoopdiwoop »

inakarmacoma wrote: post #21

MPE?

MPE stands for MIDI Polyphonic Expression and describes a standard for encoding multi-dimensional values into a MIDI note/event. Typically with a normal MIDI controller, you have values like key, volume etc on an event level, and then channel wide values like pitch bend.

With MPE, you can think of it as each note having its own channel, with added dimensions like pitch bend, vibrato, timbre and more all encoded into a note.

This allows you to interface with new kinds of controllers like the Roli Seaboard for example, which are much more expressive than your standard midi keyboard.

In terms of Live, MPE wasn't supported until now and connecting an MPE controller to the DAW was a massive headache and super hacky.

Re: Ableton Live 11

#60

Post by varispeed »

mhh__ wrote: post #57
varispeed wrote: post #54

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…

Bitwig already does that with VSTs IIRC

Yes and that works very well. You could also achieve this in Ableton by using jBridge (it was intended as a way to run 32bit plugins in 64bit DAW or other way around or to overcome the memory limits of a 32bit process) which runs plugins in separate processes and unintended consequence is vastly improved performance. I remember having projects that wouldn't play at all and played through jBridge without breaking a sweat.
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