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Ableton Live 11

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Re: Ableton Live 11

#171

Post by arvinsim »

whatch wrote: post #160
bsder wrote: post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Blame Google. Android has a craptastic audio stack and only Google can fix it. Google would have to rip the heart out of Android and fix it for real time programming properly like OS X did way back in like 10.2?. However, don't get me wrong, iOS isn't great--it's just at least possible. The fact that you can't actually send a defined packet (just a bag of bytes and you don't know how many until the call--"HAH! HAH! Y…

> Android has a craptastic audio stack Didn't know. Looks like I'm little closer to replacing my android with iphone

Do you use your phone to create music?

Re: Ableton Live 11

#172

Post by arvinsim »

dharma1 wrote: post #102
packetlost wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Anyone who works in a specialized field (or hobbyists) can tell you the iPad will never be a "pro" device for any serious work outside of art/digital painting. iOS is simply just too limiting, and Apple intentionally neuters the App store to protect the lowest common denominator from shooting themselves in the foot with malware.

I think you could have a really good iOS DAW, I think Apple will release Logic for iPad pro at some point. But yes some of the iOS architecture is a bit weird, in terms of apps/plugins/files silos. I think the "no windows" and sandboxed apps/files paradigms are very limiting for pro work. And you really need lots of customisable keyboard shortcuts for most pro work, most iOS apps are extremely lacking in this departm…

I wonder how iOS Logic Pro would handle plugins.

Re: Ableton Live 11

#173

Post by brokenmachine »

galaxyLogic wrote: post #73
GavinMcG wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> if all my time goes to trying to figure out technical solutions Any musician has to learn their instrument. Commit to that.

> Any musician has to learn their instrument I don't have the time or resources to 'commit to that". Ableton Live is NOT my instrument, I would like to just use it as a tool. It takes years of practice to learn any musical instrument and become a musician that other people would want to listen to. Maybe the same applies to Ableton? It takes years of hard practice to master it? If so it would be proper that their sale…

Ableton is easy enough to use that you can have fun with it immediately. I think I could have worked out your question about syncing an mp3 within the first hour of using it. Warp is on by default for any audio you bring in.

If you're not prepared to spend some time learning how to use it, then maybe the whole thing is not for you. Most people enjoy the whole process.

You are being unrealistic if you think that just because Ableton runs on a computer means everything about it should be automatic. Ableton is a professional level DAW and as such has a lot of complexity under the hood.

Ordinary musical instruments only have a few knobs and take a lifetime to master. I don't know why you would suppose it should be any easier to master Ableton which has literally thousands of knobs?

Re: Ableton Live 11

#174

Post by aldanor »

jaspergilley wrote: post #169
packetlost wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 tha…

No, you'd end up with Fruity Loops

That would have been a fair comparison 10 years ago. These days FL Studio is no less advanced than Ableton in some regards (e.g. the mixer, etc).

Re: Ableton Live 11

#175

Post by aldanor »

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)

Re: Ableton Live 11

#176

Post by scarecrowbob »

torben-friis wrote: post #164
munificent wrote: post #150

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, dar…

Quite off topic, but: where would a person go nowadays to get up to speed about music making? (Learning, news, etc). I used to tinker with beatmaking back when fl studio was still called fruity loops, and this post has made me very nostalgic. I would like to get back as a hobby, but it's been like 15 years and I'm quite lost.

IMO, it's a great time for this stuff... but I've been recommending folks who ask me start out with a groovebox, as there are a lot of inexpensive ones that are super fun.... ranging in price from the Korg Electribes, to the Novation Circuit, to the (expensive, IMO) OP-1.

Youtube has a ton of stuff, but it's such a vast topic that even in the realm of something like Abelton there's a vast array of things you could be looking at and it's super easy to lose focus.

I have a FL license from around the turn of the century... I think it still works. You might see if you do and start there.

Re: Ableton Live 11

#177

Post by PaulDavisThe1st »

varispeed wrote: post #153
PaulDavisThe1st wrote: post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If plugins A, B and C are present in a given signal path, and ordered [ A, B, C ], then you cannot parallelize their execution. A must run first, then its output is fed to B, which must run to completion, and its output is fed to C. Using a single thread for this is the only sane implementation. If you have plugins A, B and C spread across 3 signal paths, then you can certainly run them on different cores, which Able…

Let me try to explain again. In Ableton one signal path executes in one thread. Any track that goes to send or to a group gets added to one thread, so that if you have [A, B, C] on track one and [D, E, F] on track two - they will run in parallel - that's fine. However, if you send track one and track two to a send track with [G], they both run on a single thread, so it becomes [A, B, C, D, E, F, G], if a single core…

The specific example you cite seems to be:

  [ A, B, C ] --+
                |
                +--> [ G ]   
                |
  [ D, E, F ] --+
If Live really insists on running [ A, B, C, D, E, F, G ] all in a single thread, then I agree with you, Live is being sub-optimal at best, dumb at worst. Despite their description supporting this notion that their scheduling works this way, I'm skeptical, because they're just not that dumb (I hope! :)

However, sandboxing is absolutely not the simplest way to fix this. Ardour does not and will never sandbox plugins in processes. It just uses a topological sort and a dataflow algorithm to decide what can be run and when, and would execute [ A, B, C ] and [ D, E, F ] in parallel (or could, if on appropriate hardware), before finally running [ G ].

Moving plugins into a separate process has both overhead and complications, and is basically a crazy way to fix this issue, if indeed it is an issue as described.

Re: Ableton Live 11

#178

Post by arvinsim »

breakfastduck wrote: post #83
salimmadjd wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For someone like me who uses Logic, is there a reason to use Ableton? Logic is only one $200 lifetime fee

I converted to Ableton from Logic (pre logic x) a long time ago, but I still use logic sometimes. There’s lots of small differences, and obviously you can make any type of music successfully on either, but generally my advice would be: If you prefer recording traditional instruments & band tracks stay with logic, If you prefer experimenting with sound design & electronic music in general, try ableton out. Also if you…

Seems right. Although I chose Ableton because it's cross platform even if I do guitar primarily.

Re: Ableton Live 11

#179

Post by bborud »

aldanor wrote: post #175

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…

I’m actually quite impressed with how Ableton came up with a UI that didn’t exist about 20 years ago and then stuck to it without trying to be all things to all people. The hardest thing to do is to say no.

What’s even more impressive is that they did not start out doing any user research. They made what they wanted and (pardon the pun) it struck a chord. If they had not had the courage to trust their instinct, but had done what so many designers do and focus on satisfying only the needs users can imagine and articulate, I think they would have made yet another Cubase or Protools lookalike. That’s a crowded market and they wouldn’t have made it.

Sure, I understand and agree with your criticism, but there are probably great tools that do what you ask for cleaner and better because those tools are designed around different ideas.

If they can squeeze this in and make it work: great. If they can’t, that’s okay too.

Re: Ableton Live 11

#180

Post by varispeed »

PaulDavisThe1st wrote: post #177
varispeed wrote: post #153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Let me try to explain again. In Ableton one signal path executes in one thread. Any track that goes to send or to a group gets added to one thread, so that if you have [A, B, C] on track one and [D, E, F] on track two - they will run in parallel - that's fine. However, if you send track one and track two to a send track with [G], they both run on a single thread, so it becomes [A, B, C, D, E, F, G], if a single core…

The specific example you cite seems to be: [ A, B, C ] --+ | +--> [ G ] | [ D, E, F ] --+ If Live really insists on running [ A, B, C, D, E, F, G ] all in a single thread, then I agree with you, Live is being sub-optimal at best, dumb at worst. Despite their description supporting this notion that their scheduling works this way, I'm skeptical, because they're just not that dumb (I hope! :) However, sandboxing is abs…

Yes this is what's happening in Ableton and by your description I'd love if Ableton did the same thing as Ardour. I understand sandbox is not the simplest, but it is exactly what jBridge does and it gives me better performance in Ableton, so by simplest I meant that Ableton wouldn't have to change how they do processing, as jBridge is just a wrapper - does not modify Ableton in any way.
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