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Ableton Live 11

ableton.com

201–210 of 268 posts

Re: Ableton Live 11

#201

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m seeing a pattern in the lack of detail ;)

The main problem is that I'm going for something somewhat different than what current DAWs are and I feel like what I'm going for will be easier to understood by seeing it. Tell me what you expect I will tell you whether your workflow is supported. If you are interested, sign up and I'll notify you when I launch.

Something utilising and also filling in the gaps of the JACK, LV2, and soon PipeWire based modular Linux/libre audio workstation (including NSM, CV, Atoms) but more of focus on Ableton Link than JACK Transport?

Check out Agordejo, Carla, Non-Mixer/jack_mixer, seq66 (nsm branch).

Re: Ableton Live 11

#202
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.

Re: Ableton Live 11

#203

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, bu…

The push certainly has a deeper integration. I own a gen 1 (they're on 2 now), but rarely use it. In fact I wish your comment were true: I'd like to get some value out of the push, but... meh. In fairness, I've never been a hardware guy, so it's me, not the push, that's a bad fit.

What did they do to cripple the features of non-push interfaces? As far as I know the monomes, apc40s, etc of the world continue to work as they always did?

Pad controllers are dime a dozen. I've never gotten the impression that Ableton was willfully sabotaging the market there.

Re: Ableton Live 11

#204

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To add to this, the precise value of a control isn’t relevant in most mixing and sound design operations, only it’s value-within-range. Most of the decision-making work is done by ear, not by number. The knobs (and sliders) give you a quick reference to “can I get a bit more out of this”. Virtual knobs (and sliders) invite experimentation where a numeric control or text box doesn’t (so much). You can play with them.…

They also serve as a kind of memetic device. To see the current state of things, the user does not have to (1) read a bunch of numbers (2) remember the current state. Instead, they can look at the image (full of knobs and sliders), and utilize the much greater visual processing capacity of the human brain.

Unlike a slider, a GUI knob's visual feedback and skeuomorphic comfort comes at the cost of ergonomic interactivity.

The whole point of physical knobs is to leverage a person's thumb and forefinger (or tennis muscle if it's a huge knob) to twist precisely and efficiently to a desired position. With the two most popular digital input devices that torque doesn't exist-- you can't "twist" a mouse or tweak a touchscreen to change the position of a knob.

At least in most of the audio GUIs I've seen that use knobs, the author seems to have no idea that their skeuomorphic interface actually degrades interactivity. E.g., if they had simply used a slider the user could swipe their finger efficiently to quickly change several sliders in a row.

Even worse-- with a knob you have a similar "90-degree ambiguity" problem as with touchpad scrolling. Do you use dx, dy, or some other algo to choose the relationship between touch/drag and knob rotation?

Even worst, some devs try to "bring the torque back" by coupling the knob movement to the distance of the mouse from the center of the knob. I really wish someone would feed this awful behavior back into the physical world, and ship a mixing board with knobs that only update their value if you twist them using an included set of "knob tongs" :)

Re: Ableton Live 11

#205

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.

Some of my favorite youtube channels, in case they're relevant:

* Julian Earle

* Tom Cosom

* Make Pop Music

* edit: you suck at producing definitely makes the list

Youtube's the spot for info, but the CreateDigitalMusic blog has also been an impressive source since FL studio was still called fruity loops

Re: Ableton Live 11

#206

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They also serve as a kind of memetic device. To see the current state of things, the user does not have to (1) read a bunch of numbers (2) remember the current state. Instead, they can look at the image (full of knobs and sliders), and utilize the much greater visual processing capacity of the human brain.

Unlike a slider, a GUI knob's visual feedback and skeuomorphic comfort comes at the cost of ergonomic interactivity. The whole point of physical knobs is to leverage a person's thumb and forefinger (or tennis muscle if it's a huge knob) to twist precisely and efficiently to a desired position. With the two most popular digital input devices that torque doesn't exist-- you can't "twist" a mouse or tweak a touchscreen…

two words: scroll wheel

more words: scroll wheel with disengagable "clutch"

Re: Ableton Live 11

#207
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.

> Not to thread-jack

Not thread-jacking at all. I ALWAYS want a sub-thread on open-sourced competitors to any product.

Re: Ableton Live 11

#208
post #203

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, bu…

The push certainly has a deeper integration. I own a gen 1 (they're on 2 now), but rarely use it. In fact I wish your comment were true: I'd like to get some value out of the push, but... meh. In fairness, I've never been a hardware guy, so it's me, not the push, that's a bad fit. What did they do to cripple the features of non-push interfaces? As far as I know the monomes, apc40s, etc of the world continue to work a…

They aren't sabotaging the market... just trying to get me to buy a Push, I think. Basically, it's easy to do something important with the Push and you can't do it without the Push. I feel you on the value of the Push... it doesn't have any for me other than to be able to create and record a live loop of a specific length on the fly and have it start playing.

Re: Ableton Live 11

#209

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The main problem is that I'm going for something somewhat different than what current DAWs are and I feel like what I'm going for will be easier to understood by seeing it. Tell me what you expect I will tell you whether your workflow is supported. If you are interested, sign up and I'll notify you when I launch.

Something utilising and also filling in the gaps of the JACK, LV2, and soon PipeWire based modular Linux/libre audio workstation (including NSM, CV, Atoms) but more of focus on Ableton Link than JACK Transport? Check out Agordejo, Carla, Non-Mixer/jack_mixer, seq66 (nsm branch).

I'm more focused on composition. Linux support will come at some point, not immediately.

It won't be open source if that's what you are asking.

Re: Ableton Live 11

#210
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…

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