Live data from Hacker News

Ableton Live 11

ableton.com

211–220 of 268 posts

Re: Ableton Live 11

#211
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...

Re: Ableton Live 11

#212
post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Knobs Can someone explain to me the point of a GUI knob? Is it just the analogy to physical knobs on mixers that makes people comfortable with them in GUIs?

It is just skeuomorphism but sometimes musicians bind those knobs to real midi instruments.

Every serious musician I know has a MIDI controller on their desk, each mapped to specific controls on their DAW. A physical knob that maps to its GUI equivalent is really helpful.

This skeuomorphism isn't without cause.

Re: Ableton Live 11

#213

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

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

To me, Ableton is as much a performance tool as it is a production tool. I used to limit myself to production, then I bought a Push controller and it completely changed my workflow.

Re: Ableton Live 11

#214
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.

Try Ardour. Open source and works great on Linux

https://ardour.org/

Re: Ableton Live 11

#216

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…

I don’t find this to be true. The Push is simply a remote control for the software and it controls features that already exist in the DAW. I don’t believe Ableton is hindering other manufacturer’s MIDI or SysEx integration. It’s strength is in it’s specificity and the fact that it is custom-tailored to Ableton Live alone and does not need to be some middle-of-the-road hardware device that also has to make sense with every other DAW.

I owned a Push 2 for 2 years before I sold it, and in my experience there is very little (if anything) it does that cannot be done with a 1:1 analogue in the software.

Re: Ableton Live 11

#217
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 haven't done anything to cripple other controllers. In fact, they keep adding new classes of controllers all the time -Live 11 now supports MPE.

Re: Ableton Live 11

#218

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm pretty sure that you can do this with a Push using a fixed length clip. https://www.musicradar.com/tuition/tech/how-to-capture-the-p... Can you not do it without the Push?

This is one of the huge blind areas of Ableton, and one that they chose not to address in 11. You do have to use the Push to launch clips of a specified length in live performance. There have been very complicated workarounds built by third parties (BinkLooper). I have wondered if this is all a ploy to force people to buy the expensive Push. At any rate, it has definitely kept me from buying Ableton. It is regarded a…

I sort of agree with you, but Push is awesome and totally worth the cost in my opinion.

Even with a Push, there are a couple of WTF omissions that I would have thought would be easy to add, but I assume every DAW will have a few of those.

Lots of people use it Live, mostly negating your argument that the lack of this specific feature makes Ableton unusable live. Actually, is there an alternative DAW that is used live more than Ableton? I would guess the answer to that is "no".

Re: Ableton Live 11

#219
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…

Absolutely love this about Ableton and that’s the reason it’s my main tool. As a creator it allows me to flow and shift quickly between different modes of production. It emphasizes speed and intuition, and it allows me to excute powerful moves in far fewer steps than every other DAW I use (Pro Tools, Logic, Cubase). With the announcement of track comping (long overdue) it resolves my biggest pain point. Particularly…

Sounds like a great feature. Elsewhere in this thread I asked for advice on how could I take two mp3 recordings and synchronize their tempos and beats but couldn't get a very clear answer, except that it is a "very basic task".

Reading your comment about this new feature it seems obvious to me now that if the tempos in those mp3 recordings vary independently, like they do in much recorded music, it would be impossible to sync the tracks without this new feature. Right?

Re: Ableton Live 11

#220
post #34

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.

$229 for Suite upgrade. I love Live, but it’s getting harder to keep justifying additional money into it as a hobbyist. I might give Logic another go (purchased years ago and still getting free updates), even though it has always felt less intuitive to me than Live for whatever reason. Edit: I’ve seen other folks online posting a price of $183 for Suite upgrade, so I would just login and see what price they give you.…

I loved Live when I had a chance to use it, but to quote the professor I had at the time - it's "so bloody expensive".

As an amateur, it's extremely hard to justify the doubling of the price of FL. (The $100 edition of Live is limited to 16 tracks so don't even bother.)

Post reply on HN