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Ableton Live 11

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Re: Ableton Live 11

#131

Post by pvarangot »

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.

Have you tried the Lite version? I don't have keys right now but they come with hardware all the time and I already have a Suite licence. On the Ableton subreddit sometimes there's giveaways.

It's kind of like a gateway drug, because you can do a lot of stuff on the Lite version but all the "fun" things like all the bundled instruments and effects that let you use it like a modular synth or the scripting and automation goodness come only on the more expensive version.

Re: Ableton Live 11

#132

Post by pvarangot »

franl wrote: post #34
tokamak-teapot wrote: post #23

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.…

Wow that's a lot for Suite, specially if you shelled at full price. I hope there's discounts once the hype goes away.

Re: Ableton Live 11

#133

Post by dumpsterdiver »

the_other wrote: post #115
marshray wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Knobs and sliders allow users to leverage their spatial and manipulation abilities to specify a value from a continuous range. You could also ask users to just type in a number, but that interrupts the flow and pushes some other data out of their short-term memory. Composers and audio engineers would probably prefer to keep that part of their brain free to focus on other things. Sliders can also be laid out in an arr…

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.…

Very relevant point. The end result of any individual sound is entirely dependant upon the other sounds accompanying it within the same physical space.

Just as a file isn't only a file, but an entity in a filesystem, a sound is not just a sound, but an entity in a sound environment.

Re: Ableton Live 11

#134

Post by dumpsterdiver »

lostgame wrote: post #9
breakfastduck wrote: post #3

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…

Speaking of instruments, after purchasing the Native Instruments Kontakt piano plugins: The Giant, The Maverick, The Grandeur, The Gentleman and Una Corda - I can never go back to the instruments provided with the DAW. The NI instruments mentioned above are just so head and shoulder above the rest, imo.

My favorite is The Giant using either the "emotional" or "intimate" preset. Feel free to tweak those presets if you want, but good luck sounding better, it's already amazing.

Re: Ableton Live 11

#135

Post by alkonaut »

jancsika wrote: post #86
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…

> 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?

The only alternative UI for many of these knobs is a linear gauge/slider. A knob is often modulated and automated so it's not just an input widget, it's also a gauge. It needs to convey an animated value to the user.

Typing is usually out of the question since you need to do it by ear. Some controls obviously have numberic input in combination with the knobs, for extra flexibility (e.g. if you made some notes with settings and just want to enter them).

Many of the values use mappings that make little sense as numbers. E.g. a knob marked 0..10 could mean a filter cutoff frequency from 20 to the nyquist frequency, logarithmically. Entering values in a text box with such arbitrary limits is a terrible experience (is it 20...22000...or 20..48000? or 0..1? or 0..100%?). Knobs hide the complexity of the logarithmic mapping and it's easy to to quickly set a value by ear.

In a few cases the knobs are decorative and could just as well have been e.g. most fixed step knobs could be combo boxes. For example a vintage synth often had a rotary knob to select between 3 options (waveform, for example) so now you can see that in ui's too. Doing that in a computer interface is purely for visual appeal.

Re: Ableton Live 11

#136

Post by p0nce »

adamnemecek wrote: post #61
enumjorge wrote: post #59

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.

Keep it up! I've subscribed. I hate most of DAWs.

Re: Ableton Live 11

#137

Post by strangus »

anotheryou wrote: post #72
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…

Have you checked out bitwig? I love the help overlay. Explains everything while you can turn the knobs. Same for their graphical programming thing ("grid" I think). A nice hybrid between skeumorphic and digital with e.g. stylized wires hanging down in gravity, but becoming transparent when crossing components. Also super nice that most "visualizations" are also interactive (see the direct manipulation of the envelope…

Long time Ableton user here. I just rebuilt my studio, and decided to use Bitwig as my DAW. I'm still coming up to speed with it, but it's winning me over. Being able to have multiple project open is nice.

Re: Ableton Live 11

#138

Post by deeblering4 »

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.

Nah, FOSS DAWs don’t even come close. Your friends are exactly right.

Re: Ableton Live 11

#140

Post by iainctduncan »

qppo wrote: post #89
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…

The problem is reducible to maximum directed cuts in arbitrary DAGs, which is hardly "low hanging fruit." The OS scheduler is a particularly poor choice of solution and introduces a ton of overhead while solving it suboptimally. Granted you can use a lot of heuristics to figure out simpler solutions since DAW graphs aren't arbitrary DAGs and you can get clever with how you allow them to be constructed, but it's non o…

ha, yeah. No real time audio person trusts the OS scheduler anymore than is totally and unavoidably necessary.
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