13 ms·

Ableton Live 11

198 points by alphadelphi 6y ago

jtxx 6y ago
wow, I'm so hyped for the improved tracking capabilities
breakfastduck 6y ago
They did it. They finally added comping. I would be buying the upgrade if that was the only feature but there's so many!
- salimmadjd 6y ago
  For someone like me who uses Logic, is there a reason to use Ableton? Logic is only one $200 lifetime fee
  - wrs 6y ago
    I’ve used both for many years and enjoy both. They’re largely equivalent in function, but they have very different feels. Ableton is more “hands on” and almost modeless. It assumes that you’re always manipulating and reworking things. Logic is more structured and “modeful”. Examples: Ableton defaults to time-stretching and transient slicing for audio; you have to turn it on in Logic. Ableton’s always in what Logic calls “marquee” mode, so you can grab pieces of audio and move them around. Ableton always shows you all the controls of all the (built-in) plugins; Logic makes you open them one by one. Routing in Ableton is dynamic; Logic has fixed “busses” you have to allocate manually. Other than style, one killer difference is that Ableton has Push hardware, which is really an extension of the UI into physical reality. It’s a fantastic control surface that has no equivalent in Logic-world. And of course, with all those features you can create amazing live setups with Ableton—thus the name “Live”! Logic’s comfort zone is very much as a studio tool. Edit: I forgot to mention the higher versions of Live come with Max for Live, which is an amazing construction set for making audio/MIDI software. No Logic equivalent for that.
  - breakfastduck 6y ago
    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’re a programmer because you’ll enjoy max for live and the max MSP ecosystem.
    - arvinsim 6y ago
      Seems right. Although I chose Ableton because it's cross platform even if I do guitar primarily.
  - dham 6y ago
    But then you would have to use Mac, which breaks third party plugins every 1 year or so. Most the stuff I invested in when I got started hasn't worked since Lion. All other things that survived were dead with Catalina. Windows you can install stuff from 2003 and run no issue. Work on ARM lol. Most DAWS don't even support 4k monitors. Reason, MPC, Maschine. Not to mention the countless popular plugins that are the size of rain drop on the screen (Ominisphere)
  - scarecrowbob 6y ago
    I dunno if there is one. I get a lot of work done in logic. I ended up with an octatrack for doing what a lot of folks are using live for, tho, and that's been super fun for me.
  - SomeHacker44 6y ago
    You can stop using Apple hardware for no additional software cost if you use Ableton.
  - pier25 6y ago
    True but Apple makes it so cheap because they get their money back on hardware.
  - puranjay 6y ago
    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.
- nfoz 6y ago
  What is "comping"?
  - _fs 6y ago
    Multiple takes intermixed on a single track. https://www.ableton.com/en/live/#comping https://www.ableton.com/en/live/#comping
  - XzAeRosho 6y ago
    Recording different takes, and then piece different parts of those takes and create one final "perfect" take.
  - sullyj3 6y ago
    It's short for "composite" recording. As in, mixing several takes together to form a single one with the best bits of all of them. Strictly speaking you can already do this using multiple tracks, but having a dedicated workflow will make it much easier.
- lostgame 6y ago
  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 Mac user. I honestly have no idea about the DAW landscape for PC's. I am extremely reliant on exporting songs from GarageBand on my iPhone as I create beats on the go quite often - and opening those .garageband files in Logic Pro to seriously hone in on the sounds, keeping the original instruments and MIDI intact. It's an irreplaceable ecosystem for me.
  - timrichard 6y ago
    It looks like a good update, but I'm starting to give up hope on seeing ARA2 as a feature... :-( Something that wasn't a problem for $200 Logic Pro or even $60 Reaper (with their two-person dev team).
    - galaxyLogic 6y ago
      What is ARA2?
      - detaro 6y ago
        https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Audio_Random_Access https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Audio_Random_Access
      - timrichard 6y ago
        Following on from the link of the other poster, the Random Access part allows plugins like Melodyne to "see" all the audio data that's on the track all at once, without you having to transfer it inside the plugin manually. You just start working with it seamlessly in an edit window. It's a neat idea.
    - lostgame 6y ago
      I am consistently pleasantly surprised by the way Apple consistently updates Logic with only more and more layers of impressive features. ARA2 support was fantastic - so was their buyout of Camel's Alchemy. Alchemy alone added a ton of value to Logic, and it came as a .x upgrade. Fantastic. EDIT: One of the only selling points of an iPad I can think of is using it on a stand with Logic Remote as an actual digital mixing window. The experience is unparalleled.
1_player 6y ago
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, and power users can't be at their most productive because we're scared of complexity and build around the casual, computer illiterate user. Imagine what Ableton would look like if they were only optimising for the user that wants to put a couple of pre-made loops together and call it a song.
- toomanybeersies 6y ago
  > Imagine what Ableton would look like if they were only optimising for the user that wants to put a couple of pre-made loops together and call it a song. It would look a lot like FL Studio, which caters more towards that end of the market.
  - packetlost 6y ago
    FL Studio is quite powerful, though it does seem to cater more towards electronic music production and live sets. I don't think I've ever seen anyone use pre-made loops in FL Studio that wasn't an absolute novice. GarageBand on the other hand...
  - farias0 6y ago
    Dude, FL Studio is so much more complex and flexible than Ableton! So much that I'm switching to Ableton for a while to see if I can get more productive and spend less time troubleshooting stuff I'd say the opposite: Ableton is more focused and simpler, streamlining lots of stuff (live VSTs) without being less powerful. Kinda Apple-ish in a way.
    - andybak 6y ago
      I don’t know FL very well but Ableton’s power is cleverly designed and is easy to miss when you only use the obvious surface features.
galaxyLogic 6y ago
I have version 9 and have difficulty figuring out how to do simple things with it. Like how do I take an existing MP3 recording and make it one of the tracks but synchronize the beats with those of the existing tracks?
- dmicah 6y ago
  Drag the mp3 onto an audio track, and turn on / adjust the warp settings to set it to the correct tempo.
  - galaxyLogic 6y ago
    Thank you for the advice. But even that sounds difficult for a novice like me. How do I "adjust warp settings" so that two tempos are the same? And I don't want to just have the same tempo, I want to align specific beats. I know there is a forum and documentation but if all my time goes to trying to figure out technical solutions then all my creativity goes into finding technical solutions, rather than solving artistic problems.
    - GavinMcG 6y ago
      > if all my time goes to trying to figure out technical solutions Any musician has to learn their instrument. Commit to that.
      - galaxyLogic 6y ago
        > 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 sales literature would be up front about it. You will need years of study to master this instrument in order to produce something that other people would want to listen to. You will need to commit to it :-) The difference between Ableton and "ordinary musical instruments" is that Ableton runs on a computer, therefore its use should be easy enough to not require years to learn.
xriddle 6y ago
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.
- drchopchop 6y ago
  There is nothing remotely close in the OSS world. You might find you prefer a different DAW, workflow-wise, but Ableton is A+ at what it does.
- timdaub 6y ago
  Heeey, glad you asked! I'm not full-time on this, but I'm trying to build an OSS DAW. Here is a first tiny demo: https://timdaub.github.io/wasm-synth/ https://timdaub.github.io/wasm-synth/ I also wrote about it: https://timdaub.github.io/2020/02/19/wasm-synth/ https://timdaub.github.io/2020/02/19/wasm-synth/
  - PaulDavisThe1st 6y ago
    I'm not sure what you think a DAW is, but typically it tends to involve the possibility of dealing with large numbers of tracks and vast amounts of audio. How do you propose to do this in a browser context?
    - timdaub 6y ago
      At this point I don't propose any design. But I'm confident it can be done. You seem to know the challenges ahead. Mind sharing?
      - PaulDavisThe1st 6y ago
        https://ardour.org/ https://ardour.org/
  - mattmar96 6y ago
inakarmacoma 6y ago
MPE?
- shwoopdiwoop 6y ago
  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.
tokamak-teapot 6y ago
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.
- xster 6y ago
  Standard Live 10 -> 11 is 159. It's nested behind a bunch of links.
- franl 6y ago
  $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 think I came from Suite 9, so maybe that accounts for the price difference.
  - pvarangot 6y ago
    Wow that's a lot for Suite, specially if you shelled at full price. I hope there's discounts once the hype goes away.
  - Fej 6y ago
    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.)
  - system16 6y ago
    This is why I ultimately switched over to FL Studio. I don't make money off of music, and with work and family rarely have the time to spend on it. Live's high upgrade costs seemed wasted on me. With FL Studio, it's a single lifetime licence. Mind you the UX is not nearly as nice as Live and it's much more geared to in-studio producing than live use, so obviously won't work for everyone.
adamnemecek 6y ago
I've been working on an IDE for music composition. I'll be launching soon http://ngrid.io http://ngrid.io I setup a discord channel the project https://discord.gg/a5ttYuG https://discord.gg/a5ttYuG
- kzrdude 6y ago
  Sounds coll but the pitch doesn't have much detail. Which DAW workflows will it support to start with?
  - adamnemecek 6y ago
    Which ones would you want?
    - enumjorge 6y ago
      I’m seeing a pattern in the lack of detail ;)
      - adamnemecek 6y ago
        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.
        p0nce 6y ago
        Keep it up! I've subscribed. I hate most of DAWs.
        adamnemecek 6y ago
        Thanks for the encouragement.
        6y ago
eyelidlessness 6y ago
I haven’t recorded for years, but when I first used Live I fell in love with it instantly. Two of these features (tempo following and velocity chance) are compelling enough I may get back behind a guitar. They were ideas I had years ago and considered trying to build myself but I had no idea where to begin. Good showing, Ableton!
AlwaysBCoding 6y ago
Something I find interesting is that they're adding built-in entropy to this update. You will now be able to set the probability that a MIDI note will fire in a melody. Or set a range of probabilities for the velocity value of a MIDI note. I'm sure that you will be able to map the range probabilities to the ADSR of synths etc... I'm curious if that is more of a novelty or will actually be a valuable tool for exploring ideas.
- blub 6y ago
  People seem to love this probability trigger feature in Elektron products.
  - munificent 6y ago
    YES. The Elektron sequencer is the first time I ever felt stepping out of a computer might make for a more powerful, fun sequencing experience. It's a joy to use.
- rosseloh 6y ago
  Probability-based triggers are one of my favorite things, and something that I thought was pretty lacking here (I only came to Ableton just recently, but nearly every arpeggiator I've used up until now has had a note probability feature and it does wonders for variation in patterns). So I'm extremely glad to see it being integrated.
- CobsterLock 6y ago
  Do you get to define seed values? I'm just thinking in terms of reproducibility if you are composing a track instead of playing live. A super cool feature I didn't even think would be helpful before
- munificent 6y ago
  > Or set a range of probabilities for the velocity value of a MIDI note. The velocity MIDI effect already let you randomize all note velocities by a user-controlled range. This just lets you set random ranges per-note.
rvense 6y ago
Huh, cool. How long before those spectral tools are as cliche as Beat Repeat, though...
shwoopdiwoop 6y ago
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.
varispeed 6y ago
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.
- mhh__ 6y ago
  Bitwig already does that with VSTs IIRC
  - varispeed 6y ago
    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.
    - spacechild1 6y ago
      For other readers: It is a misconception that sandboxing per-se enables parallelism. On the contrary, it only hurts performance. The speedup observed with jBridge might have other reasons. More here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25068976 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25068976
- 6y ago
throw_m239339 6y ago
Minor workflow improvements, but frankly not enough to get me pay for the update. The audio comping is nice. What I'd like to do is being able to run live as a VST inside Cubase, like FLstudio for instance. Cubase handles most of what I need for production and does it way better than Live, Live is more a creative tool than anything else, especially when it comes to complex studio setups with multiple monitoring, it is where Live completely fails.
andrewmcwatters 6y ago
The Spitfire Audio additions are a really compelling competitor to the Vienna Symphonic Library.
- pier25 6y ago
  Not even close. VSL has many more instruments, orchestrations, articulations, and mics than the instruments bundled in Live. Don't get me wrong, these are nice additions for Live users, but VSL is simply one of the top orchestral libraries.
  - andrewmcwatters 6y ago
    True, but it feels like it provides something that scratches at VSL's surface.
deeblering4 6y ago
As a drummer the follow feature looks super interesting and useful!
munificent 6y ago
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, dark patterns, social media apps hijacking human psychology to drive up engagement, etc. Ableton Live reminds me that software can be beautiful and empowering, and how good and natural it feels to just pay money for a well-crafted product.
- kace91 6y ago
  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.
  - codetrotter 6y ago
    YouTube! Here are some people that I personally subscribe to and currently watch. Blezz Beats (8.68K subs) – https://www.youtube.com/blezzbeats https://www.youtube.com/blezzbeats Synth Mania (126K subs) – https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCSGAKoBpUJI5jrJLgFQxiiw https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCSGAKoBpUJI5jrJLgFQxiiw Rick Beato (1.93M subs) – https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCJquYOG5EL82sKTfH9aMA9Q https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCJquYOG5EL82sKTfH9aMA9Q Ave McRee (71K subs) – https://www.youtube.com/user/AveMcree https://www.youtube.com/user/AveMcree Dom Sigalas (23.5K subs) – https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCGGgrpgOZ-DMvjLSYxn8W3w https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCGGgrpgOZ-DMvjLSYxn8W3w Accurate Beats (81.7K subs) – https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCoT0i4T3r3d4oYkdYQgZ4fg https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCoT0i4T3r3d4oYkdYQgZ4fg Da Drank Kang (7.13K subs) – https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCD7cuqL0P3x8RGsLQxxTpAA https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCD7cuqL0P3x8RGsLQxxTpAA Poli Popo (3.55K subs) – https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCZv3Yw5jtvjwcrzJ90yscEw https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCZv3Yw5jtvjwcrzJ90yscEw JAde Wii ツ (36.2K subs) – https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCqjAXHR5DHTCahIHpg7vspg https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCqjAXHR5DHTCahIHpg7vspg Doctor Mix (486K subs) – https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCbzNcFN7cxA8HO18cTYyTfg https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCbzNcFN7cxA8HO18cTYyTfg Swiftstyle (33.7K subs) – https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCHPY6JX3EBMo1N9SKIxNDmQ https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCHPY6JX3EBMo1N9SKIxNDmQ Kirk State (1.05K subs) – https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCGGgt68KDkMsHaniWUhjbBw https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCGGgt68KDkMsHaniWUhjbBw Tube Digga (14.1K subs) – https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCCs9r5J_56ta_n_hI3RUcGw https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCCs9r5J_56ta_n_hI3RUcGw You Suck at Producing (222K subs) – https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCapo4XcpVOlTLkbKIDL0WlA https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCapo4XcpVOlTLkbKIDL0WlA Marlow Digs - mpc head (27.4K subs) – https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCXTqU3m3XZx_rWV_XaPiDcg https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCXTqU3m3XZx_rWV_XaPiDcg
aldanor 6y ago
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)
- bborud 6y ago
  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.
  - aldanor 6y ago
    That's all understandable and I agree that they had the courage to go the 'other direction' and succeeded in doing so. And that's part of what makes Live special and what makes it fun to use, which I do on daily basis. But for professional use, you do end up with a hundred or a few hundred track lanes in your projects, and mixing and tweaking the whole thing becomes an unavoidable disastrous chore. If I understand this correctly, they planned on introducing it in Live 8 (hence a hidden flag in Options.txt which sort-of enables a preview of this feature but is extremely buggy), but it never fully worked out because they also introduced Racks with nested tree-like flow of plugins, which doesn't play well with a conventional matrix-like mixer view. That being said, I believe most pro users would be happy with a simplified solution like "if you fork a chain in a rack, its branches won't be shown in the mixer", which would cover the 95% of other simple use cases like, seeing where your compressors are at a glance without having to click on each track a hundred times... There's many such things - like proper multi-screen support (e.g. with 3+ screens), which, hypothetically, could also couple well with a separate-window mixer view where they could introduce chain branching and all that (and become the first DAW to do that!). For pro use, there's lots of features like this that may sound boring but end up hampering your workflow a lot. It may not be as fun-sounding as 'yet another cool phaser bitcrusher spectral distortion plugin' but the reality is, professional users that they supposedly aim at do require core functionality that's been missing since the start.
d883kd8 6y ago
I started out with Sam Aaron's Overtone, which completely blew my mind and reignited my musical interest. I got to a point where I was scratching the rough edges of it and I didn't want to follow him to Sonic Pi so I moved on to Ableton. It's awesome, leveled up my production game but the one thing I miss is the workflow of composing in a CIDER REPL, totally unbeatable. Guess I could just export the midi ... but I decided to buy a keyboard and learn to play keys. This is the music I make[1]. The older, more piano-based songs are written in Overtone, and you'll here where they change up to be more textured and electronic sounding when I got into Ableton 1: https://soundcloud.app.goo.gl/FCnh https://soundcloud.app.goo.gl/FCnh
joeevans1000 6y ago
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, but it's not like what they worked out with their Push. I don't want the Push on stage and I don't want to spend what is basically the price of Live all over again (plus have another expensive thing to have to upgrade again and again).
- RickS 6y ago
  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.
  - joeevans1000 6y ago
    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.
  - daniel_reetz 6y ago
    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.
- Slow_Hand 6y ago
  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.
jermeh 6y ago
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.
S_A_P 6y ago
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...
arvinsim 6y ago
I wonder if Ableton 11 is already compatible with the new M1 Macbooks.
blhack 6y ago
I'm surprised at how many HNers seem to be into ableton. Very cool! Just curious: do you guys buy the full version? It's so expensive that I've never been able to justify it. I actually have been using the free version that came with a midi controller I bought a few years ago, and even that has been great. (I'd rather spend the money on hardware synths)

198 points by alphadelphi 6y ago

jtxx 6y ago

wow, I'm so hyped for the improved tracking capabilities

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

salimmadjd 6y ago
For someone like me who uses Logic, is there a reason to use Ableton? Logic is only one $200 lifetime fee
- wrs 6y ago
  I’ve used both for many years and enjoy both. They’re largely equivalent in function, but they have very different feels. Ableton is more “hands on” and almost modeless. It assumes that you’re always manipulating and reworking things. Logic is more structured and “modeful”. Examples: Ableton defaults to time-stretching and transient slicing for audio; you have to turn it on in Logic. Ableton’s always in what Logic calls “marquee” mode, so you can grab pieces of audio and move them around. Ableton always shows you all the controls of all the (built-in) plugins; Logic makes you open them one by one. Routing in Ableton is dynamic; Logic has fixed “busses” you have to allocate manually. Other than style, one killer difference is that Ableton has Push hardware, which is really an extension of the UI into physical reality. It’s a fantastic control surface that has no equivalent in Logic-world. And of course, with all those features you can create amazing live setups with Ableton—thus the name “Live”! Logic’s comfort zone is very much as a studio tool. Edit: I forgot to mention the higher versions of Live come with Max for Live, which is an amazing construction set for making audio/MIDI software. No Logic equivalent for that.
- breakfastduck 6y ago
  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’re a programmer because you’ll enjoy max for live and the max MSP ecosystem.
  - arvinsim 6y ago
    Seems right. Although I chose Ableton because it's cross platform even if I do guitar primarily.
- dham 6y ago
  But then you would have to use Mac, which breaks third party plugins every 1 year or so. Most the stuff I invested in when I got started hasn't worked since Lion. All other things that survived were dead with Catalina. Windows you can install stuff from 2003 and run no issue. Work on ARM lol. Most DAWS don't even support 4k monitors. Reason, MPC, Maschine. Not to mention the countless popular plugins that are the size of rain drop on the screen (Ominisphere)
- scarecrowbob 6y ago
  I dunno if there is one. I get a lot of work done in logic. I ended up with an octatrack for doing what a lot of folks are using live for, tho, and that's been super fun for me.
- SomeHacker44 6y ago
  You can stop using Apple hardware for no additional software cost if you use Ableton.
- pier25 6y ago
  True but Apple makes it so cheap because they get their money back on hardware.
- puranjay 6y ago
  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.
nfoz 6y ago
What is "comping"?
- _fs 6y ago
  Multiple takes intermixed on a single track. https://www.ableton.com/en/live/#comping https://www.ableton.com/en/live/#comping
- XzAeRosho 6y ago
  Recording different takes, and then piece different parts of those takes and create one final "perfect" take.
- sullyj3 6y ago
  It's short for "composite" recording. As in, mixing several takes together to form a single one with the best bits of all of them. Strictly speaking you can already do this using multiple tracks, but having a dedicated workflow will make it much easier.
lostgame 6y ago
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 Mac user. I honestly have no idea about the DAW landscape for PC's. I am extremely reliant on exporting songs from GarageBand on my iPhone as I create beats on the go quite often - and opening those .garageband files in Logic Pro to seriously hone in on the sounds, keeping the original instruments and MIDI intact. It's an irreplaceable ecosystem for me.
- timrichard 6y ago
  It looks like a good update, but I'm starting to give up hope on seeing ARA2 as a feature... :-( Something that wasn't a problem for $200 Logic Pro or even $60 Reaper (with their two-person dev team).
  - galaxyLogic 6y ago
    What is ARA2?
    - detaro 6y ago
      https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Audio_Random_Access https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Audio_Random_Access
    - timrichard 6y ago
      Following on from the link of the other poster, the Random Access part allows plugins like Melodyne to "see" all the audio data that's on the track all at once, without you having to transfer it inside the plugin manually. You just start working with it seamlessly in an edit window. It's a neat idea.
  - lostgame 6y ago
    I am consistently pleasantly surprised by the way Apple consistently updates Logic with only more and more layers of impressive features. ARA2 support was fantastic - so was their buyout of Camel's Alchemy. Alchemy alone added a ton of value to Logic, and it came as a .x upgrade. Fantastic. EDIT: One of the only selling points of an iPad I can think of is using it on a stand with Logic Remote as an actual digital mixing window. The experience is unparalleled.

1_player 6y ago

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, and power users can't be at their most productive because we're scared of complexity and build around the casual, computer illiterate user. Imagine what Ableton would look like if they were only optimising for the user that wants to put a couple of pre-made loops together and call it a song.

toomanybeersies 6y ago
> Imagine what Ableton would look like if they were only optimising for the user that wants to put a couple of pre-made loops together and call it a song. It would look a lot like FL Studio, which caters more towards that end of the market.
- packetlost 6y ago
  FL Studio is quite powerful, though it does seem to cater more towards electronic music production and live sets. I don't think I've ever seen anyone use pre-made loops in FL Studio that wasn't an absolute novice. GarageBand on the other hand...
- farias0 6y ago
  Dude, FL Studio is so much more complex and flexible than Ableton! So much that I'm switching to Ableton for a while to see if I can get more productive and spend less time troubleshooting stuff I'd say the opposite: Ableton is more focused and simpler, streamlining lots of stuff (live VSTs) without being less powerful. Kinda Apple-ish in a way.
  - andybak 6y ago
    I don’t know FL very well but Ableton’s power is cleverly designed and is easy to miss when you only use the obvious surface features.

galaxyLogic 6y ago

I have version 9 and have difficulty figuring out how to do simple things with it. Like how do I take an existing MP3 recording and make it one of the tracks but synchronize the beats with those of the existing tracks?

dmicah 6y ago
Drag the mp3 onto an audio track, and turn on / adjust the warp settings to set it to the correct tempo.
- galaxyLogic 6y ago
  Thank you for the advice. But even that sounds difficult for a novice like me. How do I "adjust warp settings" so that two tempos are the same? And I don't want to just have the same tempo, I want to align specific beats. I know there is a forum and documentation but if all my time goes to trying to figure out technical solutions then all my creativity goes into finding technical solutions, rather than solving artistic problems.
  - GavinMcG 6y ago
    > if all my time goes to trying to figure out technical solutions Any musician has to learn their instrument. Commit to that.
    - galaxyLogic 6y ago
      > 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 sales literature would be up front about it. You will need years of study to master this instrument in order to produce something that other people would want to listen to. You will need to commit to it :-) The difference between Ableton and "ordinary musical instruments" is that Ableton runs on a computer, therefore its use should be easy enough to not require years to learn.

xriddle 6y ago

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.

drchopchop 6y ago
There is nothing remotely close in the OSS world. You might find you prefer a different DAW, workflow-wise, but Ableton is A+ at what it does.
timdaub 6y ago
Heeey, glad you asked! I'm not full-time on this, but I'm trying to build an OSS DAW. Here is a first tiny demo: https://timdaub.github.io/wasm-synth/ https://timdaub.github.io/wasm-synth/ I also wrote about it: https://timdaub.github.io/2020/02/19/wasm-synth/ https://timdaub.github.io/2020/02/19/wasm-synth/
- PaulDavisThe1st 6y ago
  I'm not sure what you think a DAW is, but typically it tends to involve the possibility of dealing with large numbers of tracks and vast amounts of audio. How do you propose to do this in a browser context?
  - timdaub 6y ago
    At this point I don't propose any design. But I'm confident it can be done. You seem to know the challenges ahead. Mind sharing?
    - PaulDavisThe1st 6y ago
      https://ardour.org/ https://ardour.org/
- mattmar96 6y ago

inakarmacoma 6y ago

MPE?

shwoopdiwoop 6y ago
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.

tokamak-teapot 6y ago

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.

xster 6y ago
Standard Live 10 -> 11 is 159. It's nested behind a bunch of links.
franl 6y ago
$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 think I came from Suite 9, so maybe that accounts for the price difference.
- pvarangot 6y ago
  Wow that's a lot for Suite, specially if you shelled at full price. I hope there's discounts once the hype goes away.
- Fej 6y ago
  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.)
- system16 6y ago
  This is why I ultimately switched over to FL Studio. I don't make money off of music, and with work and family rarely have the time to spend on it. Live's high upgrade costs seemed wasted on me. With FL Studio, it's a single lifetime licence. Mind you the UX is not nearly as nice as Live and it's much more geared to in-studio producing than live use, so obviously won't work for everyone.

adamnemecek 6y ago

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

kzrdude 6y ago
Sounds coll but the pitch doesn't have much detail. Which DAW workflows will it support to start with?
- adamnemecek 6y ago
  Which ones would you want?
  - enumjorge 6y ago
    I’m seeing a pattern in the lack of detail ;)
    - adamnemecek 6y ago
      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.
      - p0nce 6y ago
        Keep it up! I've subscribed. I hate most of DAWs.
        adamnemecek 6y ago
        Thanks for the encouragement.
      - 6y ago

eyelidlessness 6y ago

I haven’t recorded for years, but when I first used Live I fell in love with it instantly. Two of these features (tempo following and velocity chance) are compelling enough I may get back behind a guitar. They were ideas I had years ago and considered trying to build myself but I had no idea where to begin. Good showing, Ableton!

AlwaysBCoding 6y ago

Something I find interesting is that they're adding built-in entropy to this update. You will now be able to set the probability that a MIDI note will fire in a melody. Or set a range of probabilities for the velocity value of a MIDI note. I'm sure that you will be able to map the range probabilities to the ADSR of synths etc... I'm curious if that is more of a novelty or will actually be a valuable tool for exploring ideas.

blub 6y ago
People seem to love this probability trigger feature in Elektron products.
- munificent 6y ago
  YES. The Elektron sequencer is the first time I ever felt stepping out of a computer might make for a more powerful, fun sequencing experience. It's a joy to use.
rosseloh 6y ago
Probability-based triggers are one of my favorite things, and something that I thought was pretty lacking here (I only came to Ableton just recently, but nearly every arpeggiator I've used up until now has had a note probability feature and it does wonders for variation in patterns). So I'm extremely glad to see it being integrated.
CobsterLock 6y ago
Do you get to define seed values? I'm just thinking in terms of reproducibility if you are composing a track instead of playing live. A super cool feature I didn't even think would be helpful before
munificent 6y ago
> Or set a range of probabilities for the velocity value of a MIDI note. The velocity MIDI effect already let you randomize all note velocities by a user-controlled range. This just lets you set random ranges per-note.

rvense 6y ago

Huh, cool. How long before those spectral tools are as cliche as Beat Repeat, though...

shwoopdiwoop 6y ago

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.

varispeed 6y ago

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.

mhh__ 6y ago
Bitwig already does that with VSTs IIRC
- varispeed 6y ago
  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.
  - spacechild1 6y ago
    For other readers: It is a misconception that sandboxing per-se enables parallelism. On the contrary, it only hurts performance. The speedup observed with jBridge might have other reasons. More here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25068976 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25068976
6y ago

throw_m239339 6y ago

Minor workflow improvements, but frankly not enough to get me pay for the update. The audio comping is nice. What I'd like to do is being able to run live as a VST inside Cubase, like FLstudio for instance. Cubase handles most of what I need for production and does it way better than Live, Live is more a creative tool than anything else, especially when it comes to complex studio setups with multiple monitoring, it is where Live completely fails.

andrewmcwatters 6y ago

The Spitfire Audio additions are a really compelling competitor to the Vienna Symphonic Library.

pier25 6y ago
Not even close. VSL has many more instruments, orchestrations, articulations, and mics than the instruments bundled in Live. Don't get me wrong, these are nice additions for Live users, but VSL is simply one of the top orchestral libraries.
- andrewmcwatters 6y ago
  True, but it feels like it provides something that scratches at VSL's surface.

deeblering4 6y ago

As a drummer the follow feature looks super interesting and useful!

munificent 6y ago

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, dark patterns, social media apps hijacking human psychology to drive up engagement, etc. Ableton Live reminds me that software can be beautiful and empowering, and how good and natural it feels to just pay money for a well-crafted product.

kace91 6y ago
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.
- codetrotter 6y ago
  YouTube! Here are some people that I personally subscribe to and currently watch. Blezz Beats (8.68K subs) – https://www.youtube.com/blezzbeats https://www.youtube.com/blezzbeats Synth Mania (126K subs) – https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCSGAKoBpUJI5jrJLgFQxiiw https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCSGAKoBpUJI5jrJLgFQxiiw Rick Beato (1.93M subs) – https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCJquYOG5EL82sKTfH9aMA9Q https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCJquYOG5EL82sKTfH9aMA9Q Ave McRee (71K subs) – https://www.youtube.com/user/AveMcree https://www.youtube.com/user/AveMcree Dom Sigalas (23.5K subs) – https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCGGgrpgOZ-DMvjLSYxn8W3w https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCGGgrpgOZ-DMvjLSYxn8W3w Accurate Beats (81.7K subs) – https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCoT0i4T3r3d4oYkdYQgZ4fg https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCoT0i4T3r3d4oYkdYQgZ4fg Da Drank Kang (7.13K subs) – https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCD7cuqL0P3x8RGsLQxxTpAA https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCD7cuqL0P3x8RGsLQxxTpAA Poli Popo (3.55K subs) – https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCZv3Yw5jtvjwcrzJ90yscEw https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCZv3Yw5jtvjwcrzJ90yscEw JAde Wii ツ (36.2K subs) – https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCqjAXHR5DHTCahIHpg7vspg https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCqjAXHR5DHTCahIHpg7vspg Doctor Mix (486K subs) – https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCbzNcFN7cxA8HO18cTYyTfg https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCbzNcFN7cxA8HO18cTYyTfg Swiftstyle (33.7K subs) – https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCHPY6JX3EBMo1N9SKIxNDmQ https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCHPY6JX3EBMo1N9SKIxNDmQ Kirk State (1.05K subs) – https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCGGgt68KDkMsHaniWUhjbBw https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCGGgt68KDkMsHaniWUhjbBw Tube Digga (14.1K subs) – https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCCs9r5J_56ta_n_hI3RUcGw https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCCs9r5J_56ta_n_hI3RUcGw You Suck at Producing (222K subs) – https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCapo4XcpVOlTLkbKIDL0WlA https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCapo4XcpVOlTLkbKIDL0WlA Marlow Digs - mpc head (27.4K subs) – https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCXTqU3m3XZx_rWV_XaPiDcg https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCXTqU3m3XZx_rWV_XaPiDcg

aldanor 6y ago

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)

bborud 6y ago
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.
- aldanor 6y ago
  That's all understandable and I agree that they had the courage to go the 'other direction' and succeeded in doing so. And that's part of what makes Live special and what makes it fun to use, which I do on daily basis. But for professional use, you do end up with a hundred or a few hundred track lanes in your projects, and mixing and tweaking the whole thing becomes an unavoidable disastrous chore. If I understand this correctly, they planned on introducing it in Live 8 (hence a hidden flag in Options.txt which sort-of enables a preview of this feature but is extremely buggy), but it never fully worked out because they also introduced Racks with nested tree-like flow of plugins, which doesn't play well with a conventional matrix-like mixer view. That being said, I believe most pro users would be happy with a simplified solution like "if you fork a chain in a rack, its branches won't be shown in the mixer", which would cover the 95% of other simple use cases like, seeing where your compressors are at a glance without having to click on each track a hundred times... There's many such things - like proper multi-screen support (e.g. with 3+ screens), which, hypothetically, could also couple well with a separate-window mixer view where they could introduce chain branching and all that (and become the first DAW to do that!). For pro use, there's lots of features like this that may sound boring but end up hampering your workflow a lot. It may not be as fun-sounding as 'yet another cool phaser bitcrusher spectral distortion plugin' but the reality is, professional users that they supposedly aim at do require core functionality that's been missing since the start.

d883kd8 6y ago

I started out with Sam Aaron's Overtone, which completely blew my mind and reignited my musical interest. I got to a point where I was scratching the rough edges of it and I didn't want to follow him to Sonic Pi so I moved on to Ableton. It's awesome, leveled up my production game but the one thing I miss is the workflow of composing in a CIDER REPL, totally unbeatable. Guess I could just export the midi ... but I decided to buy a keyboard and learn to play keys. This is the music I make[1]. The older, more piano-based songs are written in Overtone, and you'll here where they change up to be more textured and electronic sounding when I got into Ableton 1: https://soundcloud.app.goo.gl/FCnh https://soundcloud.app.goo.gl/FCnh

joeevans1000 6y ago

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, but it's not like what they worked out with their Push. I don't want the Push on stage and I don't want to spend what is basically the price of Live all over again (plus have another expensive thing to have to upgrade again and again).

RickS 6y ago
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.
- joeevans1000 6y ago
  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.
- daniel_reetz 6y ago
  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.
Slow_Hand 6y ago
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.

jermeh 6y ago

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.

S_A_P 6y ago

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...

arvinsim 6y ago

I wonder if Ableton 11 is already compatible with the new M1 Macbooks.

blhack 6y ago

I'm surprised at how many HNers seem to be into ableton. Very cool! Just curious: do you guys buy the full version? It's so expensive that I've never been able to justify it. I actually have been using the free version that came with a midi controller I bought a few years ago, and even that has been great. (I'd rather spend the money on hardware synths)