4 ms·

I believe it may have to do with the fact that Ableton is a performance tool first and foremost. It would follow that all design decisions stem from that requir

I believe it may have to do with the fact that Ableton is a performance tool first and foremost. It would follow that all design decisions stem from that requirement. Yes it is a full-featured DAW like Logic or Pro Tools, but Ableton differentiate themselves by supporting that paradigm and that leads them to configurations that are unconventional for non-performance-oriented DAWs: 1. Having all instruments and plugins in a horizontally-oriented trough allows quick drag-and-drop rearrangement. So if you want to rearrange their order very quickly you can do it. In Pro Tools it would be a two click operation at best and depending on how your plugins are arranged it could be significantly more than that. 2. It allows you to reach the knobs on their native instruments and plugins without the need to open/close plugin windows first. 3. MIDI mapping becomes much quicker and intuitive when you can simply toggle the MIDI/Keyboard mapping overlay for a given plugin. 4. Their Instrument Rack/Drum Rack/Midi Rack devices are very flexible in their capabilites. Being able to nest plugins within them like macros and then quickly hide or reveal a dozen plugins within a single rack is great for declutterring an otherwise busy interface. As someone who mixes most of their projects in Ableton, their Rack paradigm allows me to condense a lot of parallel processing into a single instrument/audio channel. This makes for a very clean representation of very complex processing. To do a similar task such as having three channels of parallel processing on a single channel in Pro Tools involves either sending them to as many return channels, or creating duplicates of that channel which all have their own parallel processing chains. This creates way more clutter on the screen. That said, you CAN still have Ableton's plugins displayed in the manner you prefer. It's a hidden feature that's not documented. Pretty easy to setup, but not discoverable. It's an option that they developed but decided not to include in the final version. Here's a tutorial: sonicbloom.net/en/ableton-live-insider-tips-options-txt-part-1/

aldanor 6y ago
> That said, you CAN still have Ableton's plugins displayed in the manner you prefer. It's a hidden feature that's not documented. Pretty easy to setup, but not discoverable. It's an option that they developed but decided not to include in the final version. Here's a tutorial: sonicbloom.net/en/ableton-live-insider-tips-options-txt-part-1/ I've specifically noted above, expecting this reply: "I'm aware of the Options.txt hack which is unreliable and I'm not even sure it works with the latest Live 10". It does NOT work properly and it's unsupported/unmaintained. You get misaligned circles, up to 4 per channel, instead of plugin names, because redraw logic is broken. > Having all instruments and plugins in a horizontally-oriented trough allows quick drag-and-drop rearrangement. That's true in most DAWs. E.g. in Logic, you just drag plugins around, either in the channel strip which would be always open for a given channel, but ALSO in the mixer view. Try dragging plugins across channels in Live and see how that goes for you. > It allows you to reach the knobs on their native instruments and plugins without the need to open/close plugin windows firs Same in Bitwig. In Logic, you can't but instead you can e.g. see all (native) EQ curves for all channels simultaneously in the mixer view and access it without having to select the track first. > MIDI mapping becomes much quicker and intuitive when you can simply toggle the MIDI/Keyboard mapping overlay for a given plugin. Same in Bitwig. In Logic it's a few clicks instead of one but the idea is the same. > Being able to nest plugins within them like macros and then quickly hide or reveal a dozen plugins within a single rack is great for declutterring an otherwise busy interface. True. But that comes at a price of those chains and effects being even LESS discoverable when it comes to mixing. Since now a particular plugin may be buried deep two layers down in a rack of racks.

aldanor 6y ago

> That said, you CAN still have Ableton's plugins displayed in the manner you prefer. It's a hidden feature that's not documented. Pretty easy to setup, but not discoverable. It's an option that they developed but decided not to include in the final version. Here's a tutorial: sonicbloom.net/en/ableton-live-insider-tips-options-txt-part-1/ I've specifically noted above, expecting this reply: "I'm aware of the Options.txt hack which is unreliable and I'm not even sure it works with the latest Live 10". It does NOT work properly and it's unsupported/unmaintained. You get misaligned circles, up to 4 per channel, instead of plugin names, because redraw logic is broken. > Having all instruments and plugins in a horizontally-oriented trough allows quick drag-and-drop rearrangement. That's true in most DAWs. E.g. in Logic, you just drag plugins around, either in the channel strip which would be always open for a given channel, but ALSO in the mixer view. Try dragging plugins across channels in Live and see how that goes for you. > It allows you to reach the knobs on their native instruments and plugins without the need to open/close plugin windows firs Same in Bitwig. In Logic, you can't but instead you can e.g. see all (native) EQ curves for all channels simultaneously in the mixer view and access it without having to select the track first. > MIDI mapping becomes much quicker and intuitive when you can simply toggle the MIDI/Keyboard mapping overlay for a given plugin. Same in Bitwig. In Logic it's a few clicks instead of one but the idea is the same. > Being able to nest plugins within them like macros and then quickly hide or reveal a dozen plugins within a single rack is great for declutterring an otherwise busy interface. True. But that comes at a price of those chains and effects being even LESS discoverable when it comes to mixing. Since now a particular plugin may be buried deep two layers down in a rack of racks.