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Last time I used Ableton (2011), the recording cut off somewhere between 5 and 6 hours. From the email exchange I had with them, this was because they were usin

by joesmo 12y ago

Last time I used Ableton (2011), the recording cut off somewhere between 5 and 6 hours. From the email exchange I had with them, this was because they were using 32bit ints instead of 64bit ones. For a company that touts its partnership with Serato, and the ability of their program to work with Serato's DJ tools to specifically record DJ mixes (which can be many hours or even days long), this is absolutely unacceptable. Perhaps they fixed this since then, but after experiencing that, I could no longer see Ableton as anything but amateur software at best. The UI is not very intuitive or particularly great either, at least for composition, compared to other music software.

keyle 12y ago
Well it goes to show the struggle of large development teams and products at large. According to that video, maybe you should revisit now. I've used Ableton but I found myself driven back to simpler tools that give a less digital sound. Also I sort of agree about the UI.
cubano 12y ago
Oh my...it has changed drastically from 2011 and I'm sure it now records music until your hard drive is full. The idea it is "amateur software as best" flies in the face of the fact that most professional electronic producers use it if they use Windows, at least as far as I can tell from the various computer music magazines.
thirdsun 12y ago
Since version 9 Live is 64 Bit only. It's an important move, but you always have to deal with musicians who rely on old plugins that won't work in 32 Bit mode - so backwards compatibility is an issue. correction: They still offer a separate 32 Bit installer - didn't realize, never looked back.
unepipe 12y ago
Sounds like you had a bad experience, but as others have said, the Ableton has changed substantially in the past 5 years. Ableton 9 came out in March of 2013, at which point the time limit issue would be resolved. Regarding the interface being unintuitive, I think that could be true for those who are experienced in standard linear DAW workflows, and I could see how it could feel unintuitive for someone looking to record a Serato DJ session. It's got a lot of tools for music production, and you'd need to be in Arrangement view, not session view. As a software developer and someone who likes to mess around in music production, the interface became incredibly intuitive once I did the (included) software tour and learned the difference between Arrangement View and Session View, and what could be accomplished in those. In terms of music production (not DJing), the way instruments and effects are set up reminds me of objects, where you have data and methods. You create sound clips on instruments which are kind of like functions you can reuse. (Just a loose analogy) If you build a bunch of clips on instruments in the Session view of these you can use them together to create a song that you improvise somewhat, within the sounds and drumbeats that you have pre-created. It's really fun if you play with it and get accustomed to how the software works!

by joesmo 12y ago

keyle 12y ago

Well it goes to show the struggle of large development teams and products at large. According to that video, maybe you should revisit now. I've used Ableton but I found myself driven back to simpler tools that give a less digital sound. Also I sort of agree about the UI.

cubano 12y ago

Oh my...it has changed drastically from 2011 and I'm sure it now records music until your hard drive is full. The idea it is "amateur software as best" flies in the face of the fact that most professional electronic producers use it if they use Windows, at least as far as I can tell from the various computer music magazines.

thirdsun 12y ago

Since version 9 Live is 64 Bit only. It's an important move, but you always have to deal with musicians who rely on old plugins that won't work in 32 Bit mode - so backwards compatibility is an issue. correction: They still offer a separate 32 Bit installer - didn't realize, never looked back.

unepipe 12y ago

Sounds like you had a bad experience, but as others have said, the Ableton has changed substantially in the past 5 years. Ableton 9 came out in March of 2013, at which point the time limit issue would be resolved. Regarding the interface being unintuitive, I think that could be true for those who are experienced in standard linear DAW workflows, and I could see how it could feel unintuitive for someone looking to record a Serato DJ session. It's got a lot of tools for music production, and you'd need to be in Arrangement view, not session view. As a software developer and someone who likes to mess around in music production, the interface became incredibly intuitive once I did the (included) software tour and learned the difference between Arrangement View and Session View, and what could be accomplished in those. In terms of music production (not DJing), the way instruments and effects are set up reminds me of objects, where you have data and methods. You create sound clips on instruments which are kind of like functions you can reuse. (Just a loose analogy) If you build a bunch of clips on instruments in the Session view of these you can use them together to create a song that you improvise somewhat, within the sounds and drumbeats that you have pre-created. It's really fun if you play with it and get accustomed to how the software works!