ABLETON LIVE 5 (DAW software)

[Anderton]

Live 5 – Prologue

I was talking with a local avant-garde musician who uses Live for live resampling. I asked if he’d checked out Live 5 yet. “I don’t know…seems they’re getting greedy with their updates.” I was somewhat taken aback, but he explained “I’ve been with it since the beginning, and I keep spending money on updates…I’m probably up to about a $1,000 investment. Someone who’s just buying it now would get all the same features, for half the price.”

“But,” I said, “you’ve been able to use it for all these years. That must be worth something. And each update has been pretty significant: Elastic audio, MIDI and instrument support…and I can assure you we’re not talking about a Microsoft-sized company here. It’s people who like the program and buy updates who fuel additional development.”

He saw my point, then said “But is Live 5 really that big a deal compared to Live 4 that it’s worth the upgrade price?”

Well, that’s what existing Live fans want to know. And non-Live users want to know whether Live 5 has reached a point where they can contemplate replacing their existing host with something that's perhaps a better option...let's investigate both aspects.

[Anderton]

For a list of features and system requirements, click here (http://www.ableton.com/index.php?main=live&sub=live5-tour-features)

For a list of what’s new in the program, click here (http://www.ableton.com/index.php?main=live&sub=live5-whats-new)

Ableton says Live 5 is their most significant upgrade yet. While previous upgrades have concentrated on adding some major feature, Live 5’s changes extend throughout the program. Almost as if to drive the point home, Ableton’s trademark “green” look is gone, replaced by Basic Black. It seems like they’re trying to say “This is a different program.”

The classy-looking package (click on the Attachment button to see it) includes three CDs: Program Disc, Library Disc with over 400MB of loops from Big Fish Audio, and a third demo CD of the program to pass along to a friend. There’s a 288 page manual - Ableton does a very good job with manuals. Although there’s no Quick Start guide, the program itself has several video “lessons.”

I installed the program, then immediately checked the web site. Sure enough, there was an update: 5.0.1, about a 40MB file. As I don’t have broadband yet - and to add insult to injury, my dial-up connection is 28.8kbps on a good day - it took a while to get the upload and install it, which is why this review started a few days late.

Copy protection consists of entering a serial number, then going to the web site and getting an unlock code. The licensing agreement is the usual mind-numbing collection of fine print, but here are the basics:

 You can use it on only one machine at a time.
 Ableton will give you two unlocks, so you can install on laptop and desktop – Ableton relies on the “honor system” that you won’t use them at the same time.
 The demo version is unusually generous – it provides all features for an unlimited amount of time, but you can’t save or export. Ableton points out that if you’re playing live and run into some disaster situation, you can also install the demo and at least be able to play back any files you’ve prepared as backing tracks. Good point.

Okay, let’s check out the features, with an accent on what's new. And of course, because this is an interactive review, feel free to fire away with questions.

[Anderton]

I admit it - I rarely go through tutorials. But hey, it’s a Pro Review and you want to know if they’re cool or not, so I figured I should do my homework and check them out.

Turns out they’re actually pretty useful and quite well done. The “Tour” loads an example file, then takes you through all the main operations: clips, scenes, mixing, and the like. If you’re new to Live, this would be extremely helpful. The Tour tutorial has 27 pages and includes a fair amount of material, but not so much as to be overwhelming.

The tutorial appears in a strip along the right (click on Attachment to see the basic format), with the example file loaded into Live - most lessons have accompanying demo files. There are plenty of screen shots to show where you’re supposed to click, and the whole process is clear.

The five “Quick Start” tutorials include the tour, recording with Live, software instruments, creating beats, and DJ-ing with Live. Four additional tutorials explain working with Live (e.g., editing arrangements), but perhaps the most useful one for those getting into computer-based recording will be the two on “Setting Up Audio I/O” and “Setting Up Latency Compensation.”

Two remaining groups of tutorials cover what’s new in Live 5 (four tutorials), and the other group (six tutorials) deals with using the Operator software instrument. (A demo version of Operator comes with Live 5, but for full functionality, you’ll need to buy it - $149, 129 Euro).

Bottom line: Between these and the manual, if you’re willing to put some time into learning Live, you’ll learn it.

Next up: The Freeze function, one of Live 5's big features...we'll see how its ease of use compares with other programs.

[Anderton]

In case you’re not familiar with the concept of freezing (no, I'm not talking about Minnesota in January), this converts tracks that use processor-intensive devices (e.g., software synthesizers, plug-ins, or both) to hard disk tracks, which are much kinder on your CPU.

Live 5’s freeze function is basic: You select the track and click Freeze – the program creates a background hard disk track, and you’re done. Although you can’t do any editing of the track in terms of notes/cut/paste new data etc., functions that are “external” to the track (volume, pan, and mute) still work. Even better, you can launch and stop frozen clips. Of course, you can also unfreeze as needed if you want to do any editing, then re-freeze.

The only change to the GUI is that the frozen track, and the frozen elements within the track (e.g., soft synth) have a sort of “scrim” over them, like you’re seeing them through a thin layer of ice (click on the Attachment button to see this). You don’t see any actual hard disk track or waveform data, as this is all handled in the background.

One problem I ran into occurred when trying to freeze the MIDI track driving the Impulse synth; I received an error message that said “Track Routing Choose Entry ‘4-Beats’ ‘1-Impulse’ Prohibits Freeze.” Well, that didn’t tell me much, and the manual didn’t mention anything about conditions that prohibit freeze. But I know some of the Ableton people will be looking at this thread, so perhaps we’ll get an explanation.

How does this compare to Sonar 4’s freeze function, which I consider to be one of the better host implementations? First of all, with Sonar, you can cut, move, copy, paste, etc. the frozen track, as well as bring the frozen track into a Track Folder. I assume this would be structurally impossible to do with Live, due to the dichotomy between the clip-oriented Session view and the track-oriented Arrangement view.

I also like that Sonar draws an audio waveform in the otherwise blank virtual instrument track. This not only confirms the track was frozen, but gives you an idea of levels and other characteristics of the frozen track. Furthermore, you can hide the MIDI track associated with a frozen instrument, which saves workspace clutter as you can’t do anything with the MIDI data anyway.

Another somewhat cool Sonar feature is Quick Unfreeze, which instead of discarding the bounced audio, retains it. So you can toggle quickly between a frozen track, and one that you can tweak, to see if you perhaps want to freeze the tweaked version instead.

The freeze function in Cubase SX 3.1 doesn’t let you manipulate tracks like Sonar, but does have a great feature: You can freeze just the instrument track and leave the mixer channel untouched (so any mixing, effects, or automation can still be edited), or freeze the instrument audio along with the mixer channel settings. You can do something similar in Sonar by assigning a frozen track to a bus, but that’s not as elegant as Cubase SX’s solution.

So basically, Live’s freeze function may not be as flexible as other hosts, but it does the job and more importantly, lets you launch and stop frozen clips – this is crucial to making freeze useable with Live. And of course, freeze completes the MIDI implementation that was introduced in Live 4; these days, if you’re going to use soft synths, freeze is invaluable for keeping CPU stress under control. Also, frozen tracks make it easier to exchange files if the person on the other hand doesn’t have the same instruments and plug-ins, although programs without a freeze option can do pretty much the same thing in a somewhat more clumsy fashion by premixing tracks.

Well, I’m stopping for now…more to come. Let me know if you have any questions or comments as the exploration of Live 5 continues.

[Phil O'Keefe]

Great start Craig! :cool:

As you go further with the review, I'm interested in learning more about the MIDI features and implementation (and upgrades) in Live 5.

[GregRule]

Hey, Craig. It seems more and more folks are using Live as their "auxiliary audio device" on big tours these days. At Winter NAMM, for example, Kelly Clarkson's MD was showing how he uses it onstage with her, and how flexible it is in terms of on-the-fly arrangement changes ("take it to the bridge," "repeat the chorus," etc). Might be cool to devote a couple of paragraphs to using Live as a "live band enhancement tool". How easy is to set up songs in Live so they can be instantly rearranged onstage, and how transparent (and reliable) is it when doing so? As you know, when it comes to high-profile gigs like that, one glitch could spell the end of a person's career.

[jollibug]

Hi Craig, I know people are reading but you were doing such a good job, that I didn't want to interrupt. Great review so far, I'm very engrossed in the review. Was just waiting for a clear "ending" before replying and asking questions.

[Anderton]

<<Hey, Craig. It seems more and more folks are using Live as their "auxiliary audio device" on big tours these days.>>

Greg! What a cool surprise, thanks for checking in bro! Excellent suggestion. In fact, I'm trying to "break" the audio engine right now.

<<Hi Craig, I know people are reading but you were doing such a good job, that I didn't want to interrupt. Great review so far, I'm very engrossed in the review. Was just waiting for a clear "ending" before replying and asking questions.>>

There may not be clear ending, but I hear what you're saying. Much more to come. Thanks for the interest!

[reclude]

I have been a frequent Live 4 user, and went through the same patterns of thought when the time came to upgrade to Live 5; it is worth the money?
I really do feel it is worth it, mostly due to all the new and lovely shortcuts that make composition and recording so much faster and easier. I know how excited I was with live 4, that you could use vst instruments and program music as fast as reason yet be able to record audio as well. There were just a few things that seemed quirky to me, that you couldn't right click a menu to bring up different options (especially changing the edit tool from draw to click) nor change the play marker without dragging it to the desired measure. Another small detail I like are the tiny buttons that reveal and hide the options such as crossfade, sends/returns, and others. All these aside, most of the value seems to me within the new plug-ins such as beat repeat and saturator, they make for easy yet complex arrangements (though I know more than a few people around me that use beat repeat as a major crutch). The test tone is another very valuable item I have used to seek out trouble areas in rooms. Overall the program now seems more organized and even easier to get quality results out of. I started using it with clients from day one of the upgrade and they have been extremely impressed, I have already more than paid for the upgrade.
I was also skeptical about the Reason 3.0 upgrade, but it proved a blessing in the studio as well. Second that about Tiger (OS 10.4). Has Microsoft ruined everyone's take on upgrades with their lackluster efforts? Not me except with them.

[Anderton]

I’m happy to report one thing that has not changed from Live 4 to Live 5 is the robustness of the audio engine. As far as I'm concerned, Live sets the standard for “unstoppable audio.” It seems you can do just about anything without the program hiccuping - even insert VST instruments.

In fact, while several loops were doing their thing, I called up several instruments that take a long time to load, like NI’s Kontakt 2 and Arturia's Moog Modular 2. The meters stopped moving, and the little hour glass appeared for quite a while as Kontakt 2 loaded its various instruments and elements, but the music never stopped. You can insert effects, tracks, shift things around in just about any way you like – Live 5 keeps on chugging along.

However, there is one thing of which you should be aware. One friend of mine who’s a newbie Live user was complaining about occasional crackling and popping on his laptop. He was running about 20 loops and a few fairly long one-shots. I assumed it was a latency, sound card, or driver problem, but working with those didn't seem to fix it, and his CPU meter was only showing something like 15% activity. So we went to the next level: Making sure “Background Services” was checked under Advanced Performance Options in Windows XP, and so on. Still no solution.

To make a long and excruciatingly boring story short, what happened was that he had loaded all his loops as hard disk tracks, and his poor little 5400 RPM hard drive just couldn’t keep up. I suggested he convert the short loops to RAM tracks (which you do in the Sample Display area), and that solved the problem. Click on the Attachment button to see a screen shot of how this is done. The shot also includes the relevant section of Live’s info regarding how to use clips in RAM mode.

We’ve come a long way since Steinberg based an ad campaign for its MIDI sequencer on “the music never stops.” Live really has the “don’t stop” audio engine thing down – as it very well better if you’re going to depend on it for live performance! Big kudos to Ableton for this one.

[Anderton]

So far, so good – so I figured it was time to see if Ableton fixed the one thing that really bugged me about using Live in live performance: The inability to record Solo button presses. This is important to me, because I often have a bunch of loops going, solo one for a couple of measures (by tying a track’s solo button to one of the buttons on my Peavey PC1600x controller), then have everything crash back in. This works fine in live performance because yes, you do hear the soloed track only. But if you're recording that performance, Live will ignore the solo button press. In other words, the solo button press will not exist in the Arrangement view.

I’ve been bugging the Ableton guys about this so much that they don’t return my phone calls, and if they see me walking down the street, they hurry over to the other side and pretend they don’t see me. Well not really :). Actually, they said that the way the program is structured, it’s just about impossible to go back and change this. The solo button was assumed to be there for diagnostic purposes only; if you’re in the studio using Live and you want to hear if there’s a glitch or something on a track, you probably don’t want that solo button press recorded. But on stage, I do! Yet it seems that nothing can be done about this.

I’m determined to find a workaround, but so far haven’t been successful. Basically, I think there are two options. One is to record the set’s audio in real time (using Minidisc or whatever) so I have an audio record of where the solo button was pressed, then go back into Live and edit the tracks in the Arrangement view to reflect this. The other option that just occurred to me is to program a preset in the PC1600x where hitting a solo button doesn’t tie to a track’s solo button, but instead sends out a string with multiple commands to mute all other tracks, as Mutes are recorded. I’m pretty sure the PC1600x can send out strings that are long enough, we’ll see.

Meanwhile, I’m going on a business trip Tuesday and Wednesday, so I won’t be able to work with my music computer… but I’ll be back in a few days. See you then!

[Gus Lozada]

Originally posted by Anderton
I’m determined to find a workaround, but so far haven’t been successful. Basically, I think there are two options. One is to record the set’s audio in real time (using Minidisc or whatever) so I have an audio record of where the solo button was pressed, then go back into Live and edit the tracks in the Arrangement view to reflect this. The other option that just occurred to me is to program a preset in the PC1600x where hitting a solo button doesn’t tie to a track’s solo button, but instead sends out a string with multiple commands to mute all other tracks, as Mutes are recorded. I’m pretty sure the PC1600x can send out strings that are long enough, we’ll see.



I don't know if this is the right place to talk about that "workaround" but if you know which tracks you use to SOLO, well... just set those loops in their very own rows and assign a button to play those "scenes" alone.

It will be easier for the computer and controller to handle only one MIDI message than a bunch just for soloing a track.

BTW, excellent -as usually- report, sensei. I'm still trying to feel comfortable with Live 5's engine myself.

[Anderton]

I don't know if this is the right place to talk about that "workaround" but if you know which tracks you use to SOLO, well... just set those loops in their very own rows and assign a button to play those "scenes" alone.

That would work, but here's the problem: After you're done with the solo function, you then have to call up the scene you want to return to. It's a lot easier to just hit the same button twice -- once to solo, once to get you back to where you were.

I realize that a lot of users, perhaps the majority, won't consider this an issue. But one of the things that got me into Live in the first place was the ability to hit that record button and record an entire performance. It seems a shame that it can't handle recording the solo function.

[Gus Lozada]

Originally posted by Anderton


That would work, but here's the problem: After you're done with the solo function, you then have to call up the scene you want to return to. It's a lot easier to just hit the same button twice -- once to solo, once to get you back to where you were.

I realize that a lot of users, perhaps the majority, won't consider this an issue. But one of the things that got me into Live in the first place was the ability to hit that record button and record an entire performance. It seems a shame that it can't handle recording the solo function.

Agreed!

[thie1210]

Originally posted by Anderton
This works fine in live performance because yes, you do hear the soloed track only. But if you're recording that performance, Live will ignore the solo button press. In other words, the solo button press will not exist in the Arrangement view.If you add an Utility plug-in to your track, the Mute button could be assigned to one of the PC1600x Mute button!? That should get recorded.

[riffy]

Craig,
I have used Acid for years. How does it compare to LIVE and will I like Live more if I spend the $ for it and take time to actually learn the program?

Gary

[Anderton]

I have used Acid for years. How does it compare to LIVE and will I like Live more if I spend the $ for it and take time to actually learn the program?

Wow, that's an essay question to say the least. The programs are really quite different, each has its strengths and weaknesses, as well as very different workflow.

The Big Live Goodies: It fits live performance like a glove: It's crazy responsive, and you can tie parameters to controllers and the QWERTY keyboard with ease. The audio engine is unstoppable, and the included effects are excellent. The Arrangement page gives you most of what any good DAW gives you, and you can record your performance moves. Oh, and the "elastic audio" feature, where you can warp just about anything to a rhythmic framework, is a genius feature. The MIDI implementation is done in true Live fashion: Fast, intuitive, and inspiring.

The Big Acid Goodies: I still find Acid the absolute quickest way to put audio loops together and make music. The folder tracks introduced in v5 help a lot in overcoming Acid's one-loop-per-track paradigm, which has both advantages and disadvantages. The "acidization" process has been greatly enhanced over the years, with the ability to warp beats, and the fidelity took a big jump forward in v5...looping can be very close to seamless when done right.

Live Issues: I've mentioned the solo button thing, but hey, that's big to me but may not be big to you. Metering is primitive (but I LOVE the new feature where the whole turns red to alert you of distortion). The stretching algorithm is a mixed bag; it's effortless to use, but with sustained material, needs tweaking to sound natural, and sometimes you end up with a faint pulsing no matter what you do. I'll be getting into this more later. I don't want to give the impression there's a problem with the audio - any stretching-based program has material that works well, and material that doesn't. If you learn how to use Live, you can usually optimize the stretching so the audio sounds very good.

Acid Issues: Acid's stretching has the potential to be better than Live's, but some "acidized" sample CDs feature such bad acidization that Acid's full potential is often not realized, and you end up having to tweak anyway. And if you don't know how to tweak, it can be quite time-consuming. The MIDI implemenation is less elegant than Live and feels "tacked on," rather than integrated into the program. Also, you can't tie faders and such to hardware controllers - a major oversight, and something that Live handles superbly. And of course, Acid offers one style of working; it's an efficient style, but there's nothing like Live's outstanding session view.

Both programs have downloadable demos, so it's well worth playing with them both and seeing which suits your style of working better.

I know I'm forgetting some things, but it's late at night, I only got five hours sleep, and I'm in a questionable hotel :) so I'm not operating at peak functionality just now...more to come...

[Mighty Coogna!]

I took part in the beta testing of Live 5. While I enjoyed some of the new features i wasn't impressed enough to update. I feel the same as the fellow who you mentioned in your opening thread. I figure I can get 6 or 7 for the price of one upgrade. They just don't make it a good deal to upgrade to the latest version.

It ought to work like this:
From 1-5 $200
From 2-5 $150
from 3-5 $100
from 4-5 $50.

Makes a lot more sense and reduces the hit on loyal customers to remain up to date.
The argument that I've had Live the whole time is kind of a odd thing to say, and really just voids the notion that as of "now" one person has $1000 invested with ableton while another has $500.

A lot of folks on the ableton forum are expressing some dismay at what I also found to be an accelerated finalization of the product with many bugs left in along with unnerving performance & crash issues on live sets that worked fine with version 4.

Things missing from Live 5

Included multi voice high quality samplers (Reason includes several sound modules and handles loops (not the same obviously) and effects. Operator and a Multi-voice/velocity layered synth need to be included.

MP3/MP4 functionality that doesn't simply convert mp3's to wav files within a cache folder. But rather steams the mp3 file in real time (using an analysis file).

A drum sampler with more than 5 voices and assignable midi channels.

Multiband Compression
Mastering FX

A notation editor would also be nice along with the ability to have multiple windows open on one screen.

Live is a great program, but I'll be sticking with version 4 until they add a few more perks to the overly expensive upgrade scheme. As it stands I feel I have 95% of what ableton has to offer with Version 4.


Sorry to jump the gun on your Craig, but cut to the chase. I have your book form way back with the quadrafuzz project (and others in it), so I have great respect for you, though this is seeming like a catalog "review". Bust some balls and get them going in the direction we want, not what marketing shmoos decree!

[Anderton]

<<The argument that I've had Live the whole time is kind of a odd thing to say, and really just voids the notion that as of "now" one person has $1000 invested with ableton while another has $500.>>

If you've been using Live for the past four years and you've done all the upgrades, then it's basically cost what, $200-$250 per year? That's really not an unreasonable price to pay for software that has undergone major improvements, like the elastic audio and MIDI recording/editing.

<<A lot of folks on the ableton forum are expressing some dismay at what I also found to be an accelerated finalization of the product with many bugs left in along with unnerving performance & crash issues on live sets that worked fine with version 4.>>

I have not encountered that yet, but I downloaded v5.0.1 immediately and never actually used v5.0.0. And I'm still finding out things about the program, so stay tuned. If it crashes I'll let you know.

<<Things missing from Live 5: Included multi voice high quality samplers (Reason includes several sound modules and handles loops (not the same obviously) and effects. Operator and a Multi-voice/velocity layered synth need to be included.>>

I don't think Live is intended to be an all-in-one studio like Reason (which of course, doesn't record digital audio, doesn't have an audio-related arrangement page, and doesn't have anything like the session view...yet prices are comparable). I think they are programs that went into different directions, Reason into synths, and Live into audio. If you want elements of both, then pay more and get Sonar, Cubase, Logic, etc.

<<MP3/MP4 functionality that doesn't simply convert mp3's to wav files within a cache folder. But rather steams the mp3 file in real time (using an analysis file).>>

But wouldn't it slow down the audio engine to have to do all that real time conversion and streaming in a different format? And what difference does it make to the operational usefulness? Maybe I'm not "getting" what you're saying here.

<<A drum sampler with more than 5 voices and assignable midi channels. Multiband Compression. Mastering FX>>

But the point of a plug-in architecture is to let YOU decide what plug-ins you want to use. Yes, Reason added mastering effects, but they HAD to because you can't plug in your own. Someone from Ableton may correct me on this, but I think adding pro-level effects and instruments would add a lot to the cost. I'd rather pay less, and use effects that I like and am familiar with. Or what if someone has invested in WAVES plug-ins? Why buy more with Live that you may not use? However, I do appreciate that many of Live's effects are different from the average. I'd rather see Ableton spend their time developing new, weird plugs than produce yet ANOTHER multiband compressor.

<<A notation editor would also be nice along with the ability to have multiple windows open on one screen.>>

Notation?!? It sounds to me that what you really want is a traditional DAW...to me, Live takes a different approach to creating music, it's not just another DAW. As I recall it was the first program with that sort of "unified" interface. I don't want to open other windows...I want something simple, fast, and inspiring for live performances that I can also use in the studio. I think that's the core of what Live is about, not being a DAW.

<<Live is a great program, but I'll be sticking with version 4 until they add a few more perks to the overly expensive upgrade scheme. As it stands I feel I have 95% of what ableton has to offer with Version 4.>>

Then don't upgrade! I can't definitively agree or disagree until I've worked with the program more.

<<Sorry to jump the gun on your Craig, but cut to the chase.>>

Your opinions are both welcome and encouraged, but I can't "cut to the chase" because I do not feel I am an expert in the program yet. I am documenting what I find as I work with Live, that's the whole point of this format...not just to sit on it for weeks and then make some grand pronouncement at the end, but to share some of the process or discovering what something does and does not do, and encourage others to comment, ask questions, give their own opinions, etc.

<<I have your book form way back with the quadrafuzz project (and others in it), so I have great respect for you, though this is seeming like a catalog "review". Bust some balls and get them going in the direction we want, not what marketing shmoos decree!>>

Uh...does the Live catalog really compare Live and Acid? Talk about the solo button limitation? Explain why it's necessary to use a mix of hard disk and RAM loops? Explain what happens when you load the instruments that take the longest to load to see if the audio engine would hiccup? I don't think so...

But the more important point is that the direction YOU want Live to go in is most definitely NOT the direction I want it to go in. When I first started using Live, I was seduced by its fun factor and ergonomics. Every time they've announced an update, I've gotten nervous that they'll "break" what made it cool by making it too complex. When they said they were adding MIDI, I was afraid Live would become a victim of "creeping featuritis." Yet I think they implemented MIDI in an elegant way that fits the "spirit of Live."

Point is, if I want a balls-to-the-wall DAW, I have Sonar. If I want a studio-in-a-box, Reason rocks. But if I want to do a live performance, I wouldn't use either of those (and I've tried to use them in the past): Live does it for me. I don't want notation, I don't want what they think is a cool complement of instruments that adds hundreds of dollars to the price, I don't want to see the workflow trashed.

What I want to see is whether Live 5 has helped make Live into being the best "Live" it can be, not whether it's made Live more like other programs. Make sense?

And that's why I like this format...you get to ask questions that allow me to explain more fully the particular biases I have that shape the way I approach a product. And this also proves my point that having a single "reviewer" simply can't provide all the viewpoints that would allow readers to make a truly informed decision about whether something is "right" for them or not.

[Mighty Coogna!]

Sorry to keep you up late :)

I guess for me I see the potential for live to do a lot more than trigger loops for dj's - which is the "live" direction of Live. Which sadly reason has also adopted. I'm sure you'll want to point out users like yourself who do different live things with Live, however I'm talking about the majority - as exemplified by the Ableton user forums. Seems to be dj's and studio guys mostly.

I use it more like a DAW, exactly.

Ever spend an afternoon programing an old jazz standard in via the piano roll, wishing a simple notation window (done the simple, elegant Live way), could make it a lot smoother?

There is a wealth of information out there a "staff" away, be it drums or melodic content.

I'm on a budget and can't afford to buy content, upgrades and gear on a regular basis. Compare the Apple/Logic upgrade scheme, around $100 for a thousand dollar program. Or Reason, Major upgrades for $150, along with periodic Major enhancements - and giveaways. Yeah, I expect more for my money.

There's no reason not to ad functionality, be it included or Add-on pacs. Add on a better sampler, a notation editor, a tab editor, a drum sampler.
Let the end user configure for their needs.

If they've painted themselves into a corner with limited code - nows to time to rebuild for the future - we don't want another PT fiasco do we?

My main set up has live rewired along with reason into PT for complete functionality. But lately, I've been using Live alone a lot more, along with reason for instruments. Don't limit the program or suggest that it should be limited due to your own way of using it.

Live is being compared to Logic in some circles (perhaps not your publishers) as the next big DAW.

That's what the community wants, a Great DAW, not a DJ toolset. My Opinion, and I'm sticking to it! ;)

One other thing lacking in Live which carried over into Live 5 - exported midi clips appear in the browser as separate folders you have to manually open to access. UGh!

And where is the Live branded Loop utility program? Someone get those folks a Proper Budget!

I make suggestions, they get panned. years later they are "features", the checks never come in the mail. I jest. :D


I'll add that I understand the love for Live's simplicity, but lots of other things could be hidden below the surface for power users without hurting that cornerstone or turning off the users that rely on that aspect of the app. An application like photoshop comes to mind.

[Anderton]

A "bug fix beta," 5.0.2, was just made available for public testing last Friday.

[Mighty Coogna!]

That's been out for a while, Only available to 5 owners. FYI.

[Anderton]

<<I use it more like a DAW, exactly.>>

Okay, I see where you're coming from. But why not just use a DAW?

<<There is a wealth of information out there a "staff" away, be it drums or melodic content.>>

If you just want it to see what's happening, fine. I suspect that doing a print-quality notation program is waaaay beyond where Live wants to go.

<<Compare the Apple/Logic upgrade scheme, around $100 for a thousand dollar program...Or Reason, Major upgrades for $150, along with periodic Major enhancements - and giveaways. Yeah, I expect more for my money.>>

Yeah, props to Propellerheads. They really do deliver value to their customers.

<<There's no reason not to ad functionality, be it included or Add-on pacs. Add on a better sampler, a notation editor, a tab editor, a drum sampler.
Let the end user configure for their needs.>>

Exactly. Buy plug-in instruments, don't ask Ableton to re-invent the wheel and charge more for the process. BTW the Yamaha OPT thing makes the concept of MIDI plug-in functionality possible, but it's use in Acid hasn't really set the world on fire...I don't know how easy it would be to make "MIDI function plug-ins" for Live that integrate into the code. Maybe someone from Ableton could comment.

<<Don't limit the program or suggest that it should be limited due to your own way of using it.>>

Well, I'm not suggesting it be "limited." As I said, I'm just concerned about "creeping featuritis" destroying what makes Live so cool. It's like the Thunderbird was a cool little sports car, then they decided to make it into a four-seater, and it lost that whole Thunderbird thing. It HAS been embraced primarily by DJs and grovoe musicians, and I think it makes the most sense to add features that cater to that crowd -- their base of support -- rather than trying to compete with Logic, Cubase, etc. I see Live turning into a DAW as being redundant.

<<That's what the community wants, a Great DAW, not a DJ toolset. My Opinion, and I'm sticking to it! >>

If you want a great DAW, there are LOTS of great DAWs! And if you're concerned about bucks, what's wrong with Logic Express? Does a ton of stuff for, I believe, less than the cost of the Live upgrade.

<<And where is the Live branded Loop utility program? Someone get those folks a Proper Budget!>>

What do you mean "loop utility program"? To do what, exactly?

<<I'll add that I understand the love for Live's simplicity, but lots of other things could be hidden below the surface for power users without hurting that cornerstone or turning off the users that rely on that aspect of the app. An application like photoshop comes to mind.>>

I think that's what they've done in many ways, particularly with MIDI. I understand you want Live to turn into more of a DAW, but I really hope Ableton resists that temptation and continues to work on making it the ultimate DJ/groove/warping program. Just my opinion, of course, but I suspect most Live users would agree.

So...what do you think, Live users? Do you wish it had more DAW-like features?

[Mighty Coogna!]

Okay, I see where you're coming from. But why not just use a DAW???
<<Live is a DAW the arrange window is great for laying out tracks using loops, midi, & direct recordings. It may not have an as easy to use interfac for linear material like Pro Tools but it's adequate>>
If you just want it to see what's happening, fine. I suspect that doing a print-quality notation program is waaaay beyond where Live wants to go.
<<I want to learn, I haven't written off the past 5 decades or so just yet, and besides did you think there was really anything new going on?>>
Exactly. Buy plug-in instruments, don't ask Ableton to re-invent the wheel and charge more for the process. BTW the Yamaha OPT thing makes the concept of MIDI plug-in functionality possible, but it's use in Acid hasn't really set the world on fire...I don't know how easy it would be to make "MIDI function plug-ins" for Live that integrate into the code. Maybe someone from Ableton could comment.
<<I bought Live, and it along with the system AU plug-ins does 99% of what I need them (plug-ins) too do, but they're encouraged (from my little corner) to improve any of them as they can. The plug-in market is grossly overpriced in general, so lets no even go there. The kind of functionality I mentioned would require some kind of open source library or framework to be published by Ableton - I don't expect that to happen, but hey - that might solve the problem.>>
Well, I'm not suggesting it be "limited." As I said, I'm just concerned about "creeping featuritis" destroying what makes Live so cool. It's like the Thunderbird was a cool little sports car, then they decided to make it into a four-seater, and it lost that whole Thunderbird thing. It HAS been embraced primarily by DJs and grovoe musicians, and I think it makes the most sense to add features that cater to that crowd -- their base of support -- rather than trying to compete with Logic, Cubase, etc. I see Live turning into a DAW as being redundant.
<<Well, they could also take features away and release a Dj version and leave it at that>>
If you want a great DAW, there are LOTS of great DAWs! And if you're concerned about bucks, what's wrong with Logic Express? Does a ton of stuff for, I believe, less than the cost of the Live upgrade.
<<Logic Express is nice I'm sure, but simply doesn't compare to the full blown beast in terms of features. I've already gone the Final Cut Express/Final cut route and discovered that the line between pro and consumer is expertly manipulated by Apple. I mentioned that I use Pro Tools & Reason also, combined with Live that makes a fairly complete toolset.>>??What do you mean "loop utility program"? To do what, exactly?
<< Ever sift thru 80 gigs of loops? >>
I think that's what they've done in many ways, particularly with MIDI. I understand you want Live to turn into more of a DAW, but I really hope Ableton resists that temptation and continues to work on making it the ultimate DJ/groove/warping program. Just my opinion, of course, but I suspect most Live users would agree.
<< Please God, No! :)>>
So...what do you think, Live users? Do you wish it had more DAW-like features?

Let me add one other little argument for more DAW features... Some music. Before you groan, give a listen, All tracks made with Live. Nothing for sale, but a different way to work with live.

Romeo Money, From Garage Band (http://www.garageband.com/artist/romeomonkey)

[Rabid]

Originally posted by Anderton
If you've been using Live for the past four years and you've done all the upgrades, then it's basically cost what, $200-$250 per year? That's really not an unreasonable price to pay for software that has undergone major improvements, like the elastic audio and MIDI recording/editing.

$200-250 a year is not bad if that is your main instrument. I'm hit with upgrades for Sonar, Project5, Live, Acid, Reason, etc... At that point I have to pick and choose. Other than playing live, Ableton Live is nice for quickly hashing out songs. But I quickly hit a wall and have to move to a real DAW for true linear editing. Acid gives me the the control over individual loops that I want by allowing me to cut and rearrange them in ways that I cannot do with Live. On the down side for ACid the one loop per track format drives me crazy. Sonar allows me to stick various loops in a single track, which I love, but it is not as easy to minuplate those loops. And for me, Reason will continue to loose value until they develop a polyphonic pattern sequencer. Because of that I use Orion Pro much more than Reason. And buy the way, Orion Pro is another program that released an update this year. Luckily the upgrade from 4 to 5 is free. :D

So until I find that one perfect app, which will probably never exist, I will continue to use multiple programs. And if the music I made last year did not suddenly turn bad because some of my tools released an upgrade, I guess I can use those same tools one more year.

Robert

[rnbeatz]

I'm a long time Logic user and have watched Live since about version 1.5. I just jumped in at version 5. I still use Logic as my workhourse because I know it. I'm learning Live and liking it more everyday.

What I have found that I don't need from Logic is notation or mixing beyound what you would get from a nice keyboard workstation. To me Live is like an instrument which can be taken to a gig and played live, you can create on an instrument or take it to the studio and record it. You can arrange on an instrument and use an instrument to help you produce. To me, this is what I want Live to stay focused on just as is says on their box, create, produce, perform.

I'll let the mix engineers work their magic with pro tools or whatever they use. Being a groove writer/producer, I think Live is on the right track. I don't need alot of plugins added because I have enough of them already. I would like to see them implement a better sample player that could read pre-existing libraries like Logics EXS24 or some Akai's.

[Anderton]

And if the music I made last year did not suddenly turn bad because some of my tools released an upgrade, I guess I can use those same tools one more year

This gets my award for quote of the month!

Given the diversity of opinions already expressed, one can't help but feel a bit of sympathy for the manufacturers getting a bunch of diverse requests on where to go next...

BTW quick Acid comment...the folder tracks in Acid Pro 5 go a long way toward making the "one loop per track" thing much more friendly.

[Marco Raaphorst]

Probably a lot of users will not agree with me, but I think a lot of the confusion is caused by adding new features which changes the concept of the program too much.

Take the now dead ReBirth for example. Reason is not ReBirth 4, but other companies would have done it like that. By adding features you create a whole new program when you change the workflow. This happened to Live when adding VSTi. The same would have happened when Reason would get an audio input and midi output. Although a lot of users would be happy, would this be a logical decision? Wouldn't it be better to create a new name for such a program? Or add a new program and let it sync perfectly using Rewire?

Logic, Cubase and Sonar they have video added. Wouldn't it be simply better if these program focus on MIDI and Audio DAW. And please let some company create a simple rewire2-based video player. QuickTime support, mpeg2 etc. Simple, it should simply slave to the host. Probably within a couple of years you will be able to EDIT video in these DAWs. But would that make sense?

So, yeah probably the next step for Ableton would be to add video too. But I do believe that some people, like myself, who consider Live as a quick way to record audio, feel that this concept is changing too much. Take a look at the way Live works, how you can set a play pointer in the arranger window, it has all been changed a few times over the years. So some basic operations have been changed in Live 5 which created a different feel when using the app. I don't feel this is perfect.

Take a look at Reason. They added the Malstrom, NNXT, new effects. But nothing, ever did change the workflow. Propellerhead will probably focus on a new application because Reason is an application with a specific goal. I do believe this is a very smart way of creating great software with a strong userbase. People really believe in these programs, because it's not about lot of features, it's about useful features which are easy accessible.

Don't get me wrong, I love Live. But I personally am not wanting more features. Live 5 is a great program and I can imagine using it for years and years without any more upgrades ;)

[rdh3t]

other tracks, as Mutes are recorded. I’m pretty sure the PC1600x can send out strings that are long enough, we’ll see.
[/B]

I think your workaround is the crossfader button, which can be much more flexible and "groupable" than just using solo buttons. With the crossfader slammed hard left or right, you could use any track's crossfade buttons as you would the solos, and it can be recorded. More than that, you can have the crossfader in the middle, choose a handful of tracks you want to mix out, select their crossfade buttons appropriately (I have all of mine key-mapped), then slam your crossfader to cut the tracks out. Once you get used to it, the crossfader is way more flexible than just using solos to mix tracks in and out--it has two sides, can fade, the data can be recorded, and you can choose more tracks than you have fingers to cut out all at once, since you can set up crossfade buttons with the crossfader centered and not mess up audio, then slam the crossfader at the appropriate time. Whereas with solos you have to perfectly hit all of the solo buttons you want at the same time, in perfect time with the music to get the sound you want, and are limited to however many buttons you can press at once. The crossfader is crucial for live use of Live.

Ryan

[Rabid]

Originally posted by Marco Raaphorst
Probably a lot of users will not agree with me, but I think a lot of the confusion is caused by adding new features which changes the concept of the program too much.

...

I agree with you. Look at what has happened to FruityLoops over the past two years. It evolved from being a nice rhythm machine to a DAW. The problem for me is I don't need another DAW and FL will never compete with Sonar. Same with Acid. When vs. 4 came out with MIDI and VSTi support it almost killed the product. I never heard so many complaints about a bad implimentation of a new feature. Maybe they got it right with 5 but I am almost afraid to look.

I wish all these great little mini-studios would stop trying to be full fledged DAW's that support every format and every way of making music.

Robert

[rdh3t]

Originally posted by Rabid


I agree with you. Look at what has happened to FruityLoops over the past two years. It evolved from being a nice rhythm machine to a DAW. The problem for me is I don't need another DAW and FL will never compete with Sonar. Same with Acid. When vs. 4 came out with MIDI and VSTi support it almost killed the product. I never heard so many complaints about a bad implimentation of a new feature. Maybe they got it right with 5 but I am almost afraid to look.

I wish all these great little mini-studios would stop trying to be full fledged DAW's that support every format and every way of making music.

Robert

When aspects of Live or FL are drastically changed--i.e. an old functionality is completely removed and replaced with a markedly different tool for accomplishing a similar task, I too get a bit frustrated, as often something is overlooked, and the new way might lose crucial apsects of doing things the old way. That said, both of these apps. seem pretty good at adding features that you can choose to use or not, and it is fortunately not often that things are fully removed. Sadly a few of the changes from Live 3 to 4 and now 5 are keeping me from using, mainly the removal of the "select on launch" feature, which is crucial to using Live as a live looping device with a midi pedal and instrument (guitar, bass, keys, etc.). Without this feature, you have no way of deleting fulbbed clips on the fly, making Lve 4 and 5 worthless as live loopers. The FL3 to FL STudio 4 seemed fairly smooth to me, and their product is as solid or possibly moreso than Live on my box. FL's midi recording, editing, and quantizing capabilities far exceed Live--FL Studio 4 and Live 3.0.2 are actually quite a compliment--FL does midi very well, Live does audio extremely well. The converse is also true, FL's audio implementation is not so sweet (but you can still use FL4 and 5 just like 3 without audio, with more features), and Live's midi implementation is functional, but not exactly "deep".

Ryan

[Anderton]

<<Whereas with solos you have to perfectly hit all of the solo buttons you want at the same time, in perfect time with the music to get the sound you want, and are limited to however many buttons you can press at once. The crossfader is crucial for live use of Live.>>

I press only one solo button at a time, it's to isolate a single loop. But I'll give the crossfader thing a serious look.

I'm back home now and will be working with Live later tonight, so I'll be posting more observations on specific functions, along with screen shots.

I will say that I feel so far, Ableton has done a very good job of upgrading Live without degrading its essence. For example, the MIDI implementation is not as deep as big-time DAWs, but it adds a welcome, easy-to-use dimension to Live.

[Anderton]

<<To me Live is like an instrument which can be taken to a gig and played live, you can create on an instrument or take it to the studio and record it. You can arrange on an instrument and use an instrument to help you produce. To me, this is what I want Live to stay focused on just as is says on their box, create, produce, perform.>>

I agree 100% that the brilliance of Live is that it created a type of software that never existed before, and did it superbly. The key for me is that it continues to do it superbly, and has retained that "musical instrument" feel. When I use Sonar -- which I think is a great DAW -- it feels like I'm in the lab. When I use Live, I feel like I'm onstage.

Okay, back to playing with Live :)

[Anderton]

Okay, let’s deal with the issue of audio quality head-on. Some people have dissed Live for “bad audio.” I think this is a bad rap, and is the result of people not knowing how to take advantage of the various Warp options.

First of all, if you don’t have to warp anything, the audio quality is going to be just fine. Like any program that stretches audio, you encounter problems only when you have to stretch, as stretching is an inherently difficult process. Acid and Sonar deal with this by a complex combination of DSP and crossfading, which works more often than not – providing you don’t stretch too far (especially downward), and if the acidization markers are applied correctly (which sadly, is not the case with many libraries). REX files work great with rhythmic audio – better than acidization, in many ways – but falls way short compared to acidization for sustained sounds.

Live does not require any specific file format, like acidized or REX; iIt will cheerfully accept any WAV or AIFF file. When you bring a file into Live that needs stretching, the program defaults to parameters that work well for beat-oriented material. But load something like sustained bass, and the sound will probably be pulsating and annoying. That’s because the program is trying to treat it like a drum part, which it isn’t.

The key to maximizing audio quality is to check out the different stretch algorithms in the Warp section. Download the Attachment to see the options. A bass part from the “Dr. Fink’s Funk Factory” (which I’m reviewing for Keyboard magazine) sounded dreadful at first. But after switching over to the Tones option, with a small Grain size, the fidelity was almost identical to the unstretched version, even when slowed down by 20%. Speeding up worked over a very wide range. Past –20%, switching over to the Complex stretch algorithm still gave totally useable sounds when stretched to –40% (!). That’s pretty remarkable.

After a while, you get a feel for what algorithm works best with what type of sound. I cannot stress enough that choosing the right algorithm is the key to getting Live to sound really great when you’re doing lots of stretching.

The only significant limitation I’ve found is with the beats mode, if you have a repetitive pattern but then something sustains (e.g., a 16th note pattern, but with an open hi-hat that sustains for an 8th note with nothing else playing underneath). If you set beats to 1/16th, a beat marker will occur in the middle of the sustained 8th note; this may produce a slight discontinuity, depending on the sound itself and the amount of stretching. In context, this usually isn’t noticeable because it falls on the beat. In fact, with some sustained sounds, I’ve used the Beats algorithm specifically to impart a more rhythmic effect.

So the bottom line is this: If you think there’s a problem with the audio, isolate the loops that are causing the supposed problem, and experiment with the stretch algorithms. I think you’ll be surprised just how gracefully Live handles stretching when it’s set to the right option, and how excellent the fidelity can be. Granted, stretching will never be 100% perfect, but Live comes very close if you know what you’re doing.

By the way, Re-Pitch will always give great fidelity with small stretch amounts, but will throw melodic content out of tune. For percussive material and sound effects, though, this is the option to try first.

[Rabid]

As an ending to a nice thread and great review I think it would be helpful to find a way to post any controller setups that users might submit. I know there are a lot of controllers out there, but there are also a lot of readers. ;)

Sure, it is easy to set up a controller, but I know that I am always looking for ideas. Someone may have a setup for the Korg Kontrol 49 (hint hint) or Emu XBoard (hint hint) with tricks that someone else may not think of. So, make that a submission of the setup and a description of the setup and use.

Robert

[jollibug]

Originally posted by rnbeatz I think Live is on the right track. ... I would like to see them implement a better sample player that could read pre-existing libraries like Logics EXS24 or some Akai's. I know what you mean, Live + Kompakt is a great combo.

Oh, and have you seen Sasha's Ableton Live controller (http://musicthing.blogspot.com/2005/03/sashas-new-ableton-controller.html)?

[DJDM]

Hey Craig,
I just picked up Live 5 a couple of weeks ago and I love it. Really enjoying your take on it so far and there are some great tips in here!
Cheers

[dave hill jr.]

Hello all + Craig,

Thanks so much for the thoughts and ideas going on here.

There is already a lot to wade through so I'm going to step carefully through the comments and try to help out where I can. My aim is to eliminate confusion and/or inaccuracies and, with some luck, inform you about what places Live in its own category of performance-minded DAW (with the most diverse and interesting user base I know of).

Before I get started on individual points, I want to say big ups to “Gus Lozada” and “thie1210” and “rdh3t” for their ideas on Craig's very special Solo button request.

Of course everyone works with Live in their own way, but that crossfader option by rdh3t struck me as especially clever. I love that in Key or MIDI Map Mode, you can actually assign a key to either side of the crossfader or the center position, so Craig can be a happy guy! How cool is that? Oh and not running the other way at all Craig, just thought I heard my mother calling . . . ; )

See ya in the next post,

Dave


www.ableton.com

[tkumpis]

I've been using Live since version 3, and I use it for every project. I even stopped using Logic because Live is so fast. Would it possible that in a future version of Live, you would be able to seperate the mixer from the arrange? This way, you can have 2 monitors and you wouldn't have to flip back and forth all the time. This would be pretty cool since most programs already do this. Thanks!

[rhythminmind]

I'm glad to see Lives getting the recognition it deserves.. i feel the pro audio world has over looked live for years..

I'm a ableton/Protools user. I've been a live user from ver 3..

Live hands down is the most creative musical app i have used... It has done the one thing for me that my other DAW's have killed. allowed me to have fun creating again!

The versatility, flexibility and the new angle on DAW recording is priceless to me. It has more pros then cons. every upgrade has given me great new tools... abletens integrated synth Operator sounds great. in a world of high priced software live/operator are a nice change for the high quality apps they are...The new live 5 plugins are just to fun. Beat repeat is so much more then what the name suggests.

My only complaint's would be i wish i could render out mulitable tracks at once for mixing in protools.. and with rewire it disables all vst plug ability's..

but for the most part live 5 gets my 5 thumbs up. :)

[Anderton]

So I finally got some hard figures on the upgrade prices of Live compared to some other programs...I probably should have done this earlier :)

For customers who purchased Live 4 before May 1, 2005

Downloadable upgrade to Live 5: 119 EUR/USD from the Ableton web shop
Boxed upgrade: 149 EUR/USD from dealers worldwide and the Ableton web shop

Accommodation for recent buyers of Live 4

Customers who unlock Live 4 for the first time between June 1, 2005 and August 15, 2005 receive a version 5 serial number at no charge.
For customers who purchased Live 4 between May 1, 2005 and May 31, 2005, downloadable upgrades to Live 5 are available for 49 EUR/USD from the Ableton webshop.

Upgrading from Live 1, 2 and 3

Downloadable upgrade from Live 1, 2 or 3 to Live 5: 169 EUR/USD from the Ableton web shop.
Boxed upgrade from Live 1, 2 or 3 to Live 5: 199 EUR/USD from the Ableton web shop.

To see how this compares to other companies, Apple Logic upgrades are $295. I've also been told they charge $200 per issue for technical support; Ableton's tech support is free. Sonar upgrades from Version 4 to 5 is $179.

So actually, it seems Live's upgrade policy is pretty reasonable.

[Anderton]

<<Would it possible that in a future version of Live, you would be able to seperate the mixer from the arrange?>>

Of all the wish list items I've ever heard for Live, I think this one is great. With so many people using dual monitors, the idea of a detachable session view or arrange view makes a lot of sense...I know that with Reason, being able to detach the mixer has been extremely helpful.

BTW let me give a letter of introduction to Dave Hill -- he is a person who doesn't love Live because he markets it, but markets Live because he loves it. He was totally into the program before he went to work for Ableton; he's also a very talented musician AND author, so he can discuss the program on a very high level. It's great to have him participating in this thread, as he knows more about Live than just about anyone I know...welcome to the party, Dave!

[rdh3t]

Originally posted by dave hill jr.
[Of course everyone works with Live in their own way, but that crossfader option by rdh3t struck me as especially clever. I love that in Key or MIDI Map Mode, you can actually assign a key to either side of the crossfader or the center position, so Craig can be a happy guy! How cool is that? Oh and not running the other way at all Craig, just thought I heard my mother calling . . . ; )

See ya in the next post,

Dave



Why thanks, Dave. Part of the reason I love Live so much is that you can use the features in many personal ways--a friend once said it was like a software Rorschach test--everyone uses/sees it in a different way. The open-endedness is refresing compared to very dogmatic apps like pro tools, etc. Back to the crossfader--I use a DM2 as one of my controllers controlling Live--it has a crossfader and two transformer buttons that are like slamming the crossfader hard to either side. Like Dave mentioned, one can assing keys/midi buttons to either side as well. It is great for being able to say turn on the crossfader "b" button of your snare, percussion, and keyboard chord tracks, then hit the transformer button for a measure, or just a beat, and instantly mute all of the tracks with the "b" crossfasde button on. Quite a powerful live remixing tool, this instrument called Live.

Dave, I wonder if you could maybe do me a slight favor over there at Ableton HQ--I've been trying to get some sort of response on the forums for awhile to no avail. I really do love Live, and it has changed the way many people (including myself) create and perform. That said, I'm really dissapointed with some oversights in the transition form 3-4, and 4-5. Cheif among these is that the removal of the "select on launch" option in the preferences menu since version 4. This crucial feature was the only way to use Live as a live looping device, so I'm stuck using version 3. The feature was essential to looping because 99% of loopers are triggering loops to record with midi pedals, and 100% of people make mistakes at some point. Without "select on launch", the clip you triggered to record via midi is NOT selected while it is recording, thus hitting the "delete"key (or using the midi ox/Bome's workaround to trigger a "delete" via midi translation) does NOT work--the clip is not "selected on launch", thus delete doesn't effect it.

Every hardware live looping devices recognizes that people flub clips on-the-fly and need to delete them, it is a given. Removing this feature from Live makes 4 and now 5 worthless as a looping devices--no one is perfect, no one wants to go on stage and know if they mess up at all, they will have to loop their mistake or stop playing their instrument to use the mouse to select the clip, then delete it. This whole thing is especially frustrating because the feature was put back into 5 during beta testing then removed. And now Ableton has a "Kid Beyond" video on their site touting live looping capabilities--I'll bet $20 Kid is still using 3 so that he can delete flubbed clips with Bomes. This is just bad marketing period, giving a totally false impression of 5.

Live 3 is the best looping device in the world, it is sad that be the removal of one feature, 4 and 5 are worthless live loopers. I would love to hear that Ableton is working on re-institution of "select on launch", and that they are working on making a midi mappable "delete", to avoid using workarounds for deleting flubbed clips like ox/Bomes on pc, or midipipe/control aid on map. Two seemingly minor details stand between 4 and 5 being worthless for live looping and being hands-down the best looping devices on the planet, why??? The live looping market is a fairly established and rapidly expanding one that Ableton is completely missing with their last two products. If I were in charge of Ableton marketing, I'd think that it would be a good investment to fix these oversights and try to open up a whole new market in live looping performers looking to go beyond the severe limitations of hardware loopers.

Sorry to go off on a loopy tangent, but this has really been frustrating me and Ableton has not responded at all on the "select on launch" issue/removal. As you might have guessed, I do live looping performances fairly often using Ableton 3.0.2, and Fl 4 rewired into so I can record live beat making via midi into the FL step seq. I use a handul of controllers and fcb 1010 midi pedal to contol Live, and record loops of bass, guitar, and keys in Live, while making live beats in FL via a midi DrumKat. I'm totally jonesing for some of the midi and vst features of 4, but this "select on launch" problem is a total roadblock in terms of using 4 or 5 for live looping. Again, sorry for the rant, but it sure would be nice to know that it will be addressed in the future, and to not be left in the dark.

Ryan

[therabbit]

Originally posted by GregRule
Hey, Craig. It seems more and more folks are using Live as their "auxiliary audio device" on big tours these days. At Winter NAMM, for example, Kelly Clarkson's MD was showing how he uses it onstage with her, and how flexible it is in terms of on-the-fly arrangement changes ("take it to the bridge," "repeat the chorus," etc). Might be cool to devote a couple of paragraphs to using Live as a "live band enhancement tool". How easy is to set up songs in Live so they can be instantly rearranged onstage, and how transparent (and reliable) is it when doing so? As you know, when it comes to high-profile gigs like that, one glitch could spell the end of a person's career.

This is more what I am looking for. I mainly want a midi sequencer (audio would be nice though) that I can make up the arrangement as I go. Live5 can do this? Could I use a midi pedal to choose song sections?

[maneco]

Hi Craig and all!

Thanks for this brilliant report...i've always worked in ACID,and now i'm switched to Live...i even built a portable machine to use it at my band's rehearsals and gigs...

Regarding the specific control question,yes,parts of the songs can be rearranged on the fly,by using for example a footswitch that sends midi notes,and assigning each of those notes to the different scenes...right now ,after finishing my "portable PC" ,i'm starting to build a midi footcontroller,based in a pic microcontroller,for triggering scenes with my feets,while playing guitar...hope i can keep dropping by here,if i'm welcomed,and keep you updated...


Thanks again!

Maneco

[sunsinger]

Hi Craig...
I've been learning Live 5 since I got it about 3 weeks ago. I'm new to the program, and I have been hacking my way through it without the manual or tutorials, which is the way I learn best.

I'm running into some stumbling blocks though, about saving clips or loops. There does'nt seem to be any clear menu command regarding this. It would make it much simpler if there were a save command both for audio and midi clips, and if it would point a dialoug box to ask where you want to save it.

As it is, Live appears to want to save everything in the Application Support file under Ableton Clips.

Saving clips was a little bit of a boggle and there is no clear reference to it in the manual. Its a bit cryptic.

Anyway I love live as a speedy composition tool.

The post by Mighty Coonga where he asks about a more extensive drum instrument. I can recommend FXpansions "GURU". I use it in Pro Tools and it opens in Live as well, and gives you 8 drum engines with 16 voices in each for 128 voice polyphony, not that you'd ever need that much. It has tons of tweekability and on board FX. GURU also opens as a separate app. within live. So you can create patterns, then resample and loop them as audio clips. Its a speedy process. And fun...

Yes... Ok, it adds about $150.00 to the cost of Live, and it sounds like the Mighty Coonga is extremely fiscally consious, but its a great combo if you find Impulse too limiting.

Sunsinger

[rdh3t]

Originally posted by therabbit


This is more what I am looking for. I mainly want a midi sequencer (audio would be nice though) that I can make up the arrangement as I go. Live5 can do this? Could I use a midi pedal to choose song sections?

Totally. Try out the demo, use session view, and learn about scenes. The demo has tutorials on using session view and scences, or there are even tutorial videos you can watch without the demo to see what its all about. Very intuitive and easy to use. A buddy of mine plays sax in Bruce Hornsby's band, and he, Bruce, the drummer, and the other keyboardist all have laptops (both pc and macs) running Live onstage. They're one laptop up on Sound Tribe Sector 9, who have 3 (or sometimes 4) G4 laptops running Live. It is a great, stable, application err... instrument.

Ryan

[therabbit]

Originally posted by rdh3t
Totally. Try out the demo, use session view, and learn about scenes. The demo has tutorials on using session view and scences, or there are even tutorial videos you can watch without the demo to see what its all about. Very intuitive and easy to use. A buddy of mine plays sax in Bruce Hornsby's band, and he, Bruce, the drummer, and the other keyboardist all have laptops (both pc and macs) running Live onstage. They're one laptop up on Sound Tribe Sector 9, who have 3 (or sometimes 4) G4 laptops running Live. It is a great, stable, application err... instrument.

Ryan

Cool! I'll download the demo!

One question though. Live5 can be used as a midi sequencer triggering sounds on my Motif rack in addition to the internal sounds?

[therabbit]

Originally posted by rdh3t
Totally. Try out the demo, use session view, and learn about scenes. The demo has tutorials on using session view and scences, or there are even tutorial videos you can watch without the demo to see what its all about. Very intuitive and easy to use. A buddy of mine plays sax in Bruce Hornsby's band, and he, Bruce, the drummer, and the other keyboardist all have laptops (both pc and macs) running Live onstage. They're one laptop up on Sound Tribe Sector 9, who have 3 (or sometimes 4) G4 laptops running Live. It is a great, stable, application err... instrument.

Ryan

Oh Yeah. I want to do the same thing, play guitar and control loops and fully sequenced songs.

[markwayne]

I agree with most of the sentiments expressed here about Live. In the years I have used this program I have found it to be a great sketchpad, very stable, light on CPU usage, and a great laptop application that is a lot of fun use.

Having said that, I must add that I'm not sure I'm willing to say "Live is not meant to be used as a DAW" so don't draw comparisons. Ableton (a great company by the way) already did it when they added VST hosting and MIDI sequencing. I have watched the feature and price creep with this application as it has moved closer in price and feature set to the big boy DAWs.

In some ways this is great. DAW software has gotten a little sloppy and bloated in recent years. (Tracktion is another piece that I enjoy for its CPU economy.)

However, I'm not sure it's such a good idea to let people implement some feature and then, when asked to polish a bit, state "but it's not meant to do that really."

What would the general public say if a word processor suddenly sprouted a spreadsheet function that the maker advertisied as a feature. Can that maker then turn around and say "our program is not meant to be a spreadsheet" when people ask for improvement in that function?

Just a question,
Wayne

[Marco Raaphorst]

yes, a wordprocessor should be a wordprocessor and not become something like a spreadsheet program.

again, why is Reason not ReBirth 4?

to make users happy, don't change the workflow all the time. focus on main features and only add small extra features. for Live 5 a lot has changed, not all is good imo, but a great new feature is adding mp3, ogg and flac support. but still, it's just a bunch of codecs, not a totally different experience when you operate the program.

[PHAT-B]

Craig,
Thanks for the info on selecting "ram" in an audio clip. I had the same problem and couldn't figure out why it was super crackly yet no apparent CPU issues. My question here is, what is the other way, other than putting all of your samples/loops on your hard drive (as you mentioned)? My hard drive is 7200 and gets bogged down. Is there a solution? Only use those samples/loops that are needed on one drive (I have multiple drives)?

The other part of this is the fact that I purchased an m-audio trigger finger which is great with live. The thing is, I don't know if the $249 (or $279 - do you get all of the extra sounds with the $249 downloadable only version?) is worth it. It seems that it is b/c of the added audio and midi channels - if you get all of the added sounds/tutorials.

Finally, would it be better to purchase a multiple pedal midi foot controller or something like the Tech21 MM1 midi mouse for exclusive use with live? Seems like everyone has these huge pedal controllers but most hardware loopers are a simple two-three button operation?

Thanks for the great review,

PHAT-B

[Mighty Coogna!]

Originally posted by sunsinger
Hi Craig...
I've been learning Live 5 since I got it about 3 weeks ago. I'm new to the program, and I have been hacking my way through it without the manual or tutorials, which is the way I learn best.

I'm running into some stumbling blocks though, about saving clips or loops. There does'nt seem to be any clear menu command regarding this. It would make it much simpler if there were a save command both for audio and midi clips, and if it would point a dialoug box to ask where you want to save it.

As it is, Live appears to want to save everything in the Application Support file under Ableton Clips.

Saving clips was a little bit of a boggle and there is no clear reference to it in the manual. Its a bit cryptic.

Anyway I love live as a speedy composition tool.

The post by Mighty Coonga where he asks about a more extensive drum instrument. I can recommend FXpansions "GURU". I use it in Pro Tools and it opens in Live as well, and gives you 8 drum engines with 16 voices in each for 128 voice polyphony, not that you'd ever need that much. It has tons of tweekability and on board FX. GURU also opens as a separate app. within live. So you can create patterns, then resample and loop them as audio clips. Its a speedy process. And fun...

Yes... Ok, it adds about $150.00 to the cost of Live, and it sounds like the Mighty Coonga is extremely fiscally consious, but its a great combo if you find Impulse too limiting.

Sunsinger

Impulse isn't bad for quickly sketching out a drum track, an I do have Reason 2.5, I could conceivably develop a nice drum set using one of those samplers, or the REdrum. The main thing is having the midi notes locked down and not alterable (there is probably some work around). In the end though it would be cool to have a integrated multi sample drum sampler built in.


On saving clips, I'm not sure how 5 handles it, but 4 requires you to render a triggered clips or scene, or a section of an arrangement. Really need a "save clip", and "save all clips in scene" kinda thing. It gets tricky working with long recordings, and wanting to save a few bars out here and there, productivity goes downhill from key & mouse fatigue.

Almost forgot... I think when comparing upgrade pricing you can't just compare dollar amounts and conclude that $100=$100, you need to also consider the percentage of the retail pricing. Looking at it that way $200 is just 20%, where $150 is 30%. I still think they should give loyal customers a break on upgrades. And to be fair they did offer a upgrade/Operator bundle for a short time.

[radiospace]

Originally posted by Anderton
Point is, if I want a balls-to-the-wall DAW, I have Sonar.

Great review, so far.

At the outset you posed the question of whether or not Live was ready to replace our other 'hosts' (like Sonar). Also the new box, which advertises Live as a "Complete Music Solution", suggests that Live is trying to be, well, a complete music solution, i.e., compete directly with Sonar, Logic or Cubase, not just as a supplemental live tool.

From some of your later remarks (including the quoted, above), it seems that you still feel that Live is a bit of a specialty product, rather than a mainstream DAW. Do you think this is a case? Hopefully you can examine this question in more detail as the review continues.

[rnbeatz]

I think the way Live handles midi program change on external hardware synths could be improved. Live presently has an elegant way to change presets for their internal synths and au/vst plugins using the browser window. Why not handle program change for hardware synths the same way for consistency? It would also be nice to create one track that could handle midi from Live to a hardware synth and audio from the hardware synth to Live. Logic does this with what they call an external object. It works nice and keeps your screen uncluttered.

The external object could appear in the browser just like impulse or simpler and handle program change in the same way. Another nice feature would be adding the ability to input program names for the external synths by reading a text file.

[tecknot]

Hi Craig.

Thank you for the excellent info. You must be the busiest guy in the recording biz.


I just want to ask you, since you have already made a number of comparisons between Live v5 and that of high-end DAWs, how does it compare to Cakewalk's Project 5v2? I would think this is a more equal comparison. Do you have any thoughts in this respect? I apologize if you have already made mention of the two.

Again, thanks for all the work you do for us. I look forward to your reviews every month.

Take care,


Michael

[rdh3t]

Originally posted by PHAT-B
Thanks for the info on selecting "ram" in an audio clip. I had the same problem and couldn't figure out why it was super crackly yet no apparent CPU issues. My question here is, what is the other way, other than putting all of your samples/loops on your hard drive (as you mentioned)? My hard drive is 7200 and gets bogged down. Is there a solution? Only use those samples/loops that are needed on one drive (I have multiple drives)?

Finally, would it be better to purchase a multiple pedal midi foot controller or something like the Tech21 MM1 midi mouse for exclusive use with live? Seems like everyone has these huge pedal controllers but most hardware loopers are a simple two-three button operation?

PHAT-B [/B]

You should have Live installed on your C drive with your other applications, and should ideally stream audio from the fastest drive you can get in terms of RPM, cache size, and means of data transfer pci being the fastest, then firewire, then usb if you have no choice. Using seperate drives for apps and audio files makes a BIG difference, especially on laptops where internal drives are 4,800-5,400 RPM, and most external FW drives are 7,200. It makes a significant difference in terms of track counts both for recording a bunch of tracks at once, and for playback. For instance, I can only record 7-8 tracks of 24/48 audio at once into Live with 128 sample latency on my RME multiface and my 4,800 internal drive. By just switching to the external 7,200, I get 16+ tracks at the same settings! Also, your soundcard, OS, system tweaks,and RAM effect your track counts.

EDIT: You can also "save set as self-contained" in the "file" menu in Live. What this does is put all of the samples in the SAME folder on you harddrive (this folder is set in the prefs. menu, and if possible should be a seperate harddrive from the one you apps. like Live are on). With all of the clips in one folder in one spot on the harddrive, the disk can access these files without bouncing all around the physical drive, or worse, bouncing around between multiple drives. If you have the disk space, save your sets as self-contained if you are still having audio hiccup problems.

I use the "huge" FCB 1010 for my midi foot controller while doing live looping with Live 3 (see my post for why 4 and 5 aren't good at live looping). Comparing looping with Live and using a hardware pedal (Line 6, Rc-20, boomerang, echoplex...) isn't even a contest, and the paradigm is totally different. Hardware loopers (with the exception of the $1000 echoplex) only have one or two mono tracks, and layers are simply overdubs directly on top of the previous recording. Live allows full midi control of most anything, and for loopers it allows us to record loops to seperate tracks for individual pan, volume, crossfading, effects, etc... So most loopers using Live have 3-7 tracks dedicated to looping instruments, and 3-7 buttons on their midi foot pedal corresponding to these tracks. Then you need a delete patch and workaround (see my earlier post), and other patches for arming tracks, navigating scenes, or whatever you want. Simply put, you want as much control and flexibility at your feet at once for live looping with Live, one or two buttons won't cut it. If you're not looping but just triggering scenes, figure out how few buttons you need and get the appropriate controller. For $150, its hard to beat the 1010, big or not. Mine's been great over 3 years of giggin with multiple bands.

Ryan

[Anderton]

My question here is, what is the other way, other than putting all of your samples/loops on your hard drive (as you mentioned)? My hard drive is 7200 and gets bogged down. Is there a solution? Only use those samples/loops that are needed on one drive (I have multiple drives)?

If I understand your question correctly, you can put the loops pretty much anywhere. When you click on the RAM option, it loads the loop into RAM, and from that point on, there's no need to access it from the hard drive any more.

I might add that if you have half a GB or more of RAM, you can stuff a lot of loops into RAM. A lot of short loops are only 1 or 2 MB. For most of my work with Live, I put ALL my loops into RAM except for really long samples that stream from disk. Even when I was using it on a G3 Powerbook running OS 9, no hiccups.

And if I didn't understand your question correctly, Ryan sure hit the target! Great advice.

[Anderton]

From some of your later remarks (including the quoted, above), it seems that you still feel that Live is a bit of a specialty product, rather than a mainstream DAW. Do you think this is a case? Hopefully you can examine this question in more detail as the review continues.

Might as well address that now. The bottom line about how well-suited Live is as a DAW depends totally on what kind of music you make.

There is no question that Live started out as a niche program. However, as it has evolved, it has become better suited to more mainstream applications. If I walked into a studio, was asked to record a rock band, and all they had was Live, I wouldn't have any problem. So, why did I reference Sonar?

It's because of the work I do. Here are some Sonar features that are crucial to me, but not covered by Live.

* Video window. I often need to do an arrangement against existing video (when I'm creating a video, I use Vegas).
* Surround. I hardly ever do surround projects, but have done a couple.
* Loop recording. Live can do it, but the way Sonar (or Cubase, for that matter) creates separate "lanes" is more convenient than stringing everything into one long sample (the same approach used by Acid, FYI). Also, Sonar's "mute" tool is great for making quick work of choosing the right takes.
* Metering. I like to know exactly how many dB a track went over or under. "Hot" masters are a fact of life, but I don't like to overcompress. So it's important to me to see if any tracks are contributing major peaks that I can reduce, in order to get a higher average level. (Incidentally, Sonar 5 flags "overs" and peaks so you know exactly where the signal levels are "bunching up.")
* Acidization editing. I use Sonar as a tool for developing Acid-compatible libraries. For acidized loop creation, it's the only option (along with Acid, of course). And, the ability to customize marker positions can sometimes yield better sonic results with "beats" than Live's beats mode.
* The Prosoniq MPX time-stretching algorithm. It's exceptionally good for offline, destructive stretching...it sounds great.
* Pow-R dithering. I often need this to bring a 24-bit file down to 16 bits.
* Track folders. Actually I find this more essential with Acid than with Sonar, but it's still very handy to be able to put lots of sounds on their own tracks, then stuff them into a folder when you want to reduce screen clutter.
* Multiple controller support. Sonar has plug-ins for several controllers I use. What is particularly helpful is GNX4 compatibility, so I can do hands-free recording...this saves hours when developing a sample library. This isn't just "play-stop-record," there's a degree of intelligence built-in with respect to creating new tracks, undoing, etc.
* Multiple view options. On really complex projects, Sonar is very customizable for how you view the project, what tracks you show/hide, and so on.
* OMF import/export. It's a Pro Tools world, and this lets me bridge Sonar to PT (as well as to Digital Performer, the main Mac program I use).

These are the biggies for me. Guitar tab, and the guitar neck view (which I use as a "pseudo-MIDI guitar) are nice but not essential. I also find the tempo editing to be more fluid, and although Live can do multiple undo/redo, Sonar's undo history is helpful. But these aren't deal-breakers.

So you can see that's a fairly specialized list that doesn't apply to everyone by any means. I mean, how many people create Acid-compatible sample libraries and do audio-for-video? And if you're not heavy into loop recording, Live does just fine; it's just more awkward than, say, Sonar or Cubase.

BUT I would NEVER use Sonar live. Live has completely taken over that space for me. The unstoppable audio engine, the session view, the ability to record performances, the easy tying of parameters to shortcuts and general-purpose MIDI controllers, the simplicity of doing on-the-fly MIDI editing, etc. etc. all make Live one of my favorite programs. I also really like the clean interface (also essential when playing live to minimize pilot error); Live has a great workflow to access what it does (although to be fair, Sonar has a great workflow for its type of program).

It all boils down to use the right tool for the right job. Live can certainly fulfill the basics of what people want from a DAW, and it's possible to use Sonar live. [color=red]But if you are into specialized DAW applications, I still feel you need a specialized DAW.[color]

Does that help or just confuse things further?

[Anderton]

how does it compare to Cakewalk's Project 5v2? I would think this is a more equal comparison.

Yes, it is definitely a more equal comparison. I am still logging hours on P5 V2 and Live 5, so don't feel I'm an expert yet. However, just as Sonar broke the monopoly on acidization, P5 V2 broke the monopoly on the Session View way of working.

I think that because both programs do have many similarities, the workflow and "style" of the program will be a huge factor in which you think is better. I see P5 V2 as tending more toward the "Reason" way of thinking, and Live as tending more toward the "DAW" way of thinking. So that will filter some users right there.

P5 V2 comes with more instruments than Live (hence the Reason comparison); the Dimension synth is particularly good. But Live 5 is more agile in terms of handling audio (hence the DAW comparison).

I'm sorry I can't give a more definitive answer, but the programs are sufficiently similar -- and sufficiently different -- that your personal preferences will be the ultimate deciding factor. As I log more hours with both programs, I'll have a better idea which is better suited for my needs.

Then again, thanks to ReWire, I don't really have to make an either/or decision if I don't want to :)

[Anderton]

I'm really disappointed with some oversights in the transition form 3-4, and 4-5. Chief among these is that the removal of the "select on launch" option in the preferences menu since version 4.

In the "Misc" tab under preferences, there's a Select on Launch option.

Please click on Attachment to see the Preferences menu, and what the Info section says about "Select on Launch."

Is this what you're looking for?

[Anderton]

Before proceeding -- I just wanted to say thanks for the excellent opinions and insights. Your contributions are what makes the whole "Pro Review" concept work.

I also look forward to more comments from Ableton's Dave Hill once he gets over his jet lag :)

I just had to say thanks for making this happen. Back to our regularly scheduled programming.

[ortho]

Hi everyone. Been reading this excellent review very closely as I am about to drop the bomb and sell my E-Mu command station and Akai sampler to help finance an iMac G5 with Live 5. I've used Live 1 awhile back and I realllly dug it. I've been using the Live 5 demo and it is so much more fun to me than the tweakability of the E-mu and akai. Even the most basic loop/beat can be transformed into the most insane variations. Thank you Ableton.

Has anyone actually used these Faderfox controllers with Live?

http://www.faderfox.de/Faderfox-Homepage_english/faderfox-homepage_english.html

I'm really excited about getting some cool new controllers to use with Live.

Does Reason Rewire into Live well? I need a softsampler to replace the Akai and Reason is so easy to use.

[rdh3t]

Ortho,

check the ableton.com forums and search for faderfox--many satisfied users. Things may have changed, but I think you cannot buy them directly from the company in germany. Seems most US users either bought them in europe, or had european friends buy and ship. couldn't seem to find a definitive answer after searching their website for all of a minute just now.

Ryan

[therabbit]

A question about live sequencing.

When you tell Live5 to go to a different section of the song like the bridge does it go immediately or is there some lead in time?

On my electribe it will wait till the current pattern is finished (up to 4 measures) and on my Motif it will wait up to one measure and switch regardless of where you are in the pattern.

It would be nice if it was more like the Electribe and would wait for the current song section to finish.

[jamsire]

Hey there Craig - Jamsire ERNOIR here.

Live is great. I will say that the upgrade situation is - what it is. But I feel that if you make a program on MSExcel or use Quickbooks, you can see where you have made money against your expenses - per project. The whole "other" point about making music for fun - is making money. You are supposed to also find a way to make money!!!

When I was first going to college back in 1983, I complained that I was going to have to pay back student loans when I graduated 4 years later - at $110 a month!!! Then a boss I had once said - they expect you to WORK after you graduate! In ten years, $110 a month will mean nothing to you - and he was right.

$119 - adds up to the following:

1. 10 bad dates

2. Drugs and alchohol you really don't need

3. 12 bad movies (no popcorn)

4. No Starbucks for two weeks (for you "need to have coffee people")

5. One parking ticket (in NY) because you were too lazy to look at the sign.

6. Insanely high cell phone bill because you went to NAMM before the weekend.

7. More bad dates

8. Girlfriend/ boyfriend guilt presents

I could go on. Once I make the money back - I see the profit margin in the reprot - and I move on. With regards to features, GET THE DAMN DEMO FIRST!!! And always remember - Windows people - to use the "Restore Point" feature. You may just not like it after all.

I remain.

[rdh3t]

Originally posted by therabbit
A question about live sequencing.

When you tell Live5 to go to a different section of the song like the bridge does it go immediately or is there some lead in time?

On my electribe it will wait till the current pattern is finished (up to 4 measures) and on my Motif it will wait up to one measure and switch regardless of where you are in the pattern.

It would be nice if it was more like the Electribe and would wait for the current song section to finish.

You can set this in Live with the global quantize. Most people use the "bar" setting--this means that when you press a new "scene" button in live (or trigger a clip), Live will wait until the next measure ("bar") to start the new scene/clip. You could also set it to 2, 4, 8 bars, 1/4 notes, none at all (immediate triggering), whatever. Clips even have their own quantize settings for trigger that you can set independantly from the global if you want. Very flexible and intuitive.

Ryan

[therabbit]

Originally posted by rdh3t
You can set this in Live with the global quantize. Most people use the "bar" setting--this means that when you press a new "scene" button in live (or trigger a clip), Live will wait until the next measure ("bar") to start the new scene/clip. You could also set it to 2, 4, 8 bars, 1/4 notes, none at all (immediate triggering), whatever. Clips even have their own quantize settings for trigger that you can set independantly from the global if you want. Very flexible and intuitive.

Ryan

Great! I can work with that! :)

I'm way overscheduled right now and I don't mind getting the demo and working through it, I just want to know that the program will do what I need.

Thanks for the help.

[rdh3t]

Originally posted by Anderton


In the "Misc" tab under preferences, there's a Select on Launch option.

Please click on Attachment to see the Preferences menu, and what the Info section says about "Select on Launch."

Is this what you're looking for?

DAMN, I got excited there for a second. Sadly, this feature apparently only applies to launching via a mouse, and supposedly the "select on launch via midi" is still not working. I haven't tested it with the demo yet, but the most recent reply in this thread confirms the lack of of "select on launch" when launching with midi (which is crucial for people trying to loop on two-handed instruments...the mouse is worthless for looping live instruments):

http://www.ableton.com/forum/viewtopic.php?p=170204#170204

Also see this thread about the feature making it back just to get cut again:

http://www.ableton.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=23799

And this one touting live looping (notice it doesn't reference a version, because he's probably using 3):

http://www.ableton.com/index.php?main=artists&sub=kid-beyond

Thanks for getting my hopes up :( This oversight not only hurts live loopers, but is totally counter-intuitive to the new midi control of the transport. This long-requested feature was implemented in such a way that you only have one set of hardware midi controls for the clip transport--these same midi knobs effect whichever clip is selected--they are global, not clip-specific. However, most performers launch clips via midi and key mappings, and thus their clips aren't "selected on launch". Thus, if you want to effect a clip with any of your midi transport assigned knobs, you have to first select the clip with the mouse--waste of time and energy on stage. Its sad that a seemingly simple feature, which is present and flawless in 3.0.2, gets removed in 4 and now 5, and totally ruins live as a looping device, and makes anyone gigging with 4 and 5 have to use the mouse much more often to select clips. What is the point of having key and midi mappable clip slots when they don't select the clip??? May as well remove this feature (just kidding!) and require the use of the mouse to trigger clips, becuase only it can select clips, which is what 99% of people want to happen when they trigger a clip. I hope Ableton can give us this option back. Whoever decided to take away an option that probably 80+% of version 3 users used was not thinking straight.

Ryan

[Marco Raaphorst]

mmm.

what if you buy a car. would you ask for more chairs AFTER you have bought it?

with software, people tend to believe they can ask for features, but why's is that.? because it's easier to change software maybe?

one thing that annoys me is software which is changing all the time, which is never finished. as a customer you will always feel it can be better etc. because of this. that's not good. it's not about the features, it's what you do with it.

I also see a shifting focus with Live. Live used to be a musician's program, but they are shifting to DAW. although they did it nicely, I can see certain issues which might become a problem when Ableton really thinks they should add video support too. I hope they consider a separate application for video. I mean, so people only use Live on stage, and who always felt it was meant for this. why should they need video. they would buy Cubase if they want that.

Please explain to me, why is there a Notepad program and why is their this program called Word?

[dave hill jr.]

Thanks for the kind introduction Craig. It is an honor to participate in your forum and this review of Live 5. I am again impressed with the helpful posts in just 24 hours or so! Great stuff going on here.

I’m going to try and keep the forum organized by posting several byte size replies. Hope this is clear and please let me know if I missed someone's remark or question with an email and I’ll reply (after a nap).

cheers,
Dave

[dave hill jr.]

Originally posted by sunsinger
I'm running into some stumbling blocks though, about saving clips or loops. There does'nt seem to be any clear menu command regarding this. Sunsinger

Hi Sunsinger,

Sorry if this is at first unclear. Simply drag the clip to the browser (then rename), then press return / enter. Saving songs is done through the file menu and I recommend to always use Save As Self-Contained if hard drive space isn't an issue. By the way, while our manual is designed to be a reference guide, the best way to learn Live (for many) are the built in tutorials, complete with sound examples found inside Live’s lessons. To see Live’s lessons, go to the View menu and select Lessons. We’ve worked really hard to make learning Live as fun as possible (not that I don’t dive into new software sans manual too!).

Cheers,
Dave

[dave hill jr.]

Originally posted by rdh3t
What is the point of having key and midi mappable clip slots when they don't select the clip??? May as well remove this feature (just kidding!) and require the use of the mouse to trigger clips, becuase only it can select clips, which is what 99% of people want to happen when they trigger a clip. I hope Ableton can give us this option back. Whoever decided to take away an option that probably 80+% of version 3 users used was not thinking straight.

Ryan

Yo Ryan,

Select on Launch: I am sorry for your frustration on this feature appearing to disappear. Craig is right that you can still activate Select On Launch, but I understand it doesn’t work with outside MIDI controllers. This is a confirmed bug that will be fixed sometime in the future. However, you can have hope once again! I caught up with Kid Beyond today and he says that doesn’t need that feature to do his looping (and is loving Live 5 by the way). He turns his MIDI commands into keystrokes by using a free application called MIDI Translator http://www.bome.com/midi/translator/. I understand there is a similar application for the Mac called Control Aid but someone please jump in if you know better. Thanks also for posting this item in detail here and for the ableton forum links. We are indeed aware of the mighty loop / looper community and we do value your input greatly. We want Live to be the perfect tool for Live looping and thank you for bringing this again to our attention!

Cheers,
Dave

[dave hill jr.]

Originally posted by Marco Raaphorst
mmm.

what if you buy a car. would you ask for more chairs AFTER you have bought it?



Great point. Here are my thoughts on limitations in general. First of all, we need them. Limits create structure and for me add focus. One of the things I have found fascinating about working with Live is that by having less windows and views, I actually get more music done and spend more time listening (and mixing). That said, those of you in love with another DAW, please keep on loving it! I would never suggest anyone cancel out all those precious hours spent trying to learn another way of doing something you already know how to do. However, my boss would like me to suggest that you might still have a helluva lot of fun inside Live land. As Craig says, ReWire makes is easy for all of us to get along with whatever tool you like to work with. So give Live a try and see if music comes to thy ears . . .

all best,
drowsy dave

[dave hill jr.]

Good points made here by all. For a minute, please allow me to take off my Ableton hat and speak about my personal experience with Live. For me, it is all the DAW I need and a whole lot more. But all of us work differently and need different tools so let me quickly fill you in on where I’m coming from. I am a drummer who uses Live to sketch, produce, multi-track record, edit, and perform. I use Live like an MPC-style beat maker / phrase sampler/sequencer on the airplane, an HD editor/recorder in my living room, and performance instrument in “da club” or studio jam session. My two favorite features are that Live records all my automation moves without even thinking and can record perfectly cut loops quickly while I continually work on the mix. I also love the warp marker technology for massaging my drums where I, ahem, meant to play them. Speaking on Ableton’s behalf (placing Ableton hat back on head now), I would add that for many of our users, Live is a DAW and luckily a DAW that works great with other DAWs . . . but I am sure it is assuredly different things to different users. So please don't let me force my drummer ways on you! Oh wait, which hat did I have on there?

Cheers,
Dave

[dave hill jr.]

Speaking of different users wanting differnt things (I mean artists not users here!) . . . I hear the coolest stories about how people are using Live. Many of these involve “DAW-like” tasks while others feel like something else entirely. Perhaps you’ve seen our press coverage of the many DJs using Live both for making Mix CDs, performing at huge festivals (check out http://www.djsasha.com/buenos_aires.mpeg), and radio broadcasts (Check out Pete Tong on the BBC http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio1/dance/petetong/index.shtml). I also hear about DJs who use Live to perform, record their whole set, edit it (and then distribute the mix). This summer, I spoke with Vernon Reid (guitarist of Living Colour, Yohimbe Brothers) and he was telling me about filling in on guitar with The Roots’ and then using Live to work on a movie soundtrack in his hotel room capturing one of the Roots' backup singers, recording, editing on the road. Another great story I just heard is Shawn Pelton using Live in his NY city apartment to record a major label drum track (I can’t say who this track is for, but take a google around Shawn Pelton’s discography and it is quite impressive). He used a cool little plug-in called Drumagog to fatten up his kick drum but that was due to the volume and mic’ing issues. He was multi-tracking right into Live. What a great time to be making music in your home and portible studios eh? So would the phrase portable performance, recording, and remix studio be better than DAW? I ask thee.

double yawn,
Dave

[dave hill jr.]

Hey we made the list!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DAW

Hooray for Wiki peeps!

dave

[dave hill jr.]

To those wanting to learn more about Live's time-stretching . . . Yes, the Warp Modes are critical to affecting the sound of Live’s time-stretching! New to Live 5 is Complex mode and if you haven’t heard this yet, it is sweet. Please give that a go and report back here. How does that compare to the competition? As for the other modes, the manual is a great reference (pages 121-125 on my PDF). But since you’re asking, here is the basic idea, Beats mode is for material largely made up of beats and can hunt for transients at a variety of different rhythmical frequencies. Generally, 1/8 note is better for 1/8 note grooves and 1/16 is better for, yep you guessed it, 1/16th note grooves. Tones Mode is perfect for bass and vocals. The Grain size affects the size of the grain (used to break up the sample to be stretched) in this granular time stretching method. Use your ears here and experiment a lot. I haven’t found a tried and true method because of the variety of audio material. But the default “30” is pretty great for bass guitar.

Texture Mode is for those unruly static and crazed SFX sounds that defy tonality or rhythm. In many ways Texture is similar to Tones Mode however as you can still adjust Grain size. The random element here is called flux and that is a lot of fun. Hint: I’ve seen Robert Henke (monolake.de) crank both values on piano sounds to achieve a Leslie-like effect on a tonal sample too. Oh and what about Re-Pitch? Re-Pitch acts like a turntable in terms of pitch, the faster/slower you play the higher/lower the pitch, but the loop timing remains the same to keep the groove. I know at least one famous DJ who loves this setting for everything because it feels so organic to him. The key with all of this technology is to read and re-read what it does and spend most of your time playing with it to hear it. One other thought here is that many artists use the “wrong” time-stretching mode as a sound design tool. If you’ve ever checked out Telefon Tel-Aviv, you know what I mean. Great and creative stuff I say! One hint, new to Live 5, you can multi-select clips and change all of their warp modes in one fell swoop (as well as other clip settings). Dig that workflow stuff!

Best,
Dave

[dave hill jr.]

OK, last post tonight . . . as Craig mentioned, I’m on the road and a bit jetlagged, but I want to say I think this review method is really great. It is inspiring (and challenging) to hear from all of you and I hope I'm making your lives easier or at least a little funny. I try. Anyway, please let me know what else I can clear up about Live 5 and I'd love to hear about how any one of the 134 new Live 5 features has helped you make some cool music.

Speaking to the reviewer at large, I not-so-secretly hope that Craig might talk about my favorite Live 5 feature, The Live Clip. What do you think? Ever seen anything like it?

This to me is a revolutionary idea-saving feature that still blows me away. I lead off every demo with it and hard core audio and MIDI sequencer guys are amazed

I won’t divulge exactly how the feature works but instead ask Craig, have you checked out our new format?

Hint1: Take a look at all the options available for importing a previously made Live set. Hint2: Try making a MIDI live clip with 3rd party effect and instrument plug-ins (then preview and import!). Nice! Hint3: go to my reply to the gentleman seeking help saving clips . . . hmmmmmmmmm

Over and out and cheers yet again,
Dave

[rdh3t]

Originally posted by Marco Raaphorst
[B]mmm.

what if you buy a car. would you ask for more chairs AFTER you have bought it?

with software, people tend to believe they can ask for features, but why's is that.? because it's easier to change software maybe?

one thing that annoys me is software which is changing all the time, which is never finished. as a customer you will always feel it can be better etc. because of this. that's not good. it's not about the features, it's what you do with it.


I agree with somewhat in general, but my gripe is with a 100% functioning, VERY useful feature from Live up to 3.0.2 that was FULLY removed, with no alternative means of accomplishing the same task. To parallel your car analogy, to me it is like a 2004 model having cruise control, and the 2005 model doesn't--useful feature removed for no apparent reason (I know, software isn't as simple as it appears, but this was a working and useful feature in version 3). Also, I didn't buy 5 and won't til they get this taken care of--I test drove so to speak, and participated in the betas, which was exceedingly frustrating as "select on launch" via midi DID work in a few of the betas. I'm not asking for new features or to copy Cubase or for live to be the end-all-be-all DAW, I just want a very useful, live performance oriented feature put back into the app, as it was already there in 3, which I will continue to use.

Ryan

[rdh3t]

Originally posted by dave hill jr.


Yo Ryan,

Select on Launch: I am sorry for your frustration on this feature appearing to disappear. Craig is right that you can still activate Select On Launch, but I understand it doesn’t work with outside MIDI controllers. This is a confirmed bug that will be fixed sometime in the future. However, you can have hope once again! I caught up with Kid Beyond today and he says that doesn’t need that feature to do his looping (and is loving Live 5 by the way). He turns his MIDI commands into keystrokes by using a free application called MIDI Translator http://www.bome.com/midi/translator/. I understand there is a similar application for the Mac called Control Aid ...

Cheers,
Dave

Thanks for looking into this and for your responses, Dave--it means a lot to customers when the software company responds and cares about the customers questions (try getting a response from NI!!!). Bomes is cool, it is the only way to actually delete a flubbed clip on the fly with a pc (you also have to use midi ox/yoke), I use Bomes every gig and have been for quite some time.

To really tap into the looping market, after fixing the select on launch not working via midi, Ableton really needs to make a midi/key mappable "delete" key to allow deletion of clips via midi. The only way to currently do that is bomes/ox/yoke on pc, and midipipe/control-aid on mac--these are useable workarounds, but not exactly simple to set up. To get guitarists and other hardware loopers who may not be computer saavy to buy Live as a looper, you need to coddle them and make life easy. Forcing a workaround requiring two additional applications and a fair amount of setup just to have the capability that every $200 hardware looper has to delete flubbed clips on the fly is a PITA. I know I can use Bome's to translate my midi signals to keystrokes in order to trigger clips, but then I have to steal keys from all of my key mappings I've been giggin with for 3 years, which would mess with my head. I guess since 5 allows number key mappings (which weren't possible up to 4), I could use them and not mess up my setup. I'll try that out--thanks for talking to Kid, I'll gladly eat my words and cough up $20 if I can get this all working via Bomes, but still, it should all be within Live--two measly little hidden featues keeping Live from being the best self-contained looper ever.

Ryan

[rdh3t]

Originally posted by Anderton


* Multiple controller support. Sonar has plug-ins for several controllers I use. What is particularly helpful is GNX4 compatibility, so I can do hands-free recording...this saves hours when developing a sample library. This isn't just "play-stop-record," there's a degree of intelligence built-in with respect to creating new tracks, undoing, etc.

* Multiple view options. On really complex projects, Sonar is very customizable for how you view the project, what tracks you show/hide, and so on.


I know that what you are saying is true, but these titles are a bit misleading. Live 5 can support up to 3 seperate midi controls on seperate ports. I don't think Live has many "templates" or built-in recognition of many controllers (All I know of is Mackie control), but it is very easy to set up midi mappings and use multiple controllers at once. If you chain controllers together with midi cords, you could concievably use an ulimited number of controllers.

Live does allow a fair amount of view control, and 4 and 5 have offered quite a bit more flexibility over previous versions, allowing the user to hide the sends, or input routings, or faders, etc. via a handful of small icons that toggle these things on and off. 5 now allows resizing and hiding of session tracks--this is a HUGE new feature for live performers, totally crucial. The browser is also resizable/hideable, and of course arrangement tracks can be minimized or dragged to the desired height. No, there aren't any view "presets" or "templates" you can jump to, but the icons and draggable track widths/heights make custom viewing options VERY quick and flexible. Any customized viewing setup you create for a project gets saved with that project too.

Ryan

[Anderton]

<<Speaking to the reviewer at large, I not-so-secretly hope that Craig might talk about my favorite Live 5 feature, The Live Clip. What do you think? Ever seen anything like it?>>

There are PLENTY of things I haven't covered yet. Honestly, this took off faster and better than I ever anticipated, so I've ended up answering questions and getting involved in discussions more than posting new Live discoveries. For the next pro review, I think I'll have more of the review "in the can" before starting.

What this means is that I have not yet hit some of the parts of Live that are blowing my mind! But that's why I expected these reviews to go on for four weeks or so. There's so much to be said about products, so we're taking advantage of The Bandwidth Luxury here :)

Next -- Dave, your presence is proving to me that inviting manufacturers to participate is a good thing. Your comments are all helpful, and I have a feeling this thread is a focus group/market research dream come true, so hopefully there are advantages both ways. I don't want to take up too much of your time, but then again, you're reaching a LOT of people here...

[Anderton]

<<I know that what you are saying is true, but these titles are a bit misleading. Live 5 can support up to 3 seperate midi controls on seperate ports. I don't think Live has many "templates" or built-in recognition of many controllers (All I know of is Mackie control), but it is very easy to set up midi mappings and use multiple controllers at once.>>

Agreed, I've noted the ease of controlling parameters in Live. My live act couldn't exist without it! BUT the template thing provides functionality that goes beyond simple MIDI commands, like my example with the GNX4, or non-Mackie devices with moving faders where there needs to be a feedback path, not just one-way control. Remember, this was in the context of "So why would I use a DAW when Live is so cool?", and it's one of those really dweeby DAW features that I find extremely useful.

<<Live does allow a fair amount of view control, and 4 and 5 have offered quite a bit more flexibility over previous versions>>

Agreed. But some DAWs offer a lot more, e.g., tabbed views etc. Again, this is not really all that important to many users, but in some situations it really comes in handy.

I really do use a lot of different programs, as each excels in certain applications and I deal with a lot of different applications :) For example, even though Live and Acid would be considered similar by many people, there are situations where I prefer to use Acid, and others where I prefer to use Live. Version 5 for both programs has really added a lot of useful features.

[lcvl]

hi Craig (my first post here)

for sure this is great new way to review products. what a cool idea!!! :)

one question about Live 5: does it have a "batch-tracks-export" function like we have in Acid 5?
instead of using the regular rendering option you select this function and Acid creates audio files for each active track in the project.
thanks to this option composing in Acid (PC) and then mixing in Logic (Mac) is really painless.
thanks

PS what do you think of Matt Fink's library?

[kidbeyond]

rdh3t,

Kid Beyond here. Dave Hill hit me up about the Select on Launch problem (see, they really do take these issues seriously!), and pointed me to this thread.

As Dave posted, I haven't bumped up against this problem, because a) I've been on Live 3 until recently, b) all my MIDI events get turned into keystrokes (by Bome) by the time they get to Live, and c) I don't delete flubbed clips -- I just suck it up and deal :)

But I can understand why this is a bummer for you. Suffice it to say, many of us who are using Live heavily onstage have a small list of "if they only put these in, it would be perfect!" features.

From reading this thread, it looks like Craig's got at least one (the solo button thing). One of mine (and many other live-loopers) is the so-called "first loop" capability -- being able to define the length (and thus BPM) of the first loop via start/stop, like you can on the hardware loopers. The Live folks have heard about this from many corners, and have assured us they're working on it.

Re:
> And now Ableton has a "Kid Beyond" video on
> their site touting live looping capabilities--
> I'll bet $20 Kid is still using 3 so that he can
> delete flubbed clips with Bomes. This is just bad
> marketing period, giving a totally false impression
> of 5.

Alas, you just lost $20. :) Please send it to the American Red Cross for New Orleans relief.

The Ableton folks shot the video many months before Live 5 was out. I was still using 3 because: a) of a *different* feature that got removed after 3 -- keystroke access to quantization level, which some of my arrangements depend on (it's now back in 5, thanks guys), and b) the monitoring buttons changed a bit, and I was too lazy (I mean, um, too busy writing songs) to mess with my carefully crafted Bome scripts.

I was bummed that this little feature, which was pretty key for me, disappeared between 3 and 4 -- just like you're bummed about the Select feature. Ultimately, all I could do was remember that Ableton is composed of human beings -- human beings under pressure from users / marketing execs / reviewers to add more and more functionality -- and that these things sometimes happen. I worked at a software company in a previous life, and I do not envy anyone standing in the middle of the feature-request hailstorm. I say all this not as some sort of Ableton apologist, but just as a human being.

Anyway, I've moved over from my old Vaio to a shiny new Powerbook G4, and I'm in the process of getting up to speed on it and Live 5 at the same time. For the MIDI-to-keystrokes thing, it looks like I'll be going with the one-two punch of MidiPipe and AppleScript, although the new Midistroke (written by ControlAid's Charlie Roberts) could fit my needs... if I could just get him to implement my 3 key feature requests. :)

Peace...

[rdh3t]

Originally posted by lcvl
hi Craig (my first post here)

for sure this is great new way to review products. what a cool idea!!! :)

one question about Live 5: does it have a "batch-tracks-export" function like we have in Acid 5?
instead of using the regular rendering option you select this function and Acid creates audio files for each active track in the project.
thanks to this option composing in Acid (PC) and then mixing in Logic (Mac) is really painless.
thanks

PS what do you think of Matt Fink's library?

sadly no batch export yet, though it seems to have been requested enough that I bet it'll make it in at some point....

Ryan

[rdh3t]

Kid Beyond,

Wow dude, thanks so much for the reply--$20 more dollas on the way to New Orleans it is! Sorry if I'm overzealous in my lust for "select on launch" and a self-contained way to delete flubbed clips in Live--you definitely get props for not needing the crutch of the deletable clip on stage, that's ballsy. I definitely dig on the video of yours at the ableton site--everybody else here should check it out, live beatboxing looping extravaganza:

http://www.ableton.com/index.php?main=artists&sub=kid-beyond

Sadly, I need the crutch of a delete pedal on stage, I usually know and can sing what I want to play, but occasionally something gets lost in translation between my brain and fingertips on the way to the bass, keys, or guitar, and needs to be deleted without stopping the flow of the music.

<Suffice it to say, many of us who are using Live heavily onstage have a small list of "if they only put these in, it would be perfect!" features. >

I agree, funny that one of your requests is also a feature on hardware loopers that we hope makes it to Live. Well, what is obvious in the post and over the course of the last 5 or so years is that ableton really listens to customers, and cares about their software as if it were their child, so its easy to have faith that they will continue to improve by leaps and bounds with each release. My only issues with the new releases (like yours from 3-4) are when they drastically change functions (like scrub behavior from 4-5 :rolleyes: ) or just fully remove functions (as is the case here, and yours with the keystroke quatize acces). I realize that software development has tons of stuff going on behind the scenes, and that these major changes in each release might make it difficult to implement old features in the new paradigm, but it sure does hurt to lose a feature you depend on.

Hope all goes well with setting up the new Live 5/G4/Midipipe/midistroke system. Any major reason for switching from the sony/pc?

Thanks again for taking the time to reply, it is really cool to see how most Ableton users are as excited about it as me, and it seems like through the ableton forums and the artists that use Live there is a community of people sharing ideas and making good suggestions for the future, and Ableton really seems to listen and get involved in discussions--it is a cool process. Not many softwares are this flexible and open-ended, everyone uses it in a different manner, and more and more people are using it on-stage in various environments. My friend plays sax in Bruce Hornsby's band and they have 4 computers running live on stage--he's using it with a midi wind controller running vsti's (like reaktor), Bruce is running soft synths for a tune or two, the drummer and second keyboardist are triggering loops on theirs. Another 4 computer live band is Sound Tribe Sector 9, who use vsti and trigger loops with their G4s. Live as an "instrument" on stage in bands is becoming more and more common, rightfully so.

Ryan

[rdh3t]

Originally posted by dave hill jr.


Yo Ryan,

Select on Launch: I am sorry for your frustration on this feature appearing to disappear. Craig is right that you can still activate Select On Launch, but I understand it doesn’t work with outside MIDI controllers. This is a confirmed bug that will be fixed sometime in the future. However, you can have hope once again! I caught up with Kid Beyond today and he says that doesn’t need that feature to do his looping (and is loving Live 5 by the way). He turns his MIDI commands into keystrokes by using a free application called MIDI Translator http://www.bome.com/midi/translator/........

Cheers,
Dave

Just to clarify for any loopers out there, "select on launch" only works on clips triggered by the left mouse button. We knew midi didn't do it, but I was hopeful for a second that keystroke commands might "select on launch"--but I was wrong. Glad to know that Ableton is addressing the issue, thanks Dave and Kid Beyond!

Ryan

[DJDM]

Originally posted by dave hill jr.
To those wanting to learn more about Live's time-stretching . . . Yes, the Warp Modes are critical to affecting the sound of Live’s time-stretching! New to Live 5 is Complex mode and if you haven’t heard this yet, it is sweet. Please give that a go and report back here.

I have an entire live set that consisted of a lot of full production tracks in 4 using the various time stretching settings. Mostly "Beats". For most tracks this worked well but with more tonally dense rhythmic material it was only moderately effective until you ramped up or down to the track's base tempo.

After upgrading to 5 I ran the "Complex" setting through the paces with various tracks and immediately went back and reassigned many of the samples. I have to say it's amazing! It handles the most richly textured files elegantly and nearly flawlessly with very smooth results. Now I'm not in such a hurry to bring the tempo right into base speed or use reverb to hide artifacts.

[markwayne]

Hello Craig,

Thanks for doing this. Live is a great, even elegant program in many ways. I would love to hear more on differences between 4 and 5.

>Please explain to me, why is there a Notepad program and why is their this program called Word?
Umm . . . Notepad is a free accessory bundled with Windows to view readme files and general text editing. It has never been, nor would it be marketable as, a retail program.

>what if you buy a car. would you ask for more chairs AFTER you have bought it?
I didn't ask for more chairs. Ablelton added them for us on their own. I'm just asking for more comfortable chairs.

I want to be clear: I'm not asking for new features. However, since they added MIDI support, it would be nice to see it fleshed out a bit. And, yes, I agree with the poster who asked for patch name managment for external MIDI hardware.

Now, why would Ableton want to invest the time in refining these existing features when what makes news (and hooks new users) is adding powerful new features? First, because it's just the kind of thing a cool company like Ableton does. Second, by not getting caught up in a feature race and strengthing the very hip stuff they already have, they can focus on one area which every major DAW has let slide for the last several years. MIDI sequencing. Every DAW out there is so focused on audio, beat detection, pitch correction, etc. that MIDI has just been left to rot. I can name more than a half dozen programs I own that actually have worse MIDI implementations today than they did five years ago.

I see a chance here for Ableton to pick up where everyone else is leaving off and do something very creative. Adding cool MIDI tools would not require a bunch of CPU muscle and, in the tradition of Live, could give us a new way to look at something that's been around for a while.

just my thoughts,
Wayne

[dave hill jr.]

Originally posted by DJDM


I have an entire live set that consisted of a lot of full production tracks in 4 using the various time stretching settings. Mostly "Beats". For most tracks this worked well but with more tonally dense rhythmic material it was only moderately effective until you ramped up or down to the track's base tempo.

After upgrading to 5 I ran the "Complex" setting through the paces with various tracks and immediately went back and reassigned many of the samples. I have to say it's amazing! It handles the most richly textured files elegantly and nearly flawlessly with very smooth results. Now I'm not in such a hurry to bring the tempo right into base speed or use reverb to hide artifacts.

Hi DJ DM,

Great to hear!

For a completely different take, Complex Mode is also a great sound design tool and powerful studio ally. Hint: make sure and try a few transpose or effect parameter clip envelopes for maximum fun! (yet another tip gleaned from Robert Henke).

Cheers,
Dave

[dave hill jr.]

Originally posted by markwayne
Hello Craig,

Thanks for doing this. Live is a great, even elegant program in many ways. I would love to hear more on differences between 4 and 5.

I want to be clear: I'm not asking for new features. However, since they added MIDI support, it would be nice to see it fleshed out a bit. And, yes, I agree with the poster who asked for patch name managment for external MIDI hardware.

Now, why would Ableton want to invest the time in refining these existing features when what makes news (and hooks new users) is adding powerful new features? First, because it's just the kind of thing a cool company like Ableton does. Second, by not getting caught up in a feature race and strengthing the very hip stuff they already have, they can focus on one area which every major DAW has let slide for the last several years. MIDI sequencing. Every DAW out there is so focused on audio, beat detection, pitch correction, etc. that MIDI has just been left to rot. I can name more than a half dozen programs I own that actually have worse MIDI implementations today than they did five years ago.

I see a chance here for Ableton to pick up where everyone else is leaving off and do something very creative. Adding cool MIDI tools would not require a bunch of CPU muscle and, in the tradition of Live, could give us a new way to look at something that's been around for a while.

just my thoughts,
Wayne

Hi Wayne,

Thanks for the post. I too am having a little trouble understanding exactly what you are getting at. I think you mean you don’t want us putting the wrong feature in Live or doing so in the wrong way. I must attest, neither do we! Ableton spends a huge amount of time considering and testing how a new feature or concept is to be implemented before actually coding the implementation. When I first came to the company, I was blown away by the development teams’ commitment to keep Live simple, elegant and intuitive for its creative and extremely diverse user base. Even now, each time I visit Berlin, I see a team completely in love with their baby and passionately debating what is next and best for Live.

Rest assured, Ableton’s philosophy is to be 100 percent committed to making Live as stable, intuitive and easy to use as possible, and to include the most requested features in such a way that we never jeopardize what makes Live so popular and fun.

If there is some specific new feature you are seeking or unhappy with a change, please let us know by putting a post it in our forum and articulating as clearly as you possibly can. After doing so, you will likely find debate, ideas, encouragement, disagreement and usually some colorful discussions on how to improve Live. If you post sits idle please give us a second chance.

Since we're in a forum now, could you provide some specific examples of exactly what features you'd like to see simultaneously expanded and simplified? What might flushing out the MIDI be for you? Do you see a way to do so without making Live more complicated or Word like?

Thanks in advance for helping me understand your ideas here.

Cheers,
Dave

[dave hill jr.]

Originally posted by Anderton
One problem I ran into occurred when trying to freeze the MIDI track driving the Impulse synth; I received an error message that said “Track Routing Choose Entry ‘4-Beats’ ‘1-Impulse’ Prohibits Freeze.” Well, that didn’t tell me much, and the manual didn’t mention anything about conditions that prohibit freeze. But I know some of the Ableton people will be looking at this thread, so perhaps we’ll get an explanation.

Hi Craig,

Support tells me that you can only freeze one track at a time. Here you have Impulse sending to multiple tracks. Make sense?

Cheers,
Dave

[markwayne]

Howdy Dave,

>I think you mean you don’t want us >putting the wrong feature in Live or >doing so in the wrong way.
Right as rain. Just because I mention that I would like to see a couple of extra MIDI tools within Live does not mean I want to see Live become Digital Performer. I love the fact that I can use Live on my old laptop.

Live's stabilty, forgiving VST hosting, stingy CPU usage, and solid sync capabilities are THE most important features for my money.

However, I really see MIDI in general as a very neglected technology at the moment. I think that some simple, yet elegant MIDI editing tools would greatly enhance Live for everyone.

I'm not looking to Ableton to cop DP, Cubase, or Logic's paradigm. I think that MIDI editing in those programs has actually gotten worse rather than better as they have focused on audio. Reason strikes a pretty good balance. But I would expect Ableton to come up with something fresher than emulating hardware.

In short, I want Ableton to take MIDI sequencing as we have known it for the last twenty years and turn it on its ear. I'm thnking of something like the chaos generator in Stylus RMX combined with event list editing to allow open-ended MIDI commands and maybe even sysex.
Or, Imagine the power of providing a set of hardware or VI control templates where you are no longer just sequencing notes but patch parameters at the same time. But hey, I know Ableton can come up with something far simpler and cooler! These things sound involved. But, because we are talking about an established protocol like MIDI, there would be a number of items that could be modular, maybe even a plugin?

>could you provide some specific >examples of exactly what features >you'd like to see simultaneously >expanded and simplified? What might >flushing out the MIDI be for you?
You know Live 4 introduced a couple of fun little MIDI tools. In fact, these tools are so fun I would love to make them a part of my composition process. To make that happen, however, I need, at minimum, some form of name-based patch selection, quantization, and transposition and a drum machine style overdub mode. I don't think Live should jump into the DAW bloat race. But there is a good deal of power that is frustratingly out of reach at the moment.

thanks for letting me use the bandwidth,
Wayne

[rnbeatz]

Originally posted by markwayne
Howdy Dave,
>could you provide some specific >examples of exactly what features >you'd like to see simultaneously >expanded and simplified? What might >flushing out the MIDI be for you?
You know Live 4 introduced a couple of fun little MIDI tools. In fact, these tools are so fun I would love to make them a part of my composition process. To make that happen, however, I need, at minimum, some form of name-based patch selection, quantization, and transposition and a drum machine style overdub mode. I don't think Live should jump into the DAW bloat race. But there is a good deal of power that is frustratingly out of reach at the moment.

thanks for letting me use the bandwidth,
Wayne

Exactly, and as I went into detail at the top of page 4 of this thread, program change and name management on the track level, more quantizations choices, and combining a midi and audio track into one would be at the top of my list.

[Anderton]

<<Support tells me that you can only freeze one track at a time. Here you have Impulse sending to multiple tracks. Make sense?>>

Yes it does, thanks Dave. I'm used to freeze in other hosts freezing all tracks involved in a multi-timbral device, so I just assumed :) But yeah, it's different to freeze multiple tracks feeding one device as opposed to one device feeding multiple tracks!

I'm sure glad I don't have to code this stuff, just use it :)

[gnapier3]

Hi Craig,

Thanks for this forum/review/discussion group. It's a great idea! Just wanted to weigh in on a couple of things:

I too hope that Ableton does not try to make Live all things to all people. I use Logic and DP (started out on Dr. T KCS and Studio Vision). Each upgrade brought welcome features --- and increased complexity. As someone who does not do this for a living, the learning curve is considerable particularly if you step away for a couple of weeks then have to "get back up to speed".

That's why Live and Tracktion were a breath of fresh air! The creative experience became fun, less encumbered, and much more immediate. I still use Logic alot (and I'd use Tracktion more if it supported AU instruments), but I find that I open Live first when I want to capture that moment of inspiration.

In fact, because I feared that it was going the way of the other apps, I shied away from Live 5. This forum and discussion is very helpful. I'll spend some time with the demo over the next couple of weeks.

Now opinions please on a feature request (or am I the only person who would find this useful?): I would very much like to be able to see more than one control envelope on a clip at one time. I love the way DP superimposes multiple controller envelopes so you can see relationships say between pan and volume or resonance and cutoff -- or all four if need be. (I also prefer superimposition to the multiple drop down approach of Logic.)

Lastly, I use live for beat oriented stuff for sure, but my real interest is in it's use for creating evolving non-repeating textures and ambient spaces. The probablistic control of follow on actions and the ability to have loops of different periodicity are really really cool.

Cheers all.
George

PS

Not to gush, but your reviews and articles are ALWAYS helpful and have been for years. Thanks.

[Anderton]

Auto-Warp is a gem of a function and quite frankly, verges on the magical. To give you some background, prior to Version 5 you could use the “elastic audio” feature to painstakingly pin an existing tune’s rhythm to beats. For example, I took a song from the 80s that was recorded on analog tape with a somewhat iffy tempo, and thanks to elastic audio, was able to put loops on top of it to “modernize” the tune. It was so cool to be able to do that, I didn’t mind spending a considerable amount of time moving warp markers around.

Live 5 does pretty much the same thing, but automatically. To insure that the tempo fluctuated a bit, I tested this function with a fairly long song recorded on analog tape (a cover version of Julian Cope’s “When I Dream”). After bringing it into Live, the program needed a few seconds to analyze the tune (presumably it was looking for transients, downbeats, etc.), but then the file showed up in the Clip Display, warp markers and all.

Well okay, but were those accurate guesses? I switched over to Arrangement view, and started dragging over loops into the arrangement from Sony’s “The Electro Set” loop library. The results were perfect. Not “pretty good,” or “surprisingly good given the complex nature of the task,” but perfect. Granted, the tempo was regular, but it was subject to analog drift and certainly lacked the metronomic precision of today’s tunes. Yes, in some cases you will need to tweak the warp markers, but the Auto-Warp function will save you a ton of time by putting you “in the ballpark.” Well actually, not just in the ballpark, but in front row seats on the third base line.

Click on the Attachment to see a screen shot of the original file and the added loops. Notice the long, continuous waveform at the top (the original song) and below it, the various loops I laid in. At the bottom, in the Clip Display, is the Auto-Warped song file. I didn’t have to move one marker…now that’s pretty cool. And Live did not guess based on overall length, because there’s a fade at the end, and the song doesn’t end on a measure boundary – let alone a beat. Impressive? Very much so.

[Anderton]

Complex Mode is a new stretching algorithm that’s designed to work with complex material. Well, time-stretching is a difficult enough task without trying to apply it to program material, which may include a mix of percussive sounds, sustained tones, unpitched components, and more. It’s a major task to deal with analyzing and stretching all this.

Yet I must say Complex Mode gave a very good account of itself – I was able to take a tune recorded at 125 BPM and do about plus/minus 5% time stretching without the sound becoming “funny.” No, it’s not perfect; if you have a beautiful, audiophile quality recording, it won’t exit the stretching process unscathed. And if you need to transpose, all bets are off. Still, Complex Mode is a valuable addition to the stretch options and really does make using program material viable.

Click on Attachment to download a ZIP file that contains an MP3 example of Complex Mode in action. This has the tune referenced in the previous section about Auto-Warp (a cover of “When I Dream”), along with the one or two added drum loops, sped up by 5%. Unfortunately, to fit the space requirement for attachments, this example is rendered as a mono MP3 at 64kbps. Although this doesn’t do justice to the stretching, if you’re at all familiar with what an MP3 recorded at 64kbps sounds like, you’ll appreciate that the sound quality is really quite good.

[Anderton]

Live Clips are a simple idea, but they save time and effort. Basically, a Live Clip loads not only digital audio or a MIDI pattern, but also any devices that are part of the Clip’s “chain.” For example, if you have some groovy MIDI drum pattern that drives the Simpler but also goes through Beat Repeat and Reverb, you can save the whole thing as a Live Clip for later recall. This is really handy for those times when the signal processing is a necessary, important element of the sound; you don’t have to save each processor’s preset then recall them all to get the same sound – just load the Live Clip.

One other small, but important, point is what happens if you drag a Live Clip into a track that already contains devices and/or clips. The existing devices are not replaced, but the clip settings are updated. For example, suppose you have a Live Clip with a good synth patch setup and a riff in a major key. You also have a matching riff in a minor key, but you came up with it early in the song, and have it saved as a Live Clip driving a different instrument. You can load this Clip into the track with the Clip that has the synth patch, and drive its sound instead.

Click on Attachment to see what happens when you load the “Warm Strings” Live Clip. It loads the Simpler instrument, Reverb processor, all Clip settings, and a MIDI pattern into the track.

[Anderton]

I really like hands-on control, and Live has always made it easy to tie parameters to external control devices through a simple “learn” process. But it also takes this one step further by making it easy to assign QWERTY keyboard keys to particular functions, so you can use your keyboard as a control surface to trigger clips and such.

Live 5 has excellent support for the Mackie Control and Mackie Control XT – but only the Mackie Control. This makes sense, because it’s an extremely popular control surface, and also, many other control surfaces have a Mackie emulation mode. I was somewhat surprised that there wasn’t support for the Evolution series of control surfaces, given that M-Audio distributes Live and acquired the Evolution line. However, it seems that perhaps Live is using a plug-in architecture for control surface support, because you specify it under Preferences, and there’s a drop-down menu that looks like it’s just waiting to be populated.

Anyway, although I don’t have a Mackie Control so I couldn’t test the implementation, on paper it looks great: It takes advantage of the motorized faders, you can expand with the XT, there are bank select options when you’re using a single Mackie control and need to control more than 8 tracks, transport options, mute, solo, send, pan, etc.

I’ve always felt that operating Live without some kind of control surface was like going to a movie with a blindfold on – you’d get only half the experience. I like the Mackie Control, and can see its support as a real useful add-on to Live. Now, if they’d just support my Radikal Technologies SAC-2k…well, I can still use the “ learn” mode, which works just fine.

Oh, and one other thing: I find myself using the "Computer MIDI Keyboard" a lot to trigger notes into the MIDI sequencer when I don't want to deal with going over to the main keyboard. It's also great when you have a laptop on a plane!

[Anderton]

If you were expecting Live 5 to become a MIDI powerhouse, you’ll be disappointed. If you were expecting MIDI to be expanded to the point of getting complex and fussy, you’ll be happy.

There are only a few new MIDI features.

MIDI Note Deactivation: You can selectively “turn off’ a note (or group of notes) without deleting it/htem. It’s not a huge deal - until you create a short loop with a cymbal crash at the beginning, and wish you could bring the crash in every now and then instead of all the time. Perfect: De-activate and activate at will. It also lends a lot more flexibility when using the MIDI Note Editor live: Select, for example, all the closed hi-hats, then deactivate during a more cooled out part, and bring them back in when you want more rhythm.

MIDI Editor Preview: This really should have been there when Live first added MIDI, but better late than never. With preview on, when you click to add a note, or click on the virtual keyboard, you hear the note. Clicking further to the right of a keyboard key gives higher velocities.

The preview function is particularly useful with drum sets, as you don’t have a “drum map” MIDI view, and sometimes you can’t always be sure which key that weird percussion sound corresponds to… Better yet, this can be enabled individually for each track.

Better MIDI Quantizing: Now you can do quantize strength, which is the most important MIDI quantizing feature to me – it’s a great way to tighten up timing, without getting robotic. You can also quantize the note start and end.

And for MIDI effects, there’s – tra-la – an arpeggiator. Yeah, it’s cool.

So, what about MIDI, anyway? It’s kind of a controversial aspect of Live. Those who were raised on Logic, Digital Performer, etc. see what’s missing: No event list, no notation, limited editing options, etc. But if you’re willing to keep an open mind, Ableton has come up with a new, and valid, approach to dealing with MIDI. Whether it fulfills all your needs is something only you can decide, but you can get a hint of where they’re going with the MIDI effects – I could definitely see these growing in the future. That way, you need only drag in the plug-ins you want, rather than be faced with all editing options, all the time.

Given the approach, about my only wish list item is to be able to see more than one envelope at a time in the MIDI Clip Display. I’m a big fan of using controllers to add expressiveness, and often, I want to relate one controller’s settings to another. I don’t know how many other people are into controllers so much that this would be a limitation, but it makes a difference to me.

I had hoped to get a little further along in the review tonight, but made the “mistake” of deciding to install review copies of Steinberg’s Groove Agent 2, Virtual Bassist, and Virtual Guitarist, and try them out with Live (I was hoping that maybe Live could record Groove Agent 2’s MIDI patterns, like Cubase SX does, but it doesn’t). Well, I got pretty hung up in checking them out, and they made great “test cases” to check out Live’s MIDI functions. Guilty pleasures, anyone? If there’s interest, I’ll do a quick review of these as well when the Live review is finished.

[Marco Raaphorst]

Ableton should implement Propellerhead ReMote. Anyone who has seen Reason 3's controller integration will agree it's the best way of doing this.

ReMote is a standard protocol. Same as for ReWire.

[blue2blue]

Ableton will give you two unlocks, so you can install on laptop and desktop – Ableton relies on the “honor system” that you won’t use them at the same time.

That's refreshing. I wish other companies were as enlightened in that regard. I certainly don't mind, even, if an app won't allow two copies of itself open at the same time on the network. But when they forbid non-simultaneous use on different machines (in this era of portable computing), it's an awkward and intrusive restriction on what seems like ought to be a legitimate use. (Still, I respect the publisher's wishes. My product is 1's and 0's, too.)

[Anderton]

They say timing is everything. Live 5 has added some interesting tweaks that compensate for timing problems, and allow for custom timing changes.

Plug-in Delay Compensation. Okay, pretty much everyone has it these days, as they should: Being able to compensate for timing differences among plug-ins is a prerequisite for working with audio in today’s digital environment. Note that Live doesn’t “cheat” and apply compensation only to tracks, but to the bus returns as well.

“Feel factor” track timing advance/delay control. This is not the same as delay compensation (an automatic process) as you can manually advance or delay a track, in one millisecond increments up to +/- 1 second. This lets you tune out timing differences manually, or “slip” tracks to alter the “feel” of a part (delay to drag, advance to rush). Thankfully, you can type in the delay value if you’re not a fan of dragging on numericals. Click on the Attachment to see the Track Delay parameter (outlined in red).

Nudging and scrubbing. This is a lot of fun, although I must confess, I haven’t always been able to obtain predictable results when nudging with an external MIDI controller. Basically, you nudge Clip playback (MIDI or audio) in increments based on global quantization. I file this under the category of “Tools to make repetitive loops more interesting” as you can add rhythmically intricate syncopations. A small orange dot indicates the playback offset point, while a Revert option places the start point at the beginning of the clip, and a Keep function makes the offset permanent (well, as permanent as anything is in Live – meaning, until you change your mind). Click on the Attachment to see the Nudge section and the little orange dot (both outlined in yellow).

[Anderton]

As you might expect there are lots of little update features, some despite being more utilitarian than anything else are very helpful to have. Such as…

MP3 compatibility. Bring MP3 files into Live – a Good Thing for DJs who have converted a lot of their collection into MP3 format. Live also handles Ogg Vorbis, Ogg FLAC, and FLAC files. However, it has to decompress these files (a mercifully short process, thankfully), write them to disk, and read them from there. The Live manual gives the impression that these files have to stay on disk, but that’s not true: You can pull them from disk into RAM. Of course, this means using up your RAM, but as mentioned earlier, this makes life a lot easier when dealing with laptops that have slow internal drives.

Multi-clip editing. Yup, you can control-click on Clips and adjust the same parameter in all selected Clips (of course, this applies only to common parameters). Most of the time, if parameter values differ, they move together (e.g., if one clip is set to transpose by +0, another one by +3, and you boost them up by +1, the clips will transpose by +1 and +4 respectively). However, once a value reaches its limit, it won’t move any further although other ones will until they hit their limit. From that point on, the values move together. This is a good way to set a bunch of parameters to the same value and edit it for all clips at once: Slam the value all the way in one direction, then set to the desired value. Another cool application is to convert a bunch of Clips into RAM clips, all at the same time.

Clip deactivate. Just as you can de-activate individual notes in the MIDI Note Editor, you can de-activate clips to they don’t launch in Session view, or play back in an Arrangement. A big deal? Not really, but this comes in handy when you want to alter the arrangement without actually deleting Clips.

“Detach” Clip loop markers from the file beginning and end. This may not sound like a big deal, but it allows you to start at the beginning of a Clip, play through to the end of the loop, then jump back to the beginning of the loop (not the start of the file). Before, when you set a loop start point, this also established where playback would begin.

[Anderton]

This feature is definitely one of my favorite features in the update, so it gets its own post. :)

Launching with Locators lets you set locate points at any time in the Arrange view, and freely go to any locate point whenever you like – with the usual quantization option where the switch to the next locator occurs on the next measure boundary, next beat, etc. But you can also trigger these from keyboard or QWERTY keys (or by double-clicking on a locator), which is a blast: instant rearrangement. This is sort of a “playlist on acid,” and I don’t mean the program by Sony…with enough good bits in a tune and enough locators, you could probably keep people entertained for hours.

Click on the Attachment to see the Set Locator button, Prev/Next button, and the locators themselves.

Well, after we cover the new effects and a few more of the more important features, we’ll wrap this up with some conclusions.

[Anderton]

Live is good about not adding “me-too” effects, and the ones in 5 are no exception. The Flanger includes an envelope follower, and a tempo-synched multi-waveform LFO, including sample-and-hold effects. There are two modulatable delay lines, and you can adjust the phase between them, as well as “detune” the speed so that the two LFOs are not frequency-locked. The only bummer: You can’t get through-zero flanging, even if you add the Mono Utility afterward (although increasing width can sound really cool). This flanger is a useful addition that’s not all that much like other flangers.

The Phaser has a complement of controls that’s similar to the Flanger, although you can choose the number of poles (1 - 8). The sound is useful, although at least to my ears, it doesn’t nail the “vintage” flanger sound. But you can always use a multi-stage parametric for that sort of thing.

The Auto Pan surprised me: It’s very, very cool. This is because you can change the phase between the two waveforms controlling amplitude in each channel, as well as the offset (where along the waveform the pan begins). Now, if these were static settings that would still be pretty useful. But when it gets really wonderful (and actually, this applies to most of the Live effects) is when you start controlling parameters with MIDI controllers and varying them in real time.

Another “they’ve done it again” effect, the Saturator, is not your basic distortion yet it’s very easy to obtain great results. You have a choice of clipping options along with drive (as expected), but what makes this thing rock is the set of “color” controls, which allow radical changes to the sound – anything from thin crunches, to booming fuzzes. Good stuff.

But I’ve saved the best until last: Beat Repeat is totally twisted. It captures, then repeats, portions of a signal. How often it captures the signal, the duration, and where it comes from in the file are all adjustable, as are several other parameters. Repeated material can be inserted in place of the signal, gated, or mixed in with the straight sound. I don’t know if this is an effect you master, or whether you just twist the dials and see what happens…but this is like nothing you’ve heard or seen before, with the possible exception of some of Pluggo’s outer fringes.

Want to see what the effects look like? Click on the Attachment to see the Saturator, Flanger, Auto Pan, and Beat Repeat modules.

The Simpler has also sprouted a few new parameters: Separate envelopes for pitch, filter, and amplitude, an attack delay control for the LFO, and glide.

[Anderton]

There are still a few things we haven’t touched on: Preset buttons in each device to make it easy to browse and load presets, instrument presets that now recall any associated effects (although this works only with Live instruments, not others you bring in), a new sound library with lots of presets and Live Clips, and – this is neat – the ability to “unfold” Live sets to see what they comprise, and drag over or audition elements within the Live set. Bottom line: Workflow and ergonomics are better, and they weren’t shabby to begin with.

Okay, we’ve pretty much covered the details…so let’s zoom out and get some perspective.

Software revisions are, in some ways, like remodeling a house. Hopefully the process isn’t too difficult, you end up with something better than before, and don’t crack open a gas main accidentally. Also, the remodeling should keep the house’s aesthetics and flow.

In previous updates, Live added the equivalent of more rooms. Live 5 is more like an update that replaces the existing TV with a big-screen model, adds dimmers to the lights, replaces the old bathtub with a jacuzzi, knocks a new window in the kitchen to let in more light, and attends to numerous details that make the “house” a better place to live. None of the improvements represent dramatic, mind-bending changes – although being able to load entire device chains, do more sophisticated on-the-fly arranging with the launchable locators, and have auto-warp deal with complex files are all welcome and extremely useful. But when you add in features like the improved browser, well-implemented nudge, new effects (Beat Repeat in particular), plug-in delay compensation, and all the other changes, the whole becomes far greater than the sum of its parts.

I also feel that Live has not lost its laser-sharp focus on what makes it great in the first place: A live performance, groove-oriented tool with no real equivalent (although Cakewalk’s latest rev of Project5 comes closer than anything else so far). The clean, efficient interface has not suffered from the additional features, even though functionality has increased significantly.

The big remaining question for some users is “Okay, is Live a real DAW now?” I don’t really understand why this is so important to these people, but the answer is yes…and no. For many, if not most, applications, Live can do all the functions you expect a DAW to do. But if you want to do video or surround, forget it. And there are other, smaller limitations as well, such as fairly basic metering. MIDI is not as well developed as on the “cubeperfonargic” type of DAWs (although Live offers a valid approach), and the “Beats” stretching option – while excellent at making files useable – doesn’t offer the same editing flexibility as acidized or REX-format files. However, Live offers multiple stretch algorithms, which in most cases will more than compensate.

But how much of this really matters? After all, there’s a little thing called “ReWire” that means you can add Live’s capabilities to your DAW of choice if that’s what spins your crank. And if you’re really hung up on this DAW thing, bear in mind that Live’s current functionality handily beats that of most DAWs of only a few years back.

Now to get back to the original question: Is it worth the bucks to upgrade? I’d say a definite yes. All the improvements add up to a smoother workflow and enhanced user experience. That’s important to me – far more important than, say, adding video support (which I presume most Live users don’t find all that vital anyway). If you know your way around Live 4 and you’re totally happy with it, I suppose you can always wait until Live 6 comes along. But if you’re a Live aficionado, it’s hard to imagine not being able to appreciate the plethora of talents that Live 5 brings to the table.

This concludes the main part of the review, but any further questions, comments, or discussion are most definitely welcome. Thank you very much for your participation!

[markwayne]

>And if you’re really hung up on this DAW thing, bear in mind that Live’s current functionality handily beats that of most DAWs of only a few years back.
--------------------------------------------------

Not with regards to MIDI recording/editing! For what it's worth, I'm not hung up on Live becoming a "real DAW." I thought my posts were directed at fleshing out the MIDI support that has already been added so that it is faster to work with MIDI data in Live. Heck, even drag and drop support would help things considerably.

However, let's be honest. Live's MIDI tools are the weak link in an otherwise great package. I can not honestly think of a single sequencer package from ten years ago or more that does not make Live look downright clunky with regards to MIDI recording/editing.

I suppose I'm in the minority here in that I don't use Live for much audio work. I have a "real DAW" for that. I use Live to host my CPU-hungry VST instruments on a second computer in my studio.

[Anderton]

<<I'm not hung up on Live becoming a "real DAW." I thought my posts were directed at fleshing out the MIDI support that has already been added so that it is faster to work with MIDI data in Live. Heck, even drag and drop support would help things considerably.>>

Well, at least you can import SMFs into Live, so if you really need to do intensive MIDI editing you can do so in another program and import it. Or just Rewire it...not that I disagree the MIDI implementation could use some beefing up. I just think that Live has come up with a way of handling MIDI that fits into the "Live way of life," and also, that the MIDI effects make up for some of the implementation's limitations.

<<I can not honestly think of a single sequencer package from ten years ago or more that does not make Live look downright clunky with regards to MIDI recording/editing.>>

Pro Tools and Samplitude come to mind. I'm pretty sure all they could do was import MIDI files and play them back, no significant editing. Ditto Cool Edit (now Audition, and still without a significant MIDI implementation). Same too with Acid and Vegas when it was an audio-only program, although neither was around 10 years ago.

This isn't to say that the MIDI implementation can hold a candle to Logic, Cubase, Performer, Sonar, etc. But they all started as MIDI sequencers, whereas Pro Tools, Samplitude, Live, etc. did not.

BTW Samplitude 8's MIDI implementation is pretty good these days! Much improved over V7.

[rdh3t]

HOW COOL IS ABLETON??? The new 5 beta update online has the "select on launch" via midi and keystroke that I was whining about!!! ITS BACK!!! Now I can shut up and buy 5 and get to looping. Thanks Ableton, Live 5 is on track for being the worlds best looping device with this crucial feature back.

Ryan

[Anderton]

HOW COOL IS ABLETON???

What would be even cooler if they did that just because they read your comments and wanted to make you happy! Now that's what I would call customer service...

Hey I have an idea...let's ask them to put an anti-gravity module in the next rev. Maybe they can figure out how to do it.

[Reitzas]

Craig,

Excellent review of "Live"!

Quick question. I'm working on a song right now in ProTools, using Live through Rewire. I need to make a few edits for radio and I was wondering if there is a simple way to duplicate the edits that I do in the ProTools session, to the Live session?

Thanks! In the meantime, I'll check over at Ableton but I thought I'd ask here first to see if there is an easy way for me to do this.

BTW, I've just registered and I look forward to being a contributer to your forum.

Dave Reitzas
www.reitzas.com

[Anderton]

Hi Dave, it's always an honor to have you stop by (low bow)!

Quick question. I'm working on a song right now in ProTools, using Live through Rewire. I need to make a few edits for radio and I was wondering if there is a simple way to duplicate the edits that I do in the ProTools session, to the Live session?

You can't have one program "mirror" the other (i.e., if you make a change in Pro Tools the file acquires the same change in Live), but I don't think you really need to.

I have not tested Live's rewire capaabilities with Pro Tools, but with Sonar, you can just make whatever edits you want in a Sonar track, then drag the edited version over to Live's arrangement view OR into a clip in the session view. From there you can of course loop, stretch, bend, fold, staple, or mutilate.

Does this do what you want?

BTW isn't rewire great? More props to the prop-heads.

[Reitzas]

Originally posted by Anderton
Hi Dave, it's always an honor to have you stop by (low bow)!



You can't have one program "mirror" the other (i.e., if you make a change in Pro Tools the file acquires the same change in Live), but I don't think you really need to.

I have not tested Live's rewire capaabilities with Pro Tools, but with Sonar, you can just make whatever edits you want in a Sonar track, then drag the edited version over to Live's arrangement view OR into a clip in the session view. From there you can of course loop, stretch, bend, fold, staple, or mutilate.

Does this do what you want?

BTW isn't rewire great? More props to the prop-heads.

Live, especially with Rewire, is one of my favorite creative tools!
More specific to my question is, suppose I have a song in ProTools that Live is 'chasing' via Rewire. In the arrangment window of Live, I have all of my sounds triggered according to the bar numbers that coincide with my ProTools session.
Now let's say I want to remove a 2 bar re-intro before the second verse. The verse started at bar 30 before the edit, . When I remove the 2 bars, the verse now starts at bar 28. However, in Live, the sounds that happened at the top of the verse, still get triggered at bar 30.
Is there an equivalent of a shuffle delete in Live that, after removing bars from the arrangment, would shift everything accordingly?

This may be a simple thing to do and I feel guilty taking up space for my technical questions on your review thread. I guess I could pursue this question in a more appropriate place, like the Ableton's website, but since I started here I might as well finish it here.

Thanks in advance!
Dave Reitzas
www.reitzas.com

[Anderton]

<<Is there an equivalent of a shuffle delete in Live that, after removing bars from the arrangment, would shift everything accordingly?>>

Yes. Set up the "loop braces" around the section you want to delete (e.g., measures 17-21), then go Edit > Cut Time (or type Ctrl-Shift-X). The start of measure 21 will now occur where measure 17 started, and measures 17-21 will be gone.

<<This may be a simple thing to do and I feel guilty taking up space for my technical questions on your review thread.>>

Au contraire! This is what the review thread is about, talking about the product but also, asking questions about it. For someone reading this, being able to do what you want to do might be very important, and finding out it's possible may make them more interested in seeing what Live is about.

[Reitzas]

Originally posted by Anderton
<<Is there an equivalent of a shuffle delete in Live that, after removing bars from the arrangment, would shift everything accordingly?>>

Yes. Set up the "loop braces" around the section you want to delete (e.g., measures 17-21), then go Edit > Cut Time (or type Ctrl-Shift-X). The start of measure 21 will now occur where measure 17 started, and measures 17-21 will be gone.

<<This may be a simple thing to do and I feel guilty taking up space for my technical questions on your review thread.>>

Au contraire! This is what the review thread is about, talking about the product but also, asking questions about it. For someone reading this, being able to do what you want to do might be very important, and finding out it's possible may make them more interested in seeing what Live is about.


Duh!
I knew it was a simple thing, but I was just spacing out and a little distracted by more pressing studio issues at hand. Thanks for answering my question so quickly. I will pay it forward for sure.

Dave Reitzas
www.reitzas.com

[Phil O'Keefe]

Good to see you over here Dave. :cool:

[Marco Raaphorst]

yes, this mirror idea is great. I can imagine that if both audio-files are the same it should be possible, in theory. both programs, Live and ProTools are doing their edits non-distructive. so this is a future idea!

David, you probably slave Live to ProTools, but if you could slave ProTools to Live you could simply record the audio stream of ProTools in a clip or track. This is what I do most of the time using VSTi's: I simply record them as audio-clips in Live while the track is playing. Works super fast! No offline exporting,rendering, with Live you can do it on the fly.

[gigabetz]

I have gone thru the example for justifying beats with elastic audio and I am stumped. Any recommendations would be appreciated. Here's what I do.
I created a chapman stick line in 6/8 time for two bars. I selected the 6/8 time signature in the clip display section and my quantization to 1/32 and push the warp button. What I get is that the bars line up with my notes but only one bar's worth of timing shows up in the clip display window. I try to pull two bars worth of lines so that the beats line up perfectly but then the BPMs are doubled. I am baffled. I tried 'warp from here (set to 100BPM) but that doesn't work either. I tried editing the waveform in Soundforge and it plays perfectly as a loop. It doesn't matter what loop I call up same problem. I just say @#$% it and go with what the program sets it to but it makes me feel dirty : ) If I have two bars I figure I should have two bars worth of elastic bars but I don't. Please help!

[dave hill jr.]

Originally posted by gigabetz
I have gone thru the example for justifying beats with elastic audio and I am stumped. Any recommendations would be appreciated. Here's what I do.
I created a chapman stick line in 6/8 time for two bars. I selected the 6/8 time signature in the clip display section and my quantization to 1/32 and push the warp button. What I get is that the bars line up with my notes but only one bar's worth of timing shows up in the clip display window. I try to pull two bars worth of lines so that the beats line up perfectly but then the BPMs are doubled. I am baffled. I tried 'warp from here (set to 100BPM) but that doesn't work either. I tried editing the waveform in Soundforge and it plays perfectly as a loop. It doesn't matter what loop I call up same problem. I just say @#$% it and go with what the program sets it to but it makes me feel dirty : ) If I have two bars I figure I should have two bars worth of elastic bars but I don't. Please help!


Hi Giga,

It is definitely advisable to have a two bar loop marked as such in Live. You are certainly right here! Here are a couple of my best hints:

• Next time . . . ':)' Record the loop along with the click track so that you are already in 6 / 8 time. Live will cut the loop for you and save you all this work.

• If the loop or audio recording has already been recorded and you are importing it into Live, play the clip once or twice without being warped (deselect warp) and then tap the tempo into Live (via the tap tempo button). This will get you close to your loops original tempo and make the figuring easier. Once you’ve got a tempo that makes sense, turn warping on again and make sure the Orig. Tempo is near your tapped tempo. You may have to enter this value in manually. For your two bar loop example, you should have 1.1.1 to 3.1.1 marked as the loop region.

• Live 5 features Auto-Warp and as Craig mentioned works quite well however I find that it helps if you know a little about your audio. ½ time and double time buttons can be found in the clip settings and are great for adjustments similar to what you mention. Note the 6/8 tempo in the clip view functions only as a visual reference so you might need to adjust it to 12/8 or 3/8 for your own visual aid.

I’ve attached a clip of a loop and made it constrain to 2 bars of 6/8 to show you an example. Also, one last thought: I think 1/32 transient detection is too much for most things unless you are playing really fast on that Chapman Stick!

Let me know how this goes . . . and if this was helpful.

All my best,
Dave

[gigabetz]

Dave, you answered my questions perfectly and you hit the nail on the head.
I was importing files into Ableton and it figures the first song I was attempting had to have multiple time signatures running at the same time. I never thought of using the tap button but I will definately use that next time. Also, I needed to know that the time signature is a suggestion and a guidline not necessarily factual or idylic. I have another question, I am a newbie but count on me for finding quirks. Ableton is cool because it is so logical and works the way a musician thinks. Am I imagining things? I noticed that the warp editor behaves differently in Arrangement View than it does in Session View. Thanks Dave javascript:smilie(':cool:')
cool

[Anderton]

I'd also like to give some public props to Dave for his participation in this thread...above and beyond the call of duty!

I hope Live 5 is a huge success for you. And as a way to say "thanks," please feel free to use this forum as a sounding board. For example, you can post polls. If you're debating about whether or not to include a particular feature or how to handle implementing that feature, you won't find a better group of people to ask.

Thanks again Dave, and please pass my regards along to the hard-working people at Ableton. I know the program is very close to their hearts.

[dave hill jr.]

Thanks Craig! No problem at all.

As for Giga's second question, can you explain what you're trying to do exactly or noticing in terms of behavior?

I'm not sure what you mean. There should be no difference in the way that warp markers behave in Session or Arrangement Views. A clip is a clip in other words . . . but hey, maybe I missed something.

Cheers,
Dave

[AMIEL]

HI I WANT A PROGRAM THAT HANDLES LOOPS ALMOST AS EASY AS ACID DOES, BUT THAT IS MORE STABLE AND THAT THE AUDIO FIDELITY IS BETTER!

I WANT TO KNOW THAT WITH LIVE 5 ALLOWS YOU TO HAVE DIFFERENT WINDOWS TO USE IT WITH 2 MONITORS?

HOW GOOD IS THE MIDI?

ALLOWS YOU TO DETERMINE HOW MANY OUTPUTS YOU CAN HAVE FROM VSTIs THAT HAVE MULTIPLE OUTPUTS AS BATTERY? CAN I REDUCE THEM TO 2 O 4 OUTPUTS?

HOW GOOD IS TO MIX ON LIVE5, HAVE FEATURES AS BUSSES, INSERTS, PRE, POST?

HOW GOOD IS USING VSTiS AND OTHER PLUG INS?
ACCEPT AUTOMATIONS TO OTHERS PLUG INS O VSTiS?
.
ANY OTHER PROGRAM THAT YOU RECCOMEND MAYBE?

THANKS!!

REUVEN AMIEL

[Myshell]

I just recently upgraded to Live 5.

I was wondering...can you control third party soft synths/plug-ins with a controller like you can the native synths/plugs?

I scanned through the 'help' files but couldn't find anything. Of course, I am a little blonde...so it could very well be there.

Thanks,

Myshell:D

[AMIEL]

Same with Acid. When vs. 4 came out with MIDI and VSTi support it almost killed the product. I never heard so many complaints about a bad implimentation of a new feature. Maybe they got it right with 5 but I am almost afraid to look.
]

WELL I AM MOVING FROM ACID 5!!

TOO MANY BUGS, POOR AND UNSUFUL MIDI, TOO MANY CRASHES, NOT STABLE AT ALL.......U NEED TOO MUCH POWER AND IS ALSO NOT A GOOD DAW.....CAN BE ONLY GREAT FOR USING LOOPS

I AM THINKING TO MOVE TO ABLETON LIVE 5
USE PROTOOLS FOR MIXING O REWIRE LIVE 5/REASON TO PROTOOLS......
ANYWAY I THINK LIVE 5 CAN BE GREAT FOR MIXING AND USING IT AS A GREAT DAW TOO.
BUT I WANT A PROGRAM WHEN I CAN BE FOCUSED IN MAKING MUSIC, HAVING GREAT TOOLS AND FEATURES FOR THAT!!
AND NOT WORRY ABOUT CRASHES AS HAPPEN WITH ACID PRO 5.
I NED A PROGRAM TOMAKE ARRAGEMENTS AND MUSIC , BUT IS AFAIRLY GOOD DAW TOO!!

WHAT DO U THINK?

I THINK SONAR PRETENDED TO BE A MIX OF PROTOOLS AND ACID...BUT THE WORKFLOW IS NOT VERY SIMPLE!! IS SOMETIMES ANOYING THAT FOR DOING SIMPLE APPLICATIONS U NEED TO OPEN MAY WINDOWS!!

THANKS!
REUVEN

[dave hill jr.]

Originally posted by Myshell
I just recently upgraded to Live 5.

I was wondering...can you control third party soft synths/plug-ins with a controller like you can the native synths/plugs?

I scanned through the 'help' files but couldn't find anything. Of course, I am a little blonde...so it could very well be there.

Thanks,

Myshell:D

Hi Myshell,

You may have figured this out by now, but you can control most VST plug-ins with a MIDI controller. The key is to unfold the plug-in (using the arrow in the upper left hand corner of the plug-in) as this picture shows and then use Live's MIDI Map Mode to assign the control.

Hope this is helpful.

Best,
Dave

[dave hill jr.]

Originally posted by AMIEL
HI I WANT A PROGRAM THAT HANDLES LOOPS ALMOST AS EASY AS ACID DOES, BUT THAT IS MORE STABLE AND THAT THE AUDIO FIDELITY IS BETTER!

REUVEN AMIEL

Hi Reuven,

I may be a little biased but I think you will not be disappointed with Live 5. Please check earlier pages in this forum for more info / comparisons between Live and other DAWs / Acid Pro.

One thing we don't have is dual monitor support yet for Live's two windows. You can however place third party plug-ins on another monitor.

Speaking to your questions:
STABLE?
dave sez "Yes!"

AUDIO FIDELITY IS BETTER? Live supports 16, 24 and 32 bit audio.

2 MONITORS?
dave sez "not yet"

HOW GOOD IS THE MIDI?
I am not sure about Acid's MIDI these days, anyone care to comment? Live's MIDI is different from the standard approach. Some folks in this thread say it isn't enough, some say it is plenty. Perhaps check our demo at www.ableton.com/downloads

ALLOWS YOU TO DETERMINE HOW MANY OUTPUTS YOU CAN HAVE FROM VSTIs THAT HAVE MULTIPLE OUTPUTS AS BATTERY? CAN I REDUCE THEM TO 2 O 4 OUTPUTS?
dave sez Yes!

HOW GOOD IS TO MIX ON LIVE5, HAVE FEATURES AS BUSSES, INSERTS, PRE, POST?
Our routing is simple, flexible and can even be set up while you listen / playback. Yes you can do that stuff (pre/post returns and create inserts).

HOW GOOD IS USING VSTiS AND OTHER PLUG INS?
dave sez "very good but you should always make sure you have the latest patch of your third party plug-in and try at home before you take the stage"

ACCEPT AUTOMATIONS TO OTHERS PLUG INS O VSTiS?
er, do you mean FROM other VSTi plug-ins? You can automate plug-ins in Live and I hear Live can accept MIDI from other plug-ins but I haven't tried this myself. Perhaps try our forum? Anyone want to help Reuven get loop crazy?

ANY OTHER PROGRAM THAT YOU RECCOMEND MAYBE?
hmmm. . . well, for loops there are lots of fun tools out there but from the questions you are asking you are looking for a DAW I think. I'll leave this one to the forum . . .

You also mention: IS SOMETIMES ANOYING THAT FOR DOING SIMPLE APPLICATIONS U NEED TO OPEN MAY WINDOWS!
I would say that Live's limit of 2 views will help you a lot here.

Good luck on the music project,
dave

[Myshell]

Thanks, Dave.

I'll give that a try. I assume that will work with Audio Units as well.

Thanks,

Myshell:D

[Anderton]

<<I may be a little biased but I think you will not be disappointed with Live 5.>>

I'm not biased and I agree. It's a hot program.

<< One thing we don't have is dual monitor support yet.>>

Which should be on the to-do list for L6!

<<STABLE?
dave sez "Yes!">>

So does Craig.

<<AUDIO FIDELITY IS BETTER?>>

See the comments in this thread re: the importance of choosing the right stretching algorithm in order to preserve audio quality.

<<I am not sure about Acid's MIDI these days, anyone care to comment?>>

I prefer Live's implementation, it's more oriented toward real time pattern creation. I would consider it on a par with Project5's, which I also think has outstanding MIDI pattern functionality.

<<Perhaps check our demo at www.ableton.com/downloads>>

Good advice!

<<dave sez "very good but you should always make sure you have the latest patch of your third party plug-in and try at home before you take the stage">>

Dave is right.

<<You also mention: IS SOMETIMES ANOYING THAT FOR DOING SIMPLE APPLICATIONS U NEED TO OPEN MAY WINDOWS!
I would say that Live's limit of 2 views will help you a lot here. >>

Sonar has greatly improved the MIDI implementation in Sonar 5, you can now edit MIDI "in-place" in a track.

[dave hill jr.]

Craig was too fast for me but I will edit my post above next. Live does support two monitors in that you can drag a third party plug-in to a second monitor. At present Live does not allow Session and Arrangement to be split to two screens. I can't promise when or how, but this feature has been on our list for some time.

cheers,
Dave

[gigabetz]

To all of you who are wondering which one is the cats meow Ableton or Acid I can tell you that each was invented with a different purpose in mind. Acid is outstanding in its design and simplicity and is very good for loops and raw recording. Ableton is a musicians tool and I found that it sounds better. It was quite evident to me that the designers were trying to make a super-tool for musicians and not technicians. I can tell you this. After re-importing some tracks back into Acid from Ableton, my loops were perfect. The fact that it understands ReCycle means no matter what kind of loop you throw at Ableton you can perform magic with it.
Acid is very flexible for editing with but it isn't what I call Computer Aided Composing like Ableton, where Acid is more of a Killer digital tape splicer. Hope it helps!

[AMIEL]

Do u know if Ableton support Daws with Dual processors?

if not , how they will perform?

anybody there using it on a dual procesor DAW?
Thanks

[AMIEL]

hello! what about Live % ...can support dual processors? if not how can be the performance?
also can support windows XP 64 ?
if not how can be the performance?

[EnGee]

Hello there,
Composing music is not my profession, but it is a hobby. I do compose some short melodies for flash movies when designing a web site. I'm also new to Live world. So, I'm from this audience (not a pro, new to live, home use, some pro work for flash). Except for the last one, i think it is not a small audience and it is growing right?
I have the demo (Live 5) and is really impressive. It is already in the top of my wish list and as soon as i get it i will abandon Sonar (what a relief!).
In my opinion, Live 5 is the best 'studio' overall. The interface and GUI design is fantastic and the stability is great. Very responsive (what language you used?! Binary?!) and so organized and easy to use while i lost so many inspirations with Sonar, just because i wanted to edit this 'thing', going to the menu, reading the manual, going back to the interface. Repeat this procedure for two or three times and I said goodbye to this sweet feeling or inspiration I had. Till now i can't figure how to select more than one note in the midi editor while dragging the mouse over them? (i know i must ctrl + click, for every note!!). Cuabase is little bit better but i had stability issue. The two 'big' ones didn't allow me to insert an audio affect (VST effect) into a midi track. I must use bus ..etc. In Live (and Tracktion) i can. Tracktion is a second choice but it lacks drum editor, Live is more responsive and has the Session view, but Tracktion is less expensive. I can go on why i consider Live better than the others, but there are equally important things to write.
I didn't consider Live in the past because i thought it is only for live performance. Live 4 changed my mind but one feature was missing is the Freeze function. Now Live 5 has it and many more features, it is an ideal one for me, well almost.
I wish there is a small view of video (i can see it in the info space with a button or a tab) supporting swf files (flash movies).
Some (not me) wish there is a staff view (or editor) and i can see it also in the bottom panel with some tab to switch to.
I don't know why, but i feel i will see these things in Live 7! without affecting live performers I hope.
Last, i felt so good when i read the great care for customers and the nice comments from 'Dave' and 'Kid'. The comments reflect nice and modest personalities which i adore.

[Anderton]

I use Live on a dual processor system, and it works fine. I'm not sure if it increases performance.

As far as I know Live is not designed for X64.

[dave hill jr.]

Wow, Thanks EnGee for the nice remarks.

You can rubberband select notes in the MIDI editor when the pencil tool is off. Apple (Ctrl) + B.

As for X64, we do not support at this time.

As for dual processor, I understand we put the audio playback on one processor and video demands on the second for both macs and PCs. Please chime in on our forum with what you'd like to see in the future. www.ableton.com/forum

Cheers,
Dave

[AMIEL]

Hi! My question is that is ableton live 5 will work anyway on windows xp 64 .... i mean will catch 32 bit by default? will work with the same stability and performace than a regular windows xp? o simple will not work at all??


Thanks!!

[EnGee]

Originally posted by dave hill jr.


You can rubberband select notes in the MIDI editor when the pencil tool is off. Apple (Ctrl) + B.



Thanks Dave, But it doesn't apply on Sonar ;) Sorry if i gave the impression that i was talking about Live.
With Live is very easy to 'guess' how it is working without even reading the manual. Well at least for my needs.

[Anderton]

Okay everybody, I'm about to close the thread, I think we have all our comments/questions in on Ableton Live 5. But before signing off, note that Live 5.0.2 is now available; it has quite a few bug fixes and some enhancements.

And thanks again to Ableton's Dave Hill. At AES he said "Those Pro Reviews are a lot of work..." Well if it's any consolation, they are for me too! But thanks much for being a standup guy.

[dave hill jr.]

Thanks Craig,

It was also a lot of fun!

BIG THANKS for all the ideas and feature requests as well as the positive review. It’s been really great to hear from the legions of Craig fans and I know I’ll keep watching the other threads on this forum to keep up on what is going on.

By the way, if you already have Live and are looking for the 5.0.2 update, you can grab the latest version of Live quickly by opening Live and selecting "Check For Updates" from the help menu. You will be taken right to our website for the update without having to enter a serial number again.

Love to hear how the fixed Select On Launch via MIDI is working for the loop cognoscenti!

All best and happy music making!
dave

[maneco]

I want to say thanks for this great thread,and post some pictures of me playing live with LIVE5

http://community.webshots.com/user/manecolooper

Best!

[rerdavies]

Probably a silly question, but I've searched and searched, and I can't find a definitive answer on the web.

I'm currently playing with Ableton Live 4.1 Lite, which came bundled with a firewire m-audio adapter I just bought.

I'm tempted to jump to Live 5, but the midi editing in 4.1 Lite is just not going to cut it for me. Having to put every note right on a grid line isn't something I can live with, although the performance features are very very tempting. (Intended application is live nu-jazz; I'm a jazz guitarist, currently working with cubase and an extensive custom software rack).

I've searched and searched, and I can't find any evidence that midi editing improves in full Live 5. Am I wrong?

(btw, earlier comments that I'll be facing $250 a year in upgrade costs if I lock into live are a big turnoff for me too).

[apostate9]

.

So...what do you think, Live users? Do you wish it had more DAW-like features? [/B]

Yes. Absolutely. Music authoring tools should target musicians, not just DJs. That seems like it should go without saying somehow...

:-)

[jjbraunius]

Craig - another big problem I've had with live besides the 2 paid updates per year is the fact that they are still not incorporating meter changes in their software.

The built in drum sample looked like a great option to do some prog. rock arrangements and after sweating midi notation for 3+ weeks to my utter dismay I ran into the meter/tempo problem.

Basically Live 4 (and what I understand 5) won't do a meter change, so if most of your song is in say 4/4 at 120 bpm and you want to go to 7/8 at 160 bpm - tough luck, Live just won't do it.

I wanted to bring your attention to this as none of the reviews of Live have mentioned this so far.

Compared to Live, say even a cutdown version of Cubase LE handles this like a champ.

[Anderton]

Correct up to a point - you set the time signature for the song as a whole and cannot alter it partway through.

However, you can change the time signature for individual clips. So if you changed to, say, 3/4 at measure 120, you can just start inserting clips in 3/4 at that point. It won't look pretty on the timeline but it'll at least give the intended musical results. Maybe Live 6...

[Anderton]

And speaking of Live 6, it showed up! Maybe Ableton will want a Pro Review on it...

[the stranger]

Originally posted by markwayne
>Please explain to me, why is there a Notepad program and why is their this program called Word?

Notepad is for html. I'm not sure what Word does. I opened it once and didn't feel like beating it with a hammer to make it do what I wanted...which probably wasn't anything...you know how you get that Hey, I got a a program here in the list I ain't tried! I bet it's totally cool, though. :cool:

This is great review, everyone! :thu:

Originally posted by Anderton
Auto-Warp is a gem...

...Impressive? Very much so.

I need to try Live. It's gotta beat cutting a song into individual bars. :eek:

I've done it and it ain't fun. :bor: :D

Originally posted by Anderton
What would be even cooler if they did that just because they read your comments and wanted to make you happy! Now that's what I would call customer service...

Hey I have an idea...let's ask them to put an anti-gravity module in the next rev. Maybe they can figure out how to do it.

That's kinda esoteric...we need something practical...like time travel! :D

[GRIZ]

:thu:

[Myshell]

is 6 worth the jump?

[zeronyne]

Absolutely. The UI improvements alone are worth it.