Ableton Forum

Not having a rant or anything as in general i'm really happy with Live 9....but i'm pretty disappointed with the new envelope curves.
maybe i was expecting something more akin to the way curves are handled in design packages.
for example say i have a straight line that i want to bend somewhere. the most intuitive way would be to grab where i want the bend to occur and simply drag it up or down, thus creating the bend equally on both sides. unfortunately this is not the case in Live. First you can't bend a straight line (eh?)
secondly when you get the option of bending, Live automatically decides where to put the point in which the curve bends.
Sorry if i'm not explaining myself very clearly but if you try it out, i think/hope you get where i'm coming from.


So yeah, i'd be really interested to find out other users thoughts on this.

Cheers

Agree, not sure why ableton have only implemented such basic control, just seems like half a job to me. its not an especially difficult thing to do.

Yeah it's really badly implemented. The weird thing is the curves that they already had in the arrangement view for (cross)fades make much more sense: they at least have a smooth start and end of the curve. With these new automation curves, you can only have one end smooth. Why would anyone want that? You have to put another automation point in the middle so that you can manually bend the other half of the curve in the opposite direction to get a "smooth in, smooth out" curve. It's just a non-feature now

And yes, every graphics program in existence that works with curves in some way has had way better implementation of curves for years, but not a single audio sequencer that I know of has ever tried and just copy that behaviour. They're all trying to reinvent the wheel and come up with really silly, limited solutions.

This is what you need:

Simple bezier curve with handles on the points, so you can easily make ANY curve YOU want, not just one curve that Ableton decided everybody wants.

Or at least something like this (Reaper) where you can choose from a few different curve behaviours:



(oh yeah it also snaps to grid and you can type point values )

Just to illustrate: Live's "fades" (that they already had) and New Feature: curved automation.

yeah its better than it was but selling it as one of the main new features, hmm well its almost embarrassing. It not something i would use a huge amount so not overly bothered but I'm really surprised about ableton's approach to this & the browser.

edit: ok yes crossfader maybe was better in prev versions.

snakedogman wrote: And yes, every graphics program in existence that works with curves in some way has had way better implementation of curves for years, but not a single audio sequencer that I know of has ever tried and just copy that behaviour. They're all trying to reinvent the wheel and come up with really silly, limited solutions.

In graphics programs what matters is how the result looks.
But in DAWs getting automation values from the fancy looking curve may use more CPU than from curves done in another way.

That doesn't really make sense. If you can get automation data from one curve, you can get it from any curve, it's not gonna be any more or less cpu intensive. Next you're gonna tell me that typing values for envelope points is too cpu intensive.

Anyway, it's not a deal breaker. I'm just amazed that after all the people asking for curved automation, Ableton finally actually decided "ok we're gonna add this as a feature" and then this is what they came up with. If you're gonna do it like this, why bother at all?

It was mentioned in the beta, with a lot of people commenting on the topic. For some reason they applied a constraint on the orgin point of the curve, on the x axis.

The cross fade curves ( which exist since L8 ) have the type of control we need to shape the curve, but for some reason they decided we need all these other automation curves to be worse .
A very weird decision.

Angstrom wrote: A very weird decision.

indeed

I'm glad i'm not the only one. thanks for your thoughts on this.
surely this can't take a lot of programming to implement (I remember Deluxe Paint 3 on the Amiga had this feature!)

snakedogman wrote:That doesn't really make sense. If you can get automation data from one curve, you can get it from any curve, it's not gonna be any more or less cpu intensive. Next you're gonna tell me that typing values for envelope points is too cpu intensive.

Have you done ANY programming?
If *no* DAW uses the kind of advanced curves you'd like to have (I'm trusting you on this, because I haven't used most DAWs),
do you think the reason is that DAW developers just can't do it?

My guess is that it has to do with performance when audio is being played.

you are right it would effect performance, i do think handles on curves are not neccesary. We just need enough control for the feature to actually be useful.

+1. ableton should work that out..

The existing "fade" curve is the correct type. The new curve is the same, only that the handle is not visible and there is an constraint on the x axis. They could release this constraint and it would become the same as the fade curves.