Top 5 things I will regret after going from Live8 to Live9

[timday]

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I used to hate the browser too but I've grown to prefer it. I especially appreciate the preview of instrument sounds that you now get.

You mean the preview that only works for factory presets, but not if you tweak something and save it?
I don't really use factory presets myself (other than some strings and piano), but for those that do I'm sure thats a nice feature : to listen to Abletons stock content. I think that was their target market with this release and that browser. Browsing their content in the way they want you to, and hearing their content.

As I'm not a big factory / bought preset guy I don't miss this feature in L8

Well, I think it indexes to prerecorded .wavs or something, rather than playing the instrument. If that's how it works it's hard to see how it would do the same for user presets unless it took a few seconds to generate and save a .wav each time you saved a preset. I bet you'd find that pretty annoying, pretty fast.

edit/ I had a rant here but, you know, whatever. If you want to work from an initialised patch every time I guess that's your prerogative. I like to find a preset close to the sound I want and tweak it from there, and the browser helps with this enormously. Your comment about biasing it towards their stock content makes no sense to me though. I've already bought the instruments, why would Ableton care if I use their presets or tweak them myself?

[Angstrom]

I don't mean it to be insulting, not at all. Its just that some people work one way and some work another.
You commented on the previews so it's obvious you favour the factory presets, and that's good for you - you get a go at the new feature for that. That's all. If you never used them you would never have heard them. As I said : user presets don't get previews.

In beta I suggested a way that user presets could get previews. I wont repeat myself here. I don't plan on participating any future Ableton betas as the effort expended contributes nothing. It seems dissenting voices are ignored, and any issues raised seem to be treated as attacks to be defended rather than issues to be noted as input, and filed dispassionately.

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My comment about the stock presets is because (based on outcomes)I can only picture their internal discussion like this:

SPEC MEETING GUYS ! We need to bring our customers attention more to the add-on content and the added value it brings. We are competing against Apple Loops on one side and NI's sound banks on the other, we hear no end of "GarageBand with all its content is better than Live". Our partners feel that their affiliations could be better promoted by us, be made more findable, and be put into findable categories more easily, perhaps automatically, and so on. So driving more sales of packs. So what's the solution?
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How about : we redesign the browser so that our content and our partners packs are installed directly into pre-formatted categories, that everyone will use. We'll determine which are the correct categorisations for everything and then make a big authoritative hierarchic tree and categorise everything we can. Then - put some main filters in the browser with the top 5 things which everybody looks for.

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Great solution for everybody!


A User :

• Um where do I put my content? And how do I get it to show in these new categories? question asked on beta
• How do I import my existing content (beta link )
• How do I get my presets to have previews (beta link)

Ableton : Do you really want to do that? We'll have to work something out. You can create folders with the correct names if you want, please determine them from the folder structure. Although user defined categories cannot be made. We'll have to get back to you on the details. um ...

And so ... just prior to Live 9's launch, and late in the public beta, a system is hastily implemented to allow user content to show in the main category filters with something more like logic than luck.
It may have been that a plan was in place for this all along, but damn it did not seem that way.

9.0b64 Release Notes When saving presets into the User Library by clicking the save button on a device, Live will no longer save the presets as a flat list in the User Library's root directory, but rather creates a folder structure which is identical with the preset's source context. Example: If you save an Operator preset with the name foo.adv that origins from 'Categories -> Instruments -> Operator -> Bass', then the saved preset goes into '~/User Library/Presets/Instruments/Operator/Bass/foo.adv'.

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What was the focus of this new browser?
this browser appears to be have been designed to meet the requirement : how do we wish to display and categorise content, and then play previews of this known content? Rather than answering the question : how can we empower our users to store, and retrieve their disparate content through powerful customisable categorisation tools which meet their varied needs?

When it was suggested that users might generate content, and might have their own unique (and weird) requirements for storing, retrieving and accessing their own content it was greeted with great shock and amazement.

When some users said that the new arbitrary hierarchic categorisation did not match their own working practices, those users were told in no uncertain terms that they were wrong, and should either adapt to the new system, or just be quiet.


What should have happened?
If you, right now, designed a browser for Samples, Songs, Presets, Virtual instruments - what would it have? Consider it is intended to meet the highly varied needs of Producers / Performers / DJs / Studio people / Artists ... just imagine what might that focus on?
Just think : what would you include in a media & content management system designed for so many different usage types: on stage, studio, etc. and by so many different creative people.
Would it be customisable? Would it focus on allowing user-centric shortcuts? Would your new browser show MP3 tags to DJs? Perhaps it might tell a DJ the bpm of a song? Would your design for a browser allow collections, and groupings of content "Live presets for Berlin", "Live set 2" , .. that sort of thing. Might it allow users to show and hide lots of information, and filter on that information?

All this is possible with a database. It's just a choice how the data is represented on screen.

A choice was made.

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tl;dr not a fan of this browser

[madlab]

My main gripe with 9 is how you can't go anyway on the computer with the browser to grab a file without adding and indexing the appropriate folder first. I wouldn't give it all up and go back to 8 though.

True. Forgot this one.

[Michael Hatsis]

Been using Live since version 1.5. There are so many things bother me about Live 9...
Where to start

Single click automation is my biggest gripe. I do alot of chopping in the arranger and this really gets in the way. Always thinks I want to select automation instead of the clip:

Here is a video describing what I'm talking about.:
https://www.dropbox.com/s/n9zadpp1da4us ... mation.mov

also, with the new single click automation feature, it just seems more annoying to edit automation in general, like for instance when selecting a single automation point, for some reason I usually get a range of points selected.

Fixed Grid hides itself in the arranger when zoomed out.
basically, if ou have a fixed grid setting in the arranger, say 1/8th notes, then zoom out, the grid shows something like 1 bar....However, things still snap to 8th notes. Now I always have to zoom in when I move something and check if it is where I wanted it to be- or I have to zoom in first, see the actual grid, then move the clip. waste of time

The browser, is not finished. I like some of the things that they are doing with it, but it is not ready to go. Also, to me if something is 'read only', usually it is because of poor design

Midi editor stuff - the "smart snapping" is distractingand sometimes doesn't actually snap to the grid when you get there. also, when highlighting midi notes, deactivated notes look very similar to activated ones. confusing... ( oh, if anyone is interested, in Bitwig studio, you can turn the smart snapping off )

Lastly, the whole session recording thing is something I never cared about. It also kind of takes away some of the simplicity of the program. This one isn't that big of a deal as I am aware that it was one of the most requested features- but things have changed because of it, and I like the Live 8 way better.

All of these things were brought up in the beta and still remain in the program...They all could easily be solved with an option/preference. But ableton know the best way for all of us to work and we should adopt that workflow.

So, all in all, I use Live 9 for work, I am an ableton instructor at a trade school ( i have not purchased it- and before you ask, no it was not pirated either ), but for real world work where I need to get stuff done and not have the program get in the way, I use Live 8.

Hope that helps.

[H20nly]

Fixed Grid hides itself in the arranger when zoomed out.
basically, if ou have a fixed grid setting in the arranger, say 1/8th notes, then zoom out, the grid shows something like 1 bar....However, things still snap to 8th notes. Now I always have to zoom in when I move something and check if it is where I wanted it to be- or I have to zoom in first, see the actual grid, then move the clip. waste of time

this is pretty lame. agreed.

[ezelkow1]

(large browser explanation) .....

+1 to all of that

It just struck me as odd during the beta phase. Normally when you see a company go and redesign a whole browsing system they usually at least somewhat try to focus on the end user and helping them in some way. Take all the NI redesigns, sure it pissed some people off, but personally I found the bank categorization and the new stuff they added to be of great help TO ME in organizing my own stuff while it still empowered NI to put things where they felt they should be. It also provided a fairly minimal impact to the majority of users beyond running their existing presets through a built in conversion program (though a batch editing method would still be nice)

It seemed like very little thought was put in to the browser and navigating it, coming from an engineers perspective. The moment you say 'lets throw everything in a database', that opens up worlds of possibilities for browsing and organization over a file system layout, but almost none of the advantages of this were taken. There could be user customizable browsing, categories, filters, tags, out the yingyang, and none of that was done.

From personal experience at my work with an embedded product, we had been using our own file system layout/custom structures on older products. A few years ago we rebuilt alot of the new product line from the ground up and one of the first things added was a database for user file organization. Immediately following that was all sorts of user customizable organization for display of files and searching of files because its just freaking obvious and simple to do at that point

[3osc]

So the browser seems to be the main problem...

BTW : is it possible to disable indexing ? I don't want Live to index all my 126 thousands of .wav files (lots of gigabytes)...

Is it possible to disable all indexing features?

No. The indexing will take a long time, so if you're planning on trying 9, just come to peace with that fact. Let it work overnight or something.

I don't regret 9. There are some things I don't like, but that was true in 8 as well. I'm fully used to 9 at this point, and when Live X Pro comes out with a bunch of whiz-bang new features that no one asked for, I'll have to get used to that just the same (in order to use the 4 or 5 real improvements they offer).

There are as many different opinions on this as there are users on the board. You'll never get anywhere trying to weigh them all. The only solution is to try the demo and see what you like and don't like.

It seemed like very little thought was put in to the browser and navigating it, coming from an engineers perspective. The moment you say 'lets throw everything in a database', that opens up worlds of possibilities for browsing and organization over a file system layout, but almost none of the advantages of this were taken. There could be user customizable browsing, categories, filters, tags, out the yingyang, and none of that was done.

I'm hugely bothered by this, more than anything. Why no tags? No custom sorting? I'd like to set up a custom search in the browser for anything with "kick" in the name, so no matter where in the library the file is, a kick will appear in that selection. Or a selection to show just my top 10 most used AU presets. Melodic instruments, rhythmic basses, recordings with the name *tic, and wav files that I added on 5/28 between 10:54 and 15:39, excluding those that I converted to 8 and 16 bit - kinda wonky stuff, but examples of what would make my life a lot easier. So much wasted potential...

[tone61]

I don't know how to prevent indexing, but it's probably a good idea to let it index first when you first start using Live9.
Later index updates will be faster.
So before really using Live9, start it and then go to sleep or something so the first indexing won't cause big delays to your real use.

[re:dream]

We need to bring our customers attention more to the add-on content and the added value it brings. We are competing against Apple Loops on one side and NI's sound banks on the other, we hear no end of "GarageBand with all its content is better than Live". Our partners feel that their affiliations could be better promoted by us, be made more findable, and be put into findable categories more easily, perhaps automatically, and so on. So driving more sales of packs.

If that was their strategy, it's not working. If you are not interested in buying packs, how would reorganizing the browser change your behaviour?

In any case, I *don't* experience the new browser as making their content more findable than mine. My own presets are showing up through their filters and in the Sounds Category without a problem, so they are exactly as available as the stuff that comes on Live Packs.

It's just a matter of organizing the User library correctly.

[timday]

I'd also mention another feature which probably makes no diffrence to you but a big one to me.

I work in education so we have a lot of machines which, ideally, we'd like to use with multiple user accounts. With Live 8, if we try this, every time a student uses a machine for the first time, Ableton copies the library into their user account. All 25 GB or so of it. This takes a long time and is frustrating, and rapidly fills up the hard drive.

We tried a script to stop that happening but it wasn't ideal and we had to keep fiddling around with which folders to target. Eventually we settled on having a common "student" account on these machines but this isn't ideal either as it has security implications, and also we had to ask students not to crete, alter or save presets as the ibrary was held in common and would alter for all the other users.

Now in user accounts, it's just the user library that copies across, each user can have their own preset bank, it's much better.

tl;dr much better for multiple users.

[erikomic]

When it was suggested that users might generate content, and might have their own unique (and weird) requirements for storing, retrieving and accessing their own content it was greeted with great shock and amazement.

When some users said that the new arbitrary hierarchic categorisation did not match their own working practices, those users were told in no uncertain terms that they were wrong, and should either adapt to the new system, or just be quiet.

I got used to live 9 browser (in fact I moved all of live 8 lib to 9). Hard time, some broken links but it's fine with me now.
My next demand would be how to hide "categories" wich is just taking place and I don't really use since it's not "refinable"... but I must be one of the "wrong" user generating its own content... I wish "categories would appear only when making a search query and would be named "refining filters"... with VST, audio units, ... and that the filters would be customisable...
"Categories" is just a strange name that lets people think there are full of duplicates...
I personnaly either do'nt have a clue of what is the name of the thing I'm looking for or just happens to know exactly where is what I'm looking for so this little mess of search refining tools just isn't really meeting my needs.
I only use it if I need somethink generic like "piano" or "strings"...

The main drawback is that you cannot browse your computer if you haven't dragged some folder in "place" and each time I put my extenal USB recorder to import some sounds, it's faster to expell the folder from places then reimport it than wait the content gets automatically indexed (don't know how much time this can take, but I'm not ready to start the experiment..."

But I don't regret much from Live 8.

[solovox]

I am LIVID that they have removed the UNDO functionality of Record Quantization!! WHAT THE LIVING FUCK?? Being able to hit Ctrl-Z (or in my case a Midi command that sent CtrlZ) on-stage to Undo the quantization for a clip I just made...or not...was critical.

To remove this amazing feature (that I've bragged about to my students for years, btw) for the sake of PUSH (don't get me started) is just criminal. Almost considering going to back to 8.

[solovox]

Not that I'm angry or anything.

[ikeaboy]

I am LIVID that they have removed the UNDO functionality of Record Quantization!! WHAT THE LIVING FUCK?? Being able to hit Ctrl-Z (or in my case a Midi command that sent CtrlZ) on-stage to Undo the quantization for a clip I just made...or not...was critical.

To remove this amazing feature (that I've bragged about to my students for years, btw) for the sake of PUSH (don't get me started) is just criminal. Almost considering going to back to 8.

Can you explain how this used to be useful? genuinely curious.

[solovox]

I am LIVID that they have removed the UNDO functionality of Record Quantization!! WHAT THE LIVING FUCK?? Being able to hit Ctrl-Z (or in my case a Midi command that sent CtrlZ) on-stage to Undo the quantization for a clip I just made...or not...was critical.

To remove this amazing feature (that I've bragged about to my students for years, btw) for the sake of PUSH (don't get me started) is just criminal. Almost considering going to back to 8.

Can you explain how this used to be useful? genuinely curious.

You could create clips in the studio or onstage with Record Quantization enabled...and if the Quantization ruined the feel or funk of the sequence, you could hit Undo and it would revert back to its natural state instantly. Otherwise you just leave it alone and bam: you're done.

In Live 9 with Quantization enabled, if you lay down a GREAT performance that is improperly affected by the Quantization, you're screwed. You have to turn Off the Quantization and then somehow REPEAT the performance.

Turning off Record Quantize and going all natural means you have to open up every single clip and manually apply it. Yeah...that's what crowd's want to watch.

This feature used to be one of the crowning jewels of the program. Something to shame the other companies to think 'why didn't we think of that?'. Now they remove it after years and years to sell a $500 launchpad that few will ever buy. Just stunned.