Ableton Forum

https://help.ableton.com/hc/en-us/artic ... scontinued

http://cdm.link/2017/10/ableton-live-going-64-bit-mean/


Interesting. 10 soon?

No reason to believe this has anything to do with Live 10. It's exactly what Ableton has written...all modern computers have 64 bit OSes and most come out of the box with more than 4GB of RAM. The only reason to stay with 32 bit is you use third party 32 bit plugins for which there is no 64 bit version. That includes a lot of older freeware, of course. In some cases you may have to pay for upgrades to get 64 bit plugins. Another good reason to use only Live's native plugins...no compatibility problems.

antic604 wrote:

doghouse wrote:I think (hope!) Live 10 has some changes under the hood

If not, what would be the point of a Live 10? I think you're making a bird of a feather here. Even if Live 10 is released, dropping 32bit was only extremely rational anyway. At this point quite late actually.

Seems like a good way to let the 32-bit users know that they need to get with the times if they want to upgrade to 10... Head off the inevitable "I've been using Ableton since 1972 and it worked just fine at 32-bit, I quit Ableton!" type comments.

I like the phatness of the 32 bit sound. It's just more real, call me retro but I feel the soul of the music in 32 bit. 64 bit is too clinical, far too much headroom for me. Just think of all that classic music done in 32 bit and tell me I'm wrong, it was the golden age of electronic music. If you want that late 90s early 2000s classic sound you NEED 32 bit. And a bullshit detector.

Angstrom wrote:I like the phatness of the 32 bit sound. It's just more real, call me retro but I feel the soul of the music in 32 bit. 64 bit is too clinical, far too much headroom for me. Just think of all that classic music done in 32 bit and tell me I'm wrong, it was the golden age of electronic music. If you want that late 90s early 2000s classic sound you NEED 32 bit. And a bullshit detector.

Words!

Yes, this is unfortunate for those of us who are invested in the legacy plugins that we've used in various porojects over the years. I've tried various options using jbridge, and found that the most optimal solution for me was to continue using the 32-bit host while bridging some 64-bit as well as most memory-consuming 32-bit plugins via jbridge. Plugins bridged via jbridge become separate processes and can each use a separate block of memory up to 4Gb, even with a 32-bit host. This way I can use all my RAM and never get the "out of memory" crash. This is a reliable solution and works better than trying to bridge the old 32-bit plugins into a 64-bit host (which doesn't always work). The additional bonus is that the plugins are sandboxed, so a crash in a plugin does not crash Live itself. I have not noticed any discernable overhead with this solution.

Hopefully, Ableton will integrate some kind of bridging technology inside the newer versions of Live or at least retain some 32-bit functionality.

ilia wrote:Yes, this is unfortunate for those of us who are invested in the legacy plugins that we've used in various porojects over the years. I've tried various options using jbridge, and found that the most optimal solution for me was to continue using the 32-bit host while bridging some 64-bit as well as most memory-consuming 32-bit plugins via jbridge. Plugins bridged via jbridge become separate processes and can each use a separate block of memory up to 4Gb, even with a 32-bit host. This way I can use all my RAM and never get the "out of memory" crash. This is a reliable solution and works better than trying to bridge the old 32-bit plugins into a 64-bit host (which doesn't always work). The additional bonus is that the plugins are sandboxed, so a crash in a plugin does not crash Live itself. I have not noticed any discernable overhead with this solution.

Hopefully, Ableton will integrate some kind of bridging technology inside the newer versions of Live or at least retain some 32-bit functionality.

i had jbridge and always problems. So i purchased the "32 Lives" bridger. Works flawlessly and i can use all my 32 bit things in Live 64bit

I hope. No, better said,,, pray that Live 10 will have Vst 3 support. But i guess we all have our priorities.....

Angstrom wrote:And a bullshit detector.

Actually, that last one should be sufficient. Unless yu're talking about Gabba Samba? I mean, hell, you'd need 256bit to cover that dynamic range.

Ok, I have one of these bullshit detectors and it just went off.
First of all I would GUESS (and please correct me if I'm wrong) that with proper programming
I would get a friendly "out of memory" message and not one of these "persistent out-of-memory crashes".

Personally I'm using Live since version 3 and even during intense use of Live 9 I never
ran out of memory. So there is absolutely no reason for me to switch to 64 bit version.
32 bit version is 100% stable for me, so it can only get worse - costs for plug-in updates,
costs for bridge tools, possible crashes when bridging my beloved 32 bit plug-ins.

Stating that 32 bit version will be descontinued because SOME people have problems with it
while everybody having these problems is free to switch to 64 bit version for years now, is just
bullshit. Ableton just doesn't want to put work into a product anymore that many people are happpy with.

Oh, btw Ableton, while you are dropping 32 bit version, because some people run out of memory,
don't forget to drop Live lite, because people are constantly running out of tracks !
Force them to buy the full version so this does not happen to them anymore !

Coupe70 wrote: Stating that 32 bit version will be descontinued because SOME people have problems with it
while everybody having these problems is free to switch to 64 bit version for years now, is just
bullshit. Ableton just doesn't want to put work into a product anymore that many people are happpy with.

besides the memory issue, there clearly are a number of other good reasons for Ableton to stop supporting a 32-bit version, as discussed in the CDM article and its comments.

Coupe70 wrote:Ok, I have one of these bullshit detectors and it just went off.

You need a reset of that detector I think. Or try to attain some deep developer knowledge. If you had some already then you'd likely know that there are additional memory registers in x64 mode. The performance boost of this may not be that large, but in real time applications like music production, everything counts.

While I don't know if 32bit Live actually uses much other code than the 64bit version — compilation rendering different binaries — I'd think that in 2017 there are now 64bit only tools, like code libraries and developer tools functions, that makes the price for keeping 32bit support much higher as you'd have to maintain two code bases and sync functions between them. This may be one reason why some developers are abandoning 32bit at this point.

Would it be worth working hard to keep 32bit support or building a native bridge to support old software plug-ins that may not be compatible with the current and future OSes, when 64bit only means you can give users better performance and unique functionalities for less work? I think it's not. Nothing is stopping anyone from keeping old 32bit around if they choose. There are bridge solutions and old machines for a reason.

Here's an article from 2009 (!): "From 32-Bit to 64-Bit: Why Software Development Is Lagging Hardware Improvements", talking about the situation then. We have moved way beyond that now in late 2017.

Stromkraft, I am not happy I HAVE TO switch to 64 bit version (especially during a still ongoing
product lifecycle of Live 9), but even though it will give me no advantage and will only cause
possible trouble and costs for me, I absolutely understand and agree with the things you mentioned.
What I call bullshit and strongly counter are the reasons Ableton give in the official statement.

they gave a very simplified reasoning, that is true. but that is probably because most people would not understand the technicalities involved.

realistically, if a plugin does not have a 64-bit version by now, it is most likely no longer supported by the developer.