the ableton camp: what we spoke about / the future of Live

[peeddrroo]

alright, i think it's time to start discussing a little bit more seriously about what was discussed in this first ableton camp.

so there were 2 panels: one was about the "future of Live", and the other was entitled "the future of the community"

in this thread, we shall discuss the "future of Live"

first of all, and before anyone asks, we didn't get a chance to see what's cooking for Live6. to be honest, i actually found that this panel was a little weird, as we have a place to discuss the future of live, which is the feature wishlist forum. but that's just me.
an interesting discussion was whether all upcoming features and products should be bundled into Live, or should be available as separate products. the consensus was that Live is the main platform and that it should remain the same.
we heard that some limitations of the software (which the abes are very conscious about) are due to early developments: stuff like knobs that have wrong curves, or editing features... these are things that can't be changed from 1 version to the next, as it would lead to changes in sound for a project.
then Stephan showed us his excel spreadsheet of all the acknowledged features from the wishlist forum... quite a huge one (about 700 entries!). we agreed that it should be made public, which should eventually happen.

about the features that we wanted to see soon, i remember about those ones:
- LFOs assignable to any parameter
- better midi editing
- more randomization features
- some kind of scripting language

they asked us whether we wanted to see some ableton hardware. we said of course said yes, but when they asked what it should be, it became harder to word...

well, i'll stop for now, the discussion is open. i speak freely as all the talks we had were recorded, and are supposed to be put online sometime.
feel free to comment.

[spiderprod]

dude , don't take it bad but am i the only one to think that the name "ableton camp" sound a bit camp , i mean a bit village .

[gaspode]

we heard that some limitations of the software (which the abes are very conscious about) are due to early developments: stuff like knobs that have wrong curves, or editing features... these are things that can't be changed from 1 version to the next, as it would lead to changes in sound for a project.

Sorry, but shame on ableton for saying this. This is a lazy programmer answer. I know they have plenty of things to worry about, but this is the *exact* reason you keep version tracking for file sets so that if absolutely necessary you can maintain the backwards compatibility behavior.

Staying 'backwards compatible' with poor, unusable or incompatible/incorrect interface options is awful design. This is entirely going back to the interface issue of forcing a user to work around poor design choices or bugs and not fixing the real problem. People who need to maintain the incorrect behavior should have two options, staying with their previous version, or updating their set to the new version. If *absolutely* necessary do what most other developers do... depricate the functionality, so that it will still 'work', but is no longer supported. There should also be room for Live being able to 'translate' the old parameters to what the new ones should be.

Please fix interface issues, curves, etc! These are the same types of issues that synth designers deal with, they'll go off and fix a filter, which changes the tone of the old patches. Is this good or bad? This is entirely irrelevant as the answer will depend on the user. However, by fixing the issue users are not required to work around the problem.

Anyway, enough of my rant...

Thanks for sharing

[ryansupak]

agreed -- esp. on the scripting language. that would open up a lot of functionality that is probably too complex and specialized to really be part of the core package.

glad you guys took the time to go down there.

rs

[AlKaMyST]

totally agree with gaspode

although incompatibilities with projects between versions is annoying I personally think that beneficial fixes far outweigh any annoyances

[peeddrroo]

we heard that some limitations of the software (which the abes are very conscious about) are due to early developments: stuff like knobs that have wrong curves, or editing features... these are things that can't be changed from 1 version to the next, as it would lead to changes in sound for a project.

Sorry, but shame on ableton for saying this. This is a lazy programmer answer. I know they have plenty of things to worry about, but this is the *exact* reason you keep version tracking for file sets so that if absolutely necessary you can maintain the backwards compatibility behavior.

Staying 'backwards compatible' with poor, unusable or incompatible/incorrect interface options is awful design. This is entirely going back to the interface issue of forcing a user to work around poor design choices or bugs and not fixing the real problem. People who need to maintain the incorrect behavior should have two options, staying with their previous version, or updating their set to the new version. If *absolutely* necessary do what most other developers do... depricate the functionality, so that it will still 'work', but is no longer supported. There should also be room for Live being able to 'translate' the old parameters to what the new ones should be.

Please fix interface issues, curves, etc! These are the same types of issues that synth designers deal with, they'll go off and fix a filter, which changes the tone of the old patches. Is this good or bad? This is entirely irrelevant as the answer will depend on the user. However, by fixing the issue users are not required to work around the problem.

Anyway, enough of my rant...

Thanks for sharing

well, they are dealing with this dilemna.
you think this way, but i'm sure lots of ppl think the other way: the sound has to be maintained from one version to the next.
i think this must be decisions that are very difficult to take and that wont please everybody.
but the abes are aware of it, so it will be sorted someday.

[Angstrom]

a check box in preferences marked 'old host behaviour' ?
or has that idea been taken already by another company

[Alex]

Hi gaspode,

People who need to maintain the incorrect behavior should have two options, staying with their previous version, or updating their set to the new version.

Sure. But the question is what is the price for getting this. How much effort is needed to achieve it and in which way can it be achieved by the user interface and technically internally? It is always a question of effort and benefit. Maybe you have noticed that we already partly go this way to give it to the user to use the previous or the current behavior (for instance with the Auto Filter effect).
So for me it is not a "lazy programmer answer" but the usual decision process where to put effort in.

regards,
/Alex

[peeddrroo]

something i forgot to mention, but that was discussed a lot is the content within Live.
should it be ableton only, could there be licences for alp format, or shoud it be freely available.
does all the content have to be managed by ableton and do they need to enhance it a lot...
these were the questions...

[Former Pharaoh]

they asked us whether we wanted to see some ableton hardware. we said of course said yes, but when they asked what it should be, it became harder to word...

When they said ABleton hardware did they mean units to complimement Live utilized within a computer (midi controllers) or an exclusive hardware unit ala Akai's MPC series?
I feel the latter would benefit GREATLY as far as stability. An exclusive unit solely for Live and Live only.
If the Abes can workout a deal with some company to make a "laptop" styled hardware unit with dual touchscreens that would REALLY be cool. I mentioned it before, think of the Nintendo DS with it's 2 screens.
The bottom screen will have all the parameters for hands on control (the CLIP view), including a synth layout to play the plugs (press the "keyboard" button to display) and the top screen displays the session view/arrangement.
IMO this would be the best hands on portable Ableton hardware device.

[Angstrom]

I think they should make a touchscreen HUD !

no wait, that's not right.

OK, a HUD, some motion sensing and some haptics. That's my kind of interface

[Former Pharaoh]

something i forgot to mention, but that was discussed a lot is the content within Live.
should it be ableton only, could there be licences for alp format, or shoud it be freely available.
does all the content have to be managed by ableton and do they need to enhance it a lot...
these were the questions...

Definitely license to 3rd party synth manufacturers so that ALL synths display in the track view ala Operator. It saves GUI space (no multiple windows) and it is better than using the VST wrapper within the track view (with all the faders).

[peeddrroo]

they asked us whether we wanted to see some ableton hardware. we said of course said yes, but when they asked what it should be, it became harder to word...

When they said ABleton hardware did they mean units to complimement Live utilized within a computer (midi controllers) or an exclusive hardware unit ala Akai's MPC series?
I feel the latter would benefit GREATLY as far as stability. An exclusive unit solely for Live and Live only.
If the Abes can workout a deal with some company to make a "laptop" styled hardware unit with dual touchscreens that would REALLY be cool. I mentioned it before, think of the Nintendo DS with it's 2 screens.
The bottom screen will have all the parameters for hands on control (the CLIP view), including a synth layout to play the plugs (press the "keyboard" button to display) and the top screen displays the session view/arrangement.
IMO this would be the best hands on portable Ableton hardware device.

if i remember well, we spoke pore about control devices, not a standalone product. though this idea is beautiful.
we all agreed that if ableton developped such a product, it would be a kickass, but none of us were able to say what this product would be.
this was discussed in the last minutes of the panel i was in, so i don't have much to say

[gaspode]

Hi gaspode,

People who need to maintain the incorrect behavior should have two options, staying with their previous version, or updating their set to the new version.

Sure. But the question is what is the price for getting this. How much effort is needed to achieve it and in which way can it be achieved by the user interface and technically internally? It is always a question of effort and benefit. Maybe you have noticed that we already partly go this way to give it to the user to use the previous or the current behavior (for instance with the Auto Filter effect).
So for me it is not a "lazy programmer answer" but the usual decision process where to put effort in.

regards,
/Alex

I know that a lot of decisions and effort go in to this. I also know that you all are fully aware of all of these issues, ways to deal with them, values to the community et al, much more aware than I am as a specific user.

It is also easy for me to classify this as being lazy as an outside observer. Being a third/fourth/fifth or whatever party to the conversation I am sure there is more to it than what was presented. To me, the statement just felt like the standard app/os answer of "well everybody works around these issues now, so it is the new standard".

For me personally I would much rather have my sets shaken up/distrubed to get a better interface/workflow/consistency. I am sure that many people here are keyed up about a particular sound/effect from Live, I for one prefer a consistent interface to my application over a sound. Perhaps that makes me a rarity.

Ableton has one of the bests interfaces I've used for music design, and it is much more streamlined than many other apps that I use. As an example of a major UI change right in the app that you have made would be changing how you interfact with the clip view of the waveforms/midi. Honestly when I first used it I was very irritated that the behavior had changed. Having the ability to play/scroll/zoom/automate/etc... all in that area, where before you pretty much could only scroll/zoom really bothered me. Did this cause me a lot of pain using the clip browser, it sure did and I certainly swore a lot for a few months while using it. Now I actually appreciate it. There are still some design inconsistencies in my mind, but the tool itself is much more powerful. Was this change for better or worse? Again that is only a decision an individual can make. Were we given an option to utilize this behavior or not? No... because that would confuse the issue further.

Another example would be the ability to scrub audio with the start flag. This interface behavior had been changed as well. I would like to actually put this under the 'sound change' category as many people liked this effect for the distinctive sound. Here a sound 'effect' behavior was clearly modified for a 'better' interface, but in the mind of some vocal people a 'worse' sound. This change was made with the ideals of a better interface and not with the goals of an 'improved' sound, and it was certainly not 'backwards compatible'. The side effects of changing the sound may have been unknown to Ableton, but I would only take that as an excuse for making it okay to the people it impacted.

I'm really not trying to be hyper critical of the Ableton team, and if sound integrity is more important than interface that is fine by me. I had always been under the assumption that interface was king at HQ, which is something I can also stand behind. Sound integrity is very important, as important as interface design, I would just hate to see user interface progress/fixes/consistency shelved for the old ways of doing things, just because that is how they were done before.

[nuperspective]

gaspode wrote:

I'm really not trying to be hyper critical of the Ableton team, and if sound integrity is more important than interface that is fine by me. I had always been under the assumption that interface was king at HQ, which is something I can also stand behind. Sound integrity is very important, as important as interface design, I would just hate to see user interface progress/fixes/consistency shelved for the old ways of doing things, just because that is how they were done before.

i agree. i would like to see the work flow remain top of the pile. i'm pretty new to music making. i have tried other daw's and never really got on with them, as the time involved to do anything was to great given my limited knowledge. with rewire and mastering plugins, is it really important at this stage to make live the one stop shop. i prefer the composition tool approach, as that is what drew me and many others to live. along with the ability to use live 'live'.