Ableton should communicate with its users

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Rootxp
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Ableton should communicate with its users

Post by Rootxp » Wed Feb 08, 2023 6:32 pm

Dear Gerhard Behles, Dear Ableton,

This is a Meta-Feature Request.
A request for a new way to deal with Feature Requests, in particular within the Beta Forum.


1. There are dozens of highly upvoted Feature requests in the Beta Forum since many years.
Ableton is not actively engaging with the community.
Ableton is not moderating the Beta Forum, merging Feature requests
(some of those are quadrupled just because people don't realize they've already been started YEARS ago).

2. To users who have asked about a specific Feature since (in some cases) up to 10+ years, Ableton appears to be ignorant and careless.

3. I m sure Ableton is not ignorant and cares about its community. My wish simply is: for Ableton to actually show it. Communicate with us. Show us at least a glimpse of a roadmap, a glimpse of your future visions. Moderate the Beta Forum, merge Posts, communicate about whether you even CONSIDER implementing those Feature requests, and if yes, give us a HINT of when it might happen.

Last year (2022), the CEO of Ableton, Gerhard Behles, said the following at a Conference:
“The transition to steward ownership is a long term Project for Ableton. How is this relevant now, and for who?
I think it’s all about trust.
Think of a music maker investing huge time and energy into our instruments, achieving mastership. Think of an employee who puts in the most productive years. (...) I think it’s important for all these stakeholders to know that Ableton will stick around and stay true to its purpose.


I absolutely agree, it's all about trust. And since i m one of those music makers investing huge time and energy into Ableton since 14 years, i m desperately asking Ableton to change from the ground up. Not by finally implementing Bounce in Place which has 450 upvotes since many years, no. Not by finally implementing the Feature Requests about Shortcuts, about better Browsing, better Midi-Editing and Audio-Editing tools, no.
By communication.
PLEASE communicate about whether you even CONSIDER implementing those Feature requests, and if yes, give us a HINT of when it might happen. Please make Ableton stay true to its purpose by actually listening to the community - or at least communicate why you are not listening.
Thank you!

Tarekith
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Re: Ableton should communicate with its users

Post by Tarekith » Wed Feb 08, 2023 6:42 pm

They used to here but people were total jerks and completely rude to them about it, no one wants to deal with that.
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Rootxp
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Re: Ableton should communicate with its users

Post by Rootxp » Thu Feb 09, 2023 12:10 am

I hope you agree that the majority of Ableton Users, hopefully even the majority of Abletons Forum are not jerks?
What reason is there to stop communicating with the majority which are not jerks, but rather friends of Ableton?
Friends in the most direct meaning: we love Ableton, and we support Ableton (financially, but also from a standpoint of willingness to remain “loyal”, and not changing DAWs).

In my opinion, good communication is key for success. When i stop communicating well with my friends, things go downhill. And that’s exactly what i don’t want to happen between Ableton and its users. THIS is the biggest threat for Ableton. Not the possibility that they might encounter “jerks”. If “jerk” means someone who is not participating in factual talk, but rather personal attacks, he should be excluded anyway!

Besides, some of the things i wish for don’t even need direct communication. For example, in the beta forum, it would already be incredibly helpful to see SOME life of Ableton there: like merging feature requests, creating surveys about detail-questions, and marking some Feature requests as “under review” or even “in progress” which then would tell the users “aha, they are looking into it, Abletons progress is not dead, yay! :D ”.

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Re: Ableton should communicate with its users

Post by Angstrom » Thu Feb 09, 2023 12:33 am

I actually think the "design by committee" approach is flawed and delivers a watered down product.

I think in politics it's called "tyranny by majority" which is a bit extreme but the idea is that the majority of voices don't actually have the best ideas for the future.

I'd actually rather that they tried a series of really wild and stupid ideas completely out of leftfield than did something really sensible like (I dunno) AV improvements and scoring (which everyone would say they wanted and then continue to do it in their previous choice!)
Is the Live MPE UI better than bitwig? Is the comping better than studio One? Even if it's incremental it's certainly not a bold leap into new territory.

I'd rather see them do something as wild as the session grid was for the cubase/logic paradigm. Something bold and imaginative.

Dangerous of course, but if one out of ten absurd prototypes worked then it would be a quantum leap for all of us.

That's just my perspective others are available

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Re: Ableton should communicate with its users

Post by Tarekith » Thu Feb 09, 2023 12:57 am

Angstrom wrote:
Thu Feb 09, 2023 12:33 am
I actually think the "design by committee" approach is flawed and delivers a watered down product.
It was actually at the very first Loop event Ableton did in Berlin that I heard one of my favorite quotes. It was a panel with Gerhard from Ableton, Stephan the head of NI, and Carla the founder of Symbolic Sound talking about what they were most and least proud of about their respective products. Carla said that if music companies did everything their users asked for, it’d be a directionless hot mess and every company would have the same hot mess product. Not every tool needs to do every thing, and often it’s better to follow your own path to creating the workflow you envision for your users rather than let the masses dictate that.

Not saying that more communication wouldn’t be good, but it made me realize that a lot of the reasons we like one software over another is for the vision individual developers bring to their products.

Side Note: Gerhard admitted the one thing he wished he could redo at that time was the implementation of the Groove Pool functionality, and Stephan from NI said it was the fact that no one ever took Guitar Rig seriously for guitar as they had put more time into that than most of their products (at that time).
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Re: Ableton should communicate with its users

Post by Angstrom » Thu Feb 09, 2023 1:22 am

I think on the "more communication" front I personally enjoy allowing the developers to have a nerdy article on the blog. Something they are passionate about, whether it's Andy Cytomic talking about component modelling or some in house Dev talking about the issues with visualisation of sound and creating innovative UI / UX for these new tools.

Now, of course that's specific to me, but I feel like putting human faces on the monolith is important. Even if most producers won't necessarily understand if there's an article about Jessie Schmitt and her passion for haptics, it helps humanise the organisation.

What's happening now with Ableton is what happened to NI. It appears to be a corporate marketing machine. It's all about cool articles about cool producers with cool hair. Affiliations and tie ins. The marketing department want to score an interview with Kae Tempest talking about the Grammies much more than they are excited about Ms Schmidt's haptic FFT exploration. But for the customerbase. Like the OP for instance. If they feel that Ableton are becoming remote and disconnected, it's not Beyonce we want to hear from it's Jessie and her Arduino glove and how she feels about the future of the Ableton project. Because that's where we all come together. That's where the corporation looks like they are human. And it avoids the whole troll bridge / peanut gallery problem..

BTW.
while I disagree with Gerhard ( I think that the groove pool is pretty good and a few tweaks would get it there). I am super curious what his improvements would be. Like, what did he come up with as a better solution after the fact?

But still, I think the groove pool is fine.
The browser and the database? Now that's a different story! 😆

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Re: Ableton should communicate with its users

Post by Forge. » Thu Feb 09, 2023 6:24 am

Angstrom wrote:
Thu Feb 09, 2023 1:22 am
I think on the "more communication" front I personally enjoy allowing the developers to have a nerdy article on the blog. Something they are passionate about, whether it's Andy Cytomic talking about component modelling or some in house Dev talking about the issues with visualisation of sound and creating innovative UI / UX for these new tools.

Now, of course that's specific to me, but I feel like putting human faces on the monolith is important.
Reason does a good job of this with their guy Ryan who does their YouTube channel, with fairly regular long Live Streams and occasional interviews with devs, or even 3rd party devs. I think that content goes a loooooooong way towards handling this well.

Ableton should hire me to be their Ryan, I'm probably quite expertly qualified for that role now as it goes. :mrgreen:

Only caveat is I'd have to fake the cool studio with flashing lights in the background with a green screen as mine mostly consists of things like a Launchpad Mini on the sofa under a pizza box.

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Re: Ableton should communicate with its users

Post by Tarekith » Thu Feb 09, 2023 1:18 pm

How do you get your sofa under a pizza box? :o
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Re: Ableton should communicate with its users

Post by Forge. » Thu Feb 09, 2023 1:39 pm

Brrrrrm ching!

Heartleader
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Re: Ableton should communicate with its users

Post by Heartleader » Mon Feb 13, 2023 1:51 pm

Tarekith wrote:
Thu Feb 09, 2023 12:57 am
Angstrom wrote:
Thu Feb 09, 2023 12:33 am
I actually think the "design by committee" approach is flawed and delivers a watered down product.
It was actually at the very first Loop event Ableton did in Berlin that I heard one of my favorite quotes. It was a panel with Gerhard from Ableton, Stephan the head of NI, and Carla the founder of Symbolic Sound talking about what they were most and least proud of about their respective products. Carla said that if music companies did everything their users asked for, it’d be a directionless hot mess and every company would have the same hot mess product. Not every tool needs to do every thing, and often it’s better to follow your own path to creating the workflow you envision for your users rather than let the masses dictate that.

Not saying that more communication wouldn’t be good, but it made me realize that a lot of the reasons we like one software over another is for the vision individual developers bring to their products.

Side Note: Gerhard admitted the one thing he wished he could redo at that time was the implementation of the Groove Pool functionality, and Stephan from NI said it was the fact that no one ever took Guitar Rig seriously for guitar as they had put more time into that than most of their products (at that time).
Go with your message and statement (what I totally agree on) "if music companies did everything their users asked for, it’d be a directionless hot mess and every company would have the same hot mess product":
1.) Why they are asking for suggestion?
2.) From my point of view it always makes sense to ask for user voices to get a user & outside perspective
3.) If Ableton thinks the same way to get this outside & user perspective that just change the style of communication
Now I explain what I mean and how I am doing it in my company (changed in Ableton language):
-Every User feedback is in one place
-Every User feedback get a status (open, investigation, in design for this major version "11", in design for next major version "12", backlog for design for future major versions ">12")
Now I explain why I am doing this:
-The user & customer gives me free consulting with their feedback
-The user & customer gives me money for my products
-The user & customer invest their time & money to give me this feedback, make screenshots, make videos, think about solutions
-I don't want to waste the time & energy from users & customers to ongoing asking for something we will not take into account for developing = treat them fair!
I can give a lot of examples what I already suggest over the last years without any feedback beside the standard "I put it in our list". Until today I never get a feedback beside that.

Still go with your statement "if music companies did everything their users asked for, it’d be a directionless hot mess and every company would have the same hot mess product" but lets take some examples (couple of years old) to compare "market standards mainly all DAW has in place"
1.) Ableton EQ has only 12/48 db slope (Apple Logic, Steinberg Cubase, Studio One, ProTools,... all of the has more than just 12/48dB Slopes minimum a 24 db/Slope what Ableton has in EQ3 but not in EQ8 - sorry to say I don't understand and talk about this for years and it will not mess up Ableton - no it will keep me inside Ableton - yes I know 2x12=24 but that is not my idea of working)
2.) Organise your Plugins to speed up workflow (every DAW has a much better solutions for users how the organise their plugins) @Ableton: just make the option to create subfolder in the collection (does it mess up = no it is optional)
3.) I think there is now DAW without a mixer view (what is partly). Okay I understand that it is maybe not logic for Ableton with the idea of Racks but than they should mentioned in the suggestion that this is not in planning and user don't waste their time bringing it up again

Ableton is still a top DAW and I like that they try to keep it clean and simple. But sometimes I have the feeling they just follow 100% their own ideas or maybe following if the top 10 major user are requesting something. Sorry I don't want to be unfair against Ableton employee. They are doing a lot of good things and a good product with a lot of nice features. Have a clean & clear feedback communication in place would give the feeling you listening and I think most of the users understand that not every wish get real.
Here some example:
-Why they switch the Groove Pool Library from organised in folder (Logic, MPC,..) to A-Z with a naming doesn't make sense to look in a A-Z sorting (Interesting fact: at the same time the implement the Audio Effect Grouping by "Delay & Loop, Drive & Colour,... and degroup the Groove Pool) Why not the same logic that the user can choose for Audio Effects grouping yes/no and Groove Pool yes/no
-When I save a Track Default Midi or Track Default Audio and I insert a new Midi or Audio it opens up the default but when I drag & drop a Ableton Midi Instrument to a new Midi Track it doesn't load my default Midi
-Why is the height different when I have 3 tracks to 20 tracks in Arrangement View (understand the idea is to show as maximum as possible on a screen and when I have 3 the make stretch it out over the screen and when I have 20,30,40,50,.. they use a minimum height that the user can still read the important information) but why I can not set in preference set a minimum height for myself for the shortcut "h" and user can decide the height they want to use I always want to see minimum 2 lines of returns means 6 and have the submenu for add lane for automation. If another user want to see 3 lines of returns means 9 they can decide by themself in preferences. By the way the minimum height belongs to tracks & automation lanes.

Summary I like to see from Ableton:
-Clear feedback categories and status per suggestion (maybe you can forward it to the top management because this is a organise topic not a Ableton development)
-1 development cycle only focusing on optimising workflows & consistent workflows and not new developments (I do this regular "once a year" with other developers and then there is an update only introduce optimising workflows)

Forge.
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Re: Ableton should communicate with its users

Post by Forge. » Mon Feb 13, 2023 7:14 pm

Ableton has always listened closely to the users. But they have also always kept stumm and only ever gone as far as saying "interesting idea" or asking for elaboration on an idea if it wasn't clear, but non-committal, usually asking YOUR opinion, then saying nothing about theirs. They have always liked surprises, hence they take the NDA on beta and especially alpha testing very seriously, because they hate to spoil the surprise. It's also because sometimes a feature might be tried in an alpha for a short time and for some reason it's taken out because there is a problem, or it doesn't make sense in the wider context, or something.

The difference now of course is the user base is orders of magnitude larger than it used to be, so it's just not viable to discuss everything in detail. In fact it's hard for them to discuss anything more publicly that isn't already in the released version, because seemingly giving too much attention to what one person thinks is important will undoubtedly result in "But what about X? We've been asking for this forever...." from others. etc...

If you apply to join the beta testing then there can be a little more discussion, but still limited with the public betas (and immediately preceding full public and RC versions), as they are more focused on bug fixing and stability for release and the features are no longer as open to change. With alpha testing there can be a little more still, but I think that's to some extent because those involved know how it goes and won't throw a hissy fit if something is added then taken out again, and I think also because we've been under an NDA for a lot longer and demonstrated that we can be trusted not to go out and leak everything. Even now there are occasional leaks which can be difficult to find the source of, so establishing that trust is important.

This is just my take on it based on my experience over the years and not official word from Ableton, but you'll find the same with most developers. Some developers like to be a lot more open in discussing upcoming features, but in the 20+ years I've been around Ableton has always kept their cards close to their chest, even when they were a small company new on the scene. So I see it more as just liking surprises than some kind of corporate paranoia about trade secrets! ;-) They are also very cautious and consider things extremely carefully, and won't do anything unless they are sure it will live up to the high standards they have always set for themselves.

So in other words, the best bet for getting more in the way of dialogue about what they are up to is to get more involved. Apply for beta testing when there are spots, and work towards earlier testing/alpha. But also keep up to date with things like Loop and other events where there might be more frank discussions.

[/my2c]

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Re: Ableton should communicate with its users

Post by Heartleader » Tue Feb 14, 2023 5:33 am

Valid points.

After thinking about not implementing something what hardly can take back/out again totally make sense.

In terms of surprises I have a different perspective. Is a surprise moment for an already existing product still needed (new customer, organic marketing,...)? But it is a philosophy and a company culture way. I accept that I know all details about future coming Apple product beside "there is on more thing" and not "there a million of things you never heard before". Knowing what is coming makes me eager of an update and wit and stay with the actual product. But as I said this could discuss for ages. Your post change my point of view a bit. Thanks for your perspective.

Regarding "it is hard to follow" with each user. Absolutely. But if a topic is in the Top10 for 3 years and easy to implement, not a fundamental impact in development, unlogic because it is from my point of view already there, it is more or less a market standard in all competitors products I don't understand why it is not there. And this is not a Big Bang surprise need for a major update.
Let me give 2 examples from my perspective:
1.) EQ3 has a 24 & 48 dB cut slope - EQ8 has a 12 & 48 dB cut slope - almost all competitors has minimum a 12/24/48 = market standard (or even more) dB cut slope (nice to have but align EQ3 & EQ8 with the same slope would make sense to habe in both 12/24/48. And from a development perspective: a 24dB slope is not so hard to develop, it doesn't impact a change for older projects (it is a additional slope and 12/48 ist still there) and the maintenance is close to 0
-> Why does every car have a radio? Do you need it to drive? No! But it is market/competitor standard. It needs to be there.
Maybe I am a bit emotional after years of discussion about this point. But this shows I really like Ableton otherwise I would not mentioned this ongoing. Maybe I am the only one think it is needed but 80% the use case using another EQ is that 48 is to deep and 12 is to less and I want stay within Ableton :)
2.) I can generate Subfolder in Folder. But I can not generate Subfolder in Collection. I don't know exactly how they implement it but technically a collection is a folder and a subcollection is a subfolder. Looking again to market competitor: All of them has a much better way to speed up workflow by organise your plugins,... in a DAW
-> In this case it is in the top 10 for almost 3 years
3.) Before: Groove Pool was organised in SubFolders. Audio Effects was not organised in SubFolders.
Now: Groove Pool is organised in no subfolder. Audio Effects is organised in SubFolders and the User can choose.
Why is it now it Audio Effects & not in Groove Pool anymore. I don't get the point but maybe I don't know the big strategy of GroovePool.

P.S.: Companies should be worried if customers stopping feedbacks. If they interact they still are connected to their products :) So I "love" Ableton and looking forward to upcoming releases. I don't need "NEW" things for the next month. I would like to see focussing on simplify,

jonljacobi
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Re: Ableton should communicate with its users

Post by jonljacobi » Fri Feb 17, 2023 1:40 pm

Having interacted with the public for several decades, I’ve always found that transparency and overt communication worked best. HOWEVER... There’s always someone that will make your life miserable because of it.

I can understand anyone’s decision to not deal with it. It can be a colossal time and energy suck, not to mention the negative emotions it can induce if you let it get to you.

I think Ableton walks the fine line between its vision and satisfying new customer requests pretty well.

That said, it would be nice to know exactly why they do what they do. They could certainly do a better job of explaining that.

Heartleader
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Re: Ableton should communicate with its users

Post by Heartleader » Tue Feb 21, 2023 8:04 am

Don't worry about that just make music and invest your time in music making. Ableton follow their strategy.

Why I have this impression:
1.) If I look to the suggestion list after a long research (40 suggestion 2+ years old) I only found 1 customer suggestion implemented so far. Hopefully with the next paid version some user suggestion will hopefully come :)
2.) There are market standards what are in all DAW but not in Ableton (e.g. only 12/48 db Slope main EQ low/high cut = ALL DAW has minimum a 24 dB Slope or plugin delay compensation what can not be handled from user means all time based effect plugins are not working on tracks, groups neither on returns after a plugin introduce time delay and also Instrument are already generate time delay e.g. Diva,... and this can not handled by the user it must be by the computer by the DAW!!! = Logic, Bitwig, Studio One,... ALL has a Plugin Delay compensation because we are living in 2023 :wink:

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Re: Ableton should communicate with its users

Post by goose3000 » Mon Feb 27, 2023 9:21 pm

Ableton has not adapted with the times. It's not 2006 anymore, where no communication with developers is normal. Other developers, even larger ones in this industry create a relationship with the community and engage to make their products even better.

Ableton isn't Art. It's not a painting- where feedback and suggestions aren't necessary for the greater good of it's inception. This is a tool, one which is expensive, which people pour thousands of hours into every year. They legitimately have not responded or taken weight to 99% of the amazing suggestions on the old centercode platform. It's embarrassing. In 2023 to be this walled off from the passionate community who have supported their company all these years. You'd think they'd show some respect to all these great ideas.

It's not even about disrespectful comments and harassment either. Those things can be dealt with on their own, but to crater to them and sacrifice conversation with the absolutely respectful majority is rubbish. I can't continue to support a company who has not changed in the 7 years I've used their software.

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