Better Metering, RMS, Peak, Pre-fader and a few other wishes

[designwebuk]

I would love to see better metering and metering display options in Live.
Live is a great, maybe even the best Daw for music creation, especially if you come from a electronic music or sound design background.
But when it comes to mixing and audio editing in the arrange view, I feel it falls down in a few areas.
Most of the time I end up bouncing the stems and moving into Reaper as I get better visual control and metering options for gain staging and mixing.

1. I would love to see Live having better options for metering, such as options to switch between RMS, Peak or both. The ability to view pre-fader levels on all channels and more options for how the meters display this information.

Here are some other features I would like to see in live 9

1. Bounce items in place in the arrange or session view.
2. Waveforms to change display level when adding volume clip automation or fades in clip or arrange view.
This is a really nice feature in Reaper and Cubase that gives you a better understanding of what is happening to the audio in a visual way.
3. Note automation in midi view for better expression and control.
4. Ripple and spot edit modes
5. Multiple monitor support
6. More options for video
7. Another nice feature would be to have sample or audio pools that you can create on the fly and use in other projects. Great for video work and sound design.

I really do think Live is a great app and the release of 9 made me upgrade from Intro to Suite.
But these features need to be added before I give up my other Apps like Reaper and Pro Tools.

[claytonsquire]

Definitely agree with some of this, but I think a few already exist, so let me know if any of the below helps.

A. Yes, would be great to see pre-fx, pre-fade metering options. Currently I just use something like the Waves Dorrough meters if I really need to scope it out.

1. Maybe not as quick as a Logic style "Bounce In-Place" but I think you'll find freeze and flatten pretty much accomplishes this.
2. This happens w/ fades in arrangement view, but yes, session view fades/the same GUI feedback for level automation would be slick.
3. You can get pretty in depth with the envelope section of a MIDI clip. Does that not accomplish what you're after?
4. If by ripple you mean something like shuffle in PT, then yes, that and spot mode would be pretty sweet.
5. No contest. Do it Abes! However, Eric Ameres (http://www.erasermice.com/) has a floating max for live mixer window that looks pretty useful.
6. Not sure how video centric Ableton will ever be but there are some cool Max for Live plugs that can do interesting video processing/generation.
7. You can absolutely do this. Just drag a group of clips into a file browser folder and give it a name. It will save as an .alp which you can then drag into any other project and have all the same clips.

Hope that helps!

[designwebuk]

Thanks for the reply, you gave me some nice tips and information there.
Have you tried Gamma Devices, they do a great mixer plugin for Ableton.

One thing that is really bugging me at the moment with Ableton and has really stopped me using it all the time is the load time of the application itself and also the load times of projects.
I really only use Ableton now and again, as I have reverted back to Reaper as i get all of the above and loads in seconds.
It can take me over a minute if not more to load the app and then a project. I could not trust this application for live use.
I do love Ableton for the creative work flow, but until they fix the loading issues, I will be using it only when I have too.

I am running a Mac Pro with 8 gig of ram.
UAD and only plugins I have paid for.
I might put a video up on YouTube to show how shocking the load times are.