To Ableton representatives: please, share Ableton roadmap

Share what you’d like to see added to Ableton Live.
Valery_Kondakoff
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Joined: Thu Jun 11, 2009 7:40 am

To Ableton representatives: please, share Ableton roadmap

Post by Valery_Kondakoff » Tue Dec 10, 2013 5:40 pm

Hello.

Personally, I'm (in general) pretty happy with the current feature set, which Ableton gives to its users. Of course, there are several obvious things to improve: say, PDC, Retina support, browser enhancements, VST3, layered MIDI editing etc... All of these features are endlessly requested here and in the Ableton FR forum.

What worries me: is a lack of communication with the Ableton representatives and lack of information of their development plans. To be honest, I remember only two precedents (in the last 5-6 years), when Ableton tells us about their plans: the Gerhard Behles 'quality' address and the info about ceasing the collaboration feature...

Don't you think this is strange for a software which costs >$500? Why are you not telling us in which direction are you going? I'm pretty sure this is nothing to do with 'keeping secrets' from the concurrent companies. Just after reading an older messages in the forums it is clear, that Ableton was more open to their users ten years ago. What happened?

Is there a chance to see more friendly Ableton representatives <-> Ableton users communication? Can you, please, share your development strategy, plans and roadmaps?

Thank you.
CU
VK

phoswain
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Re: To Ableton representatives: please, share Ableton roadmap

Post by phoswain » Sun Dec 22, 2013 2:15 pm

Great idea!

In an era of rapid incremental releases, we increasingly buy into the culture and trust of a development studio, rather than the features of a specific software release.

doghouse
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Re: To Ableton representatives: please, share Ableton roadmap

Post by doghouse » Mon Dec 23, 2013 12:09 am

The trouble with releasing product roadmaps publicly is that consumers expect you to deliver on it and may even delay purchases because of it.

Example: How many "should I buy XYZ now or see if a new version is released at the next NAMM/Messe?" thread have you read over the years.

Example: How many people have posted about not buying or upgrading Live because Bitwig was coming? It's still coming, right? :?

Angstrom
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Re: To Ableton representatives: please, share Ableton roadmap

Post by Angstrom » Mon Dec 23, 2013 12:58 am

These days I'm inclined to think "what would they benefit from doing this?" . If they release a roadmap that says something like
"we will fix the X to be more flexible and powerful, and not as bad as it is now"

Such a statement acknowledges that the feature X is not all it could be. Cue rampant speculation about what it could become, and also rampant recrimination about releasing X in an "inferior" state.

Really they have nothing to gain from releasing a roadmap, other than a pain in the ear.

However, I do think they ought to interact more with their customers. I used to like it when Robert or one of the developers would wander on here and just talk about elements of Live, or about music making, or they'd honestly say something about a slippery foible of Live they were tussling with. It made the whole thing more personal, and felt like there were invested people working on this thing, filled with unique musical motivations and ideas.
I guess times have changed, the company has changed, their customer base has changed. I guess that was all a long time ago now. I guess the money and focus is on "content".

In a gold rush, sell ShovelPackBreaks Pro II, 20% off!

regretfullySaid
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Re: To Ableton representatives: please, share Ableton roadmap

Post by regretfullySaid » Mon Dec 23, 2013 2:14 am

Sharing a roadmap could be disastrous. Ableton get bitched at enough as it is.
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tone61
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Re: To Ableton representatives: please, share Ableton roadmap

Post by tone61 » Mon Dec 23, 2013 12:10 pm

Lots of things are working well now.
So I'd assume they want to see what kind of features other companies are releasing.

Angstrom
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Re: To Ableton representatives: please, share Ableton roadmap

Post by Angstrom » Mon Dec 23, 2013 1:57 pm

tone61 wrote:Lots of things are working well now.
So I'd assume they want to see what kind of features other companies are releasing.
Actually I've had more problems with L9 than any previous version. Specifically crackling and clicking when using the GUI with low resource usage projects. I never had that before.

thunderkyss
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Re: To Ableton representatives: please, share Ableton roadmap

Post by thunderkyss » Mon Dec 23, 2013 6:34 pm

People want to complain about PDC, or Ableton's lack thereof.

However, I bet they set record numbers with sales of Live 9




Meaning it's not as big an issue to most of Ableton's users.

Some of us just can't handle that. Knowing that a company such as Ableton does not bend to the whim of a bedroom producer is just mind boggling.

tone61
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Re: To Ableton representatives: please, share Ableton roadmap

Post by tone61 » Mon Dec 23, 2013 7:58 pm

Angstrom wrote:
tone61 wrote:Lots of things are working well now.
So I'd assume they want to see what kind of features other companies are releasing.
Actually I've had more problems with L9 than any previous version. Specifically crackling and clicking when using the GUI with low resource usage projects. I never had that before.
I'm sure fixing bugs is part of the road map.
But I don't know how many *new* features they want to reveal long before release day.

I guess different people use Live in different ways.
In some cases people notice problems, in some cases they don't. If bugs are not reported they may not be fixed too quickly.
Many people never report their problems, they just wait and expect things to get fixed as if developers knew every problem that might happen in some users computer.
I'm not saying you haven't reported issues, because you've written you were beta testing Live9 and commented many things at that point.

I've noticed crackling in some situations, mostly when using very CPU hungry VSTs.
For me a bigger problem is that after loading a live set there seems to be some background processing happening so that Live is not responsive to UI commands, but I do not know when all that processing has ended. When can I really start using the live set that I just decided to load?

regretfullySaid
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Re: To Ableton representatives: please, share Ableton roadmap

Post by regretfullySaid » Mon Dec 23, 2013 8:57 pm

How bout we all just make a roadmap of the rest of our lives and see how well that goes according to plan.
ImageImage

H20nly
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Re: To Ableton representatives: please, share Ableton roadmap

Post by H20nly » Mon Dec 23, 2013 9:22 pm

yeah Ableton should be more transparent like... Apple... or any of those dozens of other companies that is always telling you exactly what they are doing all the time. the Logic 11 feature set announcement email i got just yesterday is a great example of how they are so excited about openness and disclosure. i'm sure iOS 8 details will be arriving any day, but not before Steinberg and Cubase 8, of course!

i mean, besides the giant release spectacle that Ableton put on demonstrating the features of Live 9 and announcing Push before the software was out, i can't think of any other time they have shown us anything about their new releases... well, i mean, besides the giant release spectacle that Ableton put on demonstrating the features of Live 8, i can't think of any other other time they have shown us anything about their new releases... well, i mean, besides the giant release spectacle that Ableton put on demonstrating the new features of Live 7, i can't think of any other other other time they have shown us anything about their new releases...

leaving to walk the groundhog :arrow:

serotonic
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Re: To Ableton representatives: please, share Ableton roadmap

Post by serotonic » Wed Feb 26, 2014 1:49 am

What we really need is some kind of an official public feature request tracker, with formal voting/petition features.

It should be moderated by an ableton employee who would handle merging duplicates (and merging votes) on features requests.

This really needs to be a more formal process to make us users feel like we are actually being listened to.

Right now great ideas, and real momentum on important issues are just getting lost in the noise of this open ended forum.

This way we, as users, could see, for example, that 90% of the people really wanted feature X as a top priority...and we can have confidence that ableton knows what we want, and we can assume that they are working to address the issues.

Anyone agree?

H20nly
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Re: To Ableton representatives: please, share Ableton roadmap

Post by H20nly » Wed Feb 26, 2014 4:50 pm

we can't do that.

since 40% of the forum are the same people it would never work. besides, politics have been banned.

infernal.machine
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Re: To Ableton representatives: please, share Ableton roadmap

Post by infernal.machine » Wed Feb 26, 2014 5:15 pm

THIS ISN'T A DEMOCRACY.

8O
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Re: To Ableton representatives: please, share Ableton roadmap

Post by 8O » Wed Feb 26, 2014 6:45 pm

Angstrom wrote:These days I'm inclined to think "what would they benefit from doing this?" . If they release a roadmap that says something like
"we will fix the X to be more flexible and powerful, and not as bad as it is now"

Such a statement acknowledges that the feature X is not all it could be. Cue rampant speculation about what it could become, and also rampant recrimination about releasing X in an "inferior" state.

Really they have nothing to gain from releasing a roadmap, other than a pain in the ear.

However, I do think they ought to interact more with their customers. I used to like it when Robert or one of the developers would wander on here and just talk about elements of Live, or about music making, or they'd honestly say something about a slippery foible of Live they were tussling with. It made the whole thing more personal, and felt like there were invested people working on this thing, filled with unique musical motivations and ideas.
I guess times have changed, the company has changed, their customer base has changed. I guess that was all a long time ago now. I guess the money and focus is on "content".

In a gold rush, sell ShovelPackBreaks Pro II, 20% off!
20% off ShovelPackBreaks Pro II!?
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