Things you miss from previous versions of Live

[Idonotlikebroccoli]

I'm revisiting Live 7 now, and global groove nearly makes me cry man tears. It is infinitely better than having to add grooves to each newly created clip - why is there no default groove option? Too bad it doesn't have Live 8's "select MIDI area", "adjust multiple mixer faders" and ctrl+arrows to shift notes and parameters an octave.

Live 8 is really nice, seeing as MIDI notes -always- snap to grid when I drag them, as opposed to Live 9's strange way of doing things. Also, left-clicking automation doesn't create breakpoints, and I prefer having session and arrange automation behave the Live 8 way. Also, with EQ Eight, single-clicking is far better than clicking+hovering+dropdownlist for choosing EQ curves. Dropdown lists irritate me.

I guess what I want is Live 8 with a default groove option and Live 9's browser.

[doghouse]

I miss the free manual (costs $50 now) and I also miss the spiral binding of the Live 7 manual which lets it lie flat for reading. Old school, I guess.

[Angstrom]

Mainly the midi snap. L9's sloppy snap should have never been the only option.
The single click editing of automation always trips me up, I'm forever adding new points or creating automation when I just wanted to select the line, or something.
The L9 browser remains weirdly awful, at least previous version browser flaws were born out of their simplicity. The current one is cluttered and incoherent by intent, which is unnerving. Somebody actually decided that nested folders were bad, and that to make any folder in the top section, you should make a folder in the bottom section, with the right name, and then it will show up in the top section, after a little while. Or alternatively create some XML ! At least previous browsers were flawed through omission. This one actively battles users.

[Tarekith]

I miss the old way of zooming in clips, versus always have to hold shift now.

[Idonotlikebroccoli]

Tarekith: How has zooming changed? I can click and drag as always - never needed to hold shift.

Another thing I miss in Live 9 are the three volume/pitchbend/pan buttons in session view automation. I use the volume and pitchbend ones a lot, and it feels so unnecessary suddenly having to do several clicks to access them.

An even better option could be a split top 10 view, consisting of 5 "favourite" or "most frequently tweaked" parameters, greyed out if they rely on a plugin you haven't added yet, and the 5 most recently tweaked ones.

[timday]

+1 for the old MIDI snap. I've adjusted to most of the other stuff and find it OK now but dear God the smart snap, although improved from 9.0, remains a piece of shit.

But the thing that really really messes with the way I do things live is that 9 does not recognise symlinks. The thing is, my setup is as part of a band, with a load of short songs which I load separately. I used to have a "setlist" folder with aliases of the tracks I was going to use which made them easy to access. Now I have to find clunky workarounds. I seem to remember being told it would throw the browser indexing into some kind of frenzy to get symlinks back, but I can't for the life of me see why that should be the case.

[Angstrom]

+1 for the old MIDI snap. I've adjusted to most of the other stuff and find it OK now but dear God the smart snap, although improved from 9.0, remains a piece of shit.

But the thing that really really messes with the way I do things live is that 9 does not recognise symlinks. The thing is, my setup is as part of a band, with a load of short songs which I load separately. I used to have a "setlist" folder with aliases of the tracks I was going to use which made them easy to access. Now I have to find clunky workarounds. I seem to remember being told it would throw the browser indexing into some kind of frenzy to get symlinks back, but I can't for the life of me see why that should be the case.

On the subject of symlinks, this strikes at the heart of the L9 browser failure, because you shouldn't even need OS symbolic links to do that. Live should be capable of grouping content arbitrarily via it's own database, which is already a set of metakey value links. EG, a preset belongs to a live pack because it has meta data in the database which set a link between the two. There are LOTS of metadata keys and values in that database.

It should be easy to create a "My live presets" group, "my new sounds", "Daves live sounds" , "tutorial presets" . All this is as simple as a couple of additional metakey/ value pairs. The browser is not a file tree, it is a search engine. It goes and looks up attributes of resources, and returns matching results. Yet for some reason they persisted with a Hierarchic tree (sound X exists in folder Y, and never anywhere else).
I can only hope that L10 has it all repaired and usable by actual users, but the L9 beta was so defensive about the glaring issues I am really doubtful

[Tarekith]

Tarekith: How has zooming changed? I can click and drag as always - never needed to hold shift.

Another thing I miss in Live 9 are the three volume/pitchbend/pan buttons in session view automation. I use the volume and pitchbend ones a lot, and it feels so unnecessary suddenly having to do several clicks to access them.

An even better option could be a split top 10 view, consisting of 5 "favourite" or "most frequently tweaked" parameters, greyed out if they rely on a plugin you haven't added yet, and the 5 most recently tweaked ones.

There used to be a permanent zoom area on half the waveform, now you have to hold shift to access it.

[Idonotlikebroccoli]

Tarekith: How has zooming changed? I can click and drag as always - never needed to hold shift.

Another thing I miss in Live 9 are the three volume/pitchbend/pan buttons in session view automation. I use the volume and pitchbend ones a lot, and it feels so unnecessary suddenly having to do several clicks to access them.

An even better option could be a split top 10 view, consisting of 5 "favourite" or "most frequently tweaked" parameters, greyed out if they rely on a plugin you haven't added yet, and the 5 most recently tweaked ones.

There used to be a permanent zoom area on half the waveform, now you have to hold shift to access it.

Ah, I see. I've only ever used the area above the loop brace to zoom, and I don't work much with audio, but if I were used to doing it that way, the new way is undoubtedly worse. It's similar to dealing with automation for me, where I really don't like having to hold shift to adjust the selection.

[Idonotlikebroccoli]

Okay, so after some browsing around, I discovered two things that (kind of) help:

1. Selecting automation and left-clicking to adjust up/down:

While left-clicking directly on the line does create breakpoints, you can still drag an automation selection up/down by hovering just below or above it. This is an ok way of doing it, I think.

2. Modulation/automation confusion:

Clip has to be playing (I know - that's silly), and then you can right-click "show modulation", as described here: http://www.macableton.com/Ableton_live_ ... ation.html

I really wish they would have kept the old default behaviour, or given users the option. This is such an awkward way of doing it.

[chapelier fou]

2. Modulation/automation confusion:

Clip has to be playing (I know - that's silly), and then you can right-click "show modulation", as described here: http://www.macableton.com/Ableton_live_ ... ation.html

I really wish they would have kept the old default behaviour, or given users the option. This is such an awkward way of doing it.

+1

[Angstrom]

Yep, the confusion between the (absolute) automation and the (relative) modulation seems to have been resolved by brushing modulation under the carpet. I'm really not convinced this is a solution.

Trying to improve usability through simplicity is admirable, but doing it by hiding things is just desparate.

It's the equivalent of tidying your room before visitors arrive by shoving everything under the bed: "Just look at my sleek minimalist room, no intrusive shelves or ornaments anywhere! Oh, you need a spoon, lemme just move my mattress".

This is not design, it is desperation on a deadline.

[aubford]

Deadline? It would take them 5 seconds to implement a "default groove" option. I think its mental laziness..

[eyeknow]

I hate the white letters on the clips

[jlgrimes]

Mainly the midi snap. L9's sloppy snap should have never been the only option.
The single click editing of automation always trips me up, I'm forever adding new points or creating automation when I just wanted to select the line, or something.
The L9 browser remains weirdly awful, at least previous version browser flaws were born out of their simplicity. The current one is cluttered and incoherent by intent, which is unnerving. Somebody actually decided that nested folders were bad, and that to make any folder in the top section, you should make a folder in the bottom section, with the right name, and then it will show up in the top section, after a little while. Or alternatively create some XML ! At least previous browsers were flawed through omission. This one actively battles users.

I also miss the old midi snap as well (although Live's smart snap isn't as bad as other host's smart snap settings but at least you can turn those off).

My biggest gripe with the browser is having to import new folders into Live everytime you want to drag a new file from a new location on your PC.

Other than that, there are programs with worse browers (cough, cough Reason but Reason's browser can be cool for quickly choosing synth presets).


I do think that many times Live tries to err on the side of simplicity when they are faced with issues.



A small gripe I also have is the lack of being able to import Sample CD's into Live, but that isn't a big deal because Sampler's conversion abilities weren't that great from most of my experiences with it.