MPE support.

Share what you’d like to see added to Ableton Live.

Are you avoiding or ditching Live due to lack of MPE support?

Yes, it's becoming really important.
157
87%
No, I don't care.
24
13%
 
Total votes: 181

Machinesworking
Posts: 11408
Joined: Wed Jun 23, 2004 9:30 pm
Location: Seattle

Re: MPE support.

Post by Machinesworking » Mon Jul 15, 2019 7:54 pm

thomashalp wrote:
Thu Jul 11, 2019 8:47 am
another update and another month without any news

even just a sign that they are working on it would take away some of my frustration, and maybe even save them a couple of customers!
Seems like everyone has already switched or is switching to logic or bitwig
Yeah, it's a PITA, I love Live, but I don't love using scripts to create 16 tracks to record MPE into Live.

I'm using Reaper currently for MPE, but I would love to use Clips and MPE together in Live. Not interested in creating 16 clips for a single instrument, let alone 32, 48 and 64 Clips for 2,3 and 4 instruments...

Came really close to picking up Bitwig with their sale this last week..

leonardocincinelli
Posts: 1
Joined: Tue Jul 30, 2019 6:22 pm

Re: MPE support.

Post by leonardocincinelli » Tue Jul 30, 2019 6:26 pm

yea just got the seabord, we're becoming to be too many to be ignored :)

marlasky
Posts: 4
Joined: Mon Mar 16, 2015 7:35 pm

Re: MPE support.

Post by marlasky » Fri Aug 09, 2019 8:37 pm

currently I'm using Moog Animoog on the iPad with my Linnstrument, but I'm eagerly awaiting any sign from Ableton about MPE being on the horizon...don't want to switch to another DAW, but the wait has been long already... Come on Ableton, you can do it ;)

Machinesworking
Posts: 11408
Joined: Wed Jun 23, 2004 9:30 pm
Location: Seattle

Re: MPE support.

Post by Machinesworking » Sat Aug 10, 2019 4:18 am

marlasky wrote:
Fri Aug 09, 2019 8:37 pm
currently I'm using Moog Animoog on the iPad with my Linnstrument, but I'm eagerly awaiting any sign from Ableton about MPE being on the horizon...don't want to switch to another DAW, but the wait has been long already... Come on Ableton, you can do it ;)
reverb.com mistakenly had a page posted with a 50% off upgrade to Bitwig Studio from 8-Track.
Bummed it was a mistake, but also hopeful that Ableton get the message at some point that a live performance DAW like Live should be able to natively use live performance tools like MPE.

I think I've struggled with Live because I always figured it was going to be the #1 solution to live performance, and it is, but it's not 100%, my other DAW Digital Performer is still widely used in the industry for backing tracks and syncing lighting etc. in shows like Beyonce, Madonna, Roger Waters etc. etc. I think it's a much better solution for smaller bands, but the tools for larger events would have to be integrated with some serious Max knowledge, it's not an out of the box a solution for these things. The audience for Live from what I can tell is geared towards 30 somethings who work in tech, with a decent knowledge of computers who appreciate the UX, and want to jam out a little after work. That's the target audience in their ads for sure.

I think at the very least it would be fantastic to have MPE native without a script and 16 tracks grouped etc. :)

Ronan Lemaire
Posts: 1
Joined: Sat Aug 10, 2019 6:47 pm

Re: MPE support.

Post by Ronan Lemaire » Sat Aug 10, 2019 6:53 pm

Hey guys ,
We really need a MPE for the Roli seaboard ... I own a Rise 49 and it 's a pain in the ass when we have to use it... To go live it's almost impossible with 15 midi tracks to control only one instrument...
This is a forum where you are supposed to interact and I don't see any answer from you on this important topic... We don't even have any news... Are you working on it? Do you give a s... of this issue?
I'm thinking to move from Live to another DAW if nothing moves. Hope you 'll communicate at least...
RL

thomashalp
Posts: 66
Joined: Thu Oct 03, 2013 11:35 am

Re: MPE support.

Post by thomashalp » Tue Aug 13, 2019 9:56 am

well spoken

is anyone on the beta forums? wonder what the situation is like over there, last time i checked a year ago it didnt have a ton of upvotes...

Machinesworking
Posts: 11408
Joined: Wed Jun 23, 2004 9:30 pm
Location: Seattle

Re: MPE support.

Post by Machinesworking » Wed Aug 14, 2019 3:14 am

thomashalp wrote:
Tue Aug 13, 2019 9:56 am
well spoken

is anyone on the beta forums? wonder what the situation is like over there, last time i checked a year ago it didnt have a ton of upvotes...
https://ableton.centercode.com/project/ ... =1#toppost

Everyone who wants this should join and vote for it. It's definitely my #1 feature request. :?

thomashalp
Posts: 66
Joined: Thu Oct 03, 2013 11:35 am

Re: MPE support.

Post by thomashalp » Wed Aug 14, 2019 2:27 pm

done, lets all hit that +1 button

Machinesworking
Posts: 11408
Joined: Wed Jun 23, 2004 9:30 pm
Location: Seattle

Re: MPE support.

Post by Machinesworking » Sat Aug 17, 2019 4:27 am

Machinesworking wrote:
Wed Aug 14, 2019 3:14 am
https://ableton.centercode.com/project/ ... =1#toppost

Everyone who wants this should join and vote for it. It's definitely my #1 feature request. :?
Bumping. Just bought a Rise 49 of someone for a great price. Would like to use Live for it, but I'm not interested in workarounds anymore when Reaper is right here.

Airyck
Posts: 739
Joined: Thu Jul 02, 2009 11:54 pm
Location: Phoenix, AZ

Re: MPE support.

Post by Airyck » Wed Aug 28, 2019 5:51 pm

I hate that this keeps making me use up time trying out other DAW's because I really want to be able to record and "EDIT" MPE data...
Ableton Live 10 Suite / Push 2 / Max 8 /

Joe Chapman
Posts: 11
Joined: Thu Nov 23, 2017 5:14 am

Re: MPE support.

Post by Joe Chapman » Sat Aug 31, 2019 11:25 am

Agreed. I've had the Seaboard Block for nine months, and I'm wondering how long I'm going to have to wait for proper integration. Having to wait for anything as a Live customer is a nerve-wracking time because experience teaches you that you can't have any confidence that it will be soon. We get left for years waiting for smaller things. I just hope Ableton don't think they're done because Roli's products are on sale saying Live supports them, when that's only half true.

n9
Posts: 34
Joined: Wed Oct 06, 2004 8:12 pm
Location: NYC
Contact:

Re: MPE support.

Post by n9 » Sat Aug 31, 2019 10:33 pm

Live user since v1.5 (first Mac release) w/ Live as primary DAW since v3. I love Live. I love the templates that I build so that I can use my Push and turn the monitor off and do everything I want.

Except, that is, MPE. I have a Seaboard 49 and think that MPE is the most significant improvement to music making that I can remember. I used to be a horn player, so having multidimensional expressivity on each note is like a dream.

So I bought Bitwig in January to use while I wait for Live to get MPE (Live became too unstable for me with all those 15 track groups in my template.) And, well, it hurt like hell to use another system after 15+ years of Live and I thought that a million things were stupid about Bitwig, but -- hey. You folks should try it! I'm not going to say that it is better than Live for everyone in the world, but wow, it has turned out to be the best thing... since MPE!

1. MPE works great. It just works.
2. MPE actually needs a lot of help to work -- you have to scale and lag the inputs a lot to make them expressive... or else there is a lot of jitter and less beauty than you would want. Bitwig's modulators and the Grid are really great for this. You have curves, envelopes, lag processors, etc. Just what you want... and they don't take up much room and easily and reliably save with your patches and presets.
3. The built ins are pretty stellar.... I've stopped using all but a few 3rd party plugins in my projects as making stuff wit the Grid is really easy and very satisfying. I hacked at MaxMSP for years before I got to where I can get with the Grid in (literally) 1 hour. Also the Sampler is amazing, and the sampler grid module is really really amazing... you can make MPE controlled granular stuff so fast that sounds so good.
4. The Grid is polyphonic by design and has voice stacking by design. It is, in effect, the best MPE synth/sampler that exists because of all these features. MPE to MPE is one thing, but to use it to make expressive patches that have the modulators properly scaled? That's what you want. I don't think that I could walk away from the Grid now that I've used it.

So. I've been away for 8 months doing that and learning what I learned. Like I said: some pain up front, but wow -- you get a lot of good stuff w Bitwig and more to the point, the way that it is designed it works really, really well. I do miss my Push 2 templates. There is a great Push 2 script for Bitwig but it isn't as beautiful and complete as the way it works with Live. My monitor needs to be on, which -- that's a bummer.

my 2 cents.

n9
Posts: 34
Joined: Wed Oct 06, 2004 8:12 pm
Location: NYC
Contact:

Re: MPE support.

Post by n9 » Sat Aug 31, 2019 10:44 pm

Joe Chapman wrote:
Sat Aug 31, 2019 11:25 am
Agreed. I've had the Seaboard Block for nine months, and I'm wondering how long I'm going to have to wait for proper integration. Having to wait for anything as a Live customer is a nerve-wracking time because experience teaches you that you can't have any confidence that it will be soon. We get left for years waiting for smaller things. I just hope Ableton don't think they're done because Roli's products are on sale saying Live supports them, when that's only half true.
People inside Ableton have been pretty upfront that implementing MPE means a complete rewrite of the MIDI and MIDI clip components of Live, which is some of the oldest code in the codebase. It is a VERY expensive feature for them to implement because of this and is the kind of thing that could trigger a need to rewrite even larger amounts of code. My theory (as a Product Manager person in software) is that because of this the cost/value proposition of MPE just isn't anywhere high enough to justify the expense in time and money to do that rewrite and so they are waiting until the cost v benefit equation changes to do it....

That's the better of the two possibilities I'm thinking of. The worse is that the MIDI code is so central and so old that they have been trying to rewrite it for a couple of years to update it to do a few things, including implementing MPE, and they have been unable to get the work done as changes in that part of the codebase are breaking everything.

We have seen both of these scenarios play out re: MPE on many software projects -- other DAWs, instruments, etc. For example: Omnisphere has a poor MPE implementation because they do not want to rewrite the core engine -- it would cost too much, so they hacked a workaround. Zebra2 cannot be updated to be MPE so they are going to include MPE in the completely rewritten from scratch Zebra3, which Hive was written such that implementing partial MPE spec was pretty easy to do. Live is looking more and more like a Zebra... needing a dramatic rewrite.

Again my 2 cents (someone that waited from 2017 to Jan 2019 for MPE support and then went elsewhere.)

Angstrom
Posts: 14921
Joined: Mon Oct 04, 2004 2:22 pm
Contact:

Re: MPE support.

Post by Angstrom » Mon Sep 02, 2019 5:33 pm

n9 wrote:
Sat Aug 31, 2019 10:44 pm
People inside Ableton have been pretty upfront that implementing MPE means a complete rewrite of the MIDI and MIDI clip components of Live, which is some of the oldest code in the codebase. It is a VERY expensive feature for them to implement because of this and is the kind of thing that could trigger a need to rewrite even larger amounts of code. My theory (as a Product Manager person in software) is that because of this the cost/value proposition of MPE just isn't anywhere high enough to justify the expense in time and money to do that rewrite and so they are waiting until the cost v benefit equation changes to do it....

I'm not so sure about that.
L10 brought the automation "page" (view toggle) which was completely new to L10. We can see that it was a big project and caused quite a bit of upheaval for users and took a while to bed in all the functionality - yet it actually exposes very little more functionality than the L9 automation. All it gained was more clarity, a bit more screen space.
So, what does that imply?
We could say that Ableton lost their damn minds and spent a few months of dev time implementing a slightly wonky feature that delivers little more than the older method. Or were they preparing the ground for further expansion in this area. Is this V1 of automation view.

What else happened? They added some automation shapes, and they improved the differentiation and exposure / UI selectors for modulation versus automation. Which means they have been updating the classes for automation and modulation. They've done work there. A new view, new interactions, new extensions, new UI.

a lot of work. For what appears to be (so far) not that massive a return.

They have two poly-aftertouch controllers (Push 1 & 2) which were very popular, created revenue, and which spew out tons of poly-aftertouch data which their main app cannot represent.
They are reasonably likely to release Push 3 or some other controller the next 12 months, and this is surely likely to produce as much or more control data.

It is my guess that when Push 3 or Prod 1 is released that Live 10.5 will be unveiled and the Automation view will expose new methods to handle Aftertouch data and MPE

Machinesworking
Posts: 11408
Joined: Wed Jun 23, 2004 9:30 pm
Location: Seattle

Re: MPE support.

Post by Machinesworking » Mon Sep 02, 2019 8:13 pm

Angstrom wrote:
Mon Sep 02, 2019 5:33 pm
n9 wrote:
Sat Aug 31, 2019 10:44 pm
People inside Ableton have been pretty upfront that implementing MPE means a complete rewrite of the MIDI and MIDI clip components of Live, which is some of the oldest code in the codebase. It is a VERY expensive feature for them to implement because of this and is the kind of thing that could trigger a need to rewrite even larger amounts of code. My theory (as a Product Manager person in software) is that because of this the cost/value proposition of MPE just isn't anywhere high enough to justify the expense in time and money to do that rewrite and so they are waiting until the cost v benefit equation changes to do it....
It is my guess that when Push 3 or Prod 1 is released that Live 10.5 will be unveiled and the Automation view will expose new methods to handle Aftertouch data and MPE
All I've got to add to this is I've been using Live since v3, Ableton work at their own pace, and on what they want to work on. Poly Aftertouch would be a logical start for MPE support, it's not there. They're on the board for MIDI 2.0 so there's that, but I can't help but think that Ableton are happy with where it is right now. Someone wrote a script, and it "works".

There are distinct reasons IMO to use various DAWs, they all have strong points. Live is fantastic for Clips, streamlined interface fast workflow etc. but it's MIDI implementation has always been extremely limited, no NRPN, SysEx, poly aftertouch etc. I don't think this was done out of laziness, it was probably done to ensure that the MIDI it does do is fairly bulletproof.

I recently purchased MIDI Quest 12, a SysEx librarian with VSTi GUI versions of your hardware etc. It's MIDI for a track is separate than your DAW, testing it in Reaper I had no idea you did not need or want to arm the track with the same MIDI in/outs that the VSTi does internally. So SysEx, note and CC editing was being doubled and both MQ12 and Reaper were fighting for the data. It hard crashed the MIDI setup in OSX, completely eliminated, erased, kaput! Ableton error on the side of caution IMO, so I really don't know if they ever will get MPE since it's a script and workaround as of now, thereby lessening their burden if anything flies out of control.

My hopes are not up, if I want a feature, I'm more likely to use the DAW that has that feature.

Post Reply