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

Angstrom
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Re: MPE support.

Post by Angstrom » Wed Jul 18, 2018 1:15 am

Stromkraft wrote:Do we have any examples of other implemented features where Ableton could possibly have been inspired by Bitwig? .
If you look at the second image you'll see the coloured bands on the top row of the MIDI clip view which (I think) Bitwig use to show their multi-clip editing.
You might recognise that UI pattern as somewhat similar to that included in Live 10.

Stromkraft
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Re: MPE support.

Post by Stromkraft » Wed Jul 18, 2018 10:37 am

Angstrom wrote:
Stromkraft wrote:Do we have any examples of other implemented features where Ableton could possibly have been inspired by Bitwig? .
If you look at the second image you'll see the coloured bands on the top row of the MIDI clip view which (I think) Bitwig use to show their multi-clip editing.
You might recognise that UI pattern as somewhat similar to that included in Live 10.
So maybe there is some hope then.
Make some music!

thomashalp
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Re: MPE support.

Post by thomashalp » Thu Jul 19, 2018 7:05 am

would make sense to click the bar, to go one level deeper into the mpe data.
Or just have an added window below, like the velocity window, that shows all the extra data as well.
With a button to toggle through.

As far as my research goes however it seems the obstacle is more the midi engine itself, which strips incoming midi from a lot of data that would be needed for mpe to work, which is apparently also an issue for a lot of max for live use.

But we can keep on hoping.

In the mean time im just capturing stuff in bitwig and rendering to ableton, which is a total waste of an otherwise perfect workflow (ableton only) :cry:

Legitimoji
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Re: MPE support.

Post by Legitimoji » Fri Aug 10, 2018 8:49 pm

This is a pretty big deal to me. I love Ableton but I just got a LinnStrument and this is forcing me to use another DAW. I'll probably be switching to Bitwig for all my MPE needs until Ableton gets this fixed.

Sorry to say, but it seems like a very poor product decision to leave MPE out of Live for this long. I'm not sure what's going on but I hope someone in the company is reprioritizing.

soundsliketree
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Re: MPE support.

Post by soundsliketree » Fri Aug 10, 2018 9:02 pm

Do we have any indication from anyone at Ableton that MPE is in the development pipeline?
Not that they normally telegraph anything about planned new features, but I'm curious if anyone has heard anything through the grapevine.

Stromkraft
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Re: MPE support.

Post by Stromkraft » Fri Aug 10, 2018 9:07 pm

Legitimoji wrote:it seems like a very poor product decision to leave MPE out of Live for this long.
6 months and two weeks is pretty long. I don't feel a DAW maker must implement a moving target and MPE was added to the MIDI spec not before January 2018.

In contrast PolyAT support is 14 years overdue as this was in the MIDI spec when Ableton added MIDI clips to Live in 2004.
Make some music!

Stromkraft
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Re: MPE support.

Post by Stromkraft » Fri Aug 10, 2018 9:08 pm

soundsliketree wrote:Do we have any indication from anyone at Ableton that MPE is in the development pipeline?
Not that they normally telegraph anything about planned new features, but I'm curious if anyone has heard anything through the grapevine.
Well, check youtube for small hints that could become true.
Make some music!

soundsliketree
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Re: MPE support.

Post by soundsliketree » Fri Aug 10, 2018 9:22 pm

Stromkraft wrote:Well, check youtube for small hints that could become true.
Wise guy, eh? :lol:

Stromkraft
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Re: MPE support.

Post by Stromkraft » Sat Aug 11, 2018 7:50 am

soundsliketree wrote:
Stromkraft wrote:Well, check youtube for small hints that could become true.
Wise guy, eh? :lol:
Actually, that's one of best channels we got, except for the occasional "Trust me, I know someone at Ableton". We live on breadcrumbs, don't we?

Lately even Apple have opened up a little on future plans, like the coming Mac Pro so maybe Ableton could take a little hint from Cupertino?
Make some music!

Machinesworking
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Re: MPE support.

Post by Machinesworking » Sun Aug 19, 2018 2:10 am

Stromkraft wrote:
Legitimoji wrote:it seems like a very poor product decision to leave MPE out of Live for this long.
6 months and two weeks is pretty long. I don't feel a DAW maker must implement a moving target and MPE was added to the MIDI spec not before January 2018.

In contrast PolyAT support is 14 years overdue as this was in the MIDI spec when Ableton added MIDI clips to Live in 2004.
I've mentioned this before but it's worth mentioning again for clarities sake. In 2004 there was maybe one if any poly AT controllers on the market. My guess is VSTs would have struggled with Poly AT, and DAWs were pushing CPU limits at the time. IMO anyway it wasn't out of laziness that Ableton skipped poly AT, but out of a lack of need to in the first place.

Reaper, Traction, Bitwig, Cubase and Logic all supported MPE before 1-18. I'm not just bagging on Live here, my other main DAW Digital Performer has also 'led from behind' by being last in line.... DP also gets negative points for not supporting some sort of MIDI expression for classical instrument articulations like Cubase and Logic have.

Recently got a Roli Seaboard Block, love it, haven't even tried to set it up in DP or Live because it's a no brainer in Reaper. :twisted:

Stromkraft
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Re: MPE support.

Post by Stromkraft » Sun Aug 19, 2018 8:54 am

Machinesworking wrote:In 2004 there was maybe one if any poly AT controllers on the market. My guess is VSTs would have struggled with Poly AT, and DAWs were pushing CPU limits at the time. IMO anyway it wasn't out of laziness that Ableton skipped poly AT, but out of a lack of need to in the first place.
I can only add that PolyAt have been on my map since forever and all musicians I know had instruments with PolyAt and used those, not VSTs primarily, with Live and other DAWs back then.

Turn the question around, when did Logic and Cubase gain PolyAT support? Since 2010 at least keyboards with PolyAT have started to return to the market again. And still Ableton didn't add this to Live. So if they're 8 years behind, or 14, doesn't really matter. They're way behind and they haven't implemented MPE either.
Make some music!

Angstrom
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Re: MPE support.

Post by Angstrom » Sun Aug 19, 2018 12:19 pm

Machinesworking wrote: IMO anyway it wasn't out of laziness that Ableton skipped poly AT, but out of a lack of need to in the first place.
I think - to expand on that "lack of a need to implement it"

We should be honest about where Ableton Live comes from, it was the live audio loop player. The earliest versions were built to address a simple need to play loops of audio content in time. It was SonicFoundry Acid - but with audio clips triggerable off a grid.
Unlike Cubase or Logic which came from an idea of MIDI first. Live has incrementally added MIDI and envelope display features into the clip grid metaphor. That's like slowly turning a pickup truck into a dragster while it's being driven ... and about 5 million people are relying on it to deliver some ... beats?

Anyway, this kind of mutation has obviously been in the works for a while. I think the evidence of many changes to Live which make us say "Huh? WTF are they doing?" I think these are glimpses of the larger underlying changes for MIDI in Live. Both under the hood and also how it's graphically represented.

I'm probably wrong though!

Machinesworking
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Re: MPE support.

Post by Machinesworking » Sun Aug 19, 2018 6:34 pm

Stromkraft wrote:
Machinesworking wrote:In 2004 there was maybe one if any poly AT controllers on the market. My guess is VSTs would have struggled with Poly AT, and DAWs were pushing CPU limits at the time. IMO anyway it wasn't out of laziness that Ableton skipped poly AT, but out of a lack of need to in the first place.
I can only add that PolyAt have been on my map since forever and all musicians I know had instruments with PolyAt and used those, not VSTs primarily, with Live and other DAWs back then.

Turn the question around, when did Logic and Cubase gain PolyAT support? Since 2010 at least keyboards with PolyAT have started to return to the market again. And still Ableton didn't add this to Live. So if they're 8 years behind, or 14, doesn't really matter. They're way behind and they haven't implemented MPE either.
Turning the question around makes no sense. Logic and Cubase started out as MIDI only sequencers, low CPU demands, and at a time when most MIDI compatible keyboards had poly aftertouch. 15 years later when Live 1.0 was introduced with no VSTi support, poly AT was going away. You're framing the question, a rhetorical fallacy here. I could do the same. "All musicians I knew in 2000 were extremely excited about VSTi's and were using them right away." Which is true in my case, but it's anecdotal, of little value in the discussion. The difference here is my rhetorical framing actually fits with what was happening in the market. Poly AT keyboards disappeared around the time VSTi's started to take off. We are now seeing a small trickle of MPE instruments, and as a live performance instrument (at least in theory), Live would be best served if it implemented this new standard. I completely agree with that, whether or not MPE is still a niche market, Live should spend the resources to implement it, not just for current users but for the future as well. Definitely IMO it's a mistake to ignore it, even if it remains a niche market. Poly aftertouch is the same, there are still not many, if any full featured keyboards with Poly AT. Seriously, I can't think of one 49 key and above that has Poly AT. It should be implemented though.

That said, it's not like the entire Ableton community of users is demanding MPE or poly AT, and there are at least five DAWs I can think of quickly that have MPE support, so if you really want MPE support there are options. I would like it in Live for sure, but I'm not one to think Ableton share my vision of what is important to implement, and it's very possible that some of the reasons Bitwig developers left to form Bitwig in the first place was/is the problems Ableton was going through implementing more advanced MIDI features into 10+ year old code. So getting annoyed at your DAW of choice for features it doesn't have, while watching other DAWs get those features, or in the case of your poorly thought out example noticing Ableton not implementing a feature in Live that was in other DAWs for years when Live first gets MIDI at all... to me this is silly. As silly as me switching to Bitwig and complaining because they decided to not implement SysEx. They had that option, they chose not to. With all that said, if you still want to use MPE in Live you can, Roli has more articles on how to work MPE in Ableton than it does for DAWs that have MPE support.

What I'm saying here in a nutshell is Ableton intentionally chose not to develop polyphonic aftertouch in their original MIDI implementation, which was an add on in version 4.0 to a looper DAW, like Angstrom mentions above. There was no laziness about it, so with that in mind MPE and poly AT are to them a niche market, and remain one. Other DAWs are implementing these features. It's why I'm learning, attempting to modify, Reaper to my needs; because Cockos might not have any of the elegance of Live, or the refined 30+ year old DAW feel of DP, but they implement every new DAW feature without fail.

Stromkraft
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Re: MPE support.

Post by Stromkraft » Sun Aug 19, 2018 7:46 pm

Machinesworking wrote: [/i]Poly AT keyboards disappeared around the time VSTi's started to take off. We are now seeing a small trickle of MPE instruments, and as a live performance instrument (at least in theory), Live would be best served if it implemented this new standard.
This is not 2004 now. This is 2018. Stop living in the past. Already before MPE there was a comeback of PolyAT controllers, as I said in 2010. That's not me claiming this, that's the electronic music press that tend to, you know, keep an eye on the market. Even Push has PolyAT for crying out loud! Your apologetic stance and history lesson is not coherent and makes no sense. It's wishful apologies all day long.

Ableton choose to implement MIDI and with this took the step into becoming a DAW and being judged as a MIDI host as well. Live is now a DAW since Live 7 at least. That means MIDI support is key.

We have the controllers since many years and we have the computer power. Not adding PolyAT is silly and MPE should follow soon thereafter or at the same time.
Make some music!

Machinesworking
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Re: MPE support.

Post by Machinesworking » Sun Aug 19, 2018 10:57 pm

Stromkraft wrote:
Machinesworking wrote: [/i]Poly AT keyboards disappeared around the time VSTi's started to take off. We are now seeing a small trickle of MPE instruments, and as a live performance instrument (at least in theory), Live would be best served if it implemented this new standard.
This is not 2004 now. This is 2018. Stop living in the past. Already before MPE there was a comeback of PolyAT controllers, as I said in 2010.

Where is this comeback of Poly AT controllers? I see pretty much zero poly AT keyboards out there, and counting drum controllers is hardly worth mentioning. There are less than a dozen controllers with Poly AT out there in 2018, certainly nothing from any of the bigger manufacturers. I have a Keith McMillon 24 key poly AT device, one of a handfull of 24note controllers that do poly AT at all, it works like shit with poly AT.
That's not me claiming this, that's the electronic music press that tend to, you know, keep an eye on the market. Even Push has PolyAT for crying out loud! Your apologetic stance and history lesson is not coherent and makes no sense. It's wishful apologies all day long.
I would not count on Push's "poly AT" to ever work with poly AT, it very obviously wasn't designed to work with poly AT, just vanilla AT from their multi instrument drum rack. Call me apologetic all you want, doesn't matter, in the end Ableton have their reasons for not having poly AT, and I can see why. In the process of trying to explain why I can see their logic behind it, you're jumping to weird conclusions. Yes, there are MPE devices out now, not too many, and no, there is not a huge resurgence or anything more than a slow trickle of devices like Push 2 that might "possibly" be used for poly AT.
Ableton choose to implement MIDI and with this took the step into becoming a DAW and being judged as a MIDI host as well. Live is now a DAW since Live 7 at least. That means MIDI support is key.

We have the controllers since many years and we have the computer power. Not adding PolyAT is silly and MPE should follow soon thereafter or at the same time.
Therein is where we differ, I agree, requesting poly AT and MPE are right up there in my mind as far as features I would like to see, but reality is I think most people are more interested in Live from a sound design perspective. The truth is if there was a poll of which DAWs had the largest percentage of users who were not classically trained musicians (know some theory, can play piano, drums or guitar etc.), Live would be near the top of that list. I'm also not a coder, so I have no idea what kind of corner Ableton have backed themselves into in terms of implementing these features. I cannot predict at all whether Ableton will ever add those features in, so I look at the half dozen DAWs that already have them.

I'm not apologizing for them, but I'm not "blaming" them as you clearly are doing. I'm using the software that works. As I mentioned you can create a Rack that does MPE for MPE devices, it's a slight PITA but it works. Blaming software companies for not having your agenda is pointless, and I'm 100% certain Ableton aren't looking at your posts and thinking "Oh crap we better implement it! Stormcraft says MIDI support is key!" Voting for poly AT and MPE support on the beta forums is about all you can realistically do. You have to understand that although Ableton are not thinking of you and other advanced MIDI controller users as their key market (otherwise they would have implemented these features years ago), they don't particularly like reading posts condemning their software development. If this was was an easy fix they would have done it. With that in mind look to what they have done, the timeframe and environment they did it in, and what direction they're going in now, if it doesn't match up with your needs then move on, or use more than one DAW. It's not that hard.

I'm not trying to be rude about this, but you're being really unrealistic. Guitar Center, or any big music retail outlet, in 2018 how many Poly AT or MPE devices are they selling or MPE? It's just KM instruments, Roli and Linn that have devices that can do poly AT or MPE, beyond really boutique devices maybe.. Because a music rag is excited about new devices doesn't mean the market jumps on them. I'm literally ending up arguing with you over this because you're acting like it's a feature that MUST exist in Live, that's simply not true. MPE wise a Rack will cover the Equator, Falcon and other MPE capable synths, it's well covered on Roli's site. So I'm not sure where you're expecting this to end up? MPE is still a niche market, period, and it can work in Live as it stands today. Offering you a reasonable explanation as to why Ableton did not implement poly AT fell on completely deaf ears, you brought up them not implementing Poly AT back in the day, but I'm living in the past? Why is it so hard to think that things happen for a reason? What is your take on why Ableton didn't implement or isn't implementing MPE and Poly AT? Serious question there. If it's because you think they are lazy or because the user base is not as interested as you are in these things, then you should move on. There are a half dozen poly AT and MPE capable DAWs out there.

I chalk it up to nerding out about it, but your unreasonable take on why Ableton skipped Poly AT and your dismissal of possible explanations reeks of internet "win" syndrome.
Arguing with people online will not solve the problem, and feels especially weird considering you're attempting this open ended attack at Ableton like it's some righteous stance, and attempts to explain the situation are making you upset. Plenty of faster developed DAWs out there, and being upset about features a DAW doesn't have is pointless.

Live 10 was recently released, Ableton haven't had Poly AT for 14 years now, MPE is not in the horizon realistically. Looking at their timeline feature wise. It's time to think about other DAWs Stormcraft, or at the very least stop posturing that your indignation is righteous, it's not.

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