Why is there STILL no strip silence in Ableton 11???

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Nyyx
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Why is there STILL no strip silence in Ableton 11???

Post by Nyyx » Mon Apr 12, 2021 12:57 pm

It its absolutely mind boggling to me that Ableton 11 shipped with no strip silence feature. And after a quick search, it appears from a post on twitter that Ableton added strip silence to their user wishlist FOUR YEARS AGO. Like, what???? Personally, I think you could take half of what came with Ableton 11 and throw it in the fucking trash can. Where are the quality of life upgrades??? Where is the stuff people have been literally begging for for years now? I would instantly upgrade to 11 just for this one feature. I don't know, I just don't get it.

slow.robot
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Re: Why is there STILL no strip silence in Ableton 11???

Post by slow.robot » Mon Apr 12, 2021 3:32 pm

I’m new to Ableton, but comp editing, and linked editing seem like pretty huge quality of life improvements to me—but I digress... I’ve been recording and producing music for almost 25 years now, and I’ve never used a strip silence feature, and more importantly haven’t ever needed it. what’s the use case for that being a quality of life feature? I’m not suggesting it’s not useful—just genuinely curious as to why it is.

Tarekith
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Re: Why is there STILL no strip silence in Ableton 11???

Post by Tarekith » Mon Apr 12, 2021 5:54 pm

I like it when doing mixdowns for clients, it cleans up all the dead space allowing me to get a better idea of someone else's arrangement. It might also help if you have a LOT of tracks and you're getting drop outs from your disk access being too slow.
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slow.robot
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Re: Why is there STILL no strip silence in Ableton 11???

Post by slow.robot » Mon Apr 12, 2021 6:37 pm

Tarekith wrote:
Mon Apr 12, 2021 5:54 pm
I like it when doing mixdowns for clients, it cleans up all the dead space allowing me to get a better idea of someone else's arrangement. It might also help if you have a LOT of tracks and you're getting drop outs from your disk access being too slow.
ah, makes sense, thanks. 👍🏼 I typically am only working on stuff I’ve recorded myself, but I can see how that could be useful for a mixing perspective if you’re working on tracks recorded elsewhere.

Nyyx
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Re: Why is there STILL no strip silence in Ableton 11???

Post by Nyyx » Tue Apr 13, 2021 2:50 am

slow.robot wrote:
Mon Apr 12, 2021 3:32 pm
I’m new to Ableton, but comp editing, and linked editing seem like pretty huge quality of life improvements to me—but I digress... I’ve been recording and producing music for almost 25 years now, and I’ve never used a strip silence feature, and more importantly haven’t ever needed it. what’s the use case for that being a quality of life feature? I’m not suggesting it’s not useful—just genuinely curious as to why it is.
Well like I said, not everything in the update was garbage. Comping was a very much needed upgrade, and one that again Ableton was slow to integrate. And I saw in another post where someone didn't really know the value of strip silence, so I'll give you a very easy example.

Let's say you're working with a massive amount of stems. Would you rather work with a ton of clips all bricked out to look exactly the same, or have each clip accurately display what it just by its length and position in the track? Or an even better one, and the one I currently deal with, let's say you're doing sound design and want to bounce out a TON of samples for later use in other projects. Welp, have fun trimming each and every one of those 100+ clips. And when you're doing this over, and over, and over? It becomes an enormous time sink. I just think it's a problem if you're having to look to other DAWs to perform a task, especially when Ableton already knows this is a problem and something that people want. And keep in mind, these aren't ground breaking changes. It's simple stuff that other DAWs already have, and have had for a long time. Strip silence, batch export, delay compensation for video, comping(which we finally got), and more.

slow.robot
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Re: Why is there STILL no strip silence in Ableton 11???

Post by slow.robot » Wed Apr 14, 2021 11:09 am

Nyyx wrote:
Tue Apr 13, 2021 2:50 am
slow.robot wrote:
Mon Apr 12, 2021 3:32 pm
I’m new to Ableton, but comp editing, and linked editing seem like pretty huge quality of life improvements to me—but I digress... I’ve been recording and producing music for almost 25 years now, and I’ve never used a strip silence feature, and more importantly haven’t ever needed it. what’s the use case for that being a quality of life feature? I’m not suggesting it’s not useful—just genuinely curious as to why it is.
Well like I said, not everything in the update was garbage. Comping was a very much needed upgrade, and one that again Ableton was slow to integrate. And I saw in another post where someone didn't really know the value of strip silence, so I'll give you a very easy example.

Let's say you're working with a massive amount of stems. Would you rather work with a ton of clips all bricked out to look exactly the same, or have each clip accurately display what it just by its length and position in the track? Or an even better one, and the one I currently deal with, let's say you're doing sound design and want to bounce out a TON of samples for later use in other projects. Welp, have fun trimming each and every one of those 100+ clips. And when you're doing this over, and over, and over? It becomes an enormous time sink. I just think it's a problem if you're having to look to other DAWs to perform a task, especially when Ableton already knows this is a problem and something that people want. And keep in mind, these aren't ground breaking changes. It's simple stuff that other DAWs already have, and have had for a long time. Strip silence, batch export, delay compensation for video, comping(which we finally got), and more.
gotcha, I can definitely see the usefulness for the cases you describe. I've never worked with other people's stems, and rarely do anything with samples, so the types of functionality that improve those things aren't always very obvious to me.

and you're preaching to the choir on that last point :lol: --I just moved to Ableton from using Reason as my main DAW for 10+ years for exactly those reasons. now, I am a patient boy (I wait, I wait, I wait, I wait), but even after all that time, Reason still doesn't have some fundamental, DAW 101 stuff (auto punch, markers, and about 100 other super basic things). I hope Ableton gives you your strip silence feature soon, and if they give me my integrated vocal pitch editing, I'll have pretty much everything I've been wanting in a DAW. :)

Abuwabu
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Re: Why is there STILL no strip silence in Ableton 11???

Post by Abuwabu » Wed Apr 14, 2021 6:38 pm

As a workaround you can set Audacity to be your sample editor which has a well-implemented strip-silence function (and batch processes nicely too)

pottering
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Re: Why is there STILL no strip silence in Ableton 11???

Post by pottering » Thu Apr 15, 2021 4:20 am

I know it is going to be hard for users of other DAWs to grasp this concept, but this feature, as described here, would cause problems with current functionality in Live, informally called "Dummy Clips".

Multiple "Dummy" Audio Clips, which are audio Clips with silent audio, could end up being removed by mistake by the user, with just a single careless action.

It could destroy a user's project.

And measures to avoid nuking Dummy Clips, like detecting and not deleting Clips with envelopes, could cause extra manual work for the user (like needing to find and delete envelopes only in the silent parts) and end making the feature moot in many situations.

Not saying it should not be implemented in some way, but it is not such a no-brainer as users of other DAWs think, there are some significant "gotchas".
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slow.robot
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Re: Why is there STILL no strip silence in Ableton 11???

Post by slow.robot » Thu Apr 15, 2021 8:23 am

pottering wrote:
Thu Apr 15, 2021 4:20 am
I know it is going to be hard for users of other DAWs to grasp this concept, but this feature, as described here, would cause problems with current functionality in Live, informally called "Dummy Clips".

Multiple "Dummy" Audio Clips, which are audio Clips with silent audio, could end up being removed by mistake by the user, with just a single careless action.

It could destroy a user's project.

And measures to avoid nuking Dummy Clips, like detecting and not deleting Clips with envelopes, could cause extra manual work for the user (like needing to find and delete envelopes only in the silent parts) and end making the feature moot in many situations.

Not saying it should not be implemented in some way, but it is not such a no-brainer as users of other DAWs think, there are some significant "gotchas".
do dummy clips have any importance in Arrangement view, or just in Session? perhaps strip silence would only work in the Arrangement?

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Re: Why is there STILL no strip silence in Ableton 11???

Post by Tarekith » Thu Apr 15, 2021 2:42 pm

I would assume strip silence is something that only makes sense in arrange view.
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pottering
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Re: Why is there STILL no strip silence in Ableton 11???

Post by pottering » Thu Apr 15, 2021 11:34 pm

Dummy Clips in Arrangement may be used for Modulation (blue), which is a Clip-only. Most probably from when recording Session Clips into Arrangement.
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Re: Why is there STILL no strip silence in Ableton 11???

Post by Tarekith » Fri Apr 16, 2021 3:01 am

Interesting, I didn’t even realize that was an option in arrange view. Thanks!
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Nyyx
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Re: Why is there STILL no strip silence in Ableton 11???

Post by Nyyx » Sat Apr 17, 2021 4:43 pm

pottering wrote:
Thu Apr 15, 2021 4:20 am
I know it is going to be hard for users of other DAWs to grasp this concept, but this feature, as described here, would cause problems with current functionality in Live, informally called "Dummy Clips".

Multiple "Dummy" Audio Clips, which are audio Clips with silent audio, could end up being removed by mistake by the user, with just a single careless action.

It could destroy a user's project.

And measures to avoid nuking Dummy Clips, like detecting and not deleting Clips with envelopes, could cause extra manual work for the user (like needing to find and delete envelopes only in the silent parts) and end making the feature moot in many situations.

Not saying it should not be implemented in some way, but it is not such a no-brainer as users of other DAWs think, there are some significant "gotchas".
I mean I still don't see how this would be a problem. Like I get what you're saying, but if you're using a bunch of dummy clips then maybe strip silence is something you should've thought about in advance, and just keep it in mind for next project I guess. And while I can't speak for everyone, personally I don't think I would just randomly want to strip out the silence if I'm balls deep in a project and have a bunch of automation going on in with dummy clips, etc. I think most people are going to be using it for, as I said at the beginning, for cleaning ups stems, or exporting a bunch of files. So ultimately it's just a tool to be used at your own discretion, like everything else.

ozinga
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Re: Why is there STILL no strip silence in Ableton 11???

Post by ozinga » Sat Apr 17, 2021 7:15 pm

Nyyx wrote:
Sat Apr 17, 2021 4:43 pm
pottering wrote:
Thu Apr 15, 2021 4:20 am
I know it is going to be hard for users of other DAWs to grasp this concept, but this feature, as described here, would cause problems with current functionality in Live, informally called "Dummy Clips".

Multiple "Dummy" Audio Clips, which are audio Clips with silent audio, could end up being removed by mistake by the user, with just a single careless action.

It could destroy a user's project.

And measures to avoid nuking Dummy Clips, like detecting and not deleting Clips with envelopes, could cause extra manual work for the user (like needing to find and delete envelopes only in the silent parts) and end making the feature moot in many situations.

Not saying it should not be implemented in some way, but it is not such a no-brainer as users of other DAWs think, there are some significant "gotchas".
I mean I still don't see how this would be a problem. Like I get what you're saying, but if you're using a bunch of dummy clips then maybe strip silence is something you should've thought about in advance, and just keep it in mind for next project I guess. And while I can't speak for everyone, personally I don't think I would just randomly want to strip out the silence if I'm balls deep in a project and have a bunch of automation going on in with dummy clips, etc. I think most people are going to be using it for, as I said at the beginning, for cleaning ups stems, or exporting a bunch of files. So ultimately it's just a tool to be used at your own discretion, like everything else.
This.
And most DAWs do it by region/clip. Not the whole session or track at once

pottering
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Re: Why is there STILL no strip silence in Ableton 11???

Post by pottering » Sat Apr 17, 2021 9:50 pm

Dummy Clips are not the only "gotcha", for example, removing silence before warping the whole stem makes it harder to set the resulting separate Clips to the grid later.

It can nullify Warping, one of Live's main features.

Saying "IF users are careful BEFORE doing strip silence THEN they won't have problems" is pretty much the same thing as saying "users are going to have problems".
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