Song states and set lists

Share what you’d like to see added to Ableton Live.
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Udo Behm
Posts: 140
Joined: Thu Nov 14, 2013 2:53 pm
Location: Germany

Song states and set lists

Post by Udo Behm » Fri Nov 11, 2022 3:53 pm

Good day,

I'm desperately missing functions that VST hosts like Cantabile Perfomer (https://www.cantabilesoftware.com/guides/states), Steinberg VST Live (https://www.steinberg.net/de/vst-live/features/) or MAGIX Independence Live (https://www.magix.com/de/musik-bearbeit ... unktionen/) are offering.

They offer functions like song states or set lists that I cannot find this way in Ableton Live.

What I totally would like to do in Live is to prepare a song (or several songs) this way so that not everything gets loaded up inside the project when the project becomes loaded or when several projects become opened inside a big project (inserted). I know that it is possible to freeze tracks. However this function isn't really implemented the way I would like it to be: It is way too complicated to freeze or unfreeze tracks when you want to use a (big) project for a Live performance. Steinberg, Cantabile and MAGIX have implemented way better functions into their VST software to handle the issues of CPU and RAM usage than Live does, I think.

To me Cantabile is the software that best handles these issues. Cantabile does not only have a function to "freeze" VST plugins that are not in use but also allows to create set lists and song states to only load parts of a song (VSTs) that the user currently needs for live performance.

In Live, as far as I know, it is not possible to only load certain channels with specific VSTs and add such "states" that would allow to freeze or unfreeze several tracks at once. It neither is possible to create set lists that only load a certain project or only parts (channels or only single instruments inside a (group) of channels) of a project inside a project.

What I would like Live to being able to is to create set lists as the other softwares that I mentioned before are able to create. Cantabile and VST Live have a pre-loading function so that the next parts of a song (the next channels that would be used in Live or the next channels in antother project in Live that would be loaded up in the set list) become loaded immediately as soon as the user wishes them to be loaded. Also I wished to be able to create "song states" so that Live automatically enables or disables certain channels, instruments or groups in order it is possible to save CPU and RAM usage... These functions I desperately am missing in Live and I hope very much that you, the developers of Live, are able to add these functions so that Live really becomes a software that is worth of it's name - being able to play "Live" without too much CPU and RAM consumption...

Hope you will be implementing these ideas and further develop Live into a software that is capable of handling big projects and many VSTs for computers that do not have infinite RAM and CPU ressources.

Thanks for at least thinking about this idea and hopefully implementing it in a next release of Live.
Udo

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