Ableton Forum

I have many audio takes from Digital Perfomer ! all of them in Sound DESIGNER II format ! I don't want to convert them and duplicate them for use with Live ! I would like to browse into my DP audio folders natively from Live , let creativity run ! It shouldn't be a great piece a cake to add .. but soooo handy !

I wrote to the techs at Ableton about including SD11 as a recognised file format.
The answer was a definite no.
I also asked about supporting Digi drivers and got a "maybe."
I hope this product isn't just for the dance guys because it could have many more applications.
Ableton are certainly not going to make a living selling to people who want to use their computers "live" in a DJ situation.
So is it for people who want to make compositions in their bedrooms?
I think it has a lot more potential than that.
All these features for live performance are not going to be used at all by the majority of producers who see the enormous possibilities just with Live's loop matching.
I bought Live and I do find some use for it but I am confused by the reason for the basic concept.
The "live" part of the concept escapes me.
So what am I going to do........sit in my studio and trigger loops from my keyboard and make some composition to play to my friends?
Why would anyone with a DAW and a sequencer want to do that?
Live is a loop tool and a very good one. It's going to be used by pro's who won't use the real time features the way they were intended.
Why do Ableton shy away from the pro user?
Live is Acid for Mac. That's why people will buy it.
So now I will go and turn on my flashing lights and trigger some loops ..........just kidding.
My 2 cents worth.
Phil Buckle.

I agree with the other comments that SDII support would be very helpful. Also, additional support for Digidesign hardware would be greatly appreciated and extremely useful. I'd even be willing to pay more for a separate version with better Digi support.

Phil B. points out that Live has tremendous applications within a "Pro" context, and I couldn't agree more. As someone who has been using computers to make music professionally for 10+ years, I see great potential for Live - but this will be limited without better support for high-end systems/condigurations.

Mike

I've encountered this before; take Propellerhead's Reason for example. Reason is one of most amazing programs I've ever worked with; unfortunately I no longer use it because the developers are not big on supporting applications of Reason, incongruent with their design paradigm. The brilliant guys at Propellerhead are programmers and engineers, not musicians, therefore, they gravitate toward music they can make: Tech music (instrumental dance/trance/techno/house/rave…), and of course in their eyes, the more their program takes over the chore of making music, the greater the designers they are. While I appreciate all those forms of electronic music, they are not all that popular where I come from.

Here’s the long and short of it, nobody is going to make a multi-platinum record with a track made in Live or Reason alone, not in the states anyway. Luckily, both Ableton and Propellerhead have wisely seen fit to allow users to hitch their respective products to a DAW via Rewire. So far, so good, but here’s the rub; Propellerhead refuses to support Pro Tools, the worlds most prominent DAW. Like the rest of the world, and for good reason, Propellerhead is pissed at Digidesign for it’s monopolistic business practices. There’s also that little issue of Rewire being Propellerhead technology. I imagine they would consider it a conflict of interest to support Pro Tools through Digi’s buss (Direct Connect), and not their own (Rewire). Problem is, by alienating the biggest segment of producers (Pro Tool users), they shoot themselves in the ass anyway, relegating their incredible product to the amateur and semi-pro market.

Let’s hope Ableton is wiser.
Peace.

Good points, all. I have heard from many different sources that Digidesign makes it difficult/expensive to incorporate their technology into 3rd party applications. That explains why "TDM-friendly" versions of software are often priced higher than, say, the VST versions.

As I mentioned before, I'd be glad to pay additional $ to Ableton for full Digi support (as I have done with Emagic and others), and I suspect that once other ProTools users get a sense for what Live can do, they'll feel the same way. I just hope that it doesn't end up that Ableton ignores all of the people producing on Digidesign equipment; that would be a real tragedy.

I wonder if the kind folks at Ableton might be willing to comment on this issue here in the forum? (hint, hint)

Mike

Phil wrote: "All these features for live performance are not going to be used at all by the majority of producers who see the enormous possibilities just with Live's loop matching. "



I don't agree. I'm a producer of "non-dance" music and I hapily use Live in an live situtation. For me it's the first time I can actually do something with my non-loop based music on stage, since my alternative was playing from DAT. While I was getting bored with this DAT method b/c it left me with very little influence, Live forced me to go on stage.

Since this is a 1.1 version I expected having to think around some basic features like importing SDII and turning off timestretching. I export all my songs out of Logic into Live which is not an easy thing but a challenge. And each time when I'm done I am amazed by the instant remix capabilities and i can give my songs a more live feel.
On top of this, now I can start my basic remix in Live and sync it with Logic to add softh synth, as simples as that.

If Ableton notices there are a lot of users demanding a certain feature they would be stupid not to implement it. But it the mean time you could see the lacking of certain features as an opportunity to try it differently. Let's us recall the times when we were stuck behind our little sampler screens praying for a program like this.

SDIIfile import would be a good plus.
I work with Logic and it allows me to select file format when bouncing so that's not a major issue.

I see people's point about LIve though. Its really hard to get a "live" set going only triggering clips, if there was a solo function, it would help a bit, but for now I have to "sequence"a track (record it in live) then play it back. There are still things to look forward to.

Above said, Live is a great piece of software! only in version 1.1 !
I'm sure things will get added to the software in the future! =)