Live 10 upgrade path

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Mr-Bit
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Re: Live 10 upgrade path

Post by Mr-Bit » Tue Feb 06, 2018 10:20 pm

As Live is a tool for work offsetting the upgrade cost against my tax bill took the sting away, but I do think its a bit steep and feel a little guilty entertaining this pricing..upgraded every version since 4 and feel the price should relate to what version the user is upgrading from.

Stromkraft
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Re: Live 10 upgrade path

Post by Stromkraft » Tue Feb 06, 2018 11:29 pm

regalpierot wrote:paying for the upgrade before the release...

…think a lot of folks will be sticking on 9.
Actually if you owned Live 9 you didn't pay before release only pre-ordered, but you paid on release.

Personally, I took another route and bought Live 9 Standard directly from Ableton. So I paid well a month before release with the money I got from selling my Live 9 Suite. A little later I also bought Max For Live at the 20% discount. That's my fee for getting Live 10.

I don't care what other DAWs cost really. At the moment I want to continue to be using Live. I have a free version of Pro Tools on my disk. Haven't opened it. 24/7 producers without kids can use multiple DAWs. I can't. I won't.
Last edited by Stromkraft on Tue Mar 06, 2018 11:39 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Razz CE
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Re: Live 10 upgrade path

Post by Razz CE » Tue Feb 06, 2018 11:42 pm

I actually feel $200-250 is more or less fair for the four year period of drip-fed feature additions that we got from Live 9. If Live 10 is the same way, I don't mind paying that. But it's definitely waaay at the upper threshold of realistic. The non-preorder price of $300 is insane. If I hadn't had the preorder option I would have stuck with Live 9 just out of principle.

But it's the non-upgrade price of Suite, and ESPECIALLY Standard that blows my mind. I recently had a friend come to me for advice about buying a DAW. He knows I sing Ableton's praises all the day long, but he's on mac and he asked me whether he should get Live or Logic. I told him Logic with no hesitation. I can't in good conscience tell anyone who isn't deadly serious about music that they should spend $700 on a DAW - or in the alternative, $450 for a DAW that is severely handicapped compared to other DAWs in its price range. Consider that for $300 you get FL signature edition with loads of criminally underrated instruments and tons of effects, a handful of which are incredible and unique... plus free updates for life. For $400 you could buy Studio One, which has copied Live's rack architecture and also includes some good FX and a couple versatile instruments. Then there's Logic's famous stock suite of plugins, plus Alchemy for $200. Live has great effects, some good instruments (but none of them are Harmor, Sytrus, Alchemy, etc.), and I will probably never switch DAWs because the workflow itself is worth the price of admission for me, but holy hell, $450 and you don't get Analog, Tension, Electric, Operator, Collision... not even one of them? People who are opting for the limited version are less likely to be the same people who would pony up to buy several softsynths. If you're that guy and you buy Live Standard, what are you supposed to make music with? Simpler? $450 and you don't even get a real sampler? A SAMPLER.

I don't know... maybe it's just me. In my mind, $450 should get you more. Seems like Standard should mean "everything you need" and Suite should mean "everything and the kitchen sink". Standard seems more like the bare minimum.

But hell, for my own self interest, I hope people keep paying Ableton's prices and they keep making new updates until I'm 100 years old because I don't want to work in anything else.
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kitekrazy
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Re: Live 10 upgrade path

Post by kitekrazy » Wed Feb 07, 2018 4:15 am

regalpierot wrote:Add me to the list who I guess didn't pay attention, got countless EMails about buying Live 9 and then getting a free update to 10 but nothing at all registered with the discount of paying for the upgrade before the release...maybe because I've never seen that before and I own a lot of software.

Just logged in, checked the price to upgrade my Live 9 Suite to Live 10 suite and I honestly kept thinking there was an error on the site, like somehow it hadn't registered accordingly. $299 to upgrade my Live 9 Suite to Live 10 Suite. That's utterly pathetic pricing. :roll:

So you have Logic at $199 new. You have Reason with serious feature upgrades for free (VST support in 9.5) and a max of $129 for all upgrades from relatively previous versions. Really quite disappointed with Abelton, think a lot of folks will be sticking on 9.
You could have gotten Cubase last month for $255 as a crossgrade price. It is a more well rounded DAW. For the price I bought Samplitude Pro Suite, upgraded Reason, upgraded to Cubase Elements for about the same price.

You can buy other DAWs for the same price of the upgrade. Most of the Suite library is very old.

greedy.mf
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Re: Live 10 upgrade path

Post by greedy.mf » Wed Feb 07, 2018 6:11 am

regalpierot wrote:a lot of folks will be sticking on 9.
I'm sticking with 9 Suite for sure.

There is not so much for me within upgrade.
New synth and delay plugin don't matter much since I own and primarily use Serum and Replica XL. While it is probably more CPU efficient than either, I'm not a fan of bundled instrument UIs. Stock FX look good though.

As for new looks, Capture option, and Multiclip editing - yeah, these are nice, but not nice enough to justify even discounted upgrade price of $239. Which I've already missed by two days.

So unless they introduce something more tempting, like advanced mixer view with all plugins visible (think Logic or more traditional DAW), or cut the price in half I'll stay on v.9.

strangedaysuk
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Re: Live 10 upgrade path

Post by strangedaysuk » Wed Feb 07, 2018 8:06 am

I think you need to look deeper into whats in Live 10. I was the same as you, and I still feel the price is a little high.

But a lot play down the amount of changes in Live 10. On the surface its not a lot but there is a lot to dive into to see whats changed and if I am honest I think it was released a little early/ not enough of what is really planned is in the 10.0.0.1 release.

The Wavetable synth is great. The new effects really good. Lots of new little tweaks like zoom shortcuts, midi catch up, fully coloured tracks, multiple clip editing, groups, improved browser, more file export options.

The problem is these are all features you expect to get in dot releases, not in a major update, the big update is for big bold changes, the dot releases are to add the little features. Its all the wrong way round in my view. I like 10, I bought 10, I do feel slightly ripped of. But as a recently new customer (I got into 9 a year ago) I will give them this chance to see what happens, if they loose focus, back to Logic I go.


And just to add...

A lot of users moan that the clue is in the title "Live". I agree Ableton is for live use but I think its carved itself a firm footing in the recording and mixing DAW market as well. There is no reason why Ableton cannot do everything it needs and do it well whilst keeping the live elements. Its Live in terms of its approach to being a DAW not in terms of a limiting towards its functionality.

Machinesworking
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Re: Live 10 upgrade path

Post by Machinesworking » Wed Feb 07, 2018 11:08 am

Razz CE wrote: and I will probably never switch DAWs because the workflow itself is worth the price of admission for me,
I wonder if you've ever spent time learning one of the "non specialized" DAWs like Logic, Cubase, Digital Performer, Reaper?
I use other DAWs along with Live specifically because the workflow is slower in Live. At first when you get into Live it's faster, unless you get hung up on something
you speed right along, but after a song is at it's halfway mark, fleshed out but not finished, it slogs down. The lack of key commands for common functions, lack of screen sets and other
"conventional" tools from the DAWs I mentioned starts to make the process of actually finishing a song crawl.

I think over the years it's been seen that I'm somehow really upset about this or something, I'm not. Live started out as a DJ performance tool, but became a DAW by demand, and partially I believe they tried to keep an intuitive approach to honor the simplicity of LIve 1.0, but at this point I often wonder what direction they're going in? The only answer I can give is Bedroom Producer.
Other DAWs show people working in studios or onstage even, but Ableton consistently show nice looking loft spaces with a laptop, maybe a guitar and a hardware synth or two. Out of all the pictures of people using it, only one seemed to be using it, live.

I get it, their vision is making them a ton of money, and a lot of people are super happy with their direction. I'm just slightly bummed that Live hasn't really had live performance as a focus of it's targeted market for quite some time now. Looking into Reaper and bought a copy of Logic lately, since both do MPE, a new MIDI standard geared towards live performance...

regalpierot
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Re: Live 10 upgrade path

Post by regalpierot » Wed Feb 07, 2018 2:16 pm

@Stromkraft : I might be missing something but it sounds like you went through all that selling\rebuying nonsense to ultimately go from Live 9 Suite to Live 10 Standard, thereby losing access to a bunch of Instruments and Effects including the new ones in 10. I may be missing something there but 9 Suite beats 10 Standard IMHO.

I will say that in the past, more often than not when I've had to do a double-take on an upgrade price I usually just bite the bullet and upgrade. I like to stay fairly on the current rev for my main applications. But twenty four hours on and I can categorically say I won't be upgrading, really ridiculous price which I see a lot of forums complaining about. Even with the 20% discount (my own fault not seeing that, my muscle memory is probably more tuned to the 99% of other times where manufacturers have an early-bird discount for a grace period after the release date) that's $240, just too expensive.

Weird thing is, I too am a Live 1.0 user who has upgraded through the years and went to Suite around 6.0. I also bought Push and then Push 2.0. A few others on different forums said they logged in today and their upgrade price was nowhere near $299 so wondering if there is something screwy going on.

Angstrom
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Re: Live 10 upgrade path

Post by Angstrom » Wed Feb 07, 2018 3:42 pm

Machinesworking wrote: I use other DAWs along with Live specifically because the workflow is slower in Live. At first when you get into Live it's faster, unless you get hung up on something
you speed right along, but after a song is at it's halfway mark, fleshed out but not finished, it slogs down.
I find it odd that Ableton highlighted arrangment updates as part of Live 10 but really there's nothing there.
Here's the full list.
Mousewheel zooming, clips can be moved with the arrow keys, slip-editing (which is not really very usable in the current state), hold shift to warp a clip, the top of a clip is now the dragging handle, reverse a sub-selection, chase midi, double click to make a new clip (didn;t this existe already!), Ctrl-L will now toggle the loop (!), MIDI files can be imported at the marker, Lock envelopes can be key mapped.

I mean - are any of those actual arrangment tools? They are more like tweaks.
The only one I actually use is mousewheel zoom. I'm a big fan of slip editing but the L10 implementation is no use at all.
It's all pretty strange. I guess is makes sense if you own Push2.
I'm still exporting stems to Studio One to arrange properly. It's a brutal and awkward process.

Stromkraft
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Re: Live 10 upgrade path

Post by Stromkraft » Wed Feb 07, 2018 3:50 pm

regalpierot wrote:@Stromkraft : I might be missing something but it sounds like you went through all that selling\rebuying nonsense to ultimately go from Live 9 Suite to Live 10 Standard, thereby losing access to a bunch of Instruments and Effects including the new ones in 10. I may be missing something there but 9 Suite beats 10 Standard IMHO.
I already have plug-in instruments, specifically the free TyrellN6. Madrona Labs Aalto, Cakewalk Z3TA+ 2, Waves Element, Massive, FM8 and Reaktor that I feel are superior to what comes with Suite and I stopped using anything but Simpler/Sampler and Electric years ago.

So there was nothing or very little in Suite I felt I couldn't give up, except for Max For Live which is why I bought that.

The final nail in the coffin was that I decided Ableton wasn't likely to update Sampler any time soon with reading loop points — meaning it throws away years of work put inbto sample libraries at import — so I gave up. I'm looking to use either Kontakt 5 or Reaktor samplers as alternatives and I'm looking at the TAL-Sampler as well. I guess this means Ableton will update Sampler very soon, so if anyone wants to sell their separate Sampler license at a bargain price PM me. Could be good to have around anyway.

I'll keep using Simpler for drums, but I use mainly synthetic drums for my stuff.

My main advantage with stepping to Standard was to clear my mind space of the Suite synths, so I don't have to feel irritated they're just there or use them and feel they let me down. I saved a few €s as well, but that was not the main objective.
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login
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Re: Live 10 upgrade path

Post by login » Wed Feb 07, 2018 5:01 pm

I remember reading that if you update from Suite to standard you don't lose the instruments from previous suite versions you just don0t get the new ones.

Stromkraft
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Re: Live 10 upgrade path

Post by Stromkraft » Wed Feb 07, 2018 6:46 pm

login wrote:I remember reading that if you update from Suite to standard you don't lose the instruments from previous suite versions you just don0t get the new ones.
Yeah, that's not what I choose to do , though it's the most feasible for many not needing Suite 10. This would create an odd situation with Max For Live 7 only being available in 9 though. But likely you would be able to finish off projects in 10 so it could work in many ways.

Given the sale of Suite I paid an equivalent of 150€ for the Live 10 update in total, which is less than cross-grading to Standard at 180€ and includes MFL (8 as well) as a separate license at about 119€, I think it was.
I'm keeping Standard 9 installed as I need to be compatible. I'm not sure MFL 8 is at all compatible with Live 9 though. I'm assuming there will be a Max 8 available separately, but who knows more about this?
Last edited by Stromkraft on Wed Feb 07, 2018 10:39 pm, edited 2 times in total.
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Razz CE
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Re: Live 10 upgrade path

Post by Razz CE » Wed Feb 07, 2018 6:48 pm

Machinesworking wrote:
Razz CE wrote: and I will probably never switch DAWs because the workflow itself is worth the price of admission for me,
I wonder if you've ever spent time learning one of the "non specialized" DAWs like Logic, Cubase, Digital Performer, Reaper?
I use other DAWs along with Live specifically because the workflow is slower in Live. At first when you get into Live it's faster, unless you get hung up on something
you speed right along, but after a song is at it's halfway mark, fleshed out but not finished, it slogs down. The lack of key commands for common functions, lack of screen sets and other
"conventional" tools from the DAWs I mentioned starts to make the process of actually finishing a song crawl.

I've spent significant time with a few different DAWs. Studio One Pro 2 and 3, Samplitude Pro X and X2, I spent a little time in FL Studio but ultimately found it too awkward and unintuitive. After I went through a rough patch with S1 I finally gave Cubase a try and I love it. It's for a different purpose though. I do production and sound design in Live. When the beat is done, I export stems to Cubase and record vocals and/or guitar, and do all the in depth mixing and all the finishing touches in Cubase. It works for me.

I used to campaign for comping in Live. I still think it would be really useful to record multiple runs of a midi part, duplicate the clip and swap portions in and out for a really effective and low effort way to add variety to a tune, but since buying Cubase I don't really care much if Live ever adds comping. The way Cubase does comping, and they way its comping interacts with its audio editing view, warping and built in pitch correction, plus track versions (this is huge for me) is just so far beyond anything I could realistically hope Ableton would add to Live. To that extent, I get what you're saying. But for how I use Live, I don't think anything will ever replace it. Especially because of Push 2 and now Capture. These are pretty important to me.


I stand by my statement though. I think Live is fantastic. I wouldn't want to produce in anything else.
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daizok
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Re: Live 10 upgrade path

Post by daizok » Wed Feb 07, 2018 7:01 pm

Razz CE wrote:Especially because of Push 2 and now Capture. These are pretty important to me.

Not hearing too many people (either rave or rant) about the capture feature. It's one of the most useful new features for me as well, been using it all the time since the beta, works like a breeze.

Machinesworking
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Re: Live 10 upgrade path

Post by Machinesworking » Wed Feb 07, 2018 9:20 pm

Razz CE wrote:When the beat is done, I export stems to Cubase and record vocals and/or guitar, and do all the in depth mixing and all the finishing touches in Cubase. It works for me..................I stand by my statement though. I think Live is fantastic. I wouldn't want to produce in anything else.
So yeah, you're not producing in Ableton then. You're coming up with initial ideas in Live and finishing them off (producing) in Cubase.
That's pretty much how I've worked in Live forever as well. ( Producer initially meant music studio person hired to adjust the mix, maybe even rearrange your songs or add parts, generally polish off your rough songs. I get that to a lot of people it means electronic music composer, but even then it probably originated from the remix culture.)

It's probably why Ableton have been more focused on the composing side in upgrades lately than performance. Which I agree with you is an at some point losing battle in terms of the final parts of production, since Cubase, Reaper, Logic etc. are already far beyond where Live can get to in terms of final production features like comping, VCA faders etc.

Anyway yeah, I guess I'm just bouncing around this thread getting used to this feeling I have that Live isn't going to be one of my main DAWs anymore. I was over at a friends house and he had a Roli Seaboard 49 set up at first in Ableton, all messed up, not easy setting up 10+ tracks to record Equator properly from an MPE keyboard like the Roli. Standalone the thing is amazing, built like a tank.

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