just a rant...

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TauTau
Posts: 6
Joined: Wed Apr 14, 2010 9:10 pm

just a rant...

Post by TauTau » Fri Dec 08, 2017 10:36 pm

this software really sucks big time. I usually use reaper for my sequencing needs, and only revert to ableton when I have a feel I nned to use a lot of loops.
If it crashes, you have a stale process, that you can't kill (yeah, I know, disable audio device and so on, still doesn't work... I have a 25 years IT background, and I can kill any process on any server anytime, just not ableton on my home PC.)
As good as it looks from a musicians perspective (I really love the features when it works), as bad it looks from the software side. Basically it really just sucks. It doesn't even inherit the basic Windows programming rules, it just side-floats them. I miss the times when Sony had a good loop-handling software....
Guess I'll just keep working through the crashes and hangs, until I can export to reaper, and work in stable software again.

kitekrazy
Posts: 795
Joined: Sat Jan 16, 2010 7:16 pm

Re: just a rant...

Post by kitekrazy » Sat Dec 09, 2017 7:11 am

Stick with Reaper. It's very deep. Get to know it well.

jestermgee
Posts: 4500
Joined: Mon Apr 26, 2010 6:38 am

Re: just a rant...

Post by jestermgee » Sat Dec 09, 2017 8:54 am

Nice rant sir, you have certainly opened my eyes now with your 4 posts of history and convincing experience history.

I too have 25+ years of "IT" experience (meaning I have used a computer for that long I guess) but I must be doing something wrong which hopefully you can help me. My system's run Live for close to a decade and I can rarely get it to crash. Am I running a system that is too clean and reliable? Should I become a real IT expert like you so I can make a mess of things with my understanding? Hope you can assist me because I would love to have crashes like your system, sounds like a lot of fun [/Sarc].

Dodgy torrent perhaps?

miyaru
Posts: 1267
Joined: Tue Jan 10, 2017 12:08 pm
Location: The Netherlands

Re: just a rant...

Post by miyaru » Sat Dec 09, 2017 9:13 am

I almost never expierence crashes in normal use, happened two times in fact. I have a special machine (PC) for Live and some audiostuff like Wavelab. This machine only connects to the WWW when needing updates and so. No fancy games on it or other apps - just a music PC build for music!!!!

Like said before, if you don't like it go Reaper or Bitwig then or maybe something else fun..... Ranting here has no use, other then recieving ansers like this. But if you contact Ableton, send crashreports etc., you can make Live better for the future.

I was in the IT bussiness too, but quit - maybe that's why I don't suffer many crashes...... :mrgreen:
Greetings from Miyaru.
Prodaw i7-7700, 16Gb Ram, Focusrite Scarlett 18i20 3rd gen, ESI M4U eX, Reason 12, Live Suit 10, Push2, Presonus Eris E8 and Monitor Station V2, Lexicon MPX1,
Korg N1, Yamaha RM1x :mrgreen:

Stromkraft
Posts: 7033
Joined: Wed Jun 25, 2014 11:34 am

Re: just a rant...

Post by Stromkraft » Sat Dec 09, 2017 9:36 pm

Occasionally it happens Live crashes, like when I open the wrong version of an old plug-in, attempt to add an incompatible file or something like that. But in session, like when I create music, record, edit, mix and print? Never.

I've had periods where Live kept crashing, but this was always due to some specific problem, that when fixed also stopped the crashes. Unfortunately unattended issues can build up and cause an unstable system. Knowing your OS and computers in general certainly helps.
Make some music!

Synthbuilder
Posts: 510
Joined: Thu Nov 10, 2005 8:42 am
Location: Cumbria, UK
Contact:

Re: just a rant...

Post by Synthbuilder » Sun Dec 10, 2017 3:27 pm

I had major problems with Live crashing a a few years back. Ableton were really good and tried to help but couldn't. In the end Pete Kaine at Scan pointed me in the direction of a motherboard setting that involved speed stepping the CPU so that in idle the CPU clock would drop. It turned out that on increased activity the CPU would then go back to full speed and crash Live. Removing auto speed stepping fixed things and Live has been as stable as any other complex program. Now the only thing that seems to occasionally crash Live is Max For Live...

danweaver1990
Posts: 2
Joined: Mon Jul 24, 2017 11:58 pm

Re: just a rant...

Post by danweaver1990 » Mon Dec 11, 2017 12:37 am

I am finding Reaper’s trial to be much better than Ableton Live. I will be moving to Reaper for cheap and with the extra money I would have used to upgrade to Live 10, I can buy a handful of virtual instruments.

Stromkraft
Posts: 7033
Joined: Wed Jun 25, 2014 11:34 am

Re: just a rant...

Post by Stromkraft » Mon Dec 11, 2017 1:02 am

danweaver1990 wrote:I am finding Reaper’s trial to be much better than Ableton Live. I will be moving to Reaper for cheap and with the extra money I would have used to upgrade to Live 10, I can buy a handful of virtual instruments.
Well, good for you. I'm not envying you, but it's wonderful you have found what may work out for you. Test and try, stay or move on, that's the ticket. Some may stay and move on.
Make some music!

Emanresu0891
Posts: 154
Joined: Wed Apr 02, 2014 5:29 pm
Location: Ann Arbor, Michigan U.S.

Re: just a rant...

Post by Emanresu0891 » Tue Dec 12, 2017 7:41 am

I get an error every time live closes. I haven't sent the report in because I rather just use another program.

Yeah, live crashes, live does weird things sometimes. To suggest the poster is using a torrent is either trolling or ignorantly dismissive.

[jur]
Site Admin
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Joined: Mon Jun 01, 2015 3:04 pm
Location: Ableton

Re: just a rant...

Post by [jur] » Tue Dec 12, 2017 8:43 am

Emanresu0891 wrote:I get an error every time live closes. I haven't sent the report in because I rather just use another program.
That's really helpful, thanks...
Ableton Forum Moderator

Synthbuilder
Posts: 510
Joined: Thu Nov 10, 2005 8:42 am
Location: Cumbria, UK
Contact:

Re: just a rant...

Post by Synthbuilder » Tue Dec 12, 2017 8:55 am

[jur] wrote:That's really helpful, thanks...
As a site admin surely it would be wise to help the user with a problem.

I was going to suggest that Emanresu0891 does send a report in. I have found for the most part Ableton staff are very willing to solve problems so long as you give as much detail as you can in the first instance. Crash reports, screen grabs, the live set file and a detailed description is what is needed. This can take time and I can appreciate why people don't bother. There are alternatives out there nowadays that if they work and Live does not, people just move on - see post above about Reaper.

Stromkraft
Posts: 7033
Joined: Wed Jun 25, 2014 11:34 am

Re: just a rant...

Post by Stromkraft » Thu Dec 14, 2017 12:36 am

Synthbuilder wrote:This can take time and I can appreciate why people don't bother. There are alternatives out there nowadays that if they work and Live does not, people just move on - see post above about Reaper.
Transfer
Good advice there, but this is how it's supposed to work. If it isn't working for me, I will move on and so should anyone else feeling this is true. It doesn't have to be looked upon as a problem. A user want to use another tool. So?
To me the Reaper feels like a joke. The only viable transfer I can see is Bitwig.

My experience with issues in Ableton Live (overview)
I had serious issues, I think 4 years back, and I felt Ableton weren't helping as much as I had hoped, nor did Apple that made my computer and nor Native Instruments that made my audio interface. Then I replaced the latter for an RME Babyface and all problems disappeared at once.

Waves in templates
I then, about a year or two, later had very odd behaviour suddenly and after a few weeks with Waves support they told me I should remove their plug-ins from my personal template, so I did. All problems disappeared.

This problem may not be relevant any more, Waves have become more compatible with Live since (Use the VSTs though).

Re-installing
Some year later I had a number of odd issues again and never found out what caused these, so I finally re-installed everything from scratch, everything associated with Live and every single plug-in from their installers and I deleted all (music software) preferences as well. Took me a day or two and my machine was superstable again. I've done a clean install a couple more times since, but I cheat a little moving just the VSTs as is and the Ableton packs as well. Works fine.

Plug-ins are acting up
My installation of Live practically never crashes in session, though there are sometimes small things like after I installed a specific plug-in, or updated a plug-in. Specifically Live 9.7.3 and subsequent Waves updates have forced me to clean out Waves plug-ins completely including preferences. After re-installation and clean-out it just works just as fine as before.

Taking care of tools
So when I hear about crashing machines I think this because people are not used to take care of music production machines, or even production machines period. There's always a reason somewhere and as far as I'm concerned it's very seldom Live that is the sole cause. I've managed to fix nearly all my issues** trough the years, quite often with great input from Ableton Support or other support teams for involved products. Hopefully I 've also given them some ideas to think about too.

Exchanging what for what?
You can change DAW and one might be more happy with another DAW than the current one, but the truth is changing DAW commonly means exchanging not only a set of features and the work flow and a set of problems to another set of features and another work flow and another set of problems. No software is perfect.

Each and everyone need to decide what they are comfortable with. It also pays off, no matter what you use, to learn about taking care of your production machine.




**Some odd issues have simply fixed themselves. I think I posted about almost all of these.
Last edited by Stromkraft on Mon Dec 18, 2017 3:12 am, edited 1 time in total.
Make some music!

jestermgee
Posts: 4500
Joined: Mon Apr 26, 2010 6:38 am

Re: just a rant...

Post by jestermgee » Sun Dec 17, 2017 7:20 am

Synthbuilder wrote:
As a site admin surely it would be wise to help the user with a problem.
I would rather the admins focus their efforts firstly on people that seem to WANT help. If someone doesn't bother to send reports, detail their system, detail the nature of the crash, post a screen shot or anything you suggested SHOULD be done then why should someone who has experience invest time to dig these details out...
Crash reports, screen grabs, the live set file and a detailed description is what is needed. This can take time and I can appreciate why people don't bother.
It's because people are lazy. Takes no more than 2 minutes to do all of that (if even 2 minutes) and Live even packages up a crash log for you which you can just email. I have had almost every issue I have had (which have almost always been plugins) solved with their assistance and as you said, they are fast (one of the best support teams in this industry).

As someone who worked at top level technical support for 12 years it grinds my gears when I see people moan about something not working only to refuse to send any details about the issue citing it's "not up to me to troubleshoot this" or "I just use something that works instead...". Like the OP who has decided to have a little cry because things aren't going his way. I bet he never bothered to contact support. How people "spend hundreds of $$$" on something like Live, have an issue, then just decide to switch DAWs boggles my mind especially when part of what you have paid for is access to their experienced support team.

Go, use something else and be happy. None of us really care, helps keep these boards rant free for a while.

[erm]
Site Admin
Posts: 284
Joined: Mon Jun 01, 2015 3:05 pm
Location: Ableton

Re: just a rant...

Post by [erm] » Sun Dec 17, 2017 4:24 pm

Synthbuilder wrote: As a site admin surely it would be wise to help the user with a problem.

Our admins on the forum are here to make sure the forum runs smoothly and people are obeying the community guidelines. The Ableton forums are not a source of tech support from Ableton, they are for users to assist each other and share ideas. Though certainly were not above providing help if we personally know the answer to someone’s question. But if somone can’t take the time to send a bug report or detail their issue more, there’s really not much we can do.
Ableton Forum Administrator

BoddAH
Posts: 638
Joined: Sat Jun 26, 2010 7:13 pm
Location: Brussels, Belgium

Re: just a rant...

Post by BoddAH » Mon Dec 18, 2017 2:23 pm

Well, you get what you pay for (and really sound like you torrented Live).

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