Quality

[sublimelobc]

I really hope that people here appreciate the fact that Ableton is a company that honestly seeks to understand their user base, and even more uniquely....listen to their user base.

Last year is seems like pretty much every wish on the collective wish list of the forum became part of a huge new release in 8. It was a very ambitious release by Ableton, in a very short time. Due to the scale of such an ambitious undertaking they are now listening to a growing number of people with gripes about reliability......which I haven't really seen myself, but Ableton is listening. I was honestly getting to the point where I wondered if there was some sort of smear campaign going on, it seemed so crazy to me that people were seemingly coming out of the woodwork with gripes about quality.

I admire the approach of the Abes....they have a vision to create the Uber audio app, they have delivered a lot ... I personally would rather have the connection to the soul of innovation be synonomous with Ableton more than it being synonymous with being the most rock solid DAW....it's like the difference between a driving a Toyota Camry and driving a 3 series, reliable is probably much easier to achieve than "engaging".

Thanks Ableton for your great communication with the users of Live....and for a great product (including version that has helped me create music ideas more than any other music tool.

[Machinesworking]

@anybody human, I do something embarrassing every day, have one on me bro!

[anybody human]

Thank you Machinesworking, I appreciate it. I'm sure that they will get everything sorted out. I'm having trouble communicating, good night all.

[knotkranky]

Well geez, who gives a toss about 9?

A tight 8 would be way better than that.

[cotdagoo]

I really hope that people here appreciate the fact that Ableton is a company that honestly seeks to understand their user base, and even more uniquely....listen to their user base.

too bad they didn't seem to listen to the many beta testers asking for the release to be delayed as reported bugs still weren't fixed while v8 was shipping.

[leedsquietman]

true - I was one of them !

However - better late than never. As Dr. Phil says 'You can't fix what you don't acknowledge' (one of his catchphrases) (yes, sad being out of work is dire on SO many levels).

It's refreshing to even have a company own up to having made mistakes. Certainly others have just denied or not bothered replying/ignored support requests. Steinberg sent me away from Cubase for 18 months with their horrible attitude on a bunch of things (broken promises on SX3.1.2 update, scrapping DX support and not telling anyone until C4 was hitting the shelfs, and then poo-pooing it all as a 'minor issue' and getting defensive. Logic Pro 7 was horrible on first release and I never once heard Apple acknowledge a mistake on anything except The Newton and allowing 3rd party clone makers in the 90s. That drove me to a forward thinking company with a fresh product who seemed to care about the consumer. This was Ableton circa launch of Live 6 and the fanboyism at that time was a hundred times what it is now and a lot of it deservedly so.

I think ABleton know that their thirst for doing quirky, innovative things, overtook them and led them to neglect some core values. Too much stuff going on for such a small team of workers, spread too thin, even going back to the manual printer breaking down for Live 7, it seemed that a few glitches were coming in and people are saying how rock solid Live 7 was, it was pretty bad on first release 7.0.1 and many people were perturbed that they put the product out when the final betas were still so buggy, but fortunately this was mostly fixed by the time they got up to 7.0.3 with the latter releases beyond 7.0.9 very solid indeed for most users. Then this was repeated with Live 8. The Max4Live element is surely a big part of this. It's hard to conceive of a product going into beta releases over a year after it was launched.

I thank Ableton for their honesty and wish them success in achieving their goals with regard to this announcement.

[headquest]

tonight I mentioned this new development to a few friends who are involved in software development
they couldn't believe it

I think that tells you something

I'll second your friends astonishment. Suspending dev time on "the new thing" and re-assigning everyone, or even some, of the primary dev staff to bug fixing is something you never hear. Ever. (Except today of course...)

Surely that just shows just how serious the problems are in Live 8...?

Glad I chose Record - Propellerhead sort out the bugs BEFORE charging customers for the product and saying it is good to go. Now that really is refreshing. And without all the huge effort Ableton go to in hyping up their product releases, Propellerhead just *get* that buzz when they come out and announce something, becuase everyone knows that their stuff is actually going to work.

[Martyn]

This all sounds more like a case where the marketing dept set vastly unrealistic goals in the first place. Everybody who beta tested Live 8, Share and M4L is well aware that none of those versions were ready for release, not by a long way, but those unrealistic marketing goals just had to be met regardless. I've seen similar things happen many times in other industries, I feel sorry for the programmers, it must be enormously frustrating.

Bill Hicks was right, "are you in marketing? Kill yourselves!, no, seriously, kill yourselves now."

[headquest]

This all sounds more like a case where the marketing dept set vastly unrealistic goals in the first place. Everybody who beta tested Live 8, Share and M4L is well aware that none of those versions were ready for release, not by a long way, but those unrealistic marketing goals just had to be met regardless. I've seen similar things happen many times in other industries, I feel sorry for the programmers, it must be enormously frustrating.

Bill Hicks was right, "are you in marketing? Kill yourselves!, no, seriously, kill yourselves now."

I felt the same thing when beta testing Live 5, 6 and 7 though - I think that the Ableton culture has been to do a quicky 4-6 week public beta, then release anyway. As somebody charted above, Live 7 was an awful release that took several months to settle down. Each version has been worse, but at last they seem to have woken up to the problem, which is a relief but overdue, surely.

Contrast with propellerhead, whose public beta phases last several months, and result in bug-free proucts being released. A public beta needs 3-4 months in order to realistically sort out the issues that users raise. I hope Ableton learn this point too. Really I just hope that Ableton now get their act together and move on from this sad low point.

[derzai]

Isnt it that its more easy to release a stable new version, if the current is stable too?

[Hermanus]

Well here's a good news... As long as actions follow the words

I could be too hopeful but really the backward saving ability would be really something_ the main reason I almost never open 8.1.

Ok I don't own M4L and don't plan to.
But now, I can be confident on upgradin live 8 to suite before 15th january!
I simply felt in love with keys_clavCimer

I wish the abe team the best for chasing bugs and having strenght for the big task.
Cheers

Can't wait to see words turning into actions

[SubFunk]

Well geez, who gives a toss about 9?

A tight 8 would be way better than that.

+1

i just want a tight 8, as it is in terms of features, so i have enjoyment again using it.

i don't care about super duper functions all to often it's only a cheap excuse for people who can't produce and write music anyways.

I just want a dead stable tool, that let's me create for hours and hours and hours without a headache.

[synnack]

tonight I mentioned this new development to a few friends who are involved in software development
they couldn't believe it

I think that tells you something

Damn skippy.

I work for a software company with over 18,000 employees. I can say that we do this from time to time. Not often but it has happened. If there is a release of a product which big enough issues, we might even pull entire development teams from other products and focus them ALL on just one product (we have over 100 products) to get users what they deserve as fast as possible.

The big difference is, my company would never dream of announcing that publicly. Sure we would tell customers effected by the decision under NDA but that is a lot different than what Ableton has done here with full disclosure on a public forum.

That's more the part I am shocked about. The haters on this thread (not you Angsty) have no idea what major software development is like.

There are contracts that get written and agreements with third parties which require that release dates are known far in advance and you have to ship on or close to that date. You can only delay so long while remaining bugs are fixed.

There's an old saying in the software industry. Performance/Stability, New Features, or Ship on time. Pick two.

It's the nature of the beast.

[8O]

tonight I mentioned this new development to a few friends who are involved in software development
they couldn't believe it

I think that tells you something

Damn skippy.

I work for a software company with over 18,000 employees. I can say that we do this from time to time. Not often but it has happened. If there is a release of a product which big enough issues, we might even pull entire development teams from other products and focus them ALL on just one product (we have over 100 products) to get users what they deserve as fast as possible.

The big difference is, my company would never dream of announcing that publicly. Sure we would tell customers effected by the decision under NDA but that is a lot different than what Ableton has done here with full disclosure on a public forum.

That's more the part I am shocked about. The haters on this thread (not you Angsty) have no idea what major software development is like.

There are contracts that get written and agreements with third parties which require that release dates are known far in advance and you have to ship on or close to that date. You can only delay so long while remaining bugs are fixed.

There's an old saying in the software industry. Performance/Stability, New Features, or Ship on time. Pick two.

It's the nature of the beast.

Exactly!

[ikeaboy]

Well geez, who gives a toss about 9?

A tight 8 would be way better than that.

+1

i just want a tight 8, as it is in terms of features, so i have enjoyment again using it.

i don't care about super duper functions all to often it's only a cheap excuse for people who can't produce and write music anyways.

I just want a dead stable tool, that let's me create for hours and hours and hours without a headache.

+1 Yeah take the foot of the gas Abes. I have no hunger for a Live 9 with more features. Anyway it most likely won't have assignable LFOs or recordable session automation. I'll still manage to make tracks without them or bezier automation curves and track comping somehow Plus this will give me time to get the cash together for Max4live (money is tighter for everyone in 2010 no?). I hope they spend all the time it takes to squash every bug they can find. I assume Ableton will manage without the cash injection from a new version but this way sales for m4l will probably go up anyway.