No reaction to any of several bugs I posted in beta forum

[3phase]

I think Tone Deft will be the wind beneath my wings on this one. During the initial public beta testing phase a lot more people saw it as a way to use a free preview of Live 8 than doing actual beta testing and reporting.

Now that people actually paid for it they're taking it a little more seriously, the users that is.

this would be only a logical explantaion if there wouldnt be any professional ableton internal betatesting...

And this cant be the case because no propper software producer can afford to have only fanboy betatesting.. this only can be an additional testing ...

there are many companys that dont have public betatesting and deliver stable products.. ableton with the additional public betatesting fails big time?

maybe they really dont invest a penny to hire real beta testers...

[smutek]

During the initial public beta testing phase a lot more people saw it as a way to use a free preview of Live 8 than doing actual beta testing and reporting.

Now that people actually paid for it they're taking it a little more seriously, the users that is.

I think that's the case with every beta though, folks see it as an early preview of the latest and greatest.

True as it may be it is no excuse, and "where were you during beta testing?" is not an appropriate response to a user who has paid for a product that they can not use properly.

For those that want to beta test, I think that's pretty cool - but the bottom line is that it is absolutely not the customers job to beta test a product they've paid for.

Furthermore, it is Abletons responsibility to release an at-least reasonably stable product before they start accepting payments from folks to the tune of hundreds of dollars.

I'm not implying that you are saying otherwise, beats, just stating my thoughts.

It's been the same exact thing for every upgrade cycle since probably version 5. New version released, folks bitch about stability, version becomes relatively stable just before the release of the new version. Unfortunately for the customers and for them it appears to have gotten away from them this time.

I think they've got a relatively huge problem on their hands both in the work to be done as well as the damage to their image and reputation.

Ableton has always been, for me at least, the rare sort of company that I felt as if I could get behind and feel a part of and proud to use - almost as if these people were friends. Fanboy if you will. A lot of folks still feel this way, but there are a lot as well, like me, who feel pretty slighted and lost that connection at some point over the last couple of years.

For Abletons sake and for the sake of the customers I sincerely hope they get a handle on this and get a stable product to the consumer. Then when all is said and done they need to get everyone into a conference room, conduct an extensive "lessons learned" post analysis, and learn from that shit.

It would be a true shame to see a company like Ableton continue down this path.

[beats me]

During the initial public beta testing phase a lot more people saw it as a way to use a free preview of Live 8 than doing actual beta testing and reporting.

Now that people actually paid for it they're taking it a little more seriously, the users that is.

I think that's the case with every beta though, folks see it as an early preview of the latest and greatest.

True as it may be it is no excuse, and "where were you during beta testing?" is not an appropriate response to a user who has paid for a product that they can not use properly.

For those that want to beta test, I think that's pretty cool - but the bottom line is that it is absolutely not the customers job to beta test a product they've paid for.

Furthermore, it is Abletons responsibility to release an at-least reasonably stable product before they start accepting payments from folks to the tune of hundreds of dollars.

I'm not implying that you are saying otherwise, beats, just stating my thoughts.

It's been the same exact thing for every upgrade cycle since probably version 5. New version released, folks bitch about stability, version becomes relatively stable just before the release of the new version. Unfortunately for the customers and for them it appears to have gotten away from them this time.

I think they've got a relatively huge problem on their hands both in the work to be done as well as the damage to their image and reputation.

Ableton has always been, for me at least, the rare sort of company that I felt as if I could get behind and feel a part of and proud to use - almost as if these people were friends. Fanboy if you will. A lot of folks still feel this way, but there are a lot as well, like me, who feel pretty slighted and lost that connection at some point over the last couple of years.

For Abletons sake and for the sake of the customers I sincerely hope they get a handle on this and get a stable product to the consumer. Then when all is said and done they need to get everyone into a conference room, conduct an extensive "lessons learned" post analysis, and learn from that shit.

It would be a true shame to see a company like Ableton continue down this path.

Valid points and I agree this round it's gone well past what should be considered acceptible growing pains. Maybe the problem this time is they also put a lot on their plate with M4L, Share, The Bridge, and hardware like the APC40 and Launchpad. If they didn't have all that then Live 8 would probably be a lot more stable by now.

I'm especially shocked at the Mac issues, not because I'm an admitted Apple fanboy, but because there's far less hardware configurations to fuss with than PCs. Maybe on the PC side they have something like 20 programmers working on it and on the Mac side they just have Steve. Come on Steve, get it together!

[Khazul]

I think Tone Deft will be the wind beneath my wings on this one. During the initial public beta testing phase a lot more people saw it as a way to use a free preview of Live 8 than doing actual beta testing and reporting.

Now that people actually paid for it they're taking it a little more seriously, the users that is.

Yes very likely!

However, I did actually use it properly for creating alot of bits for tracks, and at the time, I actually remember thinking it was quite stable. Certainly I remember that once it was actually released, something drastic had changed between the last RC versions and the actual release versions.

It was probably 8.1.1 where it started to crash less, but unfortunately in less predicatble ways too.
Now I'm running the current latest beta, which so far seems better, but also seems *loads* slower startup and project loading etc (maybe thats to be expectted in a beta with extra logging etc?).

[zee verkawound]

During the initial public beta testing phase a lot more people saw it as a way to use a free preview of Live 8 than doing actual beta testing and reporting.

Now that people actually paid for it they're taking it a little more seriously, the users that is.

I think that's the case with every beta though, folks see it as an early preview of the latest and greatest.

True as it may be it is no excuse, and "where were you during beta testing?" is not an appropriate response to a user who has paid for a product that they can not use properly.

For those that want to beta test, I think that's pretty cool - but the bottom line is that it is absolutely not the customers job to beta test a product they've paid for.

Furthermore, it is Abletons responsibility to release an at-least reasonably stable product before they start accepting payments from folks to the tune of hundreds of dollars.

I'm not implying that you are saying otherwise, beats, just stating my thoughts.

It's been the same exact thing for every upgrade cycle since probably version 5. New version released, folks bitch about stability, version becomes relatively stable just before the release of the new version. Unfortunately for the customers and for them it appears to have gotten away from them this time.

I think they've got a relatively huge problem on their hands both in the work to be done as well as the damage to their image and reputation.

Ableton has always been, for me at least, the rare sort of company that I felt as if I could get behind and feel a part of and proud to use - almost as if these people were friends. Fanboy if you will. A lot of folks still feel this way, but there are a lot as well, like me, who feel pretty slighted and lost that connection at some point over the last couple of years.

For Abletons sake and for the sake of the customers I sincerely hope they get a handle on this and get a stable product to the consumer. Then when all is said and done they need to get everyone into a conference room, conduct an extensive "lessons learned" post analysis, and learn from that shit.

It would be a true shame to see a company like Ableton continue down this path.

word. could not have been put any better. too big too quick go back to 6.

[3phase]

analyzing what happened over the last years one has to assume that ableton is highly overhyped by clueless fanboys..

listing just the facts that have happened during lives evolution. like launching a live 4 with a midi implematation that was unusable with external hardware :-/... and lots of other issues along the way.. like allways claiming to have a oprefect audio engine.. but with zippery noises :-/...

Its not a good or nice company at all... its a money making machine.. based on a nice sequencer idea of theese monolake guy they builded a money makin machine .. with the priority on money making..

There is no agenda to produce the best and most stable music software.. the only agenda is to keep people in the upgrade loop..

The wishlist is only there to see which wishes are desired most, just to fullfill them last..

beta testing cost are reduced to the max..
And max for live is important to get the users as free developers of intersting plugs.. without paying anybody..rather making extra money with mfl.
smart..optimized.. outsourcing of development power by launching a new product that will generate its own demand over time without extra costs.. really smart.. creating a win win situation...thats the philosphy behind ableton...
only problem..this time it all went too buggy...


Seeing the video about ableton developers where allmost everybody says that he learnt coding themself just states between the lines that not the most expensiv guys in the biz got hired... even when learning a thing by themself dont autimatically says that the guys are bad.. but its remarkabel that ableton asks for any little shit job for a complete finsihed offical education and biz degrees..except for the coders..

why? are untrained coders better than the ones with a university diploma or just cheaper?

Maybe that has leaded to a situation where old bugs with half done fixes have acumulated ..and than when changing a few things in the program everything colapses like a cardhouse...

probably again the old problem where safing money at the wrong points can create higher costs in the end..
I would say well deserved, if the customers wouldnt suffer more than the company..

[Poster]

analyzing what happened over the last years one has to assume that ableton is highly overhyped by clueless fanboys..

you are just too bittered about not being heard, because you really don't have a clue how to get your points and wishes across in a constuctive way..
better work on that if I were you.. even the clueless fanboys know..

based on a nice sequencer idea of theese monolake guy they builded a money makin machine .. with the priority on money making..

wrong.. they're all are/were musicians driven by a vision of how to produce/perform music.. so they made a living from that vision as well..
you work pro bono I assume?

There is no agenda to produce the best and most stable music software.. the only agenda is to keep people in the upgrade loop..

ok, so the agenda is to produce unstable software to keep people in the upgrade loop..?
glad you ain't running my company..

The wishlist is only there to see which wishes are desired most, just to fullfill them last..

it's a wishlist, not a slamming my fist on the table demand list..
they also have their own agenda, but they absolutely listen to users..

beta testing cost are reduced to the max..

if you think hiring beta testers will improve beta testing you really have no clue what beta testing is all about..
how can a small paid group catch the bugs 1000's of computer configs can?

And max for live is important to get the users as free developers of intersting plugs.. without paying anybody..rather making extra money with mfl.

has the thought ever crossed your mind that a lot of people just program stuff for personal use?
and therefore MFL is an incredible add on..
you just look at it from a selfish 'gimme gimme' shareware perspective..
really.. you're complaining about them selling a plugin that offers you 100's/1000's of free plugins..

only problem..this time it all went too buggy...

agreed..

Seeing the video about ableton developers where allmost everybody says that he learnt coding themself just states between the lines that not the most expensiv guys in the biz got hired... even when learning a thing by themself dont autimatically says that the guys are bad.. but its remarkabel that ableton asks for any little shit job for a complete finsihed offical education and biz degrees..except for the coders..

why? are untrained coders better than the ones with a university diploma or just cheaper?

really.. just really..

[3phase]

it's a wishlist, not a slamming my fist on the table demand list..
they also have their own agenda, but they absolutely listen to users..

sure.. but how comes that age old wishes that bring real workflow improovemets, what was agreed by mr monolake himself, was shifted for later realisation .. because to difficult.. while a max for live integration nobody really has asked for is pushed thru in no time with the result of the most buggy music software on the market?

if you think hiring beta testers will improve beta testing you really have no clue what beta testing is all about..
how can a small paid group catch the bugs 1000's of computer configs can?

again.. how is it possible that theese 1000 users group haven´t found the letal bugs, while i ve found 2 of them in the first 2 weeks?..and and and..

In relation how little i was able to use L8 this year i came along so many bugs..each tome i start the program i find a new one...

sorry.. 1000 fanboys that get excitetd about shiny new fetaures instead testing the basics with huge projekt files are worth nothing... as ableton prooves every year again.. and with this they proove that they are either unable to learn.. or just live with this to safe money..

has the thought ever crossed your mind that a lot of people just program stuff for personal use?
and therefore MFL is an incredible add on..
you just look at it from a selfish 'gimme gimme' shareware perspective..
really.. you're complaining about them selling a plugin that offers you 100's/1000's of free plugins..

yes .. i do..because this dont adds any usefull workflow improovements and just is spice to the old more shiny features trick..
Its a marketing trick to create desires based on the free work of gentle users.abused by ableton..
They used theire resources for these marketing scam instead improoving the program..
Live as we know it was a stage related stable and easy to use platform.. not a nerd toy

how does this corelate with max and an intergration that is crashing all over?

[nuperspective]

strange i emailed support and got a response within 2 days. sent in the crash log and let them get to work.

never had an issue as far as the support responses. waxing lyrical on the forum isnt really going to do much. getting the crash logs in and letting the guys get to work is usually more constructive.

live crashes on me yeah, when it does i email the log and save often.

[3phase]

sure.. support is great and they do hard work.. but betatesting defently has gone wrong in the first place..
at least i hope so .. because any other explanation would be mean...

[zee verkawound]

poster writes:

if you think hiring beta testers will improve beta testing you really have no clue what beta testing is all about..how can a small paid group catch the bugs 1000's of computer configs can?

This is a TOTAL strawman. This ideal is just that, it's IDEAL for Ableton's sake. It's called making excuses because you are ASSUMING that Ableton Live 8's random and frequent crash and dysfunction issues are "bugs". With the mass experienced user base's reported crash behavior in mind, it is FAR more likely that Live 8's instability (quality) issues are primarily, but not in whole, caused by it's internal coded architecture. It's no surprise why some (very few) users do in fact recieve prompt replies and communications based on typical "bug reports". That's because those reports DO contain bugs. Most of the progressive random and frequent crash issues are most likely NOT "bugs" to begin with.


I am not going to hop on the evil Ableton empire thing, but like smutek wrote, I certainly don't want to see them continue down the same path. I really don't believe for a second that Ableton is on top of this issue, nor do I believe that perpetual customer beta testing is a means to an Ableton planed successful business ends. I do however believe that Ableton is doing what they can, in light of far too many irons in the fire, to focus on correcting the issue.

In short, this is what I really feel to be the truth. Too big, too quick, go back to 6. Bottom line. The notion of "Suite" should have been been an upgrade founded within Live 6. There have simply been TOO MANY changes since Live 6 that have only served to muddy the waters needlessly. You cannot expect to rewrite a program from the ground up, based on the exact same design and performance intentions, and not have a full five year spread between each version. This business strategy will simply NOT work and is precisely what has so many users disenchanted. It's like someone else in this forum stated about 2 months ago. The Abes need to take their foot OFF the accelerator pedal and keep it off. Stability should be Ableton's ONLY focus for YEARS to come. Not a few months.

Because Ableton have inspired so much creative musical vision, it is a bit sad. At least I really think so. It's just that you cannot base a business on ideal pipe dreams no matter how ideal those pipe dreams are. I really think that's what Ableton have been selling for the last few years. Mere ideals. Whereas those ideals have inspired both tremendous loyalty and artistic creativity, now those same ideals have come home with more than enough incumbent vengeance to spare. It's time to pay the piper. If they are to succeed, Ableton will have to stand and successfully fight this stability battle to a victorious end. Otherwise they will be defeated in the end or at best become an occupied third world software notion on someone else's back burner. I do not want to see that happen. Real responsibility can be a tough pill to swallow for the sake of a cure. I am proud that Ableton's directors have publicly announced their company's ill quality health, HOPEFULLY they can financially stomach the bed rest recuperation time to actually recover.

[Jarvisimon]

poster writes:

if you think hiring beta testers will improve beta testing you really have no clue what beta testing is all about..how can a small paid group catch the bugs 1000's of computer configs can?

This is a TOTAL strawman. This ideal is just that, it's IDEAL for Ableton's sake. It's called making excuses because you are ASSUMING that Ableton Live 8's random and frequent crash and dysfunction issues are "bugs". With the mass experienced user base's reported crash behavior in mind, it is FAR more likely that Live 8's instability (quality) issues are primarily, but not in whole, caused by it's internal coded architecture. It's no surprise why some (very few) users do in fact recieve prompt replies and communications based on typical "bug reports". That's because those reports DO contain bugs. Most of the progressive random and frequent crash issues are most likely NOT "bugs" to begin with.


I am not going to hop on the evil Ableton empire thing, but like smutek wrote, I certainly don't want to see them continue down the same path. I really don't believe for a second that Ableton is on top of this issue, nor do I believe that perpetual customer beta testing is a means to an Ableton planed successful business ends. I do however believe that Ableton is doing what they can, in light of far too many irons in the fire, to focus on correcting the issue.

In short, this is what I really feel to be the truth. Too big, too quick, go back to 6. Bottom line. The notion of "Suite" should have been been an upgrade founded within Live 6. There have simply been TOO MANY changes since Live 6 that have only served to muddy the waters needlessly. You cannot expect to rewrite a program from the ground up, based on the exact same design and performance intentions, and not have a full five year spread between each version. This business strategy will simply NOT work and is precisely what has so many users disenchanted. It's like someone else in this forum stated about 2 months ago. The Abes need to take their foot OFF the accelerator pedal and keep it off. Stability should be Ableton's ONLY focus for YEARS to come. Not a few months.

Because Ableton have inspired so much creative musical vision, it is a bit sad. At least I really think so. It's just that you cannot base a business on ideal pipe dreams no matter how ideal those pipe dreams are. I really think that's what Ableton have been selling for the last few years. Mere ideals. Whereas those ideals have inspired both tremendous loyalty and artistic creativity, now those same ideals have come home with more than enough incumbent vengeance to spare. It's time to pay the piper. If they are to succeed, Ableton will have to stand and successfully fight this stability battle to a victorious end. Otherwise they will be defeated in the end or at best become an occupied third world software notion on someone else's back burner. I do not want to see that happen. Real responsibility can be a tough pill to swallow for the sake of a cure. I am proud that Ableton's directors have publicly announced their company's ill quality health, HOPEFULLY they can financially stomach the bed rest recuperation time to actually recover.

I pretty much agree with your post in its entirety.

For want of repeating myself (a common thing if you get into an argument with a blinkered fan), it is also my opinion that Ableton have spent too much time growing their product than they have growing their GOOD reputation. As a direct result of their growth, the product and reputation have suffered accordingly and it's nobody's fault but theirs.

I got into a huge argument in here when Live 8 was released, as I called for them to publicly announce an apology alongside some reassurance for their customers that they were on the case. I got slated for it by some of the more mature members of this forum. However, their final public announcement was reassuring and was well received by many forum users and not just Ableton's.

Now, whilst I am glad they made this announcement, the release of subsequent controllers and software has meant that instead of immediately trying to fix bugs and therefore achieving stability and building their reputation, they instead put customer satisfaction/reputation on hold and concentrated on expansion instead. No doubt, Launchpad, the AKAI controller and M4Live have been in the making for some time but without a solid foundation, it's not been as beneficial as it should be.

For the person who claims that the Beta of Live 8 was only popular because it allowed users to make music with it before its release....well yes, that's partly true, however, any unfinished pieces could not be opened once the beta expired, so it's hardly been much of a free ride. Don't forget that it also works both ways. Allowing people use of all Live 8 suite instruments has also been a beneficial marketing ploy by Ableton. I'm sure many people upgraded to suite because of that beta testing time. However, I feel sorry for anyone who upgraded only to keep coming up against bugs 9-10 months later.

And having read the post-release posts in these forums, even though I want Ableton to get it right, I still cannot say i'm sure that they have, at least not yet.

Admittedly there are some Ableton complainers who seem to have it in the neck for the company. Especially the ones who complain yet fail to send in bug reports. That's helping nobody and confuses anyone who wishes to look at the facts.

Live is a brilliant piece of software and once it's running properly, will be capable of glitch free operation and some incredible audio manipulation.

Long live Ableton Live.....I hope.

[longjohns]

the forum is not the "real" place for bug reporting. i mean, it is not where the programmers are focused on the bug information. they have an internal bug tracking system ala bugzilla

make sure to submit bug reports in the proper way. you can post on the forum too, if you want

from a certain perspective it might be nice to always have an ableton employee manually editing the bulletin board so that everything was neatly cross-referenced (e.g. the [1234] tags)

but that would take hours each day, which might be better spent on actual work. also from an engineering perspective it does not make any sense. you should not try to maintain two databases.

[madlab]

Strange... I use 8.09 under osx 10.5.4 with 3 go of RAM and Live is really pretty stable for me, in many different situations (theater soundwork with 8 speakers, live improv woth four loopers FX / live inputs / VIs, electronic studio music with a bunch of virtual sound sources...). I don't say there are no bugs, but since 8.04, I've had just a few crashes, and never happened in live situations for which, of course, I always test the configs beforehand.

[djsynchro]

To clarify, I started this thread not because I have major problems because with Live I don't, it has always worked since the earliest betas, but I do find it weird that supposedly there is a major bug hunting effort underway and I post bugs in the beta-bug forum and my posts are just sitting there...

I do also find it annoying that every new version bugs go and new irritating ones are introduced, there is quite a bit of stuck notes mayhem with Sylenth and the implementation of the susain pedal controller is weird (never encountered that one until I started working with a piano player, controller events are not "chased", so if the last one was "pedal down" you're in stuck notes hell. Nice) I also find it irritating that if you find a bug you have to hassle and hassle and hassle until it finally gets looked at (Ableton is not unique with this)

I also find it weird that I found a bug in 7 that was solved in 8 of a rack-viewing function simply not working, I just wonder how something can be put in the program and make it past testing and just not work?


3phase you're a whiny dick.