Ableton You Should Give Something Back To The Loyal Users!

[petit nuage]

@ Machinesworking

"I'm an avid Live enthusiast. I do use other DAWs, but mainly to compliment Live, I'm on 7, but I'm still very interested in 8 and the eventual 9.

"The core, stable, adding new embedded plug ins that get people who only use Live happy IMO is starting to come across as ignoring the more traditional DAW users, we don't need more DAW features, we need what Live does that others cannot improved upon and stabilized."



hey man ,maybe some people here dont use several daws so YES we WANT daw's feature (to complete audio editing side of live ) at least ONE :THE BOUNCE IN PLACE /DESTRUCTIVE EDITING !!!

[3phase]

3phase insulting me and our developers (have I once insulted him for being a bad musician?), you totally freaking out on me about some sync issue which eventually turned out to be some local problem on your computer

insulting you? when,where? have i questioned your competence? or have i insulted you?
or the company you work for or the product you send on the market? ok..that easily can happen after the pre history..

In fact ableton started insulting me when i asked around the forum last year if there are other users that experiance crashes..

the whole support formalitys was a plain insult towards the experianced user in itself.
when the program starts to crash on te same system that was running fine with L7 its not my studiosetuo causing the problem..and i poined you to the midi engine in my very first reports.. needed you half a year to realize that there was a problem.

And.. my sync issue is not a local problem of my computer..

when you cant handle the clock after midi specs it is clearly not a local problem.

no controler feedback is allowed to interupt the clock stream..especially when the only thing i do is to select a track.

That is the problem with ableton ..allways this fight to make you realising bugs ..

and especially conceptional bugs.. oh my..

don be surpised when the tone gets harder when all you get for reporting the problems is dropped support cases.

remeber the 32 bit bug? wow..that was hard work.. even afetr i got it reproducable it needed month and noise in the main forum to got it to your attention..

sorry man..ableton desreved any insult i ca think about for this mode of operation.

usually i would expect the company to be after the bug after it is reported.. but you need it on asilver tablet best with some self written code to fix it or what?


When your program is not able to do remote and clock at the same port disable the possebility to assign booth options at once..

thats bad design..

but it would be better to just follow the 1980 midi stndard and you can have booth options on the same port..

wouldnt that be nice?

[necho]

They are unableton

speaking of the devil...

indeed.

Its great to hear Ableton employees speaking frankly about the "quality" issue on these forums. Thank you.

As for the people who seem to spend all their time making stupid comments about Ableton being "profit-driven capitalists" (its commercial software - for F*CK SAKE! Not some open-source abandonware...), or bitching about how their personal needs are not catered for... or how they want stuff for free...

Just ignore them!

Not addressing anyone in particular but:

If you don't like Ableton as a company - or you don't like the software - or you don't like Live's colour scheme - or you want some free stuff....

Guess what? No one is FORCING you to use Live. And no one is forcing you to post on this forum. In fact, I think we'd all rather you didn't.

[Machinesworking]

you totally freaking out on me about some sync issue which eventually turned out to be some local problem on your computer (where's your pardon in this rather ugly forum thread?),

Just to adress this, I and you have no idea why after 6 months the sync issues I had cleared up. I can't speak for other peoples issues with sync, but mine seem to have been due to some combination of drivers/applications IE it was most likely either Automap or a Logictech driver that was hosing sync in Live. No offense to you personally, you were and are helpful, but why on earth would an issue most likely due to extremely commonplace third party code go undetected? That was my gripe before we went through the sync test again and found the issue had solved itself with either a Logitech driver update or Automap update, and it IMO was even more disappointing that I had not done the sync test after each driver update. For that I'm apologetic, but I stand by my belief that it should have been a known issue to some degree. It's certainly not the first time I've heard about drift with sync in Ableton Live, and like I said, it's dubious at best that Logic and Digital Performer on the same machine were not affected by this possible driver issue? That hasn't changed since the thread, that Live for some god awful reason was the only DAW I own that was affected??

I'm not bitter about it, but it's crazy to me that Live was the only DAW affected, and why I thought Automap, (I didn't have it set up in DP or Logic), but then why wouldn't other people report issues? Sync isn't a concern of a lot of your users, but I would assume more than just me? Anyway it's al conjecture at this point.

[[nis]]

And.. my sync issue is not a local problem of my computer..

I was referring to Machinesworking's sync issues, who was heavily complaining and arguing with me. Luckily it seems to work for him now. He promised to post this in the sync thread, but he didn't.

As for the rest of your post: you have your valid points as a customer who has paid for the product. We haven't been able to satisfy you, even though the crash bugs and the 32-bit issue got fixed. You're right that such bugs should never have occurred, so yes, this is clearly our fault. Not being able to communicate like a grown-up adult and therefore not getting any support from a whole support department is certainly not our fault, though.

[[nis]]

it should have been a known issue to some degree.

No, it wasn't a known issue and it's still unclear what it was. I'm suspecting the Logitech driver as it also caused these CoreMIDI problems that you mentioned. Btw, I was asking you to send me some details about this Logitech driver, because I'm still trying to reproduce this here. Could you please do this? Thanks.

[dum]

LIVE was the only DAW affected ?

obviously user error

[3phase]

And.. my sync issue is not a local problem of my computer..

I was referring to Machinesworking's sync issues, who was heavily complaining and arguing with me. Luckily it seems to work for him now. He promised to post this in the sync thread, but he didn't.

As for the rest of your post: you have your valid points as a customer who has paid for the product. We haven't been able to satisfy you, even though the crash bugs and the 32-bit issue got fixed. You're right that such bugs should never have occurred, so yes, this is clearly our fault. Not being able to communicate like a grown-up adult and therefore not getting any support from a whole support department is certainly not our fault, though.

bugs happen.. thats not the problem.. the problem is how you handle or have handled the bug reports..
or lets say how you priorized them..

bugs that potentially damage the audience or show should have had priority..

a bug that creates moster loud beeps over a 40k system can damage the ears of the audience..

i had over 2000 people looking at me with tears in theire eyes. i felt guilty for doing that to them.

And regading the sync issues you said yourself that you would like to see that optimized but cant say whenever this will be adressed..

THat says its not on the actual agenda of ableton to deal with such details..

And that is bad.. because it should be the pride of a company like ableton to be superior in this live jam related core functionality..

when you cant compete with the sound engine you should be at least superior regarding the remote and clocking demands of a live set.

You are supperior in the remote questions.. sure.. ableton makes point in this department..

but as we know now that is damaging the clock output..

that is not good !!!

I rather go on stage without remote..as i do next week..and twiddle on the laptop..than getting out of sync with my partner.that has the good live with a kor esx...he gave up on carrying a laptop with him because the sync issues..

And.. i decided to share my wage because the tendency of life to crash.. the beat must go on and on. that the main rule in a club gig.. there is no minute silence to reboot allowed..

So L8 has cost me quite something sofar.. more than the suite would cost me for sure..

i defently lost a booker.. 2 shows with technical problems with the same booker in a row? not good.

[3phase]

but.. i am not in the thread because i think ableton should give something back to the suffering users in material ways..

they should repay by rising the quality.. espacially the quality in all this little details that was shifted ahead and ahead for the sake of sales argument creating shiny features and collabs..

the devil is in the details... its not me..


so the best repayment for all the trouble is a workflow and sync optimized version of live..

that would bring me much more pleasure than your surround suport your are currently working on.

[sschall]

but.. i am not in the thread because i think ableton should give something back to the suffering users in material ways..

they should repay by rising the quality.. espacially the quality in all this little details that was shifted ahead and ahead for the sake of sales argument creating shiny features and collabs..

the devil is in the details... its not me..


so the best repayment for all the trouble is a workflow and sync optimized version of live..

that would bring me much more pleasure than your surround suport your are currently working on.

I think this sums up your position in quite a good way. Ableton heard you, the community definitely heard you. Several suggestions have been made, it's up to you what to make of them - wait and hope, do it the hard way and change your whole setup or find a workaround.

I really liked nis' posts and adressing you directly which is much more then you would get anywhere else. Try to get from a problem into a solution type of mindset (or however you put that in English). And please let's go on, there's a bit more in Live than a troublesome sync issue.

Thanks.

[davepermen]

And regading the sync issues you said yourself that you would like to see that optimized but cant say whenever this will be adressed..

THat says its not on the actual agenda of ableton to deal with such details..

no, that does NOT say it's not on the agenda. it just says that one can't find a date for a fix. as said before, if one could fix something by just knowing there's a problem, we would have fixed the world.

sadly, just because they're aware of a problem, and even working on it, does not mean they can say it's fixed by the end of the day, the end of the month, the end of the year, your birthday, 2012 when the world ends, or at any other date.

BUGFIXING CAN NEVER BE ON A SCHEDULE.

[xzusa8ky]

Nis Wrote

Thanks for the elaborate response. As far as stability is concerned, we have made mistakes in the past which clearly led to an unstable product. The amount of complaints in this forum are a clear evidence for this and it is also obvious that some of our customers have lost their faith in the product. However, I think it was certainly not our intention (or "policy" as you call it) to annoy our customers with unstable software or let them be the beta testing guinea pigs. The Live 8 release has gone wrong in many regards, but I think we have learned our lesson and not only spent almost a year to work on these issues (which is quite a financial challenge for such a relatively small company), but also spent a lot of time and energy restructuring the whole workflow in our company, ensuring better inter-team communication and more efficient development and testing. All these efforts will hopefully lead to a more stable Live 8 and avoid similar problems with future versions. We're not done with this whole process yet. There's still a lot to do.

That having said, we will not be able to solve all issues. A bug-free software is an illusion. Especially new releases have bugs. We can try to get it as stable as possible, but it will never be bug free. You mentioned Reason. Reason is indeed an extremely well programmed piece of software. That's desirable for any software company (hats off to the Propellerheads!), but to be fair, Reason is not as complex as Live is and it is not entirely bug-free either. If you had used a particular function which always crashes in Reason, then you surely wouldn't be so happy with it now. Or if your computer doesn't play so well with Reason. Or if Reason would support VSTs and one of your beloved plugin always makes Reason crash. These things happen.

Anyway, we're not talking about Reason, we're talking about the oh-so-buggy Live 8 and you are asking for some compensation for all the trouble you've been through. I think this is a legitimate question, BUT I also think you should be playing fair when demanding such things, so my question is: what trouble have you personally been through that makes you deserve a free instrument? In our email archive I can see that you once had a Rewire crash problem when opening Reason sets. Searching the support forum returns an old rant about Live 5.0.2 not being able to render your sets, but apart from that I can't find any reports about serious issues from you. I'm asking because I want to understand topics like this better, just out of personal interest. Have you really been through such hard times with Live, having bought an almost unusable piece of software, and if so, why haven't you contacted us directly? I'm sure our customer care people would have sorted you out with a refund or at least provided some compensation for all your trouble.

Best,
Nico

Dear Nis

Thanks for the reply, it was almost impossible for me to fall to sleep last night because i was thinking a lot about your posts. As you wrote Ableton is a relatively small company and it is a financial challenge for Ableton to get everything to work, i do understand that. And i know that you are working hard to fix the problems and that's really good. BUT i would like to point out a couple of things that i think could help your company and the users in the future. I started to use version 1 of live as a demo, because i liked the concept, but at that time Live 1 missed a lot of features so i did wait until the programm was getting more stable and had more features that i need for my work in the studio and on stage. When i did buy my license back in 2004 there was only one version of Live which i actually did find really good. I did expect that Live would be a full working DAW with all the tools included in the future, but it did not? Ableton did start to release different version of the program, like Live Light, Live, and Live Suite. For me it's hard to understand why a relatively small company like Ableton started to do that? For me it don't make sence to release different versions of Live, except for the demo version which is a good idea. If you ask me Ableton should only release one version of Live, with all tools and synths included, that way Ableton could save money and ressources, and all users would be treated the same way. At the moment i become the feeling that you are treating the users in different ways which isnt a fair policy. You releases the AMP yesterday as a free plugin, but it isn't free for all? We have to pay 99$ for it, which i feel is wrong. And again the people with Live Suite gets the plugin for free? It seems like that Ableton is forcing people to buy the Live Suite, before they have all the needed tools you would normally find in a lot of DAWs nowaday's. For me that's not so easy to understand.

PS: Non of the users are charging Ableton for all the support, beta testing and new ideas over the years, we all do it for free, because we do love Live and the idea of Ableton.

Kind Regards

[dum]

REALITY CHECK: AMP is merely an addition or evolution, an upgrade if you will, to the suite license. But like every other suite instrument, it's also available to buy separately. Perhaps that's why some people on both sides of this discussion seem to be under the impression that it's a 'freebie' of some sort.

For example, the price of suite didn't go up with the addition of AMP - did it ?




carry on.

[Ben_Binary]

Why is it left up to users on this forum to write controller scripts that add the functionality for the APC40
that Ableton should have SUPPORTED from the beginning?

But the bigger question is why didnt they SUPPORT Hanz in his efforts ???

Clearly a lack of time / developer resources.

Um yes I figured that out already.
I appreciate your honesty but that reality needs to be changed.

Nevertheless I think the APC40 is a great controller and the default functionality already offers a lot of possibilities, doesn't it?

Yes but that is not what I was saying.
Best case scenario > The product I purchased was misrepresented to me and its planning was incompetent.
Worst case scenario > The APC40 was crippled and hanz work ignored to increasae sales of M4L & APC20.

Either way is fine with me as long as ableton is honest about it and I can learn my lesson.

Your Honesty and transperancy has and will get you pretty far in my books including my maximum ammount of tolerance plus financial and intellectual investment.

Luckily there are some clever guys who took it to another level. You'll always find things that can be better and we'll surely won't be able to make everyone happy (again).

Lucky. for you guys ?
Why not make the Hanz thread a sticky?
All this free promo for some artists who use ableton but someone who actually invests time in your product and the community and he gets no support from Ableton... Thats very short sighted > dumb marketing guy sort of mistake.

Just look at the mockups that some people posted here. Some want a controller with 5000 buttons, 800 motorfaders, drumpads and a built-in 64-channel audio interface, whereas others just want a button matrix without faders or encoders. Some can't live without transport buttons and PAN controls, others find them rather useless.

Sorry you lost me here. I dont know how crazy new controller designs relate to supporting a controller script... or a simple thought about supporting (or even mentioning) clever guys who took it to another level on your website.

I will show you respect by not questioning the reasons why this has not happened.

Anyway, what exactly do you mean by not supporting Hanz Petrov's efforts?

If your company cannot recognise what a valuable resource some clever guys who took it to another level are for your company you got an uphill battle against extinction... similar to traditional record labels/ business models.

As I said earlier. I like Ableton. I ? Live. You are excellent and deserve respect on these forums. And I hope I am not sounding like an ableton basher/whinger etc. its just my opinion.

I hope you are in the process of 'managing'out these issues.

Im over it - as i dont entirely agree with the sentiment of this thread.
Please PM me if you wish to discuss this further.

If just one person reads all this and gets more out of their APC40 >

and ... thanks Hanz.

[n8tron]

If you ask me Ableton should only release one version of Live, with all tools and synths included, that way Ableton could save money and ressources, and all users would be treated the same way. At the moment i become the feeling that you are treating the users in different ways which isnt a fair policy. You releases the AMP yesterday as a free plugin, but it isn't free for all? We have to pay 99$ for it, which i feel is wrong. And again the people with Live Suite gets the plugin for free? It seems like that Ableton is forcing people to buy the Live Suite, before they have all the needed tools you would normally find in a lot of DAWs nowaday's. For me that's not so easy to understand.

I think this is a good point but it's a tricky thing. For everyone that says the suite is a great deal, you'll get just as many people who have no need of any of the extras and just want the use of Live as cheap as possible. I like the option to have both. But I personally do like all-in-one packages. You get the most for your money. I do think Ableton charges to much for just about everything they sell, especially the extras. It's not cost effective for a non-Suite user to by just one or two of the extras that they want...

Suite Download - 699
Live Download - 449
Price difference - 250

What you get for that difference:
Amp - 129
Collision - 159
Latin Percussion - 99
Analog - 129
Electric - 129
Tension - 129
Sampler - 129
Operator - 159
Drum Machines - 79
Total - 1141

Its ridiculous. And even more so if you figure out the price between the box versions. IMO those addons are not worth those prices, but they are worth the $250 upgrade price. So you are right, they are in a way forcing to buy the suite, if you want just TWO of the add ons its more cost effect to buy the suite. Again, I do like have both options, but why charge so much for them?