Amp = Fail

Discuss music production with Ableton Live.

???

Win
51
41%
Meh
50
41%
Fail
22
18%
 
Total votes: 123

BoddAH
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Re: Amp = Fail

Post by BoddAH » Sun Nov 14, 2010 12:52 am

3phase wrote:
leedsquietman wrote:It came for free
no.. it costs 100 euro.. thats far from free
Implying anybody would actually be stupid enough to buy the standalone version of Amp. :lol:

Pro tip: it’s not really supposed to be a guitar amp mod. You can (and should) feed anything into it to add some grit and dirt to your sound design.

leedsquietman
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Location: greater toronto area

Re: Amp = Fail

Post by leedsquietman » Sun Nov 14, 2010 6:13 am

Exactly my point.

And as far as I understand, the regular Live users still get some presets in racks, they just can't do much with them - I remember once buying Steinberg Warp VST years ago which only had 3 amps modelled (1 clean Jazz chorus type, one British vintage, and one real saturated Mesa Boogie type sound) for $150 and is probably worse sounding.

To bring up other feature requests is to miss the point - of course 99% of people want session automation, bezier curves and LFOs etc. That's obviously not going to come in an 8.x.x version update when L9 is probably not too far from being announced. If it was so easy to implement these in Live, don't you think they would have already done it, given that these have been major feature requests by thousands of users for YEARS ?

I'm not a fanboy and have plenty of gripes with Ableton, but jeez, the way people keep bending them over and a$$raping them over this issue, which was trying to do something positive, is really too much.

Some of you guys really need to sell your licenses and go with something else. Maybe buy Maschine, given that everyone is jerking off to it and it's flavour of the month, and then you can compile your daily bitchfest for NI's pleasure. They'
re going to LOVE having such 'considerate' and 'caring' users ;)
http://soundcloud.com/umbriel-rising http://www.myspace.com/leedsquietmandemos Live 7.0.18 SUITE, Cubase 5.5.2], Soundforge 9, Dell XPS M1530, 2.2 Ghz C2D, 4GB, Vista Ult SP2, legit plugins a plenty, Alesis IO14.

3phase
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Re: Amp = Fail

Post by 3phase » Sun Nov 14, 2010 9:55 am

leedsquietman wrote: the regular Live users still get some presets in racks, they just can't do much with them -
presets are an embarressment and not a gift..

of cause it´s nice to please the suite owners, and show that you are in another class of users.. the economy version user..
but at least we have the colourfull splashscreen you greyish money safing suities...

in a time wher you see all these fantastic i pad apps for 30 euro and half the live user base getting it for free, the punishment price for the add on is a bit unlucky.. i am not ready to get suite.. but i never can buy a single ableton plug as princip. i know that this is normal in the software world.. but i come from a hardware world.. and addd ons to the car that quadrupel the price? :lol:
golden spoilers ?.. :lol:
mac book 2,16 ghz 4(3)gb ram, Os 10.62, fireface 400,

davepermen
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Re: Amp = Fail

Post by davepermen » Sun Nov 14, 2010 12:40 pm

it's something for free, which might some put to good use, others might not. and welcome to the web, people complain.

3phase: even if it's just some presets for free, it's SOMETHING FOR FREE. better than NOTHING.
http://davepermen.net my tiny webpage, including link to bandcamp.

anybody human
Posts: 1049
Joined: Fri Jun 05, 2009 2:27 pm

Re: Amp = Fail

Post by anybody human » Sun Nov 14, 2010 5:52 pm

Not my cup of tea. I have no problem with them adding it since it was developed by a 3rd party and therefore probably didn't take much time away from improving the program itself. I play guitar but I'm not a big user of amp sims anyway so I'm probably not the target market. However, this is not one of the better amp sims I've heard, by any stretch. That's just my opinion but I'm picky, especially when it comes to guitar. It's just a personal preference thing. Could be wrong but I think Softube worked on some of the excellent Abbey Road plugins, but I'm just not into this particular plugin. I can see why they'd want to add an amp sim and if people get a lot of use out of it and are happy with the results they get, that's all to the good.

3phase
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Re: Amp = Fail

Post by 3phase » Sun Nov 14, 2010 5:55 pm

davepermen wrote:it's something for free, which might some put to good use, others might not. and welcome to the web, people complain.

3phase: even if it's just some presets for free, it's SOMETHING FOR FREE. better than NOTHING.

? no..its an embaressment to offer such unusablel trash presets.. they are intentionally crowded so that the user cant use them as building blocks for own racks.. a clear offence against all non suite owners.. a slap in the face..
I did as much betattesting for them as any suite owner..

And there are too many presets anyway..
ableton shouldnt waste money for such trash and make the preset developers betatest instead..
3 presets on each plug, to show posebilitys must be enough..

and
judged after the amp preset the plug is total trash...

somehow an embarresment to have to deal with such a companys product :-/.. to bad that there seems to be no way out of it after so many years.. beside all the drawbacks.. its the harddisk recording system i have used for the longest time in a row now.. by the factor 2...

funny.. we still consider live a young product that cant be as refined as the competition.. but 10 years are a lot of time..
when you see what the other daw´s have achived in a handul of years.. wow.. the abes are somehow slowish... especially when you see how much of the core functionality was there in the first version allready..so 70% of the development in the first year and the other 30% stretched over 8 years.. taking at least twice as much time as one would expect.

Abeton is really clever in sqeezing money out of theire customers.. i wish they would show the same amount of genius on the functional development of the program.. but by concept they have to act a bit dumb there, to have a higher demand after a next version as our savior
mac book 2,16 ghz 4(3)gb ram, Os 10.62, fireface 400,

davepermen
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Re: Amp = Fail

Post by davepermen » Sun Nov 14, 2010 6:23 pm

blah. they are actually cleaning up the presets (as documented in their updates) because they messed something up. other than that, it's still something for free which is ALWAYS BETTER THAN NOTHING AT ALL.

but obviously, one can give you stuff for free, and you still complain.

so if i come up to you and give you 10 swiss francs for free, you will complain that i haven't changed it to € first, and that it's not more money, right? hint: i would take the money and be happy.
http://davepermen.net my tiny webpage, including link to bandcamp.

3phase
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Re: Amp = Fail

Post by 3phase » Sun Nov 14, 2010 6:33 pm

i havent got anything for free but trouble..

some lamo prestes really dont count on abletons positive acount.. really not.. even when it would be good presets they wouldnt be more than advertizing demos because only lamos use presets.

as i say.. the way this was deliverd is somehow offensiv.. i dont mind to dont have amp. i ve evrything i need to record guitars.. no digitrash for that department necessary and when i need colour and distortion i go thru analog hardware and not a cheasy plug in.. so i dont mind amp.. but the class differnece and indirect calling non sute users idiots here..

again just a marketing stunt.. probably they know that they have to lower the price fir suite soon and how to explain the old users than an upgrafe fee that is higher than a complete new licence..

so they have to boost the suite upgrade now...
mac book 2,16 ghz 4(3)gb ram, Os 10.62, fireface 400,

anybody human
Posts: 1049
Joined: Fri Jun 05, 2009 2:27 pm

Re: Amp = Fail

Post by anybody human » Sun Nov 14, 2010 6:43 pm

3phase wrote:
davepermen wrote:it's something for free, which might some put to good use, others might not. and welcome to the web, people complain.

3phase: even if it's just some presets for free, it's SOMETHING FOR FREE. better than NOTHING.

? no..its an embaressment to offer such unusablel trash presets.. they are intentionally crowded so that the user cant use them as building blocks for own racks.. a clear offence against all non suite owners.. a slap in the face..
I did as much betattesting for them as any suite owner..

And there are too many presets anyway..
ableton shouldnt waste money for such trash and make the preset developers betatest instead..
3 presets on each plug, to show posebilitys must be enough..

and
judged after the amp preset the plug is total trash...

somehow an embarresment to have to deal with such a companys product :-/.. to bad that there seems to be no way out of it after so many years.. beside all the drawbacks.. its the harddisk recording system i have used for the longest time in a row now.. by the factor 2...

funny.. we still consider live a young product that cant be as refined as the competition.. but 10 years are a lot of time..
when you see what the other daw´s have achived in a handul of years.. wow.. the abes are somehow slowish... especially when you see how much of the core functionality was there in the first version allready..so 70% of the development in the first year and the other 30% stretched over 8 years.. taking at least twice as much time as one would expect.

Abeton is really clever in sqeezing money out of theire customers.. i wish they would show the same amount of genius on the functional development of the program.. but by concept they have to act a bit dumb there, to have a higher demand after a next version as our savior
OT:
I don't know if they're squeezing money out of customers any more than anyone else. Probably not as much as Avid has over the years. They just have a different business model, everybody's got one. They're selling some cool shit too, like M4L or some of the Partner Instruments. I agree 100% about the functional development of the program though.

I think Live needs to get up to scratch on some basic DAW functions, I've said that many times, as loudly as anyone. Automation curves, midi programming, audio editing... general mixing tools I guess. That's what I need more of from the program. I'd also like to see track comping a la Pro Tools 8/9 but don't think it's likely. It's never going to look like other programs (it's always going to be box-y for instance) but I really hope they focus on improving arrangement view in Live 9. Other people have other areas they want focused on.

In my opinion Live needs to get a lot better on general DAW/mixing functions, but it's not like it's some f'ing scandal or something. It is what it is. It needs to (and does) get better. I still remember the rush I had when I first got the program and how the workflow elements that are so conducive to writing and sound design really inspired me to connect with music in a new way. Sounds cheesy but it was a big deal for me at that point in my life. I totally agree with a lot of the criticisms you have such as stability & sync for live use, and I'll be hella disappointed if arrangement isn't vastly improved in Live 9 - but I don't take as negative a view on things.

mescalin
Posts: 84
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Location: Radlett, Herts, UK

Re: Amp = Fail

Post by mescalin » Sat Dec 11, 2010 10:07 pm

well thanks for all your replies i'm suprised so many people thing this pos is any good to be honest but each to their own, it could be argued if some people can make use of it you may as well leave it there.

I realized I would get a few flames hehe :twisted:


Still personally I cannot barely squeeze anything audible out of it, and I am glad that I'm not the only one who is not pleased with this, at least it's just not me. Granted we are probabally used to what we use, I barely ever use any distortion but camel phat.


I just worry before you blink this will be bloatware like logic or cubase, that all said I've barely touched max 4 live and many of the recent additions, but it's perhaps all been made up for by the incredible sounds of Tension and Electric, two products I am most definatly blown away by, they are a real expressive treat for a keyboardist.

Anyway a suprise "win" does not make this sound any better unfortunatly :)

Ableton 8, NI Massive, Max 4 Live, other stuff

Buleriachk
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Re: Amp = Fail

Post by Buleriachk » Sat Dec 11, 2010 11:39 pm

Ableton is great at programming and understanding what musicians need, but they are definitely NOT guitarists (in addition to the meh! of Amp (especially when compared to Studio Devil, much less Amplitube, Guitar Rig, or Pod Farm (and what guitarist doesn't own some product of Line 6, even if they don't like it?....:-)

This is especially obvious, since they didn't even release a guitar tuner along with Amp.. (Duh!), and the fact that you can't test it independently from Suite (which I don't need, as a guitarist)....

Not only that, they don't make the spacebar visible to MIDI so you can activate it with a footswitch (very desirable for a guitarist).....

Other than that.....:-)

theophilus
Posts: 531
Joined: Fri Mar 06, 2009 3:54 pm

Re: Amp = Fail

Post by theophilus » Tue Dec 14, 2010 2:08 pm

The thing with Amp appears to be that it is VERY picky about your levels. Not surprising... take a real guitar amp (which is expecting a signal around -20) and throw a synth at +4db into it, and it sounds horrible as well.

If you use amp, I would highly suggest getting PSP's free Vintage Meter here:
http://www.pspaudioware.com/plugins/too ... tagemeter/

There are probably lots of others that would work too, that's just one I had around that works well. Anyways, in the standard 'VU' mode, it shows red around -12 db. If you keep your signal out of the red the whole way through the chain (maybe throwing some utility modules in there at times) then it seems to sound the best. So if you throw your guitar into your input, throw it into a compressor, into a saturator, and it's way off into the red, then it goes into amp... it's going to sound bad. I don't know why this is true on the output of amp as well - maybe because the red peak indicator isn't doing exactly what I thought it was. Overdriving the master outputs is always a bad idea. But if I keep the gain under control, I can even get some decent high-gain sounds with it.

Also, the cabinets appear to be pretty bass-heavy. I have heard the same complaints about the pod HD series too so maybe it's just something about how those cabinets were modeled? So back off the bass for guitar a little too.

nylarch
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Re: Amp = Fail

Post by nylarch » Tue Dec 14, 2010 2:21 pm

Maybe its my capitalist heart but anyone who gets offended by a product is an idiot. Buy something else. Ebay your Ableton license and shut up.
MacBook Pro; Live 8 Suite, Reaktor; '77 Fender Jazz Bass; Apogee One;

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