Features you would like to see in Ableton 9?

[Khazul]

Not possible.

Proof: tell me what you would remove from ableton "studio" ?

Why on earth would you want to remove stuff from the 'studio' version. Studio version concept would be full DAW + anything you might use live. A live orientated version of live might strip some features down - but what would you strip down?

Loose the midi and midi instrument support? Well im sure there are loads who like to play soft instrument live, and even ignoring that - there are definately some of us who want external midi sync.

Loose non-Live native plugin support? TBH - most plugin use are not live native and if Lives built in reverb and limiter were my only choces for those functions - then sod it - use somethign else entirely!

Loose M4L support? Well M4l happens to be the biggest rescue factor for live use - and excellent for lighting etc - so that become essential for many people.

For studio use - the whole reason why many of us are happy enough with the somewhat crippled feature set from a pure DAW pespective is because the instrument like live oritentated session view is the way we construct most tracks - make a bunch of clips and they play them to lay down a track skeleton.

About the only thing that you could remove for many live suitations is the entire arrange view/mode support as pretty much everything else is needed for live performance by someone somewhere - not everyone doing live can only rely upon audio clips and minimal fx (if you want that - may as well use tracktor, 2 decks for tracks and two decks for loops for eg - fx sound better too...).

[bluesfinger]

bay al means I would like to have :
1. different colours in the same track for one track ( ability to cahnge colur while choosing any length of song)
2. better view of clips when warping ( although I don not know how but present view is not satisfactory)
3. more practicality for recording instead of too much unnecessary posibilities.
I think that maybe 50% of possibilities are unnecessary , while there is lot of practical , simple things missing

[3phase]

but to be a bit more constructiv.. even when most unlikely to see such things anywhere soon if ever..
but what i would really wish for L9 is a more 3 dimensional aproach .. in the end we deal with a variation of a spreadsheet caculation here ..but one without differnet sheets and hyperlinking between them..

so excel is far more advanced in this regard than abeton live.. it has a 3dimensional structur while live is plainly 2dimensional.. actually rather one dimesnional..you run along the timeline and you have lunch slots in a vertical order but they just go along the timeline anyway.. so a rather one dimensional process that eats up al the vertical space for nothing..

so in short.. the clip slots should have more a card stackt aproach to them.. so different versions of one clip can sit in the same slot.. this also can/could go together with more advanced groups... actually what one really needs is to be able to record multitrack audio and midi data simultaniusly..edit theese multitrack data together in one go.. and having the good overview by handling the whole stack just with one clip..


so .. multitrack ability... one with comfort.. not too much asked for for a "real daw"...

this of cause should come together with a smart display mangement that automatical focusses on the wright spots regardless if you look at the arangement or session view..




beside that.. the mixing desk should be independent from the clip matrix with own snap shots.. no lousy workarounds.. real digtal mixing desk functionality now..

funny enough that this core functionality of digital mixing hasnt made it to the daw world yet.. the cheapest yamaha digital desk allows more advanced scene related mixing since the 1980´s..
and that actual max or phyton patches try to deliver this age old functionality is nice but in fact just shows a demand no daw mnufactor was able to adress sofar.. actually pretty poor in a way if you ask me.. a lack of studio vision somehow.. a kind of snow blindness

and last but not least.. fixing at least 50 of the already mentioned 150 detail problems...

especially all the syncing and song settings inconvinience one has to struggle with all the time you leave your studio...

[Leon Tricker]

I would like Ableton to concentrate on developing one product.

If they want to include instruments then fine, but the current price of Suite - for a newcomer - is in my view extortionate given what you get from other packages now (Logic, Sonar etc.) That's why I won't upgrade. It's a point of principal for me.

Of the different versions of Live, only the full Live 8 makes any kind of sense. I'd love to know how many registered 'Intro' users there are. It's way too crippled, in my view, to be any use to anyone. And like I say, I think Suite is way overpriced.

I also think Suite creates problems for Ableton. Take Amp for instance. There is no way that should have been a Suite only addition. If Ableton wants Live to be a regular DAW then fine, but note that all regular DAWs have amp sims these days. I think having Suite forces Ableton to decide which product a new feature should go into, and their form with Amp suggests they aren't too good at making that choice.

[hoffman2k]

I would like Ableton to concentrate on developing one product.

If they want to include instruments then fine, but the current price of Suite - for a newcomer - is in my view extortionate given what you get from other packages now (Logic, Sonar etc.) That's why I won't upgrade. It's a point of principal for me.

Of the different versions of Live, only the full Live 8 makes any kind of sense. I'd love to know how many registered 'Intro' users there are. It's way too crippled, in my view, to be any use to anyone. And like I say, I think Suite is way overpriced.

I also think Suite creates problems for Ableton. Take Amp for instance. There is no way that should have been a Suite only addition. If Ableton wants Live to be a regular DAW then fine, but note that all regular DAWs have amp sims these days. I think having Suite forces Ableton to decide which product a new feature should go into, and their form with Amp suggests they aren't too good at making that choice.

Its all a bit contradictory when you really think about it. Ableton did focus on their own application and added Amp by licensing the technology from Softube. Its a suite addition because there is a 3rd party collecting royalties. They can't give it away.
The Suite doesn't add things that are essential and like 75% of what makes the suite is outsourced.
Ableton are focusing on one product. And before you bring up MFL/The Bridge, consider that 3rd parties develop those apps. All Ableton has to do there is add integration which in a sense is still focusing on their one product. You can see the fruits of improvements made for MFL in things like LiveControl and Cliip which are python hacks.

[Machinesworking]

The Suite doesn't add things that are essential and like 75% of what makes the suite is outsourced.

Well other companies have added pro level devices that aren't a paid extra. Both Logic and DP which I also own have a stronger selection of plug ins than Live 8 non Suite. This IMO is the result of Ableton not making their own, and charging a feee for Suite which now has at least three other companies collecting royalties from it.

Ableton are focusing on one product. And before you bring up MFL/The Bridge, consider that 3rd parties develop those apps. All Ableton has to do there is add integration which in a sense is still focusing on their one product.

This is disingenuous at best on your part. It's not obscure arcane knowledge that when MFL was introduced Live 8 became a bug ridden mess. Making sure third party paid dependancies are working well is going to take resources away from them working on Live's core features, I really see no way around that, and I'm not convinced that the money they can make off the sales of third party add ons is covering that development time.

[Khazul]

This is disingenuous at best on your part. It's not obscure arcane knowledge that when MFL was introduced Live 8 became a bug ridden mess. Making sure third party paid dependancies are working well is going to take resources away from them working on Live's core features, I really see no way around that, and I'm not convinced that the money they can make off the sales of third party add ons is covering that development time.

Live was a bug ridden mess from v8.0 not just from 8.1 or whatever the first M4L version was. I think the M4L work merely made the problem worse by diverting resources that should have been fixing stuff rather than adding/changing stuff which in turn provided a less stable platform for M4L.

[hoffman2k]

This is disingenuous at best on your part. It's not obscure arcane knowledge that when MFL was introduced Live 8 became a bug ridden mess. Making sure third party paid dependancies are working well is going to take resources away from them working on Live's core features, I really see no way around that, and I'm not convinced that the money they can make off the sales of third party add ons is covering that development time.

Live was a bug ridden mess from v8.0 not just from 8.1 or whatever the first M4L version was. I think the M4L work merely made the problem worse by diverting resources that should have been fixing stuff rather than adding/changing stuff which in turn provided a less stable platform for M4L.

Yeah, that and Share being torn out and the new .als files that were required for The Bridge could be as much if not more to blame for problems. I'm obviously biased because I spent a great deal of time messing with Max in Live while being amazed Live still held up. Only to have it crash when you do shit like duplicating tracks.

A long time ago, we learned a Live device isn't much different from a VST in terms of coding and that Operator could be easily ported as an external instrument. Seems logical it works the other way around. And they've done it so many times now, I'm pretty sure there is more to come. On the other hand, they'll never be able to keep the current price or bring it down if they have share more each year.
Maybe they're outsourcing this stuff to use the spared resources to make Live X, the rewrite...
Or maybe we'll soon have a little forum riot on our hands when they introduce a 99€ Reverb.

That is why love NAMM/Messe season. We're all entertained by talking shit about things we've been guessing about for years. Even more so than usual that is. Well that and 25-key keyboards. We can never have enough of those!

[Machinesworking]

@hoffman, as a Pluggo owner since 2001 I can safely say that going by Cycling 74's track record, they aren't at all good at plug in stability, embedded or otherwise. No single plug in on my system caused more crashes than Pluggo. It's been sorted for the most part, but they discontinued it and well before the Bridge was announced at the same time that Max/MSP came out, that particular version of Live (8.1.1 I believe?) had regulars that normally wouldn't mention any crashes at all on their systems finally talking about instability. I think it's painfully obvious that M4L had some issues out the door. For perspective so did Reaktor up until 4.6 or so. I think that's one reason it's been so slow to upgrade, that NI don't want to kill a good thing.

As far as the bigger picture is concerned, yes Ableton will announce some partnership with a well respected third party reverb maker, and yes, it will be rightfully annoying to people considering every other major DAW has a pro level convolution reverb in their list of standard plug ins.

I also would say that while it's pretty cool for those that want to build stuff in Live that M4L came out, it's an obvious and painful reminder that things like Follow Actions will be ignored and considered "finished" by Ableton, simply because if a person wants something more complex than what Follow Actions are now they can buy M4L as far as Ableton is concerned.
This applies to many areas of Live, the most painful and obvious example is LFOs and how that's possible with M4L VS regular Live.
I'm sorry if this is considered whining etc. but Live is fast becoming the most expensive DAW outside of Pro Tools, and I'm often confused by why Ableton went that direction? Consider MOTU and their "third party" plug in additions for Digital Performer? DP uses MAS for "native" or close to embedded plug ins, and they have a line of plug ins that were codeveloped with UVI Soundsource. The Mach 5 for instance is an Improvement on the basic Sampler that UVI made for it's sample library, it's better than what UVI offer, and it's works as a plug in in Live, Logic, Sonar etc. You don't need to buy it, and if you do it's not tied to DP7 in any meaningful way. With Abletons plug ins the AAS versions at least are far more complex and offer more features, the exact opposite.
Turn around and look at what Ableton are doing and it's a closed source environment that only benefits Live, but because of that it also is painfully obvious that M4L and the Bridge etc. will cost development resources. M4L isn't the same as adding Max/MSP as a VST in Live, it's far more invasive than that, and requires far more debugging than a VST instrument would.

I dunno, I'm rambling for sure, but I would love to see a company focus solely on the core product, to develop the things that you can't get outside of the DAW, but that seems to be against the grain these days. It's all about dependancies on other code, and how many free or cheap plug ins come with the DAW.

[remute99]

I'm sorry if this is considered whining etc. but Live is fast becoming the most expensive DAW outside of Pro Tools, and I'm often confused by why Ableton went that direction?

As an owner of Pro Tools who upgraded and found themselves with a shit load of spectacular plug-ins for free (Xpand2, Vacuum, the AIR effects) and Elastic audio inside a relatively bug-free DAW, I can only concur.

Ableton's sampler and synths seem overpriced and underpowered. Live generally seems to be being left behind in the DAW race, especially considering it's price.

[hoffman2k]

@Machines

You can't really prove that MFL is the reason why you don't have any native LFO's and more advanced follow actions. There hasn't been an upgrade yet. And I can't prove that because of MFL its now technically possible in Live to have native LFO's in a future version. (Before MFL it was said that such things would require a rewrite. Might still be the case but I sincerely doubt it.)

MFL is definitely more stable than Pluggo has ever been. But its also limited. No crazy audio sending plugins with MFL.

Instead of writing a bigass reply, I'll just ask a question: If MFL is the answer to every feature request, then what would Ableton do for the upgrades? Add session recording, surround sound and pack it in?

[Mister36]

You can't really prove that MFL is the reason why you don't have any native LFO's and more advanced follow actions.

I very much think that MFL is the reason why certain things haven't been implemented, global/native LFO's would be one example. For marketing reasons. Holding back on features in Live will (and I'm sure has) make people buy MFL. If it was meant that such things as global LFO's cannot be done with the programming the way it is in Live (but MFL overcomes that) then I do not believe that. I've said it before elsewhere and I know it is a different kettle of fish to an extent but the Boss GT-8, a guitar multi-effects pedal, basically has LFO's that can be assigned to any parameter within it. If something as (relatively) basic as that can do it, I find it hard to believe Ableton Live cannot be made to do it.

[hoffman2k]

You can't really prove that MFL is the reason why you don't have any native LFO's and more advanced follow actions.

I very much think that MFL is the reason why certain things haven't been implemented, global/native LFO's would be one example. For marketing reasons. Holding back on features in Live will (and I'm sure has) make people buy MFL. If it was meant that such things as global LFO's cannot be done with the programming the way it is in Live (but MFL overcomes that) then I do not believe that. I've said it before elsewhere and I know it is a different kettle of fish to an extent but the Boss GT-8, a guitar multi-effects pedal, basically has LFO's that can be assigned to any parameter within it. If something as (relatively) basic as that can do it, I find it hard to believe Ableton Live cannot be made to do it.

If you bothered to read the next 2 sentences behind what you just quoted, you'd know I said it now possible because of MFL. While before MFL it was deemed not so possible.
There hasn't been any real development that we've seen in the past year. But this is one.
Do you have your native LFO's now? Nope. Does anybody else have any other feature currently still on the infamous list? Again, nope.
Diddly squat happened since the whole quality debacle. As far as we know..

[Tone Deft]

can you take a guy that can't use apostrophes correctly that seriously?

all this pseudo business insight is so much bullshit.

[hoffman2k]

can you take a guy that can't use apostrophes correctly that seriously?

all this pseudo business insight is so much bullshit.

That is what I love about NAMM/Messe season. We're all horribly wrong. Ableton will ditch Windows/OSX and will release Live 9 on the Android platform exclusively!