All the little detail problems with Ableton Live Collection

[3phase]

171


I might be wrong here and am not aware of a hidden key command.. but i miss the ability to set a loop of reasonable length in a long recording of thousend bars or so with just one click.. and than just expand the loop length as needed..

i came in session situation a few times in the situation wher i played parts of a long ambient background theme.. found it fitting..but needed than too much time to make a loop just from the play position..

in ideal the loop would automaticl adjust that it starts from the point you have placed the playback marker and gives it automatical a length uop to the poin where you decided to make it a loop..of cause in a quantized measure to the next 1..or regarding to the global quantisation settings..

[Khazul]

+1 - setting loops starts and length is one of those really annoying details that woud be so easy to fix and make really quick and easy.

The other example is chopping up tracks - the default loop start and length seem to be completely random - they should be set to the clip start and end so the default action is juct enable loop and the rest is allready set for the common case.

These thing have to be so easy and low risk to fix that they should be high up on the list of fixes/improvements that would speed up workflow for many users.

[Macrostructure]

I haven't been here for months. this thread is still going. wow.

[morgo]

3phase, could I ask you a non biaaed question? im genuinely interested in your answer, and I place no pre or post judgment upon it, there are a few things that puzzle me about this thread.

You seem to work with Live alot, and I think it is remarkable that you have spotted alot of points about lives design that do not sync well with the way you would wish them to work. You seem very clear and methodical in the way in which you approach voicing your opinions to others, in an attempt for acknowldgement of the problem, and also in a hope to get them changed. In a way it is admirable that you put this much effort into something that concerns you, as im sure many others would not say anything.

My question is this.... If you feel that strongly about so many points with Live, why do you still choose to work with it? I dont post on the forum much, but from reading other parts of this thread I get the impression that the ableton staff will not listen to your points of view, and so I wonder what your motivation is for putting more time and energy into this way of voicing your opinions?

Thanks

[Tone Deft]

3phase, could I ask you a non biaaed question? im genuinely interested in your answer, and I place no pre or post judgment upon it, there are a few things that puzzle me about this thread.

You seem to work with Live alot, and I think it is remarkable that you have spotted alot of points about lives design that do not sync well with the way you would wish them to work. You seem very clear and methodical in the way in which you approach voicing your opinions to others, in an attempt for acknowldgement of the problem, and also in a hope to get them changed. In a way it is admirable that you put this much effort into something that concerns you, as im sure many others would not say anything.

My question is this.... If you feel that strongly about so many points with Live, why do you still choose to work with it? I dont post on the forum much, but from reading other parts of this thread I get the impression that the ableton staff will not listen to your points of view, and so I wonder what your motivation is for putting more time and energy into this way of voicing your opinions?

Thanks

Ableton employees offered to personally come visit him and go over these issues. 3phase denied the request.

I see you left 3phase's egotistical vitriol out of the equation. therein lies your answer. the guy has issues. I just ignore him, nearly all his posts are ugly even if there's content. I wish he'd chill, he doesn't want to.

[Poster]

+1 - setting loops starts and length is one of those really annoying details that woud be so easy to fix and make really quick and easy.

how about selecting the part you want to loop, then CMD+L ?
doesn't get easier than that..

then double click the time ruler to automatically zoom in on the loop and center fit to your screen..

[morgo]

Actually Im not an ableton employee, im just interested!

[Khazul]

+1 - setting loops starts and length is one of those really annoying details that woud be so easy to fix and make really quick and easy.

how about selecting the part you want to loop, then CMD+L ?
doesn't get easier than that..

then double click the time ruler to automatically zoom in on the loop and center fit to your screen..

Talking about creating loop clips - NOT looping a selection.

[heasymo]

I am not a specialist myself but I hope these things will get more simple in the future..

[glenn303]

I am not a specialist myself but I hope these things will get more simple in the future..

[3phase]

3phase, could I ask you a non biaaed question? im genuinely interested in your answer, and I place no pre or post judgment upon it, there are a few things that puzzle me about this thread.

You seem to work with Live alot, and I think it is remarkable that you have spotted alot of points about lives design that do not sync well with the way you would wish them to work. You seem very clear and methodical in the way in which you approach voicing your opinions to others, in an attempt for acknowldgement of the problem, and also in a hope to get them changed. In a way it is admirable that you put this much effort into something that concerns you, as im sure many others would not say anything.

My question is this.... If you feel that strongly about so many points with Live, why do you still choose to work with it? I dont post on the forum much, but from reading other parts of this thread I get the impression that the ableton staff will not listen to your points of view, and so I wonder what your motivation is for putting more time and energy into this way of voicing your opinions?

Thanks

you are wright,. its a shitty program but based on a good idea,, just not any further devolped from L1.. at least not in the direction that made the difference..and regarding all other daw functionality it really lacks love to the detail.. quick and dirty implementations allways half baked, never ever finished.. a permanent building side..quite like berlin a way. rather proll than posh but very nerdy ...

But

its the only pattern based sequencer on the market

and its the only one that can send independend clocks over various interfaces and ports..


thats the 2 main things,, but i am working to overcome that by using plugins that can send midi and have own pattern sequencers insed and a das that supports the inter plug in midi..what again is not live


pretty funny that the program that is most depended on external plug ins to give a state of the art sound quality is the one that ha steh least plug in support...
constan crashes on 3rd party plugs show that..
that up top live 4 there was no midi support at all.
and that they rather include such a wet nerd dream as max than some vst standards of yesterday..

and the best with that high specialist integration
the user base totaly fits the program..
therefor the many trainies


172

inserting a blank midi clip is allways 1 bar long.. thats too short in most cases..
a user option for that clip length would be nice.. or better a key command that creates longer clips when clicking in the clipslot

173

many classical cycle midifunctions are missing..like all drummachine functionalitys where you can erase a specific note on cycle or autoadvancing loops.. replace recording.. record recovery..
thats actually 4 points.. but we can just put it into the one phrase.. midi input and editing sucks and is substandard.. by now even protools does better

[3phase]

+1 - setting loops starts and length is one of those really annoying details that woud be so easy to fix and make really quick and easy.

how about selecting the part you want to loop, then CMD+L ?
doesn't get easier than that..

then double click the time ruler to automatically zoom in on the loop and center fit to your screen..

command l- ok thanks..

would be however nice if the loop start point would keep in sync when doing so.. just because its likely that you want to keep in sync with your loop when applyng the comand -L while running..

so i keep the 171 for that

comand-L while running should keep the startmarker offset regarding to the actual timing and not to the selected loop borders..

can be conditional..so when the user selcted an exact barlength as looplenghth the startmaker keeps on the one position regarding to the actual play position and donts jumps to the loop border..

so what you hear is what you get should be the rule

[photonal]

I haven't read all of the 173 points - but of the ones I have read I really get the feeling 3phase *really does* love Ableton Live but of course wants it to be the best! Like we all do.

My personal griefs are

174 : with the 'find sample' function - actually, more often than not I have to find the sample first using the finder (OSX) and then point Ableton to that directory!!! (Otherwise it's just too slow).

175 : Also, I had so many crashes when trying to get Live to record lots of MIDI control data. I gave up and now this part of work flow is done with Logic Pro.

176 : There are also issues with Ableton stability, like when using third party plugins - Live just crashes out or the audio suddenly 'clicks out' -> no more audio til restart; often with Native Instruments, Albino and impOSCar. (Which I don't get with Logic Pro).

177 : Related to midi control data, I'd like to be able to see the midi control data in the arrange view (In the tracks, not just when you click on a clip to view the data at the bottom of the interface).

178 : In Sampler, I'd like to be able to move the entire 'Start Point / Loop Area / End Point' area as one entity - e.g. the loop area is 'trapped' between the start/end points - would be great if say, while you press Option (alt for PC), the whole 'Start Point / Loop Area / End Point' area moves along the entire sample as required.

I have to point out that I am still with version 7, however as far as I can make out these issues are still there or not resolved in Live 8 (I took part in the Live 8 beta testing) - which was a factor why I didn't upgrade even though there are some great new features in 8 which I've had to miss out on.

Other than that, the only other issue I have is with 3phase's spelling - I'd recommend writing his posts in TextEdit first and sorting out the typos

[3phase]

179


Thanks to a change in the filesystem older loop libaries got unreadable..what is a big drawback of L8 because you virtualy loose the work of weeks or month when multi gigabytes in short loops loose all theire loopmarker and tempo settings even when the old asd files are still with them in theire folder..

Allready mentioned with the blind search that ableton has in general problems with theire file handling what seems to be related with wrong concwptions like that the users will keep theire files in the same harddrive for the rest of theiere lives or will perform harddrive changes by reloading any file into the daw and resafing it..

that are vclearly no features and just eat again time that sums up over the years to anger..

also the permanent changing of the filesystem dnont helps.. we had to uncompatible fielseystems just in L8

When a company is not ableton tp predict future filesystem needs they have to at least provide the tools to deal with that.

like a little conversion app that comes with the upgrade..

Abletons attitude to leave the user allone on that is rather rude.
especially in a situation where many are still on L7 to enjoy stability but no file comaptibility anymore with theiere musical partners that are on L8 allready..

[3phase]

180

maybe allready mentioned..and once considred as bug by ableton and fixed..but returned a few versions of L8 later again..

when you zoom into a loop to see what happens around the start point..and the loop end gets out of the window by the zooming.. you cant move the loop anymore.. it gets locked..

because you just do this to do very fine adjustments numerical input is too rough..

only workaround i see is to make the loop longer to extend the window, what zooms it out again.. than moving it to the right for a bigger amount than your planed adjustment.. than zoom in again.. and move it the desired amount to the left...
but you need to be carefull to dont go too far because otherwise you have to repeat all this steps again because moving the loop to the right is prohibited again when being zoomed in and its right loopborder is outd side the window range..

other workaround is too make the loop so short that its right border is within the window range, do your adjustment..and make it long by numerical input again..


As it looks people with bigger screens have less problems so again a bug that might be computer model and monitor related....