Ableton 9: No Comping Features

Discuss music production with Ableton Live.
oddstep
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Re: Ableton 9: No Comping Features

Post by oddstep » Mon Dec 03, 2012 6:16 pm

My insight is that the absence of track comping is nothing to do with programming talent and everything to do with prioritising other features. The idea that Bigwig took all the talent that made Live 7 so amazing is puzzling.

Sean_Clarke
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Re: Ableton 9: No Comping Features

Post by Sean_Clarke » Mon Dec 03, 2012 6:48 pm

Ableton have a lot of staff, at least 60 are frequently active on the Beta 9 forum! About 4 programmers left for Bitwig....they have probably lost more than that most years with normal job shifting.

Ableton have their own view of what he program is for and prioritise accordingly...you either buy in to that or not, obviously you have a say on the forums, but ultimately it did what it did when you bought it, anything else is a bonus or upgrade decision. Personally I use Live as a quick idea tool, über groove box, sampler and rewire to cubase if I am comping or linear recording (guitar, vocals etc)

There are lots of good linear DAW options, protools, cubase, logic and studio one...and of course Reaper for the cost of a cheap plug in....consider Live with Reaper, for the cost, you get everything you need now...
DAWS: Live 11 Suite + PUSH2, Studio One, Bitwig and Reason all via an X32 desk: Instruments: modular and analogue stuff, guitars, basses and drums.

andydes
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Re: Ableton 9: No Comping Features

Post by andydes » Mon Dec 03, 2012 7:19 pm

The idea that the geniuses left for bitwit and everyone else is a bunch of morons comes up a fair bit (maybe from the same people, I don't know).

It's equally likely that the guys who left wrote shoddy code no one can make head nor tail of.

But most likely is that it's actually quite difficult to dig into the program and make changes if it's been written by someone else. Much easier to add new features on top of it.

Anyway, I doubt a company like ableton has much trouble finding talented people.

login
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Re: Ableton 9: No Comping Features

Post by login » Mon Dec 03, 2012 7:44 pm

The expectation than ableton Live has to be the best daw is naive. No DAW has been or is right now "the best", everyone misses some features, excels in others.

You work within limitations, you learn to overcome them or just another tool to finish the work. In this case is clear Ableton Live is not designed for post production duties, it's strenght is improvisation and live performance, and somewhat arrengement.

So it's depelopers have to choose where they invest their limited resources, they probably know that Live is not widely used for mastering and they choose instead of implementing features as comping to focus on performance, improvisation and arrengement: audio to midi, record automation in session, better browser, midi functions in the piano roll.

jonathan harker
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Re: Ableton 9: No Comping Features

Post by jonathan harker » Mon Dec 03, 2012 7:58 pm

2 years ago i switched over from logic to live. first i thought " damn, no comping!" but after a while, recording loads of vocals and guitars and real drums, etc. i missed nothing! with comping you are seduced to record shitloads of takes in a loop and after it you have the pain of choice and spend days of auditionimg! at the present state live is a bit like "tape". you have to fell a descision right on wich takes are good and immediatly have a good one chosen by feel and you can work on right away and don´t loose the flow!
everyone is different! cheers :mrgreen:

ttilberg
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Re: Ableton 9: No Comping Features

Post by ttilberg » Mon Dec 03, 2012 8:27 pm

lol:
Did I miss the mega thread where people were begging for new hardware?

I wonder what happened at Ableton that made all their innovators go to BitWig.


I dislike when people go on about "I haven't seen anyone ask for this feature!"

But it's funny when they follow up stating that Ableton's innovators have left... and now Ableton is unable to innovate... as displayed by adding features... that weren't asked for. lol

And also:
this forum exist for users to communicate with the company about what we think is important.
I believe the forum you seek is:
Most importantly though, is it really necessary to be so rude?
Tim Tilberg - Duluth, MN | SoundCloud - Arsenal
2011 13" MBP w/8GB ram | Live 9 Suite, Reason 6.5, FXPansion DCAM/Etch/Maul, Izotope Ozone 5

deva
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Re: Ableton 9: No Comping Features

Post by deva » Mon Dec 03, 2012 11:22 pm

hmj wrote:This is about Track Comping and why it's taking Ableton so long to do it - no programming talent. I'm interested in insights on that.
I do not care about track comping and I do not want Ableton to take the time to add it. I would like their development time put elsewhere (especially if they are short on talent! hehehe)

pencilrocket
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Re: Ableton 9: No Comping Features

Post by pencilrocket » Tue Dec 04, 2012 1:08 am

Hiring many programmer isn't equal to the speed of developing....

sdfak1234
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Re: Ableton 9: No Comping Features

Post by sdfak1234 » Tue Dec 04, 2012 1:59 am

Comping would be good, or at least improve the legato workaround features to make that easier.

Couple of people here commenting about Ableton's design principals, I've always understood their approach to be minimalist with regards to features, minimalist in that the simplest and fewest elements are used to create the maximum effect. They seem to prefer to create more powerful building blocks so that you can make your features, rather than write the core features themselves, or use the same tools to write their core presets, hence max4live. I never believed they'd have multi monitor support because it goes against that aesthetic, in a way we've seen Ableton move away from this core principal, they don't seem to be improving their core features as much, with Live9 I expected core improvements all over the place, there seems to be surprisingly few.

In regards Bitwig and Ableton, I think its actually pretty clear that important Ableton talent did leave for Bitwig. I run a software development group myself, if I had to guess what is going on with Ableton, I'd say they probably have a new development team, I'm sure they're talented but it really depends on their leadership because making this kind of software is almost like making a movie, it requires direction... for all we know that key direction could now be at Bitwig. I believe this new development team are probably working on Live 10, which is probably a rewrite. Live 9 and 8 64-bit feel like port and patch jobs. Clearly Bitwig is at least inspired by Ableton. It also shares the minimalist design principal, but they seem to be doing it better. They confirmed full PDC today, so it looks like they've covered all the top requests from Ableton users.

Back to comping, it's a tough one, I'm actually loving this feature a lot in Cubase at the moment, it makes a big difference to my workflow... perhaps Ableton could preserve their minimalist design by improving the way takes are shown (via clips), bounced and edited. I don't see this happening though, because as others have stated Live now seems to focus on Live work and if it's going to stay in the direction, then I think they should work on things related to Live work, this also includes Live recording, so they need to fix PDC regardless, but yeah, if it's got the name 'Live' on the box, I think they should take the minimalist approach to a Live performance program and simply make it easier to get this work into other DAWs, so I say things like bouncing is more important... I think it's still possible for a hybrid approach, despite the arguments, I think actually Ableton Live is very close to this ,and of course, they still add studio features like audio to midi and such, so I'm not sure I buy the idea it's focus is strictly on live work.
Last edited by sdfak1234 on Tue Dec 04, 2012 4:17 am, edited 1 time in total.

Willyum
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Re: Ableton 9: No Comping Features

Post by Willyum » Tue Dec 04, 2012 2:21 am

deva wrote:I do not care about track comping
Image

Everybody has to do comping in some form or another. Comping has been around since before home computers were invented. In the old studio where I worked, we did it with the actual tape and razor blades, or by constant punching... now I do it by recording multiple tracks and drag and drop or with midi overdub and delete (until i saw the video above... now maybe I'll start doing vocals in Reason since I already have it).

whether or not you want a 'special' feature or not to make comping easier is one thing, but to say you don't care about track comping makes me wonder if you care about the quality of your music or just trolling.
Last edited by Willyum on Tue Dec 04, 2012 2:24 am, edited 1 time in total.

Tone Deft
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Re: Ableton 9: No Comping Features

Post by Tone Deft » Tue Dec 04, 2012 2:24 am

of course it was the BEST programmers that left! would the Drama Queens say anything else?
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talking out their asses.
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pencilrocket
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Re: Ableton 9: No Comping Features

Post by pencilrocket » Tue Dec 04, 2012 3:56 am

sdfak1234 wrote:Clearly Bitwig is at least inspired by Ableton. It also shares the minimalist design principal, but they seem to be doing it better. They confirmed full PDC confirmed today, so it looks like they've covered all the top requests from Ableton users.
Really? 8O That would be great!

OzWozEre
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Re: Ableton 9: No Comping Features

Post by OzWozEre » Tue Dec 04, 2012 4:02 am

Isn't comping the domain of those "traditional" DAWs?

I don't understand why you would even expect such a thing from Live.
Macbook Pro (2.5 Dual, 4gb) / 30" Cinema Display (I don't give a fuck about no multi-monitor support)

gisela-idol
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Re: Ableton 9: No Comping Features

Post by gisela-idol » Tue Dec 04, 2012 7:20 am

Sean_Clarke wrote:Ableton have a lot of staff, at least 60 are frequently active on the Beta 9 forum! About 4 programmers left for Bitwig....they have probably lost more than that most years with normal ..
but its remarkable how things went down the drain since the 4 guys are gone and also remarable how quick tehy came up with a own daw that could be better than live from the start and actually aswers many user wishes ableton chosed to ignore for years.

seems that the 4 was the 4 good guys.

oddstep
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Re: Ableton 9: No Comping Features

Post by oddstep » Tue Dec 04, 2012 8:12 am

So lets get this right. The last version of Live with the Bitwig 4, which must be Live 7 represents the peak of Live's development and since then, bereft of those 4 people's initimable skills Ableton have been just making cosmetic alterations. I don't remember Live 7 being that epochal. Next!

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