Update LIVE 9 for RETINA !!!

Share what you’d like to see added to Ableton Live.
ezelkow1
Posts: 366
Joined: Thu Oct 08, 2009 6:22 pm

Re: Update LIVE 9 for RETINA !!!

Post by ezelkow1 » Mon Sep 22, 2014 4:44 pm

in beta now

fargo100
Posts: 39
Joined: Fri Nov 20, 2009 11:03 pm

Re: Update LIVE 9 for RETINA !!!

Post by fargo100 » Mon Sep 22, 2014 4:45 pm

fargo100 wrote:
vrprorg wrote:As much as I would also love to see "proper" Retina support, we should not forget that Apple's line of MacBooks is still not entirely Retina-equipped. In other words, it takes some time before the market is somewhat saturated with a critical mass of screens that support high resolutions - either on Macs or on Windows machines. So, up until rather recently, I guess it was just not "urgent" enough. I guess, with the next update run on Apple's MacBook line, we'll see something happening with Live, too.

Sadly, unlike Ableton and NI most developers have (almost 3 years ago for some developers) released a Non-Retina/Retina app with no problems.. they work on both machines Retina and Standard. It's just most of the graphics have a @X2.png or whatever is used as well as the normal graphic for the standard screen machines.. The machine works out which graphic to run and hey presto!!

It's not rocket science it's just laziness and as for waiting for the PC to release some version of whatever it is... I don't believe that either.
If they just did it now everyones happy and when the PC catches up then great!! It's already done..!! :) :)
Ableton Beta with Retina support available I may have just eaten my earlier post!! :mrgreen: :mrgreen: :mrgreen:
Text still a little 'soft' compared to other retina fonts - however icons text etc 100% better than previous non-retina GUI !!!!!

A Few Williams
Posts: 11
Joined: Tue Oct 29, 2013 2:30 am

Re: Update LIVE 9 for RETINA !!!

Post by A Few Williams » Mon Sep 22, 2014 6:16 pm

Thank fuck. Finally.

As you say, the text is still a touch fuzzy but the rest is looking pretty sharp. It's like taking off a pair of too-small shoes you've been wearing for 18 months :D

Stromkraft
Posts: 7033
Joined: Wed Jun 25, 2014 11:34 am

Re: Update LIVE 9 for RETINA !!! It's COMING!!!!!!!

Post by Stromkraft » Mon Sep 22, 2014 7:57 pm

"9.1.6b1 Release Notes

Improvements and feature changes:

Improved graphics for Retina displays. Note that this requires a Mac with OS X 10.7.4 “Lion” or higher." :wink:

9.1.6b1 Release Notes
Make some music!

Ronin1973
Posts: 17
Joined: Sat Dec 21, 2013 6:41 pm

Re: Update LIVE 9 for RETINA !!!

Post by Ronin1973 » Mon Sep 22, 2014 9:59 pm

I hope this includes high-resolution Windows support as well. I'm running at 3440x1440 (or whatever the native LG 34UM95 resolution is). The increase in Ableton real-estate is awesome, but not everything scales well or even at all at high resolutions.

Ilmostro
Posts: 7
Joined: Tue Sep 23, 2014 11:41 pm

Re: Update LIVE 9 for RETINA !!!

Post by Ilmostro » Tue Sep 23, 2014 11:48 pm

Just downloaded the beta - looks good on Retina.

Please be aware that beta shouldn't be used in a production environment - they may well have bugs still.

ImageScreen Shot 2014-09-24 at 00.05.34 by ravij1, on Flickr

jbw
Posts: 288
Joined: Sat Nov 09, 2013 1:08 pm

Re: Update LIVE 9 for RETINA !!!

Post by jbw » Wed Sep 24, 2014 1:21 am

Thanks for the screenshot Ilmostro, looks good. 8)

nexus01
Posts: 15
Joined: Sun Jul 19, 2009 8:22 am

Re: Update LIVE 9 for RETINA !!!

Post by nexus01 » Thu Sep 25, 2014 12:37 am

graphics looks good, but the fonts still looks pretty bad...

Stromkraft
Posts: 7033
Joined: Wed Jun 25, 2014 11:34 am

Re: Update LIVE 9 for RETINA !!!

Post by Stromkraft » Thu Sep 25, 2014 8:56 am

nexus01 wrote:graphics looks good, but the fonts still looks pretty bad...
You mean compared to a 72 dpi display?
Make some music!

Stromkraft
Posts: 7033
Joined: Wed Jun 25, 2014 11:34 am

Re: Update LIVE 9 for RETINA !!!

Post by Stromkraft » Thu Sep 25, 2014 9:01 am

Ronin1973 wrote:I hope this includes high-resolution Windows support as well. I'm running at 3440x1440 (or whatever the native LG 34UM95 resolution is). The increase in Ableton real-estate is awesome, but not everything scales well or even at all at high resolutions.
Please try out the beta and report back to the forum about this. Many people on Windows are on high resolution displays. Technically, a lot of what apps do does depend on the operating system. To what extension that is true for Live I'm not sure. I know Logic seemed to have their own graphics subroutines (Logic graphics was very instantaneous in updating even when computers were really slow, a loooong time ago), but I never noticed something special about Live concerning graphics.
Make some music!

Ilmostro
Posts: 7
Joined: Tue Sep 23, 2014 11:41 pm

Re: Update LIVE 9 for RETINA !!!

Post by Ilmostro » Thu Sep 25, 2014 2:44 pm

nexus01 wrote:graphics looks good, but the fonts still looks pretty bad...
The fonts on the spectrum analyser are still blocky as I guess that is rendered differently.

The rest of the fonts look fine - much better than before.

According to the beta release notes this should not have any affect on Windows or non Retina Macs. I would have though the Windows version would look sharp on a HiDPI display, but just have small fonts at 100% setting? This would make sense to me, as Apples solution to HiDPI displays is to tell the application that it is running on a lower resolution, but actually render the system GUI at the High DPI.

It's hard to explain but basically a 15 in Macbook with Retina display has a physical screen size of 2880 x 1800, but the application 'thinks' the display is actually 1440 x 900. This is why apps that are not aware of Retina displays look crap - because they are actually rendering at 1440 x 900!

In the other 'scaled - more space' modes, for example 1920 x 1200, OS X will render the entire screen at 4x the pixels (2x V x H) so that means the operating system has to draw a 3840 x 2400 image and than this is resampled using antialiasing into the physical resolution.

As far as I can tell, Live renders its own GUI not using the system API's or libraries. So Ableton have had to force Live to render at a native 2880 x 1800 screen resolution. I've not tested the other scaled modes properly.

I could be wrong about that, but I would explain why it wasn't a simple matter to fix as you might think. For what it's worth Adobe Photoshop Elements has only just got Retina support in the up coming Elements 13 release, so Ableton are no worse than Abobe!


At any rate - I'm grateful that they have released a Retina fix.

Thank You Ableton!
Last edited by Ilmostro on Thu Sep 25, 2014 8:32 pm, edited 1 time in total.
Ableton PUSH / Live 9 Suite / Touchable V3 on iPad Air 2 & Phone / Akai APC Mini / Akai MPC Mini Mk2 / Apple Macbook 15" Retina

Ilmostro
Posts: 7
Joined: Tue Sep 23, 2014 11:41 pm

Re: Update LIVE 9 for RETINA !!!

Post by Ilmostro » Thu Sep 25, 2014 5:02 pm

To answer my own questions:

Running at 1920x1200 mode on a Retina Mac, does indeed render the GUI at 3840 × 2400 pixels! this is then scaled into the physical display.

NOTE:
You should down load the image files at full quality from Flickr and view full screen in OS X Preview at 'zoom to fit screen' rather than '1:1 Actual size'.

This gives an truer idea of what it looks like (there will be a small difference as the file is a lossy compressed image) on screen in Live.

Viewing in a browser may not (highly likely it won't) give a true reflection of the screen image.





ImageAbleton Live - 1920x1200 on Retina by ravij1, on Flickr
Ableton PUSH / Live 9 Suite / Touchable V3 on iPad Air 2 & Phone / Akai APC Mini / Akai MPC Mini Mk2 / Apple Macbook 15" Retina

Stromkraft
Posts: 7033
Joined: Wed Jun 25, 2014 11:34 am

Re: Update LIVE 9 for RETINA !!!

Post by Stromkraft » Thu Sep 25, 2014 5:34 pm

Ilmostro wrote:
nexus01 wrote:graphics looks good, but the fonts still looks pretty bad...
The fonts on the spectrum analyser are still blocky as I guess that is rendered differently.

The rest of the fonts look fine - much better than before.

According to the beta release notes this should not have any affect on Windows or non Retina Macs. I would have though the Windows version would look sharp on a HiDPI display, but just have small fonts at 100% setting? This would make sense to me, as Apples solution to HiDPI displays is to tell the application that it is running on a lower resolution, but actually render the system GUI at the High DPI.

It's hard to explain but basically a 15 in Macbook with Retina display has a physical screen size of 2880 x 1800, but the application 'thinks' the display is actually 1440 x 900. This is why apps that are not aware of Retina displays look crap - because they are actually rendering at 1440 x 900!

In the other 'scaled - more space' modes, for example 1920 x 1200, OS X will render the entire screen at 4x the pixels (2x V x H) so that means the operating system has to draw a 3840 x 2400 image and than this is resampled using antialiasing into the physical resolution.

As far as I can tell, Live renders its own GUI not using the system API's or libraries. So Ableton have had to force Live to render at a native 2880 x 1800 screen resolution. I've not tested the other scaled modes properly.

I could be wrong about that, but I would explain why it wasn't a simple matter to fix as you might think. For what it's worth Adobe Photoshop Elements has only just got Retina support in the up coming Elements 13 release, so Ableton are no worse than Abobe!


At any rate - I'm grateful that they have released a Retina fix.

Thank You Ableton!
Very well explained, sir. Thank you for doing that better that I'd have explained it.
Make some music!

jbw
Posts: 288
Joined: Sat Nov 09, 2013 1:08 pm

Re: Update LIVE 9 for RETINA !!!

Post by jbw » Thu Sep 25, 2014 6:37 pm

Ilmostro wrote:NOTE:
You should down load the image files at full quality from Flickr and view full screen in OS X Preview at 'zoom to fit screen' rather than '1:1 Actual size'.
Or set the image as your desktop wallpaper fit to the screen, then load Live and minimize it and maximize it to compare and contrast. The difference is very significant.

Stromkraft
Posts: 7033
Joined: Wed Jun 25, 2014 11:34 am

Re: Update LIVE 9 for RETINA !!!

Post by Stromkraft » Thu Sep 25, 2014 7:16 pm

jbw wrote:
Ilmostro wrote:NOTE:
You should down load the image files at full quality from Flickr and view full screen in OS X Preview at 'zoom to fit screen' rather than '1:1 Actual size'.
Or set the image as your desktop wallpaper fit to the screen, then load Live and minimize it and maximize it to compare and contrast. The difference is very significant.
Isn't the easiest way to register at ableton.centercode.com and download the 9.1.6 beta?
Make some music!

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