Ableton Live has become an unreliable mess.

Discuss music production with Ableton Live.
phaded
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Re: Ableton Live has become an unreliable mess.

Post by phaded » Mon May 18, 2015 9:02 pm

Even FLStudio and Reason respond better when pushed. Surely more swift with project loads.

Yes I went there.

:roll:

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SLEEarts
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Re: Ableton Live has become an unreliable mess.

Post by SLEEarts » Mon May 18, 2015 9:03 pm

Funny, I just logged in to ask around and see if anyone aside from me had notice that Live has been very, very unstable lately. This thread was right at the top, so I suppose that answers my question. Aside from the instability it is also very sluggish on my i7 4770k, 32 GB Win7 desktop machine. Load times and most actions take forever, just as many have also posted.

Maybe the coders (and/or their bosses) could try to remember that less is more.

pinkpaint
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Re: Ableton Live has become an unreliable mess.

Post by pinkpaint » Mon May 18, 2015 9:09 pm

I dont use max4live at all as it just crashed and crashed for me. But without max for live I got to be honest ableton is incredibly stable for me on yosemite. The only thing I have to agree with on the performance is that as the track counts go up with third party plugs, even with a good cpu, things get sluggish as fuck. Especially switching tracks and opening and closing third party plugs towards the end of a project.

however to say that they are going backwards is in my opinion a step to far. Ableton is a pretty big company for a software company, again I will reiterate this, there is no way they are not aware of these issues and attempting to do something about them. I am hoping with the delay compensation being dealt with that after its release, we will see quicker releases and updates as I think customers are still waiting a drastically long time for 9.2. Its been well over a year since 9.1 was released.

As far as being more open to their customers, the last thing they want to do is get your hopes up for something that they dont know will take another month or a few years. Its smart for business' to keep their mouths shut because it is better to have anxious customers then customers who have been lied to and are angry at company for being lied to.

störgeräusche
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Re: Ableton Live has become an unreliable mess.

Post by störgeräusche » Mon May 18, 2015 9:23 pm

pinkpaint wrote: As far as being more open to their customers, the last thing they want to do is get your hopes up for something that they dont know will take another month or a few years. Its smart for business' to keep their mouths shut because it is better to have anxious customers then customers who have been lied to and are angry at company for being lied to.
like elektron's overbridge. the postponing festival.
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Stromkraft
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Re: Ableton Live has become an unreliable mess.

Post by Stromkraft » Mon May 18, 2015 9:46 pm

störgeräusche wrote: like elektron's overbridge. the postponing festival.
They're due for demos in June. Personally I'm waiting for Dantés Via solution in the same time frame.
Make some music!

mholloway
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Re: Ableton Live has become an unreliable mess.

Post by mholloway » Tue May 19, 2015 4:13 pm

pinkpaint wrote: there is no way they are not aware of these issues and attempting to do something about them. I am hoping with the delay compensation being dealt with that after its release, we will see quicker releases and updates as I think customers are still waiting a drastically long time for 9.2. Its been well over a year since 9.1 was released.
.
You need to remember: many of us, myself included, are beta testers, and some of us do / have done alpha testing as well. So we are reasonably well aware of whether or not Ableton "is aware of these issues and attempting to do something about them." I've been beta testing 9.2 for months and believe me, I'd post here if any of my original points (I posted the OP) were being addressed.
my industrial music made with Ableton Live (as DEAD WHEN I FOUND HER): https://deadwhenifoundher.bandcamp.com/
my dark jazz / noir music made with Ableton Live: https://michaelarthurholloway.bandcamp. ... guilt-noir

Stromkraft
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Re: Ableton Live has become an unreliable mess.

Post by Stromkraft » Tue May 19, 2015 6:01 pm

mholloway wrote: we are reasonably well aware of whether or not Ableton "is aware of these issues and attempting to do something about them." I've been beta testing 9.2 for months and believe me, I'd post here if any of my original points (I posted the OP) were being addressed.
Of course fixes and features are bound to turn up in alphas and betas with time, but the content or state of these does not indicate what is being worked on or not.

We're not privy to all what the development team(s) does just because we happen to be beta or alpha testers. We just know what is in the current versions of those. Modern software is typically modularized and it's very possible certain issues and solutions for them are studied and developed separately in time from the alpha and beta cycles.
Make some music!

agent314
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Re: Ableton Live has become an unreliable mess.

Post by agent314 » Tue May 19, 2015 6:14 pm

My experience with Live 9.1 and 9.2b has not been in line with mhalloway's at all, which is interesting to me.

I run Live on a 2012 Yosemite Retina MBP at work and a Windows 7 system at home. SSDs in both.

At work, mostly audio recording/editing/chopping/outputting, super stable.
Home, mostly music production - lots of U-he, Valhalla, NI, Spectrasonics, and assorted other plugs along with Max4Live devices.

Start-up or loading speed is totally reasonable for me, and with the exception of one of the recent betas, no issues with stability. Indexing is sometimes weird for a session after a new beta version downloads, but in a 30+GB library, I rarely find myself waiting for indexing processes gone awry. I'm usually in Live for at least an hour a day, often multiple hours a day, without significant issues. The usefulness of the browser's current implementation comes down to personal preference and workflow a lot, but overall it's more or less effective for my purposes. I certainly prefer it to the old 3-folder limits of Live 8 and before.

Live 8 however, was a complete disaster for me. Crashed constantly, projects would hang for minutes at a time while trying to load, VSTs would randomly not appear, etc.

To generalize, my experience with Live 9 and the betas has been mostly positive, which makes me feel lucky, hearing how frustrating and problematic it has been for others like yourself

I think the larger Live gets, the less nimble Ableton can be, because there are just so incalculably many variables and usage situations and combinations of software and workflow that can make things go pear-shaped, and even the best team of testers can't account for every use case (even with actual customer alpha/beta testers in the mix).

[tow]
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Re: Ableton Live has become an unreliable mess.

Post by [tow] » Wed May 20, 2015 11:35 am

Hello M & everybody else,

please contact Support with your issues and make sure you have all relevant data included, like Status Reports and proper error descriptions.
This would be the most helpful way for us to learn about the specific problems you experience with Live and to be able to help you with them.
If you are witnessing specific issues with the Live 9.2 Beta only, please use the Centercode beta system to provide feedback.

Best,

Torsten

tedlogan
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Re: Ableton Live has become an unreliable mess.

Post by tedlogan » Wed May 20, 2015 12:38 pm

agent314 wrote:To generalize, my experience with Live 9 and the betas has been mostly positive, which makes me feel lucky, hearing how frustrating and problematic it has been for others like yourself
Same here. I also use lots of u-he plugins and a small assortment of M4L devices. My track count is usually not very high though, rarely straying above 8. No crashes ever since 9.2, some crashes prior to that but purely related to a third-party M4L device (Keyboard Control 1 and 2) combined with Bazille and rack hot-swapping.

6-year old PC:
i7 920 @2.6ghz
6 GB RAM
Windows Home Premium 7 64 bit
WD 7200rpm HD (on its last knees - everything loads sssssllllloooowwwwwllyyyyyy)
gtx 295 (with one GPU broken)
Pod HD as audio interface, sometimes an old Edirol UA-25

Not that this helps mholloway in any way...good luck getting your setup sorted. I'd be more than frustrated if I was doing professional work and constantly having to deal with crashes etc.

re:dream
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Re: Ableton Live has become an unreliable mess.

Post by re:dream » Wed May 20, 2015 1:29 pm

I have two computers:

A 2014 Mac Mini: Live 9.1.7 loads extremely slowly
A 2009 MBP on its last legs: Live 9.1.7 loads in about half the time.

:roll: :?:

misanthrop
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Re: Ableton Live has become an unreliable mess.

Post by misanthrop » Wed May 20, 2015 3:12 pm

mholloway wrote:
2. I think this is only on Mac, but I've found it corroborated elsewhere online: the dreaded "UNKNOWN FILE ID" pop-up error that occurs, oh, about 70% of the time (sometimes 90%, it ebbs and flows, inexplicably) when you try to save something in the User Library. Think it doesn't matter? It does: most of the time, the file that is saved after you click "ok" in that error pop-up is a corrupted file. If you read my point #1, you know that I save Fx Racks, instruments Racks, and clips of all kinds into the User Library, all the time. Well, that is, I'd LIKE TO, but most of the time dragging something into the User Library results in, yep, "UNKNOWN FILE ID" popping up and I have to delete the screwed up file, and try again...and again... and again....

-M
just had the same problem with that "UNKNOWN FILE ID" error.. on my computer the error was caused by the fact that my "user library folder" was in the same forlder like the "ableton 9 library". it disappeared once i copied to a different root:

for example:
D:\Ableton_9_Library and D:\UserLibrary

hope that works for you :-)

sonik777
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Re: Ableton Live has become an unreliable mess.

Post by sonik777 » Wed May 20, 2015 3:39 pm

Asus G750 laptop

windows 8.1

Intel gen 4 i7 4700HQ 4 core mobile processor

Samsung 840 EVO SSD

16 GB ddr3 ram

M-Audio Project MIX I/O firewire interface

Ableton version 9.1.2


Ableton is relatively stable, but it still crashes (which I mostly blame on vst's), maybe once every 2 hours of use.

However M4L is a total crapshoot. I very rarely use it because it is insanely unreliable. A real shame.

Ableton seriously needs to add convolution reverb to the core devices. DO IT!

brettonwoodsapocalypse
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Re: Ableton Live has become an unreliable mess.

Post by brettonwoodsapocalypse » Wed May 20, 2015 5:08 pm

I don't have the same problem, Live 9 has been quite stable so far; it gets definitely worse with Max For Live.
The browser is definitely shitty, I 100% agree with the one column search: it doesn't work
- Categories are far too general
- If I'm looking for an effect why differentiate Max for live effects from native effects ? Just show an icon indicating to the user that it comes from M4L
- No proper tagging ( when you have 2000 bass sounds clicking on the bass category is pretty useless)
This browser is only useful when you type a keyword more or less specific. This is poor design, most users just have a general idea of the kind of sound they're loooking for.
I'm not a huge fan of NI for sequencing but I have to say they're really nailing it in terms of browsing sounds. Why can't live give us the same efficiency ?

In broader terms Live is definitely the slowest daw I have tried on my Mac. It takes forever to load the template. It freezes for a second or two on a regular basis, although crashes are rare.
Updates take forever and it makes me think that Ableton needs more developpers and rethink the engine. I have been using the program since V3 and it was great how fast it was.
Since v8 it seems to lag behind all major daws in terms of responsiveness of the UI and efficiency. Maybe it's time has well to update the minimal design which was great but is now updated.
If I wasn't hooked to the session view I would really consider switching.

sashazane
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Re: Ableton Live has become an unreliable mess.

Post by sashazane » Wed May 20, 2015 5:49 pm

I made the mistake of cleaning up my computer, removing unnecessary files and indexing the os to optimize performance.
Of course ableton didn't see the user library any more....I PUSHED COLLECT ALL AND SAVE.... 12.5 hours later, 93% done. Image

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