Surface Book and Ableton... ACT ABLETON MARKETING!

[Pasha]

Recently I found this article:

http://blogs.windows.com/devices/2015/1 ... musicians/

But Ableton is not mentioned!
Come on!!!

Ableton Live is the best Musical Software ever!!!

Best
Paolo

[BoddAH]

Ableton Live isn't mentioned for several reasons:

1. It's not officially touch enabled. The whole point of the Surface that you can use a DAW (like BitWig or FL Studio) with multi-touch gestures and the stylus.

2. BitWig is probably the most direct competitor of Ableton Live. You can’t really officially endorse both Ableton Live and BitWig for the same reason you couldn’t endorse Coca Cola and Pepsi or BMW and Audi at the same time.

3. Even if Ableton Live officially supports Windows, pretty much all marketing and PR is Mac-centric. I have yet to see an official Ableton Live blog entry or marketing material featuring a Windows laptop or desktop and not some MacBook or an iMac.

I really hope that Ableton Live 10 natively supports multi-touch and stylus workflow. I also hope that the Surface Pro and Surface Book end up becoming popular music producer and DJ “laptops”. They certainly deserve it and it would be nice to see the current MacBook Pro monopoly shaken up a little.

[beats me]

Maybe they are busy developing for the third rail iPad Pro.

[pencilrocket]

ableton CEO is steve jobs fanoboy. it wont happen

[yur2die4]

Surface CPUs are not going to cut it next to MacBook Pro CPUs.

I wonder how bitwig is on CPU.

[beats me]

I read you can pimp out the specs on a Surface for about $3,000.

Are consumers willing to drop that much on a PC?

Will (largely home) music producers drop that much just because it has a touch screen?

Personally I think most are going to want the cheapest option possible that somehow also performs like the top of the line desktop.

[BoddAH]

Many people are trying to get away from Macs and OS X for other reasons.

As a PC gamer and professional translator who actually needs a Windows machine to run Windows-specific software, I can’t really use a Mac as my main/only PC.

Yet I was so convinced that Macs and OS X are the way to go, that Core Audio is vastly superior to ASIO and all that crap, that I actually decided to get a MacBook Pro with Retina display to do my music production and installed Windows via Boot Camp for my other needs.

Recently I couldn’t bear maintaining TWO OSs, alternating between them constantly and playing the most recent games on my rMBP anymore (even if they ran surprisingly well) and put it on eBay to build a desktop PC.

I haven’t regretted my choice at all. The Windows desktop is stable as fuck and everything just works.

Now if a nice, aesthetically pleasing (that’s probably part of the appeal of MacBooks on stage for DJs) Windows laptop with a magnesium chassis could also provide a viable alternative to a MacBook Pro even on stage, I would be free to use only one OS forever from now on.
It’s not as if you need a workhorse on stage. In the studio it’s another story but on stage your likely to just trigger audio clips with maybe a few low-CPU effects on the Master Bus and the Surface Pro is more than enough for that. And if you actually want a powerful laptop, I hear that you can build a pretty beefy Surface Book to order.

[jonbenderr]

I don't think I could ever use a touch screen for anything other than a phone and I don't understand what the fascination is. Just seems to easy to slip up.

I need physical buttons and things like that.

Does anyone have a good example of practical uses for this? I could see maybe an X/Y type setup for a Kaoss pad type effect.

[BoddAH]

Does anyone have a good example of practical uses for this? I could see maybe an X/Y type setup for a Kaoss pad type effect.

Oh I dunno. Launching clips in Ableton Live in Session view maybe ?

Unless you like the physical feedback from sliding a plastick puck attached to your computer by a plastic cord in order to hover a little white arrow on the screen of your computer over the clip, then clicking a button on the wired plastic puck.
In that case it must kinda of suck having a tablet.

But I figure having a tablet on stage or on your desk at a nice flat angle and directly touching the clips you want to launch (several if you want) seems to be better.

It also looks cooler on stage and a lot less like you're checking your emails.

[stringtapper]

Unless you like the physical feedback from sliding a plastick puck attached to your computer by a plastic cord in order to hover a little white arrow on the screen of your computer over the clip, then clicking a button on the wired plastic puck.
In that case it must kinda of suck having a tablet.

But I figure having a tablet on stage or on your desktop at a nice flat angle and directly touching the clips you want to launch (several if you want) seems to be better.

But he was comparing a touchscreen to a physical controller, not a mouse:

I need physical buttons and things like that.

So, try again there.

[beats me]

I don't think I could ever use a touch screen for anything other than a phone and I don't understand what the fascination is. Just seems to easy to slip up.

I need physical buttons and things like that.

Does anyone have a good example of practical uses for this? I could see maybe an X/Y type setup for a Kaoss pad type effect.

On the Traktor (iOS) app you can freeze a bar of a playing track that slices it into 8 samples. You tap on those sections of the waveform to trigger them. Also tapping higher or lower on that section can adjust pitch or other selected effect amount. Visually way better than pressing hardware buttons that represent those slices and I don’t know how you would also simultaneously use that button for pitch or effect amount.

[yur2die4]

Some of you don't seem to be understanding the CPU of the surface book.

It is an ultramobile processor, even maxed out, tops you can be using the vid card, but the U is no match for a Mobile processor.

It'll run the software quite well, but it won't be as maxed out or beefed up as a regular recent i7 laptop.

It's essentially a Macbook Air on steroids.

[yur2die4]

https://www.facebook.com/daniel.socha.1 ... 764480277/

Thought I'd share this again... I was laughing pretty hysterically when I accidentally started doing this to this specific track.

Surprisingly, less than half the people I've shown it to recognized the track I was mangling.

[BoddAH]

Nice to see that Ableton Live actually DOES make a cameo on the official Surface promo video, even if Bitwig kind of steals the spotlight.

https://youtu.be/VRVK2s-g4t4?t=1m12s

[jonbenderr]

Does anyone have a good example of practical uses for this? I could see maybe an X/Y type setup for a Kaoss pad type effect.

Oh I dunno. Launching clips in Ableton Live in Session view maybe ?

Unless you like the physical feedback from sliding a plastick puck attached to your computer by a plastic cord in order to hover a little white arrow on the screen of your computer over the clip, then clicking a button on the wired plastic puck.
In that case it must kinda of suck having a tablet.

But I figure having a tablet on stage or on your desk at a nice flat angle and directly touching the clips you want to launch (several if you want) seems to be better.

It also looks cooler on stage and a lot less like you're checking your emails.

The thought of launching clips in session view is exactly the kinda thing that freaks me out the most about touchscreen tech. How many times a day do you accidentally slip up and tap the wrong thing on your phone/tablet? At least in that scenario you have the ability to correct it. In a live setting it could be devastating, happy accidents aside.

Add into that any anxiety you might get when first starting a performance. I know some of you are pros and don't get that anymore, but I'm lucky if I can keep my entire hand from shaking back and forth by an inch let alone my fingertip. A button gives me something to physically hold onto and nothing happens until I depress the button.

As stringtapper stated I was speaking more of controllers. (APC40/Push/Launchpad)

Anyway, the loop remixing potential as mentioned by beats me and demonstrated by yur2die4 is really interesting.