Live 12 reference manual DISCONTINUED BOOOOOO

[forestcaver]

I guess the company is sadly in deep trouble. Just an impression from the layoffs, and ex employee comments, etc. time will tell. A real shame if they do go the way of NI, and others, But it seems like Ableton has a serious case of long covid. I will not be astounded if there are secret talks to sell up to someone like inMusic or Francisco Partners. There's just too much weird stuff happening. It's like a wobbly table. Something is not right.

I think this may be likely - they did just release Push 3 (relatively recently) which had issues around the Intel NUC which may expose them. It just seems so odd that they are unable to produce a manual - especially after saying months ago that it would be “soon” - if they cant deliver a manual “soon” after many months that is a real indication that things are not right !
Surely they wouldnt ignore so many upset customers. Not producing a manual for a complex piece of software is not what reputable healthy companies do !

[spacepluk]

Manuals are hard.

[Rivanni]

Manuals are hard.

So? We got one for Live 11, 10, 9, 8, ...

[forestcaver]

Manuals are hard.

Or that a company either doesnt understand its own software or lacks the resources to describe and document what its expensive software does leaving its users to guess at the functions.

[sp0bjogu]

The maddening thing about the online - only manual for Live 12 is that it has no search function!

In the PDF I would always search to find a specific item. I'd open the info tab in Live, hover over the element to find its weird name , such as the "waveform overview" or whatever. Then I'd search the PDF for that phrase. Where is the search for the online manual? Am I missing something here? Who makes a manual without a search, or even an alphabetic appendix of topics? It's weird. Ableton used to have one of the best manuals in the business, and now it really doesn't have one!

There are solutions for maintaining updated online HTML manuals AND offering updated offline PDF versions from the same source.

Have a look at Manula:
https://www.manula.com/

Spectrasonics has done it for as long as I can remember and it works very well; updated, searchable online manuals with the option to download PDF versions for those who prefer it:
https://support.spectrasonics.net/manual/Omnisphere2/
https://support.spectrasonics.net/manual/Keyscape/
https://support.spectrasonics.net/manual/Trilian/
https://support.spectrasonics.net/manual/StylusRMX/

Hey Ableton, are you listening? Time for you to get your act together and give us a proper manual.

[forestcaver]

There are solutions for maintaining updated online HTML manuals AND offering updated offline PDF versions from the same source.

Yeah - totally agree. Most reputable software companies that produce comlex software and provide manuals have solved this problem (it’s not rocket science and all other DAW providers do this) but Ableton either dont care about their customers' stated needs, lack the technical abilty to generate a pdf or are in such dire financial straits that they can’t afford to generate and upload a pdf. I can’t see an alternative explanation.

[jonljacobi]

There must be a program somewhere that will convert HTML, crawling via links and all, to PDF. This online only thing has become as popular as it is annoying.

[lincolnkid]

A seasonal haiku...

Autumn leaves falling,
The nights getting longer now.
Where's our PDF?

[MPNoise]

Yes there are tools out there to convert a Web site to a PDF file.

Take a look at: https://github.com/AndrewKhassapov/website-to-pdf

A bit of effort to set up, then you are away.

[Angstrom]

Yes there are tools out there to convert a Web site to a PDF file.

Take a look at: https://github.com/AndrewKhassapov/website-to-pdf

A bit of effort to set up, then you are away.

Have you used that?

I used a different method because a direct scrape of the site manual brought a lot of unnecessary web furniture (header, footer, sidebar menus, etc) and also elements which didn't add to the experience. So I made a little script which stripped out a bunch of those named elements from every page. Then when that html was parsed and cleaned up I packaged it as a PDF. I'll do it again when they bring out 12.1's html manual. It takes an afternoon to babysit it.

[H20nly]

It’s such bullshit that this is still a thing. A manual, ffs

[ernietamminga]

Just adding my six cents' worth (adjusted for inflation) to the complaints about not being able to SEARCH in the user manual.
I just spent WAY too much time trying to find out how to turn on "Loop Mode" (some instructions I was reading referred to Loop Mode, but I didn't know how to access that mode).
The only way I know of to find specific information like that is to dive in to an online tutorial or read some section(s) of the manual in hopes of finding the very specific bit.
I'm still a Functional Newbie to Ableton. I've made my way through some very very good tutorials on YouTube and I'm impressed (& somewhat overwhelmed) by Ableton's power and its infinity of options. A good Search function would be worth its weight in bitcoin.

[Machinesworking]

This whole thing is weird. Ableton are spending a lot of money on 12, they're updating it with new functionality, I don't think these "oversights" are because Ableton is hemorrhaging.

The thing is this is a sh*t show, there's not any other way to put it. The main advantage of an online manual is you can update it constantly to reflect any changes in the software. They still haven't updated it to fix the initial mistakes they made. The first Keyboard Shortcut in the Live 12 online manual claims by omission that f11 to toggle full screen is for Windows only, it still works on Mac like it always did. It's just weird, we're about 6 months from launch and the manual right away when looking into one area that heavily changed in 12 has serious flaws.

[cotdagoo]

This whole thing is weird. Ableton are spending a lot of money on 12, they're updating it with new functionality, I don't think these "oversights" are because Ableton is hemorrhaging.

The thing is this is a sh*t show, there's not any other way to put it. The main advantage of an online manual is you can update it constantly to reflect any changes in the software. They still haven't updated it to fix the initial mistakes they made. The first Keyboard Shortcut in the Live 12 online manual claims by omission that f11 to toggle full screen is for Windows only, it still works on Mac like it always did. It's just weird, we're about 6 months from launch and the manual right away when looking into one area that heavily changed in 12 has serious flaws.

Fully agree.. I do not understand this situation we are in, why the lack of updates to commands and functionality. Providing the Live 11 manual to people for Live 12's release.. like what? You fundamentally changed how Live works, shortcuts, etc.. and expect people just to figure it all out, throw away their previous knowledge? This is an expensive product that deserves an updated manual, the users paying for expensive software also deserve an updated manual, ideally available in the same format it has been for years upon years - PDF.

Please figure this out.. it's downright embarrassing

[Machinesworking]

Fully agree.. I do not understand this situation we are in, why the lack of updates to commands and functionality. Providing the Live 11 manual to people for Live 12's release.. like what? You fundamentally changed how Live works, shortcuts, etc.. and expect people just to figure it all out, throw away their previous knowledge? This is an expensive product that deserves an updated manual, the users paying for expensive software also deserve an updated manual, ideally available in the same format it has been for years upon years - PDF.

Please figure this out.. it's downright embarrassing

I'm bit of a sequencer hoarder so I haven't done it yet been busy with the MPC etc, but I feel like this forum is not really watched by Ableton. They're likely just getting reports from the mod here and that's it.

In other words all of us that are frustrated and confused by the manual just being a disaster need to write in to tech support etc. It might be cathartic to call out a company on their own forum etc. but I don't think anything will change doing this, might not with support but it's far more likely to have impact.

https://help.ableton.com/hc/en-us/requests/new