Deep freeze/flatten questions

Vance · Post by **Vance** » Sun Jul 16, 2006 9:18 am

For the beloved alpha testers/Abes who have a moment to spare:

1) Is deep freeze available on both Audio and MIDI tracks?

2) Is "flattening" only available for a track after it has been frozen?

3) When flattening, is the resultant file 32 bit floating point or something lower?

4) If you flatten a MIDI track, is it possible to undo or convert back to the MIDI version very easily? For example, if you flatten a small MIDI sequence (say 2 bars) and after looping throughout a song you then decide to go back & do some further edits, is it easily possible at that point to go back to the MIDI, or is the MIDI version lost forever at the point when you flatten?

5) If you deep freeze a track, and then do further mixer automation (track-based or clip-based), is that automation also captured if you subsequently "flatten" the track?

Can't wait to get stuck into the beta to try all this stuff out for myself, seems to me that freeze/flatten could effectively be used to achieve SX-style offline automation, but with automation... Very cool

Vance · Post by **Vance** » Sun Jul 16, 2006 9:28 am

1 further question:

Is flattening handled like consolidating, where the file gets bounced and normalised, then gain is turned down to match the initial gain? Please say it isn't!

I still have qualms about the need to normalise and then reduce gain when consolidating, so hopefully this doesn't work its way into the awesome-looking flatten feature...

Johnisfaster · Post by **Johnisfaster** » Sun Jul 16, 2006 9:43 am

ok I don't really know for sure cause I'm not a tester but I can answer what I've gathered from the alpha testers. which may be flawed but I think this is what they've been saying.

1. yes

2. I think so yes

3. don't know this one at all.

4. I think I read that you can't undo flatten. could be wrong though..

5. yes

Robert Henke · Post by **Robert Henke** » Sun Jul 16, 2006 9:48 am

Vance wrote:1 further question:

Is flattening handled like consolidating, where the file gets bounced and normalised, then gain is turned down to match the initial gain? Please say it isn't!

I still have qualms about the need to normalise and then reduce gain when consolidating, so hopefully this doesn't work its way into the awesome-looking flatten feature...

currently Live flattens to 32 bit floating point files. w/o normalisation. I think we will keep it like this.

Robert

Johnisfaster · Post by **Johnisfaster** » Sun Jul 16, 2006 10:01 am

well there you are robert..

having fun watching everyone scramble around here?

Vance · Post by **Vance** » Sun Jul 16, 2006 10:13 am

Awesome Robert, thank you very much!

Very excited about this feature, definitely looking forward to getting stuck into it

Robert Henke · Post by **Robert Henke** » Sun Jul 16, 2006 10:13 am

Sure. After six versions we allready konw the dynamics of this place. What ever we do, there are peaks in both directions. I have a good feeling in general, because I really enjoy working with Live 6 by myself and I am confident it is a great release.
To me, it feels much better and much more to the point then Live 5.

I am curious to see how people will react once they can actually play with the new version. I personally would under no circumstances want to go back to Live 5.
We spent about 50% of our resources for improvemnts of existing functionality and this enhances the fun by a magnitude. Little things like the fact that you can see all KEY or MIDI assignements in a list now and edit the ranges there, or the capability to show only automated parameters in the arranger, these details improve workflow so much.... oh shit... it sounds like marketing here. I will stop now.

Bottom line, we are happy and we are confident most of our cutomers will be too finally. And Live 6 will not be the last release, so there is hope for those who are missing essential functionality.

Cheers,
Robert

Johnisfaster · Post by **Johnisfaster** » Sun Jul 16, 2006 10:21 am

I understand people wanting certain features but I find it silly that alot of people are angry. especially before they have even tried the new features it does have.

I personally had wished for certain things that I didn't get. but what you did add sounds fantastic and I will definetly be upgrading and most likely be buying sampler too. but it is what it is. it's not like you can't make music on computers these days. so any feature that anyone is wishing for isn't in any way necessary to make music. so it's just... silly to get mad.

can I ask you honostly an OT question (and highjack this thread..) I have a g4 powerbook. are the new features going to drag down my powerbook more than L5? or are we to expect comparable performance? (although I do know that the freeze functions should help us slow computer people a bit)

Robert Henke · Post by **Robert Henke** » Sun Jul 16, 2006 10:27 am

Regarding the G4 powerbook i cannot give you a serious answer for now since i sold mine to get a MacBook. Write a mail to Dom ( support@ableton.com ), he is still unsing a G4 pb. He should be able to give you more insight.

Appart from that: if you can afford it, get a MacBook. I am extremly happy with the performance here....

Cheers, Robert

Johnisfaster · Post by **Johnisfaster** » Sun Jul 16, 2006 10:32 am

I actually could probably scrape together the money by the end of summer, but I'm really not excited about the lack of universal ported plugs available at the moment. and even if there were a ton of ported plugs I would have to buy universal upgrades and then I would have to spend months and months installing everything and making everything just the way i want it.

I'll get a new computer someday but I've only had this one like a year and a half and I've put alot of work into making it work for me.

but thanks for the insight that dom uses a powerbook I'd like to find out about his performance.

honostly I'm expecting deep freeze and flatten to really save my arse on this sad (but beautiful) machine.

Vance · Post by **Vance** » Sun Jul 16, 2006 10:42 am

Very glad that 6 isn't the last version Robert... and I can definitely see myself not wanting to go back to 5 either...

Everyone has their wishlist of features, but I'm personally more excited by the new features in 6 that I hadn't thought of, than I am disappointed by not getting the stuff on my wishlist...

peeddrroo · Post by **peeddrroo** » Sun Jul 16, 2006 2:05 pm

Robert Henke wrote:I really enjoy working with Live 6 by myself and I am confident it is a great release.
To me, it feels much better and much more to the point then Live 5.

i feel exactly the same Robert.
i feel Live6 brings back the fun into Live.

there are some important fixes/enhancements that were missed this time, but it's got this "hey, i even can do this!" feeling that wasn't in Live5.

Nev · Post by **Nev** » Thu Jul 20, 2006 1:46 pm

Certainly, something as simple as flatten will be a godsned to me on my ageing pc here at work

Nev

dom · Post by **dom** » Thu Jul 20, 2006 2:05 pm

Robert Henke wrote:Regarding the G4 powerbook i cannot give you a serious answer for now since i sold mine to get a MacBook. Write a mail to Dom ( support@ableton.com ), he is still unsing a G4 pb. He should be able to give you more insight.

Appart from that: if you can afford it, get a MacBook. I am extremly happy with the performance here....

Cheers, Robert

hm, just thinking about the "can afford" thing... i have to talk to someone...

Dom

tomperson · Post by **tomperson** » Thu Jul 20, 2006 2:31 pm