Abeton can invest in a New York Office but no subgroups

dj superflat · Post by **dj superflat** » Thu Jan 11, 2007 10:19 pm

yeah, you all are sooooooo right -- ableton has unlimited resources, and could easily come out with an update that satisfied everyone, but doesn't do so just so it can sell further updates. you can tell how nefarious ableton is by the fact that none of the other DAWs issue new versions that have any bugs and/or don't accomodate all wishes of all users.

it's also unconscionable that ableton issues new version of live without providing a pony to all users. and they also make people pay, too, rather than making it freeware. evil, just plain evil.

on the other hand, anything that winds up mercy is well worth it, so maybe ableton's on to something.

knotkranky · Post by **knotkranky** » Fri Jan 12, 2007 12:06 am

Think about it this way; I bet there is serious infighting for resources within abes. The abe's developers and coders flip their collective fingers at the abe's brass for not giving them enough resources or for poor planning. Just a thought and an all too common situation. Anyway, 40% of abe's bought by an american company last march (maybe avid), new offices in NY. Hmm.

Could this mean a major upgrade? or
Milk what they have with more marketing and less improvements on the improvements? or
Seamless super tight integration with PT (my favorite).

All these opinions and ass kickings only mean we all give a shit. No complaining would be a bad thing for all of us. Some of us get pissed and say more than needed, but the message is the same. We all care a lot about Live and abe's can do a whole lot better? Imagine if Steve Jobs was on the case.

All that said, from a 20 year recording biz audio snob who needs a program to work right now so he can get to work, Live has a long way to go. DJing, fine. With an artist breathing over your shoulder or in a $100 and hour studio with their baby in the box? In Live's dreams. In mine too i suppose.

leisuremuffin · Post by **leisuremuffin** » Fri Jan 12, 2007 12:37 am

KK, i don't know who you imagine "ableton's brass" to be, but remember you're dealing with one of the very few software companies that is actually still owned and run by electronic musicians.

i don't think those guys have given up any control over the overall steering of the ship, and it shows in the product they're putting out.

I think if they were overtaken by nefarious shadowy figures we'd be looking at a more straight DAW product, probably more like what you want. When that happens, i'll stop upgrading.

right now, i'm looking at a product that has been designed with a user like me in mind. God, the elegance of control in 6 is great. You can actually customize the program to be your own instrument in a way unthinkable in just about anything else. And i love how the sound design tools get deeper and deeper in each update. the new saturator's wave shaper? amazing. Sampler? worth every extra penny if you're in it for the sound design aspect....

whateve, i'm not going to go on and on, even though i could, but maybe tyou should realize that if ableton were really falling prey to the evils of some corporate entity, they'd have a hard time justifying the direction the development has gone, because the DAW market is a bigger dollar than the electronic composer market. Or does it make more sense to be the best soft out there for that electronic composer market rather than to fully wade into the oversaturated DAW market??? i dunno. But i can say that it's hard to look at live and say, "geez, here's a product made by out of touch suits just trying to make a buck."

whatever, stodgy old engineers just don't get it, i guess.

.lm.

Tone Deft · Post by **Tone Deft** » Fri Jan 12, 2007 12:55 am

kk had to be blue skying... a studio guy wouldn't know a thing about what it's like to work in the tech sector. It's not like you imagine. Resource allocation, project scheduling and all that are known factors. Those are basic classes any mid level manager would be required to take. They've been at this for what? 7 years now? I'm sure they have a feel for software releases, this isn't 'The Office' it's real life.

Same goes for mp's original rant, totally miopic paranoid view of the world. The little fucker was just stirring shit up, goddamn, this is only going to make him linger here longer.

KK does make a good point about $100 studio time... who cares if you're using $500 Live or $1,000 Pro Tools, you use what works and don't bullshit about it.

I have no doubt that the Abes are aware that other DAWs are more widely considered as standards and Live is slowly becoming mentioned more and more often with the likes of cubase, pro fools and sonar, I'd say of the major ones, Fruity Loops is the only one Live has surpassed in name recognition.

My bet is that they take on 1-2 new plug-ins a year with newer, younger people working on smoothing out existing bugs and putting out new versions of the last release.

knotkranky · Post by **knotkranky** » Fri Jan 12, 2007 2:27 am

lm and Tone Deft, yes you are right of course. I suppose I could be better at throwing some sugar with the salt, but abe's has had me since v1. This old stodgy? but very experienced musician/engineer/producer (who can dunk a basketball and skate a half pipe

) knows all to well. Know that I only use PT and live. Thats it for programs. So respect from me is automatic and I have upgraded every time. I don't fuck around, I chose my programs with care and for a reason.

The brass i'm referring to is the money. Money is allocated and has a direct result in live's improvements/marketing/brass pay. If you can tell me the allocations, I would be greatful. Either way I don't care if they have problems or are on point. It could be better or they could ramp down their advertised expectations. Do they still say unlimited tracks? It just seems to me they bite off too big a piece of gullibility pie.

The investors want to make a buck and abes wants to make them a buck so that they keep investing to make a buck. It's not a dark situation, it's what corporations do and it's convoluted, even for them. If I can kick them in the pants enough for them to worry about their future with users(right), maybe they'll think about giving us something us audio bitches would enjoy. So yes fellas, i'm asking a lot, but by asking a lot, everybody gets the goods from it. No foul on me for action, though I know it's noisey. Tell them their great and they'll rest on their elbows. My money is enough positive enforcement.

Next, i'm an audio pig. I'm a tough son of a bitch on expectations. If i'm giving the wrong impression to newbies, then they should know i'm an audio asshole. When I loaded PT and got to work, it stayed right with me the first minute. never a hiccup. Digi made a decision to have it that way. It looks simple but its got horsepower like nothing else except logic and sx i suppose. Also know that digi can kiss my ass on some of their practices. I don't want to compare PT and Live cuz you can't. But PT's commitment to solid opps is stellar. This is one of the reasons why they have 95% of the studio market.

What a guy like me wants more than anything from Live is power. I want it to respond "with" me. I never want to hear a glitch. Ever. I want the advertised features to be robust and solid every time I turn it on. No work arounds or wishful thinking. Just music. Just thought and action and expected results. Music.

Luckily for writing, Live does this for me. If I keep the rpms low and the hills easy, all is good. But what I really want is to keep it in live. There's just no way for me right now.

Power. Gimme power. oink oink.

Tone Deft · Post by **Tone Deft** » Fri Jan 12, 2007 2:54 am

How would you gauge Ableton's progress towards catching up with other DAWs? That's what I see as the driving force, as long as there are other DAWs ahead of Live (midi implementation, groove templates, built in plug-ins etc) then the Abes want to climb that hill and get respect. Anyway, it's a trip to get the picture from studio whores, I'm a hobbyist, Live is just fun for me. I have standards but I also have the luxury of losing studio time goofing off to find workarounds. And Live is the only DAW I use, for better or for worse.

knotkranky · Post by **knotkranky** » Fri Jan 12, 2007 3:05 am

Ah well, your a rich man for sure.

I don't need them to catch up to any daw unless they do so by making their own feature set a robust reality.
And I understand the hobbyists point of view. But each of us doesn't give a shit about what each of us wants.

Anubis · Post by **Anubis** » Fri Jan 12, 2007 6:49 am

Miami Beach would've been so much better. pfff!

snowtires · Post by **snowtires** » Fri Jan 12, 2007 7:28 am

Tone Deft wrote:
snowtires wrote:
sqook wrote:When a software product gains enough momentum, people shift from expecting innovation to exepcting stability.
is that what live 6 was supposed to offer? because it crashes twice as much as 5 did. that mercy dude may be a dick, but i think his point is valid. why do we have to wait a year or more between major releases for the abes to implement new features into the program? most major daw software platforms release new features with each incremental update, on top of bug fixes. all the abes do is release an 'update' to the program and then fix the bugs for a year until the next 'update'
Stability begins with the user. Live 6 is largely agreed as being much more stable than Live 5, even then, Live 5 has been played over LOUD PAs for HUGE crowds for thousands of hours by DJs who got PAID.

Rebuild your machine.

What kills me are the loud and lazy whiners (not you man) who are careless with setting up their DAW computer, not enough RAM, unsafe web surfing, incorrect drivers, they don't rebuild the OS every year or two etc. Then they start popping off about how unstable Live is.

you're right, it's 100% my fault, how could i be so careless? my machine, a g5 quad core with 8 gigs of ram, must not have enough ram. or maybe it has the wrong drivers, maybe a .dll file got corrupted or i downloaded a virus while surfing in internet explorer, oh wait, i'm not running a pc. that and nothing other than music programs have been installed on my computer since i took it out of the box. you want to know when live crashes? when i open up a project with bfd in it, after working on a separate project that also has bfd. or replace bfd for elektrik piano, or melodyne. and sometimes it just crashes because it feels like it. and when i'm not using those, the rewire from reason pops. all of the software is paid for, so don't tell me 'stop using cracked software.' live is unstable, period. the abes cater to djs by giving the program slightly better midi implementation and a video function that is 100% a novelty without time signature changes and video export, while the daw portion of the app suffers. how hard would it REALLY be to put in time signature automation? or the ability to cross-fade punches in arrangement mode? or group tracks? or track folders? or just make the program not crash when using third party plug-ins because, let's face it, other than beat repeat, live's plugins suck. i think 99% of the people who own live would much rather see those things added/sorted out before they see more half-assed additions like sampler. if my problems were isolated to only me, i could see you blaming it on me, but this is too common of a complaint to blame on anyone but the developer of the software.

Cyberstar · Post by **Cyberstar** » Fri Jan 12, 2007 7:58 am

Hardtoe wrote:I think mercyplease is a dick....I wouldn't give him subgroups either....

Hmmm...

hoffman2k · Post by **hoffman2k** » Fri Jan 12, 2007 9:43 am

Daw people....

It's Ableton Live. Not Ableton studio......
If i wanted cubase, I would have bought it.

You want Ableton to stop making "useless" instruments.
I want them to stop adding offline processing, because thats not "Live".

There are over 100 000 Live users, try to get them to all agree....
We cant even do it with the 20-odd people in this thread.

hoffman2k · Post by **hoffman2k** » Fri Jan 12, 2007 10:08 am

Oh. And as for the original post.

Yes Ableton has an office in New York.
They also assumed control over the distribution of their product. Which is a big fact you failed to mention.

MrYellow · Post by **MrYellow** » Fri Jan 12, 2007 10:19 am

Its all about keeping back needed and wanted features for updates.

Which is exactly why ASP model is better. It's better to pay a small monthly
fee and get solid software, then pay per update. With the update model
software makers are forced to produce updates to make cashflow.

-Ben

WaveRider · Post by **WaveRider** » Fri Jan 12, 2007 7:01 pm

Poster wrote:
WaveRider wrote:agree, a vst host is supposed to automate all parameters not only the 128 first. I am running daily into that wall, since v4... I cannot even use my paid for vst's properly. So I will have to buy another host.
as hoffman2k already said; don't you think it's all relative?

so what if they had come with a solution for the 128 parameter limit instead of spending time and effort on implementing the video support?

that would've made you happy, the video people not..

maybe try to see the bigger picture, not only your private wishlist..

I am old and wise enough to see that I bought a vst host, without any pretention of being a video tool. I spent my money thinking that like all vst hosts, live would give you access to all parameters. It is a core function. NOthing in the vst spec limits it to 128 parameters.

I can now see that they are more about making money (selling instruments, sounds and add-ons, and trying to be a jack of all trades) than into developping a deep musical tool.

What I know is that in most vsts that I spent money on, some quality instruments, I cannot access some crucial parameters. The last one I got do not even show up in the vst list. And all the crippling limitations that I stumbled into at live 4 are still there at v6: 128 param limit, auto-osccillation of parameters in some vst, recording live automation in patterns (session view clips) , edit only one curve at the time in arrrange view. NOT A SINGLE IMPROVEMENT. I have e-mailed support and continue doing it for new problems and they have their own priorities -making money on very marginal updates.

WaveRider · Post by **WaveRider** » Fri Jan 12, 2007 7:02 pm

mbenigni wrote:
agree, a vst host is supposed to automate all parameters not only the 128 first. I am running daily into that wall, since v4... I cannot even use my paid for vst's properly. So I will have to buy another host.
I hate this too, but FWIW, I've never found ANY host that did not exhibit this problem. I think it might be a shortcoming in Steinberg's VST specification, or it wouldn't be common to so many hosts.

that is not true, FL studio, eXt or all the others I know let you acces them.