Ableton lost another potential customer

mister_doctor · Post by **mister_doctor** » Mon May 28, 2007 9:15 pm

If you going to pay money for a piece of software, don't you think you should have done your research to ensure its right for you before shelling out?

I was almost ready to give up until I explored these forums and found all kinds of great tutorials and tricks. No offense to ableton, but the official stuff they have on the site are pretty dated, and inferior to the guides you gurus have come up with. (I was ready to bail on DJing with live until I read VINKALMANN's Guide to Warping in Ableton Live.

SRSLY d00d. Give it a chance.[/url]

Tone Deft · Post by **Tone Deft** » Mon May 28, 2007 9:19 pm

Phew!! Close call, I wasn't looking forword to OP's other DAW whining about Live.

kabelton · Post by **kabelton** » Mon May 28, 2007 9:23 pm

solo-act wrote: I really liked everything I saw about live in terms of ... processor efficiency and more,

he? are you kidding? live has the worst performance ever!

nebulae · Post by **nebulae** » Mon May 28, 2007 9:27 pm

ethios4 wrote: In defense of solo-act, there is no documentation support from Ableton about all the great techniques mentioned here. To learn those you either have to be very experimental on your own, or frequent one of the Ableton-related forums. I think Ableton does itself a disservice by not making this largely forum-generated info more accessible.

I agree with you, brutha, although I gotto say that there's no defense for ranting like the original poster did. People who shoot first and then ask questions later need to be shot.

But back to the agreement...it is true that the forum is free to read, but we've now got like 6 years of posts, and I personally have added a lot of noise to the signal, so it's tough to get the nuggets. On top of that, the books and tutorials out there all have to cater to a lowest common denominator. Not to mention that they're outdated by the time they're published.

The Abes used to regularly publish tips and techniques, but that fell aside. I think a lot of the undocumented stuff needs beefing up so that we don't lose people who think Live is limited.

eyeknow · Post by **eyeknow** » Mon May 28, 2007 9:49 pm

hambone1 wrote:I think it was Mark Twain who said "What? No sidechain?!"

HAAAAA!

hoffman2k · Post by **hoffman2k** » Mon May 28, 2007 9:52 pm

nebulae wrote:The Abes used to regularly publish tips and techniques, but that fell aside. I think a lot of the undocumented stuff needs beefing up so that we don't lose people who think Live is limited.

Remember the time of monthly tips and tricks?
Ah those were 3 good months

nebulae · Post by **nebulae** » Mon May 28, 2007 9:57 pm

hoffman2k wrote:
nebulae wrote:The Abes used to regularly publish tips and techniques, but that fell aside. I think a lot of the undocumented stuff needs beefing up so that we don't lose people who think Live is limited.
Remember the time of monthly tips and tricks?
Ah those were 3 good months

I used to print them out all the time...made for some excellent shit-reading. Needless to say, it didn't put much of a dent in my toner. Those were good tips, but few and far in between.

hoffman2k · Post by **hoffman2k** » Mon May 28, 2007 10:23 pm

nebulae wrote:
hoffman2k wrote:
nebulae wrote:The Abes used to regularly publish tips and techniques, but that fell aside. I think a lot of the undocumented stuff needs beefing up so that we don't lose people who think Live is limited.
Remember the time of monthly tips and tricks?
Ah those were 3 good months
I used to print them out all the time...made for some excellent shit-reading. Needless to say, it didn't put much of a dent in my toner. Those were good tips, but few and far in between.

I don't wonna go on my educational rant again...
But am I really an idiot to believe that if Ableton would invest in educational material, the company would actually benefit from it?

If only it reduced redundant questions towards support for 1%, wouldn't that be worth it?

I'm even starting to get some new sort of educational vision when it comes to Live. Some video wiki knowledge base plugin embedded in the software with loads of links to lessons and videos in the little helpview on the left.
Content can be downloaded as Live pack off course..
Easy to install / uninstall.
Choices for beginners and power users. The fundamentals of using some plugins and music making in general..

Urgh, this is starting to turn into a rant again

What can I say? It's a modified version of an old Bill Hicks quote. If people are "up to speed" quicker on how the software works, we'll be able to explore new stuff with greater numbers. Thus creating a more interesting breeding ground for discussions.

nebulae · Post by **nebulae** » Mon May 28, 2007 10:43 pm

not at all a rant...the issue is quite simply that there is a learning curve...until you get to the point in the learning curve where you can be creative in Live, you are fighting an entire paradigm that's really hard to break (linear production).

you're of course correct about education and reducing support, and I'm talking about going even beyond that...if you have easy access to get a lot of people passed the point of the learning curve where Live is no longer in the way, but rather a base from which to build, well that's when the really limitless uses of the software allow people to break into new ways of thinking about and using it.

There are several people on this forum that were ready to just ditch live, and I was able to convince them to stick with it...if the website did its job, I wouldn't have to do that at all...just my two cents there...not that I mind one bit in helping, but that the website and the materials available should do better.

JoeSchubert · Post by **JoeSchubert** » Mon May 28, 2007 11:36 pm

eyeknow wrote:
hambone1 wrote:I think it was Mark Twain who said "What? No sidechain?!"
HAAAAA!

I know...that made me chuckle too.

solo-act · Post by **solo-act** » Mon May 28, 2007 11:52 pm

This was kinda fun watching everyone get defensive, however only one guy actually addressed what I was talking about & everyone else just slammed my rant (very understandable though -- I was being harsh about Live not having standard midi implementation)

hambone1 wrote:You obviously haven't taken the time to understand virtual MIDI buses, dummy clips, Follow Actions, Live clips, MIDI effects, and scores of other MIDI features that makes Live a revolution in live performance and set new standards far beyond the MIDI implementation of any other live performance software package.P.S. Do as many program changes as often as you want, and not just at the beginning of a MIDI clip, either.

You're right...I didn't because as someone else said, many of those methods aren't in the manual.

Instead, I just did it in performer in one evening and was performing live with everything automated the next day, did three gigs in a row & it worked flawlessly.....didn't look at the laptop or touch a mouse for those three gigs either.....Why did I choose that over Live? it was in the manual and there was no rocket science involved, plus the midi automation is in an industry standard format. All programs I have can load/read those midi files, but Live can't. I'm sure I'll use live for another application, but it was just extremely simple and easy to implement what I needed with DP....and it was dissapointing to learn it would be that easy with Live....thus the rant.

solo-act · Post by **solo-act** » Tue May 29, 2007 12:00 am

hambone1 wrote:This is a case of using the wrong tool for the job.
If it's simply patch changes and more conventional MIDI handling you're after, Live probably ain't the right tool.

WOW someone actually agrees with Live and conventional midi handling/implementation. Wrong tool for the job. When I used the words "a joke" regarding the usual cross platform midi implementation, they were really harsh, but truth is, I was laughing when I saw live couldn't import patch changes, or record them (in the scenes window with a midi track enabled)....it was pretty funny when it wasn't communicating on that level. Obviously not designed for that.

solo-act · Post by **solo-act** » Tue May 29, 2007 12:03 am

mister_doctor wrote:If you going to pay money for a piece of software, don't you think you should have done your research to ensure its right for you before shelling out?

I was almost ready to give up......

I rest my case. I wasn't going to learn all the myriad of ways to compensate for the fact Live didn't have a standard implementation of midi & program changes....it didn't make sense to not have it.

Actually I never said I paid for it. I was assessing it via the demo.

solo-act · Post by **solo-act** » Tue May 29, 2007 12:17 am

So.......I definitely apologize for any overly judgmental sounding stuff, and any excessively harsh language that have obviously offended some people here.

That being said, it is good that the lack of documentation is being discussed, and that some are stepping forward to tell their stories of resources they found that were helpful when the manual wasn't.

As I said, I was up and running with another program in basically one evening & it all runs on a g3 iBook. And so far, not a single hiccup or glitch. In fact, I never looked at the laptop or a mouse for any of the gigs this last weekend.

I meant to say the implementation of standard midi was a joke (and I did) not that the program is a joke (which I didn't because I liked many things about it). For now, Ableton has lost a potential customer because they left out some real basic midi stuff. But as I said, I may use it down the road in another application because of the great audio tools, but for now, the demo version is going bye bye. Take care everyone.

bensuthers · Post by **bensuthers** » Tue May 29, 2007 12:30 am

don't confuse your need for a workhorse with our need for a supremely creative & inspirational tool that responds to 'thinking out of the box' and doesn't limit us to conventional and outmoded ways of working with electronics.

wtf is a patch change anyway! The last time I used one would have been 1994.

Ableton lost another potential customer

Re: Ableton lost another potential customer

I know!!!