Ableton 7 - I can't see a reason to upgrade.

[webslave]

I love ableton but always thought that as a DAW it's a bit fiddly. Live it's great, fantastic if you're a DJ and wonderful for doing loop dance stuff - but if you need to record a real band and mix it, well there's a bunch of stuff that Live never was quite able to do, like easily group tracks, quickly move around the DAW view (and I mean quick) and easily zoom up on waveforms.

I see the list of stuff on 7 and I can't help it's all nice stuff but where are the basic improvements?!? Drum view, well got by without it, tempo changes, nice but often I DONT USE THE TEMPO (yep by live bands I mean no click!) . Nice to have a better compresser etc but the old ones worked.

I hate to say this but for what I want Garage band (yes I know) almost have the edge and I'm toying with going to Logic.

So have I missed something or are the things that have been on many wish lists just been ignored to add on, well, add ons.

I'm going to do more digging in the forum but so far i havnt found anyting on improved grouping - the one thing I NEED.

Cheers

Stew

[hoffman2k]

Better zooming has been added. It goes a lot smoother now.

Solo now works with groups.

You can quickly move around using the new "View Panning" feature.

[zaphodb]

I love ableton but always thought that as a DAW it's a bit fiddly. Live it's great, fantastic if you're a DJ and wonderful for doing loop dance stuff - but if you need to record a real band and mix it, well there's a bunch of stuff that Live never was quite able to do, like easily group tracks, quickly move around the DAW view (and I mean quick) and easily zoom up on waveforms.
Stew

Ex-Cubase user here, a recent convert. I used to think that Live is just some "loop jukebox" application for DJ's and I avoided it. I used Cubase for my productions for 12 years, up until 3 months ago. I was wrong about Live.

Ableton Live is very, very deceptive. It can do all of the things that you talk about and more. And it can do them well, in many cases much better than the traditional "DAW" apps like Cubase or Logic. The reason is that Live has a revolutionary interface that is actually quite deep, marketing language notwithstanding. Take some time to look at it carefully. It's intuitive, but you do need to take the time to learn about it and get used to it.

Once you take the time to really learn how to use it, Ableton Live is just as capable as Cubase/Logic/etc., but is usually much faster to use. Also, Live's out-of-the-box capabilities for synthesis, sound generation and effects are simply unmatched.

I avoided Live for a long time, thinking the very things that you've just mentioned above. But I was wrong, and you are too. Live is absolutely great at the kinds of tasks you describe. And its single-window interface (which Logic has now duplicated) is a huge timesaver that has spared me the endless frustration and time-wasting of Cubase's 1001 Windows.

[Machinesworking]

Better zooming has been added. It goes a lot smoother now.

Solo now works with groups.

You can quickly move around using the new "View Panning" feature.

Explain. Have the beta, just spent the last 30 minutes trying to find anything different than Live 6.

[hoffman2k]

Better zooming has been added. It goes a lot smoother now.

Solo now works with groups.

You can quickly move around using the new "View Panning" feature.

Explain. Have the beta, just spent the last 30 minutes trying to find anything different than Live 6.

- The better zooming... Thats based on a project provided by Kableton.

old behaviour: http://covops.dreamhosters.com/dropbox/Arrangement.mov

New behaviour: http://covops.dreamhosters.com/dropbox/ ... nt-fix.mov

- Solo working with groups seems obvious. If you cant get it to work, its a bug. Cause the feature is there.

- View panning is done with modifiers.. hold the apple key + alt. The mouse icon turns into a hand. You can now pan around in your arrangement/session/browser, like you would pan around in photoshop.

[Machinesworking]

- The better zooming... Thats based on a project provided by Kableton.

OK I never ran into that problem, but most of my songs are under 14 tracks.

Solo working with groups seems obvious. If you cant get it to work, its a bug. Cause the feature is there.

Haven't messed with it yet, just forgot to cut that part out of the question.

- View panning is done with modifiers.. hold the apple key + alt. The mouse icon turns into a hand. You can now pan around in your arrangement/session/browser, like you would pan around in photoshop.

That's been there since at least 6 or earlier, at least in the arrangement and browser. Unless I'm misunderstanding you.... OK just checked, Arrangement and the browser have panning in 6, what's new is that you can pan your tracks in Session View.

It's still tied only to horizontal zooming in the arrangement though, and that is what people are meaning by better zooming in Live. To zoom vertically is still a bunch of mouse clicks and panning to adjust etc. Basically the main clunk in Live

[hoffman2k]

Yeah, I see what you mean.

Now you need to drag a fine line to increase the vertical size. Zooming like on the note grid would be sweet.
Preferably on muliple tracks with the option to skip tracks/automation lanes.
Because you would want to keep individual sizes of multiple automation lanes.

[Machinesworking]

Yeah, I see what you mean.

Now you need to drag a fine line to increase the vertical size. Zooming like on the note grid would be sweet.
Preferably on muliple tracks with the option to skip tracks/automation lanes.
Because you would want to keep individual sizes of multiple automation lanes.

My personal favorite, and don't get all defensive when I mention Logic here! is the way zoom can be implemented in Logic.

Most people don't set it up, but you can select a clip/object in the arrange and have a keyboard shortcut assigned to zoom both vertically and horizontally to whatever you have selected. Also you can click and drag over whatever part of your sequence in the arrangement to zoom to that level, it's set up so a simple click on your mouse when the magnifying glass is selected zooms you back out to the original state. This is a serious time saver when editing a break that's sounding clunky, maybe something that was OK live in that environment, but sounds too abrupt or has odd volume changes etc. any number of things really..

Anyway I always wondered why Live didn't implement that, it's very intuitive and elegant. What if Live were to implement that, and have all the clips in the arrangement page be as editable as in the browser down bellow! I would kill for a DAW to do that!
Seriously, this is absolutely in the lines of their GUI aesthetic, one window to rule them all, no need for a sub-window in the Arrangement View. No need for me to beg for some way to open up the MIDI piano roll to full screen via keyboard shortcuts.

[webslave]

Better zooming has been added. It goes a lot smoother now.

Solo now works with groups.

You can quickly move around using the new "View Panning" feature.

Bit of background. I'm using 6 on mac at the moment.

I'd be interested in more details about the above. Does Ableton now zoom vertically? Are groups now groups instead of 'send to' tracks? What is view panning?

I'd love to be convinced that the DAW environment (arrange view) is now much easier to use at speed rather than being rather fustrating and cramped as it stands. If Ableton get this right then I'll be very happy and will stop looking for other solutions that do allow me to work at speed.

Stew

[webslave]

[quote="zaphodb"]
Ableton Live is very, very deceptive. It can do all of the things that you talk about and more. And it can do them well, in many cases much better than the traditional "DAW" apps like Cubase or Logic. The reason is that Live has a revolutionary interface that is actually quite deep, marketing language notwithstanding. Take some time to look at it carefully. It's intuitive, but you do need to take the time to learn about it and get used to it.
[quote]

I like Live and have been using since version 4. I use it mostly as a DAW environent to create tracks. The interface is, nice in many ways. Visualy it works well and is one of the reasons I use it other more fiddly software. BUT version 6 doesnt do what I described that's why I am hoping 7 will, but so far I havnt seen it in any features list and have mixed reports about wether it does have those improvements. If it doesnt have vertical zooming then it still doesnt have the speed I need.

At the moment if I want to solo a kick drum I have to click on the kick and find the group and then solo both. I want to just click on the kick drum. Trust me having to click on the group gets very irritating after a short while.

Stew

[Machinesworking]

At the moment if I want to solo a kick drum I have to click on the kick and find the group and then solo both. I want to just click on the kick drum. Trust me having to click on the group gets very irritating after a short while.

Stew

Soloing is improved in 7, vertical zooming isn't any different. Most visual panning improvements were in older versions as well, though it helps with mixing to be able to pan tracks in Session.