Can ableton support multiple monitors / screens to give more work room?
i've seeen pics of artists (sasha and others) that seem to be running abelton on two screens.
or are they running ableton on two different machines and synching them together?
does anyone use a setup like the afore mentioned?
dual monitors / screens
dual monitors / screens
Stuff I actually use.
sound card, speakers, mic, MBP, Mighty Mouse, Ableton, Reason, iPad, iPhone,Touchable, Rebirth, & other apps.
Pair of Technics 1200's, and a Pioneer Mixer
sound card, speakers, mic, MBP, Mighty Mouse, Ableton, Reason, iPad, iPhone,Touchable, Rebirth, & other apps.
Pair of Technics 1200's, and a Pioneer Mixer
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jmshepherd
- Posts: 7
- Joined: Wed Oct 19, 2005 1:38 am
I write code for a living, so having multiple monitors is a no-brainer. The more screen real estate, the better. As a consequence, I've been using Live with two screens since I first bought version 5.
When I still used my IBM T40 laptop for music production, I'd run Live in 1920x1200 resolution on the NEC 19" CRT plugged into the dock; with Gearbox and plugins running on the laptop's 14" LCD in 1024x768.
Now that I've built a new(ish) desktop box with multiple OS instances, with one boot image setup for Music production only; I run Live, (and everything else) with two 20" Samsung LCD's in 1680x1050 pugged into an ATI Radeon 2600 pcie-16 card with dual DVI outputs. Sometimes I expand Live to fill both screens, it just depends on what I'm working on and how much room I need.
The only caveat is be careful where you set your computer up. My studio is such that I had to locate the CPU far from the monitors, due to ventilation and noise issues (water cooling is in my future.) and finding DVI cables longer than stock length was difficult and pricey. Even a DVI to DVI adapter to bridge to short cables was just as expensive as buying a longer cable. Teh suck.
I mostly work in Session view, since I came from using hardware mixers and am used to the paradigm. I adjust the sizing of tracks in Session view so that track boundaries line up along the common edge across the monitors; or if I'm not working with many tracks, have all of my tracks on one screen and just the sends and master on part of the other, along with Gearbox and plugins.
It isn't always pretty: Instruments, effects, etc can be a bit difficult to read when they break across the monitors oddly, so I sometimes have to move things around a bit or resize the window to just one screen to adjust them.
Not a big deal, really, having the extra screen space is well worth the extra costs and minor hassles involved.
When I still used my IBM T40 laptop for music production, I'd run Live in 1920x1200 resolution on the NEC 19" CRT plugged into the dock; with Gearbox and plugins running on the laptop's 14" LCD in 1024x768.
Now that I've built a new(ish) desktop box with multiple OS instances, with one boot image setup for Music production only; I run Live, (and everything else) with two 20" Samsung LCD's in 1680x1050 pugged into an ATI Radeon 2600 pcie-16 card with dual DVI outputs. Sometimes I expand Live to fill both screens, it just depends on what I'm working on and how much room I need.
The only caveat is be careful where you set your computer up. My studio is such that I had to locate the CPU far from the monitors, due to ventilation and noise issues (water cooling is in my future.) and finding DVI cables longer than stock length was difficult and pricey. Even a DVI to DVI adapter to bridge to short cables was just as expensive as buying a longer cable. Teh suck.
I mostly work in Session view, since I came from using hardware mixers and am used to the paradigm. I adjust the sizing of tracks in Session view so that track boundaries line up along the common edge across the monitors; or if I'm not working with many tracks, have all of my tracks on one screen and just the sends and master on part of the other, along with Gearbox and plugins.
It isn't always pretty: Instruments, effects, etc can be a bit difficult to read when they break across the monitors oddly, so I sometimes have to move things around a bit or resize the window to just one screen to adjust them.
Not a big deal, really, having the extra screen space is well worth the extra costs and minor hassles involved.
Dual Monitors
I've been using dual monitors for the past 8 years. Right now I'm using an nVidia card, which can be put into nview "span" mode. (Even a cheap old Geforce MX is capable of doing this) The benefit of this is that the OS sees the two separate displays as one giant display, and applications that are not multi-monitor aware can still take advantage of spanning across both screens. The downside, as jmshepherd pointed out, is that it's hard to read text across the gap. Alot of applications get weird or annoying when they run in fullscreen mode; it's a trade-off you may need to live with. (Although you can usually switch back to single monitor mode on the fly if you need to.) Nview adds an extra "maximize" button to your windows that will maximize an application to one monitor. It's a sometimes ugly OS hack, but it works for Live flawlessly. (Photoshop is another story.)
If I'm working on a small live set, I'll usually maximize it to one monitor and put a file browser and my VST plugin windows on the other monitor. Works pretty snazzy.
Hope that helps you decide!
--Pip
If I'm working on a small live set, I'll usually maximize it to one monitor and put a file browser and my VST plugin windows on the other monitor. Works pretty snazzy.
Hope that helps you decide!
--Pip
Re: Dual Monitors
pip wrote:I've been using dual monitors for the past 8 years. Right now I'm using an nVidia card, which can be put into nview "span" mode. (Even a cheap old Geforce MX is capable of doing this) The benefit of this is that the OS sees the two separate displays as one giant display, and applications that are not multi-monitor aware can still take advantage of spanning across both screens. The downside, as jmshepherd pointed out, is that it's hard to read text across the gap. Alot of applications get weird or annoying when they run in fullscreen mode; it's a trade-off you may need to live with. (Although you can usually switch back to single monitor mode on the fly if you need to.) Nview adds an extra "maximize" button to your windows that will maximize an application to one monitor. It's a sometimes ugly OS hack, but it works for Live flawlessly. (Photoshop is another story.)
If I'm working on a small live set, I'll usually maximize it to one monitor and put a file browser and my VST plugin windows on the other monitor. Works pretty snazzy.
Hope that helps you decide!
--Pip
my mac does this for me automatically. gotta love the mac.