Arrangement Track; OMG, no audio Crossfade!!!

[Danb1]

Anyone got any ideas when we are going to see crossfading between clips on the same track in Arrangement view in Live?

I'm a new Live user and I cannot believe that you can't do this! I work in film and TV music. It's just not feasible to use Live for a session without audio crossfade, despite it being wonderful in many ways. A colleague said that Live was not up to scratch for audio editing and I didn't believe him. Now I understand

I've seen lots of posts about this and (unrealistic) workarounds, but I don't see the lovely people in the Ableton team responding (please correct me if I've missed them). Whats happening with this guys? Is it in the pipeline?

[kleine]

Hello Danb1,

It´s on our list - still we don´t know when we´ll have this feature.

Best,
Christian

[Danb1]

Thanks for the reply Christian.
Can I politely suggest that this might be something that you would want to put up at the top of the list if you want Live to be seen as a proper DAW (which it undoubtedly ought to). I think this is a big omission. I don't know how other users feel, but IMO its an absolute must for any multi-media work.

[Angstrom]

other users feel the same as you Dan

[leedsquietman]

Agree with you Dan.

However, you have to remember that when it was born, Live was not your typical DAW beast. It still isn't, even though it has incorporated some mainstream DAW features. It was born as a creative tool for Live performance. There are some users who are grumbling about the addition of DAWcentric features, while the other half (me included) want them. Ableton are caught between a rock and a hard place really on this issue.

Also, you probably should have done your research a bit better before purchasing. There are some workarounds, including using Live's crossfading where you set up 2 tracks, and Live isn't terrible for editing audio, you can split, consolidate, magnifiy waveforms and such quite easily. It is not as detailed as some other DAWS such as Cubase or Protools etc but I personally prefer to use SOundforge for this stuff anyway.

Live has many strengths and unique features, and hopefully the audio crossfading we'd like will come before too long.

[Danb1]

Cheers quietman.

Don't get me wrong I bought Live for what it CAN do, which is well worth the price alone. I was just surprised that something so straight forward as this would be missing. I ASSUMED it would have been a feature based on the fact that Live is sold as an all in one music creation, performance and production tool.
It USED to be only a live performance tool. That was a while ago, but I get your point.

That said, Live has got so many unique features, that if Ableton can deal with a couple more DAW features as priority (such as the one mentioned), they will be so far ahead from the rest of the competition that they will have the market completely tied up.
From a business perspective it would make sense for them. They already own the performance side of the market share as it is. The DAW pro's are the one's they need to win over at this stage. And they're not far off.

But that's just my opinion, of course

[legion within]

I concur...

Audio Crossfade is a MUST for the next upgrade and is LONG overdue.

[Angstrom]

There are some users who are grumbling about the addition of DAWcentric features, while the other half (me included) want them. Ableton are caught between a rock and a hard place really on this issue.

it's worth remembering that crossfading in a track would benefit both sets of users. I've needed this (in session) for theatre use many times

[leedsquietman]

Definately qgree.

although some people would prefer a vocoder or some other FX jiggery pokery, especially the DJ centric crowd.

I think you're right though, that it is an update which can benefit ALL users. Hopefully soon to be implemented...

[djsynchro]

There is a really elegant way of doing this which is how it was done in Logic 5 (I don't know how it's done now, I left Logic and went Live)

When you do a crossfade the section that fades is calculated as a new file and written to disk, and it then sits between the 2 files. Since crossfades are usually small sections of audio, the process is quite fast. it doesn't require more voices, it's just a new clip that sits between 2 clips. kinda like, consolidate, quick offline process creating a new clip.

You're welcome

[Angstrom]

hey, that IS a good idea.
a new file

[Tarekith]

NO fair, I suggested the idea of Crossfade clips two years ago

[Crash]

+1

[Pitch Black]

FWIW, At Ableton camp almost 23 months ago they acknowledged that this was a priority issue for many folks. The problem to implement it, in their words, is that Live currently plays one "voice" of polyphony per track: i.e. one stream of audio can only play on a channel at one time, and to allow crossfades (in Arrange or Session view) would require a substantial re-think and re-write of Live's audio engine.

However, I don't know how this relates to the "generate a fade file" method described above. That to me would seem logical (isn't that how all DAW's do their x-fades?) but I have no idea why this is such a tricky proposition for Live, other than what the Abes have said.

They do truly know for sure though that it's a necessity for many many people - me included...

[speculation]
Perhaps it could be easy to implement in Arrange, but difficult to do in Session, and in true Abe style they want to do something all inclusive and super-elegant for the end-user.
[/speculation]

[Danb1]

Can someone at Ableton shout out and explain to us why they can't work a simple off-line fade/crossfade 1-voice solution that we can use?
Or maybe some kind of plug-in solution that holds the audio somewhat like Melodyne and generates crossfades (I'm no expert).

I really don't think anyone here would look down on the Abe crew for not delivering the "perfect" solution that they seem to be holding out for.

Maybe they could also explain to me how I'm supposed to get smooth and flexible vocal punch-ins and comps on one track without a crossfade? I'm talking ONE track of audio recording,. not 48 tracks at Real World.
I admit the audio Warp really helps the recording process, but only about as much as not having a crossfade hinders it.