Ableton Forum

I think that surround is far from being essential.
Ableton should concentrate on giving a serious midi editing upgrade to its application first. I, for one couldn't care less for 5.1.

I could care less. IMO surround is something a full blown DAW should do. Export your tracks and do it in there. Live just needs an "export tracks as individual waves" function. That I think live needs real bad.

Here's my 2 cents from last year. Anyway, I'm all for it.

i think instead of redisigning all the tracks to have a little surround panner in them, just have an effect that u can drop into any channel including the master track.

the cool thing about that would be that you could pan different effects for a track to different locations, such as the reverb to the right and the ping-pong to the left. now that would lead to some serious sound creation.

Livewire ~ I'd be kewl with that. Expanding on the topic :: it would be good if we had some sort of channel routing. Reverb in only the FR & RL if I wanted it that way or not.

if you are into the spatial stuff, are on windows and able to route to many multiple outputs (including 5.1 configuration) VSTs for complex multiple speaker imaging with UIs that can indicate the spatial positioning/movement http://acousmodules.free.fr

I say no. Surround capabilities should be dealt with specialized and optimized authoring applications dedicated to that stuff.

Live already has a high cpu usage which comes from the performance side of it, as (i'm assuming) to have a rock solid performance application, you need more processing power.
To add 5+.1 support for Live will increase cpu use imo.

I thnk the most important things Ableton should work on improving is PDC and cpu optimization.

Well, my original idea was to create 5.1 music...not just after processed 5.1 music ~ completely different animals. This would be an option...so you don't need to mix 6 channels if you don't want to. The last update the Abletons had was massive. I think there's room for quite a few new features after all the high profile requests.

well, before they implement this (programmer-dangerous) techniqe, they schould first optimize the allready implemented.
Like pdc, sub/folder-tracks, sse3, 64bit and other cpu-opzimation and mute-possibility in impulse ( it can not be, that there is no way, to mute slots in impulse whitout to route them to "external" audio-tracks. this needs (unnecessary!) a lot of cpu-power and the handling is not really "live-like")
allready if this made, we should think about surround.

get a surround compatable Rewire host,
Rewire Live into it
Pan

Tho' I don't like running Live as a slave (no VST's or rewire in) this will work.

I agree tho' would love surround panners just for my own enjoyment