Ableton Forum

aaand I would say that someone who is extremely concerned with preserving quality of audio files should use 32 bit as their recording preference.

at that depth, internal bouncing of tracks becomes neutral

locojohn wrote:

garyboozy wrote:for that kind of work i'd seriously recommend looking elsewhere than Live.

non-linear arranging in Live can be a real pain in the arse, as i've been discovering the last few weeks whilst working on a new tempo-free mix for a client. he started the project in L8 already, and wanted to continue working in it at my place. i've used cubase for years for this type of work, but rather than sway him to moving the project over to cubase, i thought i'd see how Live copes, and if there are any benefits. for me at least, there have been none.

the poor automation and the clunky 'fades' integration, the lack of clip grouping, not being able to select clips from different tracks without selecting every other clip inbetween, etc etc. not good, and pretty infuriating. stuff i never usually encounter in Live because of the workflow i usually have with it.

no disrespect to Live - i'm a massive fan and it's great at what it does, but it's not really a tool for non-linear audio editing/recording.

Garyboozy, I tend to agree to 100% of what you said. But at the current state of things I cannot afford buying Logic/Cubase/Sonar and investing my time into the learning process. I will have to finish this project in Live.

Perhaps, Live 9 will introduce non-linear editing features in the arrangement view, in addition to improvements for some existing features like fades. Fades in Live are disappointing because, unlike other automation envelopes, you cannot set additional "points" on a fade curve and thereby change the fade envelope the way you like.

Andrejs

I actually agree with this for the kind of work you are talking about - I've done work for video which has ended up a very frustrating experience - Live is basically not designed for this, although it can do ok in some circumstances.

Maybe if you are skint you could try something like reaper which let's you use it for free indefinitely until your conscience forces you to buy it!

even then you can get a non-commercial license for $50

You can do all this in Live, but it is frustrating, I agree. In contrast to Longjohns I use session view as much as I can because to me that is Live's strength, and it's just so easy for coming up with ideas, but the kind of stuff you are talking about is not its strongest point.

The biggest problem with using Live for what you are doing is that you can't properly control tempo changes in arrange - getting an exact BPM with that tempo automation lane is pretty much impossible - but you could use the session view scenes like I said before and record a tempo change from a scene - if needs be you can get rid of all the stop buttons (cmd+E) in the scene so that it doesn't stop any clips and you just record the tempo change

i.e. - set scene name to 47BPM, select all clip slots along that row, hit cmd/ctrl+E and then trigger the scene while the global record is enabled - doing this will allow you to record exact tempo changes and still use Live's metronome (you can also change time sig in this way too)

alex.the.forge wrote: you can't properly control tempo changes in arrange - getting an exact BPM with that tempo automation lane is pretty much impossible -

there are several ways to get exact tempos in the arrangement lane, none of which is particularly difficult. of course it would be nice if you could just type envelope values

longjohns wrote:

alex.the.forge wrote: you can't properly control tempo changes in arrange - getting an exact BPM with that tempo automation lane is pretty much impossible -

there are several ways to get exact tempos in the arrangement lane, none of which is particularly difficult. of course it would be nice if you could just type envelope values

??? do share!

All I know about is holding CMD and zooming out... it's really not that easy to do

It has been mentioned that naming scenes 94 BPM would help with the tempo changes but you are working in arrangement view and as such that's useless.

So why not use the locators in arrange view to make these changes? I'm sure that you can name these locators 94 BPM and it will act the same way the scene would.

Not sure how helpful that is (my brain might have messed up significantly). Otherwise, I'd say maybe just turn warp off manually? Yeah, it's annoying and involves extra clicking but wouldn't be the end of the world and seems to be your only problem here.

aphasia wrote:It has been mentioned that naming scenes 94 BPM would help with the tempo changes but you are working in arrangement view and as such that's useless.

not if you do this:

alex.the.forge wrote: - but you could use the session view scenes like I said before and record a tempo change from a scene - if needs be you can get rid of all the stop buttons (cmd+E) in the scene so that it doesn't stop any clips and you just record the tempo change

i.e. - set scene name to 47BPM, select all clip slots along that row, hit cmd/ctrl+E and then trigger the scene while the global record is enabled - doing this will allow you to record exact tempo changes and still use Live's metronome (you can also change time sig in this way too)

aphasia wrote:So why not use the locators in arrange view to make these changes? I'm sure that you can name these locators 94 BPM and it will act the same way the scene would.
.

unfortunately it doesn't

Thank you for the help guys.

No more "Consolidate" then, at least for me. I only want to use non-destructive editing functions. In my case, Consolidate brought the volume of a clip to -4.91 dB. IMVHO, it's a crime that Consolidate automatically performs normalize! Either it should be an option or it should never be used, because you can do Normalize at any point manually if you like.

Indeed, cropping seems like an alternative solution.

Yes, non-linear editing in Live is a pain, but I have to Live with it. I for one pray for non-linear features in Live 9 !

Andrejs

The option to not warp newly recorded clips would be great! A simple Preferences option would save a lot of headache with workarounds.

alex.the.forge wrote:
??? do share!

All I know about is holding CMD and zooming out... it's really not that easy to do

what you're describing with the scene names will work, but you don't have to use session. you can just punch in the envelope points. NB there must be at least one breakpoint on the envelope before doing this:

-make a time selection: grid, no grid, or clip-based
-right-click: loop selection
-type the tempo into the box up top
-punch in, then out

now you have the first envelope point (and an extra 2 which you will delete)

-put the cursor near the end of the loop region
-enter the tempo again (or another tempo, if you want to make a perfect ramp, but in this case switch off loop and switch on punch-out, so that you don't mess up the beginning of the envelope)
-punch in and let the loop come around, punch out

now you have the last envelope point

-delete the 4 extra points in the middle. (tip: you can use shift+drag to pull on one of the extra points and delete the other 3, then you only have to delete one point)

if the time selection is short enough that you can wait through it, you can just let the envelope record

another way:
-use a midi or key assignment with a range that gives predictable numbers. this is most helpful if you want round numbers for the tempo. it's quicker to set tempos this way than typing into the field. e.g. a key range c2..c4 with range 100..124 will give 1bpm increments over that range. midi assignments will be even if the range is an even mult/div of 128. (i have sometimes seen errors this way, increments vs. decrements. i.e. it will go up in even numbers, but on the way back down will be off by some decimal place. ??)



another way: set the visible range of the tempo envelope temporarily to the target value. then you can drag a breakpoint (not a segment unfortunately!) to the limit and it will hit that exact value. later you can resize the envelope display to whatever..

this way you can make a time selection directly in the envelope field, and drag a segment. that creates four breakpoints. then drag the two outer points to the limit. they will be constrained horizontally by the other two points, if you drag against them (and aren't pressing shift!)