I read this in a Nostradomus Manuscript:

kabuki · Post by **kabuki** » Fri May 26, 2006 2:16 pm

hoffman2k wrote:Live 6.....
They're doing a sale on Live 5 till the 31st of may.
Which will be followed by the Live 6 announcement (to kick off the grace period)

Beta will arrive somewhere between 14-16 june
6 june still sounds right for the announcement though
They should send out the newsletter around 06:06:06 AM

Just a wild guess

quandry · Post by **quandry** » Fri May 26, 2006 2:22 pm

forge wrote: thing is ryan, I'm not sure it is really because they rushed it or did it too fast

by the end of the last beta I seem to remember about 2 weeks where I had nothing to report and the beta forum was definitely alot quieter - so I dont know if it's because so many new users jumped on board when 5 came out, or some problems didnt show their face right away, or if they are talking about long term issues like the arrange sluggishness bug, or even just not enough people reported bugs, but I definitely dont think they just chucked it out without having the vast majority of the beta testers stable with it.

there were alot of beta testers (the first group being limited to 500 - that alone is a fair chunk of different setups to test on)

and you must admit a CRAPLOAD of new users came on board after the L5 release - this forum was very clear testament - I remember we got a pretty big influx after 4 but there were heaps more after 5.

so it's totally possible alot of these complaints came well after the beta phase and final release

I agree it's mostly down to the shedload of new features they put in though, but I dont necessarily think delaying the beta phase of 6 would be the thing that made it more "stable"

I will defer to your experiences and knowledge--I was intitially very turned off by 5, as my chief goal and use of Live is live performance. The drastically changed scrubbing to a more "DJ friendly" thing, the loss of presets on devices themselve, the lack of true "midi select on launch" really killed it for me. I did beta test, I follow the progress, and I actually bought the upgrade because I got suckered when they said the midi select on launch was fixed (when in reality the clip grid has to be in "focus"

). All this, mixed with grad school, have hampered my use of Live in general, and I haven't done anything with 5.

I will say though that 5 had more beta versions than any previous beta--19 versions I think--this could be judged in any number of ways--more bugs to fix, more programmers fixing bugs faster, etc...Also, no previous versions required a x.2 release, only 4 ever made it to the x.1 version, and I think only 5 had beta testing periods post official release. For me, though I don't have much intimate experience with 5, this seems to indicate that there was more for Ableton to work through to get things fixed up, though it could be attributed to lots of newcomers and people using music software for the first time. It does take a decent system and decent soundcard to run Live well, and using mp3s, slow hard drives, crappy soundcards, lots of complex warp clips, or even things like overheating laptope with clogged fans/heatsinks can cause problems, and there are certainly people that had sucess with 5 from the get go. Anyhow, lets hope they get 6 right and regain the stability and smoothness of ver 2-4.

mikemc · Post by **mikemc** » Fri May 26, 2006 2:39 pm

Yhe whole 'ultra-stable' thing vis a vis ableton's reputation... I truly like every version of the Live application I've used, all great, and it's a poor carpenter who blames his tools.

What I think has happened is that people with just enough processing power to avoid hiccups in 4 were swamped by 5. More features means more functions means more processor required.

I use a PC, think about how often an app like Microsoft Word has given you problems, or how all the various versionsof windows have hung or done wonky stuff.

I don't disagree that Live 5 was more unstable than previous versions (have used 2.12, 3, 4 and 5). However, it incorporated a large number of high impact features. In addition, if you have a year to use an application, at the end of that year you are going to be using more of the esoteric features than at the beginning, parts of the code are exercised late in the game, increasing possibility of undiscovered bugs, and the number of features increases this possibility.

The Abes are developing a cross platform application (most development shops blow off Mac for PC or vice versa) for live musical performance and real time improvisation/composition (often used in smoke and vibration filled environments that would cause IT people to cringe) for a population that doesn't upgrade hardware as often as the business office environment does.

If the Abes could be faulted for anything it would be striving to meet their demanding user population's feature requests and top themselves in signficant features realized per version, at the cost of introducing risk of more bugs-- that is, for being a successful software company.

tjwett · Post by **tjwett** » Fri May 26, 2006 2:54 pm

June 6, 2006. 666. Live 6.

hoffman2k · Post by **hoffman2k** » Fri May 26, 2006 3:10 pm

I said it before.... We'll evolve into thumbless creatures

kabuki · Post by **kabuki** » Fri May 26, 2006 3:19 pm

You gotta admit... it's a little too creepy... Live 6 on 6/6/2006

I didn't even make that connection. I was talking about THIS weekend.

But that would be so cool.

mercyplease · Post by **mercyplease** » Fri May 26, 2006 4:10 pm

hoffman2k wrote:
quandry wrote:not to rain on parades, but I seem to remember news articles hyping the new version prior to any betas--haven't seen any hype articles here yet....
Yeah. I've been wondering about that too.
Either they learned their lesson. .

I hope they have, if they mess up this time after that version five utter shambles then thats going to be a disaster and a number of live users will move to something else for studio useage me included.

mikemc · Post by **mikemc** » Fri May 26, 2006 4:12 pm

hoffman2k wrote:I said it before.... We'll evolve into thumbless creatures

that's funnystuff...

hoffman2k · Post by **hoffman2k** » Fri May 26, 2006 4:26 pm

mercyplease wrote:
hoffman2k wrote:
quandry wrote:not to rain on parades, but I seem to remember news articles hyping the new version prior to any betas--haven't seen any hype articles here yet....
Yeah. I've been wondering about that too.
Either they learned their lesson. .
I hope they have, if they mess up this time after that version five utter shambles then thats going to be a disaster and a number of live users will move to something else for studio useage me included.

I was talking about the hyping bit. Al they did so far, is promise better stability and performance for Live 6.
Last year they were teasing us so much, that we had to have a discussion on the definition of "soon"

roby · Post by **roby** » Fri May 26, 2006 8:29 pm

damn, that sounded super official until i got to the "wild guess" part

Pitch Black · Post by **Pitch Black** » Sat May 27, 2006 2:41 am

mikemc wrote:Yhe whole 'ultra-stable' thing vis a vis ableton's reputation... I truly like every version of the Live application I've used, all great, and it's a poor carpenter who blames his tools.

What I think has happened is that people with just enough processing power to avoid hiccups in 4 were swamped by 5. More features means more functions means more processor required.

I use a PC, think about how often an app like Microsoft Word has given you problems, or how all the various versionsof windows have hung or done wonky stuff.

I don't disagree that Live 5 was more unstable than previous versions (have used 2.12, 3, 4 and 5). However, it incorporated a large number of high impact features. In addition, if you have a year to use an application, at the end of that year you are going to be using more of the esoteric features than at the beginning, parts of the code are exercised late in the game, increasing possibility of undiscovered bugs, and the number of features increases this possibility.

The Abes are developing a cross platform application (most development shops blow off Mac for PC or vice versa) for live musical performance and real time improvisation/composition (often used in smoke and vibration filled environments that would cause IT people to cringe) for a population that doesn't upgrade hardware as often as the business office environment does.

If the Abes could be faulted for anything it would be striving to meet their demanding user population's feature requests and top themselves in signficant features realized per version, at the cost of introducing risk of more bugs-- that is, for being a successful software company.

Great objective post, Mike!! Thanks!!!

I'm one of those people running older hardware for whom Live 5 is a stretch on my computing resources. Live 5 has been entirely useable, but not quite comfortable. When I eventually get a MBP I'll finally have dragged myself kicking and screaming from OS9 forever.

I am however a little concerned over all the discussion with "heat issues" with the MBP - If these machines are running hot i.e. at the edge of their operational extremes in an office - How are they going to stand up to abuse in a club environment? I'd really like to hear some first hand experiences from people regularly gigging with a MBP.

All you guys in the booth with the flash lappie, please tell us - how's it been going?

forge · Post by **forge** » Sat May 27, 2006 2:36 pm

Pitch Black wrote: I'm one of those people running older hardware for whom Live 5 is a stretch on my computing resources. Live 5 has been entirely useable, but not quite comfortable. When I eventually get a MBP I'll finally have dragged myself kicking and screaming from OS9 forever.

yeah paddy I've been meaning to ask you what the go is with you and your old technology. Has it been consciencious objection, or genuine poverty because I cant believe you're still using tibook 5/800s, os9 etc!!

definite props to you, but jesus you have so much more fun with computers a bit more powerful than that and they're fucken cheap now

Pitch Black · Post by **Pitch Black** » Sun May 28, 2006 2:24 am

Well I got a G4 400Mhz tower in 2000, which was pretty snappy for then. Using Logic in OS9 I was able to get a good 30-40 tracks and do serious production. Never felt limited by that setup. Then in 2002 got the Tibook 500, a tiny step up but now portable! Started using Live 3 on one Tibook for gigs in 2003 with it slaved to our MIDI sequencer. Then moved to using 2 Tibook 500's when we changed our whole live rig over to Live in '04.

I've known for a long time, along with every other mac user, that the G4 lappies have been underpowered compared to the G5 towers, so just been holding out and holding out for the next generation (which has turned out to be the Intels).

I've been able to do all my production in a dual-boot setup using Logic 6 and Live 4/5 for the last couple of years, and again not felt limited. Our live rig has been at the optimum in stability for the last 3 years - the old if it ain't broke don't fix it. Even using version Live 4.02 for superstitious reasons - it's just the one that I got working when I designed the system, has been thoroughly road-tested, and has had only five crashes in the last 3 years of touring.

Another reason for staying OS9 on stage is that each of the Live Sets has about 1Gb of clips - 110 tracks and 250 scenes. The Tibooks we use are maxed-out at 1Gb of RAM, so we are running the (OS9) system to it's utmost capacity. To use OSX onstage (anything faster than a 1Ghz Tibook is OSX-only) with it's extra resource requirements has not been something I've wanted to try. It was a case of why force myself into OSX on a machine that was underpowered?

Jumping to a Macbook Pro is inevitable, but as they have no pcmcia slot for our Multifaces, I have to rethink the audio interface situation and thats a BIG Biggie (and more $$$!) to get my head around when our system is working so perfectly now.

So that sums it up, been perfectly happy in the studio with my current setup, and I'm waiting for the folk-knowledge to emerge regarding the Macbook Pro's and heat/whine/UB's/whatever other 1st gen issues arise. I was burned by losing the FW port on the 1st gen Tibook 500 due to an Apple design fault. So I'm not going to rush into spending money until I know the unit I'm getting is stable, with all the kinks ironed out. And of course the longer I wait, the better the deal gets.

(And of course I'm a backward, sheep-shagging Luddite Kiwi who doesn't even own a TV.)

forge · Post by **forge** » Sun May 28, 2006 12:00 pm

Pitch Black wrote: (And of course I'm a backward, sheep-shagging Luddite Kiwi who doesn't even own a TV.)

that's what I was really after. go on SAY IT! SAAAAY IT!

SAY CHOWDER FRENCHIE!

quandry · Post by **quandry** » Sun May 28, 2006 3:08 pm

Pitch Black wrote: Jumping to a Macbook Pro is inevitable, but as they have no pcmcia slot for our Multifaces, I have to rethink the audio interface situation and thats a BIG Biggie (and more $$$!) to get my head around when our system is working so perfectly now.

damn, that is a buzzkill! Seems pretty silly/ignorant/lame of Apple to do away with the pcmcia slot that a lot of people use for various things--audio interface, wireless cards, bluetooth cards, extra fw ports, etc....that definitely bones a lot of people, esp. those of us with high dollar audio interfaces that take advantage of the fast pcmcia connection...