Ableton Forum

Soon we will see if LiveX will be the app of choice for beat making or pro arranging or for BOTH. I say both.

Live has extreme competition from NI for beat making. But my guess is that Live 9 is already fully developed with very little new territory to be achieved in that department. If they developed packs and flashy videos as good as NI's, and a colored-screen Push3, they could take their share of that crowd.

For live performance, there is no competition. Yes we have to screw around with buggy Komplete Kontrol or MainStage if we actually play instruments live. If Ableton tackles this hard-to-please market, which they probably won't, great!

And how hard would it be, after 4 years, for Ableton to have achieved competitive editing and mixing tools. Not hard at all. And I don't think it would bloat Live's ability to still run in performance mode, negating any need to have 2 different modes as some have wished for.

On second thought, regarding the beatzzz market, NI has so many flashy little synths and drum apps in K11 which adds much for the Maschine crowd. I hope Ableton isn't putting all their energy into competing there. Ableton's devices are very functional but not as diverse and exciting as NI's. It would be unfortunate for me if Live X came with a suite of new synths and drum machines. That would be one way they could have chosen to direct their energy that would take away from editing and mixing advancements.

nowtime wrote:Soon we will see if LiveX will be the app of choice for...

Soon?
Caught in the cycle of hope, expectation and disappointment.

Funny to read how everyone states what direction of Ableton they might follow or not.
While mostly all we got for long are Loop and loops.
The same tools recycled.

Loop addiction?

Loops are "return inherent".
Stagnation with the illusion of progress.
How serious are we, Abes and users, infected with that illusion?

Stefan Jantschek wrote: While mostly all we got for long are Loop and loops.

Not the first time I read this in the thread. I'm surprised because I can clearly remember how well received are the updates since 9.5, and how many times many users said the added features where almost worth an upgrade.
Have a look back at the release notes, imho that's quite impressive.

[jur] wrote:

Stefan Jantschek wrote: While mostly all we got for long are Loop and loops.

Not the first time I read this in the thread. I'm surprised because I can clearly remember how well received are the updates since 9.5, and how many times many users said the added features where almost worth an upgrade.
Have a look back at the release notes, imho that's quite impressive.

That´s right.
Looks like a contradiction to my words before?

O.K. - that could be a long one...

First let me thank you for the first attendance of someone "closer to insiders" in this discussion.
Does it really need that provocative words to gain that?

You are absolutely right about the updates.
Most of them are well recieved, even more - urgently expected.
Same here.
Even the little tuner i use almost daily to check the key of some wierd granular fractals.
But honestly, that´s one of the few real new tools for long.

Most of the updates just made existing tools more accessible.
That does not mean they are not welcome.
E.g. slicing beats to midi has been possible already long before Push.
Now we can put that all in Simpler - good.
Does it really change your workflow if we can change routings now also from Push?
Don´t get me wrong, i love Push, but are there any results possible that i can´t get without?
All that thoughts are not ment to devaluate any work or update.
But the legitimate question of true progression, the "future of music" is there if we ask ourself honestly.

Let´s have a real world example:
See how almost any other DAW gives you easy ways to combine different arrangements to something finished?
If i look carefully at your clip about devs at Ableton, i get the huge suspect that we all have the same problem.
How many unfinished "arrangements" are there on everyones HD´s?
Ask yourself.
How many unfinished tools are there on Abes headquarter servers?
Ask does not work.
Could we just link all that together for something successful finished?
Links here are more urgent than "linking the ipad in".

So although i like the updates, real progression isn´t happening, until at least something contemporary is brought to success.

I really understand, due to the L8 code dilemma, decisions to eliminate time pressure and public expectations from app developement.
But that can´t exclude basic questions of efficiency if we do not want to get userbase screams too loud.
And there are screams.
Obviously.
Can´t call them all daft.

Does that explain the contradiction?

Greets,
*S.

Sort of.

The "loops" argument is hyperbole. If you take it literally, you can of course argue against it by referring to the changelogs, but if you collapsed all the Simpler changes into one bullet point, the list would be quite short. The point is that mostly everything that has changed since the introduction of Push has been Push related. Isn't Push a success by now? Enough so that Ableton can address the concerns of users who hit the tab key every now and then?

sporkles wrote:The "loops" argument is hyperbole. If you take it literally, you can of course argue against it by referring to the changelogs, but if you collapsed all the Simpler changes into one bullet point, the list would be quite short. The point is that mostly everything that has changed since the introduction of Push has been Push related. Isn't Push a success by now? Enough so that Ableton can address the concerns of users who hit the tab key every now and then?

You'll have to wait for Shove (TM) Abletons new arrangement controller for the budding producers of tomorrow

(That could actually be a pretty awesome product )

sporkles wrote:The "loops" argument is hyperbole. If you take it literally, you can of course argue against it by referring to the changelogs, but if you collapsed all the Simpler changes into one bullet point, the list would be quite short. The point is that mostly everything that has changed since the introduction of Push has been Push related. Isn't Push a success by now? Enough so that Ableton can address the concerns of users who hit the tab key every now and then?

The "loops" argument was metaphoric.
Again, i don´t argue against anything.
It´s indeed the opposite.
I highly appreciate Push, Simpler, slicing feature and any tiny little update.
So do i understand any focus on hardware nowadays.
I´s anyway questionable how software companys get their efforts back when the "free copy" appears on the net soon after version releases.
That depends shurely on a more happy, honest userbase than hardware sells.

So just to stay happy i am intended to understand.
Repeating again the basic question from another perspective:

Ableton started 1999 with a bunch of lovely people.
That time they created software from the scratch, updated almost twice a year with unseen features
and had, by the way, time to talk to users about technical aspects.

Now there are about 200 people working every day on one app and one controller.
And we get a few bugfixes and added remote scripts after ridiculous increasing update cycles.
A forum excluded from the mainpage and zero public conversation.
But weekly nice clips with mostly superficial content.

Is it any wonder if people want to know what´s going on?

Stefan Jantschek wrote: A forum excluded from the mainpage

I think the very public outcry here during the early Live 8 hiccups aired too much bad PR in their mind.

Then came the largely unmoderated heated discussions on the forums that also painted them in a bad light. So they unfortunately removed the link and thus doomed the forum to this shadow existence of today.

I think they have the moderation much better under control nowadays (perhaps a little too strict even) and should revise this decision.

I at least think that a good forum (as the Ableton forum certainly is) is a great asset for any company

There's no link to the forum on the main page, because too many people were assuming it was an official outlet for support requests. It's just not the most efficient way to deal with customer problems and track issues compared to one on one support via the links we do provide. The forums are provided for user to user discussions, a chance for you all to discuss music related ideas, and help each other out with problems. It's also monitored by MANY of us at Ableton to gauge what type of functionality people want, what issues are occuring, what the general pulse of our user base is in regards to Live.

Despite what some forum members claim, this has had no impact on the number of people visiting these forums. It's still the most visited area of the Ableton website by far. For those that don't already know about the forums, typing "ableton forum" into any search engine still links you right here as the first result. For now at least, I don't see this causing us to change how people access the forums.

You can sign up to submit and vote for feature requests here:

https://ableton.centercode.com

Please search first to make sure that someone hasn't already submitted the same idea as you before posting it as new. And of course the Feature Requests section of the forum here is monitored as well, though via Centercode voting it's easier to see exactly how popular an idea is.

[erm] wrote:There's no link to the forum on the main page, because too many people were assuming it was an official outlet for support requests. It's just not the most efficient way to deal with customer problems and track issues compared to one on one support via the links we do provide. The forums are provided for user to user discussions, a chance for you all to discuss music related ideas, and help each other out with problems. It's also monitored by MANY of us at Ableton to gauge what type of functionality people want, what issues are occuring, what the general pulse of our user base is in regards to Live.

Despite what some forum members claim, this has had no impact on the number of people visiting these forums. It's still the most visited area of the Ableton website by far. For those that don't already know about the forums, typing "ableton forum" into any search engine still links you right here as the first result. For now at least, I don't see this causing us to change how people access the forums.

I believe we can all agree that this missing frontpage-link is a minor concern.
And it is possibly true that is doesn´t affect the user counts that much.

I always perceived the main critics about the new forum handling as a sort of user monolog.
It´s always great to hear that Abletons are "monitoring" it.
But don´t you think that heartily conversation needs two ends of the line?

[erm] wrote:There's no link to the forum on the main page, because too many people were assuming it was an official outlet for support requests. It's just not the most efficient way to deal with customer problems and track issues compared to one on one support via the links we do provide. The forums are provided for user to user discussions, a chance for you all to discuss music related ideas, and help each other out with problems. It's also monitored by MANY of us at Ableton to gauge what type of functionality people want, what issues are occuring, what the general pulse of our user base is in regards to Live.

Despite what some forum members claim, this has had no impact on the number of people visiting these forums. It's still the most visited area of the Ableton website by far. For those that don't already know about the forums, typing "ableton forum" into any search engine still links you right here as the first result. For now at least, I don't see this causing us to change how people access the forums.

Ok that's interesting. I guess I stand corrected then.
I wonder though; while maybe the visitor numbers haven't dropped, the posting frequency certainly has.
Any idea why that is?

[erm] wrote:It's also monitored by MANY of us at Ableton to gauge what type of functionality people want, what issues are occuring, what the general pulse of our user base is in regards to Live.

I think the core issue is that users can't monitor Ableton back and get a feeling of what Ableton's general pulse is, also in regards to Live.

Stefan Jantschek wrote:It´s always great to hear that Abletons are "monitoring" it.
But don´t you think that heartily conversation needs two ends of the line?

Years ago Ableton employees definitely participated in the forums more, but unfortunately it often just let to issues. Priorities change, schedules get adjusted, features talked about maybe weren't implemented as initially hinted at, etc. It all led to many users being not only overly demanding, but just flat out rude or disrespectful to the very people trying to be more open with them. I think it's safe to say that these days we prefer to wait until we actually have something exciting to show people before talking about it.

Even if you're not a beat maker.