Ableton Forum

Thank you for VST3 support in 10.1. This is greatly appreciated!

My top request for the next version is: comping. I hate to use other DAWs while recording only because Ableton doesn’t support it. I realize that the Ableton DAW is mostly about midi and controlling midi devices, which is why I like it, but we also need the basics for recording with mics, too.

Comping is a feature that is extremely important and necessary when recording the “talent” through a mic. With comping you can eventually get something worth presenting.

Yes, comping would be a great improvement

Direct audio bouncing too

(these work great in Studio One)

megahurt wrote: ↑

Fri Nov 03, 2017 3:35 pm

For fucks sake... version 10 and still no comping?

Yea, but emojis bro! How good is that!?

They're taking the piss now.

https://patches.zone/comping-multiple-t ... leton-live
https://www.soundonsound.com/techniques/crafty-comping
https://illfactormusic.com/2016/06/comp ... fect-take/
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LCMqXqBG8QM

[2020 EDIT:]

Now there is this M4L device too:

https://maxforlive.com/library/device/6 ... ping-takes

pottering wrote: ↑

Sat Jun 29, 2019 7:50 pm

https://patches.zone/comping-multiple-t ... leton-live
https://www.soundonsound.com/techniques/crafty-comping
https://illfactormusic.com/2016/06/comp ... fect-take/
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LCMqXqBG8QM

The illfactor one is dope. Thanks for sharing. Although the workarounds are welcome, I’m sure we can all agree every other popular DAW on the planet has far better comping workflow.

It’s so frustrating that this basic feature is not here yet, keep questioning if it will ever be an option, it’s so basic and feels unprofessional to comp with all of the workarounds

It’s not only vocals, it’s the whole workflow of layering and recording which take so much more time without this BASIC feature

I’m in love with Ableton, but the lack of comping feature is the worst in terms of workflow and time efficiency

Please. Comping is basic for every DAW and it doesn’t mean Ableton is less ‘Livey’ now.. ffs

I'm also tired of comping in another DAW and eagerly waiting on this feature to come..

But in the meantime:
Wouldn't it be an option to have an external plugin do this? Where you would have your several takes, could comp properly and then "print" it to the track in Ableton.

Something like this..anyone ever thought about it?

they rather add "support for emoji characters in all text fields "

I'm starting to learn Reaper now which has comping. Once I get the hang of it I'll probably try to switch.

summer wrote: ↑

Tue Feb 18, 2020 5:24 pm

I'm starting to learn Reaper now which has comping. Once I get the hang of it I'll probably try to switch.

I tell myself that too.

Reaper for doing audio work (recording/mixing, probably even audio looping) is superb and better than alot of other DAWS.

Its midi though while powerful is pretty chaotic. Also things like lack of Drum Racks, can be a huge barrier to overcome for some.

Comping is one of the few things Ableton is severely lacking in.

I'm guessing they are working on it as Ableton has slowly implemented most of its glaring weaknesses in the past 10 years:

1. Session view automation
2. PDC
3. VST3
4. Lack of curve automation
5. Edit multiple midi clips.
6. MP3 export.
7. Limited arrange view workflow for large projects (probably still a room for improvement here)

Biggest weaknesses now IMO:

1. Comping (or lack of)
2. Lack of sophisticated midi editing (Actually Ableton does pretty good without it, but certain things like lack of scales, chords, non destructive quantize midi engine, midi slice tools can make certain tasks tedious. That said they need to find the right balance of user friendly and powerful)
3. No mixer in Arrange view.
4. No ARA (I'm guessing they are working on this)
5. Need to do a few too many mouse clicks for Record Quantize (some keybinding support for this would help)

This topic was started in 2017 titled '->STILL<- NO COMPING'. Users are wishing for this feature for over 2 years now and yet there's no response/reaction/announcement from Ableton whatsoever. It's not like we're asking for the impossible or an incredibly sophisticated feature.

Comping. That's it.

A feature that's relatively simple to code. At it's core it's simply an interface for recording and arranging takes. Record, cut, arrange. That's it.
Yet the devs at Ableton are managing for years to find their way around it.
For me, this demonstrates the Ableton devs' unwillingness to improve Live.
I guess they will probably introduce comping in 2025 with the release of Live 11 as a revolutionary feature.
As if this wasn't enough, the few updates we get are mostly useless. I'm looking at you, CV Tools. Quick challenge: Find me 20 people that use it in serious productions/make any use of it.
What about another one? Think about the upgrade from Live 9 to 10. A tiny update for the UI, a few new features for automations and DrumBuss. 250 bucks. Let that sink in.

The update frequency of Ableton in general is very questionable. Important bug fixes and improvements take forever. Think about the interface issue: Dialog boxes appearing randomly on screen. It took about 9 months.
Another one: I contacted the Ableton support in 2014 about the stuck pitch bend issue. The problem is still existent six years later. Wow.

When I think about other DAWs and their frequency of updates and new features I can't help it to feel anything else but anger. While the guys over at Image-Line shit out updates with more and more useful features every few months (feature that users actually have been asking for). We have to wait YEARS for tiny, useless updates while important features like comping, ARA2, fixing the ridiculously bad sounding Reverb and built in pitch correction (to name a few) are completely left behind for ages now.

With that being said, mind you, FL Studio costs 288€ while Ableton is charging a whopping 599€ + anything but cheap updates for Live.
I used to merely smirk about FL, but in recent months/years they have quickly caught up with Ableton and are about to surpass it.

I'm shocked that people in this forum still praise Ableton. But hey, CV Tools! ...right?

megahurt wrote: ↑

Fri Nov 03, 2017 3:35 pm

For fucks sake... version 10 and still no comping?

Seriously, comping is extremely basic and sometimes necessary. Further, most DAWs have some form of it. Live needs it pronto.

Yeah just updated to 10 and thought "well surely the've added comping now" Nope.

For everyone who's suggested the workaround for comping vocals by creating a group with multiple tracks in it... OK, fine. that kind of works ok, it's not very convenient or slick or fast, but it works sort of ok.

Now try to edit multiple takes of REAL DRUMS recorded on multiple mics or ANY INSTRUMENT recorded on more than 2 channels (in other words, anything that can't be summed onto 1 stereo track). Forget about it. You simply can't do it.

I've been trying to ween myself off Pro Tools for 10 years, and just got a new computer and thought: this time, this time I won't have to install Pro Tools and deal with Avid and iLoks again. Then I get this rock project where I have to edit a lot of different drum takes... and NOPE, can't do it with Ableton. Could do it with Logic or Reaper I guess, but since all the drummers are in Pro Tools, I just bit the bullet and got Pro Tools again.

I know that Ableton is aimed at electronic or at least modern music (which is mostly what I do), it really is annoying to have to open a completely different app just to so something that should be so simple. hint to Ableton developers: the way Avid deals with it is that under the hood, the different playlists are just distinct tracks. All you have to do is create functionality for a user to edit ALL the audio in a group at the same time. In theory, it really isn't that big of an engineering task considering the magic and awesomeness of Ableton.

I'm super new to Live. Picked up 10 Suite on...I think it was Friday or Saturday night. I'm a Reason 11 Suite guy. First of all I love it. Like, a lot. I totally get the big deal. But I was quite surprised to see that there's no comping or vari-audio/melodyne style editing. I guess you just take it as a given that all software has these things but, having collected a large number of DAWs (Cubase, FL, Maschine, Studio One, Reason and now Live) they all have bits and pieces missing.

I guess you guys probably feel differently about it if it's something you've been waiting for. From my perspective it's like "well I guess I'll just use something else for that". But it does rule out certain types of work in Ableton, definitely.

That said the things it can do, it appears to do *incredibly* well. So I'm still excited.

You can still do comping and pitch adjustment, it’s just not as easy.