Logic gets Ableton Style audio

bigbadotis · Post by **bigbadotis** » Thu May 13, 2004 3:04 am

hey ryan,

I had to write my own program, controlAid, to get Live to work the way I wanted it to with a footpedal (the FCB1010). Now using controlAid, my FCB and my PowerMate Live pretty much runs the way I want it to for on-the-fly looping. Except for what you mentioned about recording the sends. That's defintely my personal #1 most wanted feature.

I'm just wondering if Live could be setup so that people don't have to use workarounds for performance like controlAid, or bome + midiox or whatever else. It just all seems so contrived.... but maybe it's just my needs that are contrived. Then again controlAid has had over 500 downloads (although many are from people just updating to the most recent version), so I can't be the only one.

Lest anyone be in doubt, I love Live!

guest 2 · Post by **guest 2** » Fri May 14, 2004 2:02 pm

Nick Maxwell wrote:I was always under the impression that Behringer did clones of other companys' hardware not because they are devoid of original ideas, but simply because they are trying to make affordable versions of these products. Also, can you really blame the guys who make these other programs for implementing elastic audio etc.? This is how a competitive market is supposed to work. Ideally, Ableton will now be forced to improve upon Live, thereby benefiting us, the users.

- Nick

Behringer makes clones of other companies' hardware because they are trying to make money, not affordable versions of these products. Research and Development costs money: lots of it. Reverse-engineering costs next to nothing. Quality components cost a fair bit in both materials and livable wages for the labourers. Cheap overseas labour costs (for manufacturing these clones) also cost next to nothing and ensures that their are less and less jobs available in countries that still pretend to care about such things. These overseas workers are paid literally NEXT TO NOTHING and generally work in horrendous conditions. Teenage girls working in corporate-tax-free enclaves that move about from cheap labour country to the next as their contracts come up so that they don't have to pay any (and I mean ANY) corporate taxes. This is the new capitalism, kids. I'm not picking on Behringer (or Mackie: Mackie looks like an originator, and probably was back in the day, but check out what they did to the Italian company, RCF a few years back with powered speakers), or the slew of really, really, really, cheap condenser microphones coming out of China all based on the Neumann U87 at about 10% of a Neumann's cost.
Long-winded, but here's my point: original-thinking companies that make original products should be rewarded for the work they do. There are lots of good software products out there that do things that Live doesn't do. Live does things that they don't do. Companies are tending to want diversify in order to get a piece of everybody else's pie if it looks like a money maker instead of being happy making a good, unique, quality product. I, for one, don't really want every piece of software to be pretty much the same as every other piece of software. I really don't mind using a few different products to make what I need to happen happen. I like that Live does what it does very well and that other products do what they do very well, but I don't really want a software landscape of slightly different shades of grey. Maybe a more apt metaphor would be a landscape of every colour visible to naked eye so that you can't really pick out the details of anything 'cause it's all too much to focus on. Blah, blah, blah, I'm boring myself.

Per Boysen · Post by **Per Boysen** » Fri May 14, 2004 6:38 pm

bigbadotis wrote:I had to write my own program, controlAid...

Woah, you made controlAid? Big Thanks, man- it's awesome!

Guest · Post by **Guest** » Fri May 14, 2004 7:20 pm

bigbadotis wrote:hey ryan,

I had to write my own program, controlAid, to get Live to work the way I wanted it to with a footpedal (the FCB1010). Now using controlAid, my FCB and my PowerMate Live pretty much runs the way I want it to for on-the-fly looping. Except for what you mentioned about recording the sends. That's defintely my personal #1 most wanted feature.

I'm just wondering if Live could be setup so that people don't have to use workarounds for performance like controlAid, or bome + midiox or whatever else. It just all seems so contrived.... but maybe it's just my needs that are contrived. Then again controlAid has had over 500 downloads (although many are from people just updating to the most recent version), so I can't be the only one.

Lest anyone be in doubt, I love Live!

hook us with the pc version! (Just kiddin, you've done plenty of work already, but if you wanted to, I'd use it!). I fully agree with you, I would love to have more things happen in Live so control aid and bomes, ox, etc. aren't so crucial. Here's my list of things that would help Live get there (in no particular order)

1. Recording on the sends (or some sort of overdub, like a live track output as another live tracks' "live in")

2. midi mappable "delete"--hello, nobodys perfect. for those of us looping real instruments in performances, this is crucial

3. Midi mappable clip properies (esp the playback head)

4. Revese--can be cool

5. Multiple assignments for any particular midi control: make it an on/off option in preferences so that it can be the overide system that is now in place, or have the freedom to map one knob to twenty things.

6. Live-aid: basically build some sort of midi manager pop up (maybe a prefence menu thang) that allows you to do what control aid does (from what I've seen/read, I'm on pc)--i.e. have a common set of midi hardware controls that can control any live track based on which track is selected. yeah, this could be the most complicated, but also the coolest feature to really take advantage of midi control.

7. free beer--its a wishlist, right?

Ryan

chunc · Post by **chunc** » Sat May 15, 2004 10:40 pm

one very desperate vote for midi into ableton from me. I don't want to use rewire, i dont want to use numerology, and i certainly dont want to use reason.

I live in Chicago, and all the professional/part-time techno or experimental performers and producers want midi in live. a massive portion of the legal user base of ableton live must clearly be idiots.

microtonal · Post by **microtonal** » Tue May 18, 2004 12:30 am

hello,

For me the only thing that matters is stability. As others have stated, using Logic in a live situation would be disasterous. I use Live for shows simply because I have never had it crash on me (running numerous audio files and plug-ins). If Abelton could keep Live as stable as it is after they implement midi, that would be perfect. Is it possible? No one has been able to do it yet....

Per Boysen · Post by **Per Boysen** » Tue May 18, 2004 8:31 am

microtonal wrote:If Abelton could keep Live as stable as it is after they implement midi, that would be perfect. Is it possible? No one has been able to do it yet....

Why should Ableton be successful were no one else is? Could it be that bringing a complex midi engine and an audio engine to sync on one computer is simply not possible to the same level of stability that we already have in Live today?

I say stability is everything. What does it help with "midi in live" if your computer crashes on you every fifth gig? Nightmare!

Guest · Post by **Guest** » Tue May 18, 2004 12:49 pm

I don't think its impossible at all. FL Studio does audio and midi, and has never crashed on me (except for buggy or poorly installed vstis). I know it can be done, I know that Ableton can do it.

Ryan

Per Boysen · Post by **Per Boysen** » Tue May 18, 2004 1:09 pm

Yeah, it would be cool, if possible. My vote for midi sequencing in Live would go towards step sequencing. I'm thinking about Numerology here, which gives you-real time control over groove quantize. This dead-on-the-beat groove quantizing is what I miss most when workiing with audio loops in Live. And to be able to change the global groove map just a little for a bunch of sequnces while they are running is just dope!

This type of performance oriented midi is what I'd like to see in Live. Not the production oriented midi you find in Logic and Cubase.

That FL Studio seems to be a nice app to rewire with Live. Can't check out the demo since my PC is broke down.

Guest · Post by **Guest** » Tue May 18, 2004 1:14 pm

FL is the ultimate companion to live--vsti, dx, great 64 step seq., excellent midi recording and editing in the piano rolls--everything I wish was in Live. My biggest midi gripe with Live these days is on the feature wishlist--having more midi map options and capabilities for many controllers.

Ryan

Mbazzy · Post by **Mbazzy** » Tue May 18, 2004 1:46 pm

Midi out would be nice , but certainly not essential in my eyes ... and calling people "stupid" because they don't want/need/use midi is shortsighted in the least ... I know many pro performers who are happy to be able to go audio only thanx to ABleton .... the truth somewhere lies in the middle I guess ... it's always difficult to change habits [ and investments in midi gear ]

Maybe the "easiest" [ have to weight my words

] would be a way that Live would allow midi out for plugins so that people needing midi can use the step/pianoroll sequencer of their choice .... maybe even an Ableton native one ...

Per Boysen · Post by **Per Boysen** » Tue May 18, 2004 2:26 pm

I have to add that the combo Numerology/Live seems to take care of everything I ever whished for regarding midi in Live. Numerogoy is Mac OS X only, but since I got hold of a Mac i must say that this is a cool combo for performance. Just like Live does, Numerology lets you assign midi controllers - knobs and faders of the real world - to every parameter. You can have a knob to boost tempo by 5 bpm up or down, you can change the groove quantize map on the fly and have it affect ALL RUNNING SEQUENCES, you can apply live input arpeggiators and even have them to modulate each other! In short: you can tweak midi like playing an instrument - the specific trademark of Live, regarding audio.

Ok, Numerology is quite young, just like OS X is, but I'm getting more and more impressed with the possibilities and I think it's going to be veeery nice

steve-o · Post by **steve-o** » Thu May 20, 2004 7:15 pm

The Numerology/Live combo is really sick. And with numerology, you can use Audio Units within the app, as well as external hardware gear and even vsti's if there hosted in another environment, because of Numerology's virtual midi ports. Combined with soundflower, wormhole, or jack tools for routing audio, and midipipe, iMIdi, and midipathcbay for routing midi, OS X turns into a little modular environment.

16 BIT · Post by **16 BIT** » Thu May 20, 2004 9:05 pm

well I left this thread for a long time. I havent much to add except:

If those people who dont want midi then thats fine by me. But I see no reason why a midi version couldnt be sold for the studio users. Not everyone uses live on stage. Lets not forget its a great studio tool as well.

noisetonepause · Post by **noisetonepause** » Fri May 21, 2004 3:43 pm

16 BIT wrote:Sometimes you want to lift the crowd using filters on some synth or other.

You can wing it with VST filters... just have the synth loop with the highest filter setting you'll be using... you lose keyboard scaling and velocity sensitivity, but it's still workable...

-Paws

Logic gets Ableton Style audio

Re: hmm...