Ableton Forum

forge wrote:

Poster wrote: that's why I think drumracks lean more towards the massive sample packs or ppl who really like to sculp their sounds with Sim/Sampler + chained devices..

but this is the crazy thing - if you are going to do it that way then you are better off just using it on it's own normal track, grouping them together so you can hide them and save space

I didnt use to think it was too bad using a SImpler for 1 drum sound if it was on it's own on a track

agreed.. grouped tracks will solve alot of issues..

forge wrote:

Poster wrote: but for just simple playback and doing a tweak or two I think that a stripped down sample device that sort of has the feature set of Impulse would be great..
as jamester said:
..a one-pad "mini-pulse" device, which would be the default Drum Rack pad instrument..

problem with that is the parameters take up the full length of the current Impulse - so how would you fit it all in? You might as well just use a full Impulse

I assumed it can be much more compact, and eventually smaller then a drumrack filled with Simplers..
using the mini dials for the most important parameters and the value sliders for less important could already slim it down alot..

Poster wrote:

forge wrote:

Poster wrote: that's why I think drumracks lean more towards the massive sample packs or ppl who really like to sculp their sounds with Sim/Sampler + chained devices..

but this is the crazy thing - if you are going to do it that way then you are better off just using it on it's own normal track, grouping them together so you can hide them and save space

I didnt use to think it was too bad using a SImpler for 1 drum sound if it was on it's own on a track

agreed.. grouped tracks will solve alot of issues..

forge wrote:

Poster wrote: but for just simple playback and doing a tweak or two I think that a stripped down sample device that sort of has the feature set of Impulse would be great..
as jamester said:
..a one-pad "mini-pulse" device, which would be the default Drum Rack pad instrument..

problem with that is the parameters take up the full length of the current Impulse - so how would you fit it all in? You might as well just use a full Impulse

I assumed it can be much more compact, and eventually smaller then a drumrack filled with Simplers..
using the mini dials for the most important parameters and the value sliders for less important could already slim it down alot..

realistically though at this point they couldn't really do that I dont think - partly because it would look really bad to suddenly backtrack like that, but also because there are some people who apparently don't mind the clusterfuck

practically the solutions are probably more like resizable device view and better ways to jump to mapped parameters etc

I mean realistically, for me personally, I'm one of the big whingers about this, but for me I don;t think I really care what they do to drum racks as I will probably just not use them much and instead use group tracks when they come - and I feel certain they will because it's pretty close to being one of the most highly requested features

mike@TrackTeam Audio wrote:I think if we could expand the device view then there would be lots less negatives aboot drum racks...

[edit - just found this unsubmitted in a tab from hours ago]

yeah probably - even still I'm finding I get lost pretty easily in mega nested racks

track delay can be really useful for creating swing/groove - delaying the snare or hi-hat slightly for example

Sweetjesus first pointed it out and I totally agree

more to the point I like tracks as they are and just dont like these 'pseudo-tracks' that are the inline rack mixer

Poster also suggested a really good idea for racks of having like a browser in them to the left so you could jump straight to devices

forge wrote:realistically though at this point they couldn't really do that I dont think - partly because it would look really bad to suddenly backtrack like that, but also because there are some people who apparently don't mind the clusterfuck

well no one ever officially stated that drumracks are Impulse' replacement..
so Impulse 2.0 would not be backtracking to me at all..

forge wrote: but for me I don;t think I really care what they do to drum racks as I will probably just not use them much and instead use group tracks when they come - and I feel certain they will because it's pretty close to being one of the most highly requested features

I'm in the same boat..
I still use Impulse because the drumracks don't offer me enough to do the switch..

though I can see the potential for my own workflow if some things would change..
if not, nothing changes for me either..

Poster wrote:

forge wrote:realistically though at this point they couldn't really do that I dont think - partly because it would look really bad to suddenly backtrack like that, but also because there are some people who apparently don't mind the clusterfuck

well no one ever officially stated that drumracks are Impulse' replacement..
so Impulse 2.0 would not be backtracking to me at all..
.

maybe you're right - if enough people expressed interest then maybe an Impulse update wouldn't be such a bad idea - like the latest Compressor update

but I expect they are probably all drummed out after this release, a lot of focus went into drums

and really i'd probably rather all the other things I mentioned that I've been going on about for 5 years get sorted first! maybe fix the worst shortcomings of Impulse then just give us group tracks

I still think a Macro plug-in might be a really good compromise - so we could stick one on a group track and still have macro control

forge wrote: track delay can be really useful for creating swing/groove - delaying the snare or hi-hat slightly for example

Sweetjesus first pointed it out and I totally agree

+1 on that.

I started out using drum racks on everything until I figured out that on avarage I wasn't using any more than 5 or 6 cells anyway. The (unfathomable) lack of offsets is the real clincher for me too, I've gone back to one track per drum until rendering to audio to hack about in the arrange window.

To be honest I'm not really getting a lot of use out of any of the L7 suite items with the exception of the sidechains, i recon i could have saved myself 200 quid, my machine struggles to run any of the synths without freezing every track.

Yeah, why no offsets in the drum rack channels? You'd have thought it'd be the first thing you'd have thought of if you were building them. Why does this software ignore groove so much? It's like it's not even considered.

I've gone back to working with pure audio again, the midi side is shite beyond belief for a DAW of this maturity.

forge wrote:
I'm not a fan of the inline rack mixer at all - in large racks you end up with a big sea of grey faders and you don't even have direct access to clips and the sends on them are pointing to a different set of returns to the rest of the mixer - you spend your time jumping all over the place switching between devices and clips and returns and back again

each to their own I guess, I just wanted a way to reduce screen clutter (group/folder tracks) not add to it

Well, this is true. I was just pointing out I find it an easier way of working than scrolling left and right across chains of imbedded racks, which seems to be a bit of a gripe for many people.

Group tracks would of course be a great option, and for what it’s worth, I think the way they fold and expand would be very similar to what we have in racks. Of course, it would make sense to keep the routing options where they are for normal tracks.

I assume they went for drum racks instead of group tracks to allow macros and allow kits to be created.

So the question is, if Ableton were to include group tracks to allow you have the separate clips for different chains, would they add it as a separate feature, increasing the complexity of the program further, or try to expand the rack idea to allow different clips, and types of track, effectively making a track rack with all the functionality of drum racks, instrument racks, effect racks and group tracks? The latter would be great only if it could be done in a robust and easy to use way. I imagine they’ve been sweating over this one a bit at head office. As with all of these feature requests we keep coming up with, implementing them cleanly could prove to be a massive headache.

Didn’t want to continue posting in the bug fix sticky about possible workflow improvements in Live. And I think we’ve kind of hijacked this thread as well. Perhaps we could start a new one to get everyone’s ideas about this and shout down people who we don’t agree with.

andydes wrote:

forge wrote:
I'm not a fan of the inline rack mixer at all - in large racks you end up with a big sea of grey faders and you don't even have direct access to clips and the sends on them are pointing to a different set of returns to the rest of the mixer - you spend your time jumping all over the place switching between devices and clips and returns and back again

each to their own I guess, I just wanted a way to reduce screen clutter (group/folder tracks) not add to it

Well, this is true. I was just pointing out I find it an easier way of working than scrolling left and right across chains of imbedded racks, which seems to be a bit of a gripe for many people.

Group tracks would of course be a great option, and for what it’s worth, I think the way they fold and expand would be very similar to what we have in racks. Of course, it would make sense to keep the routing options where they are for normal tracks.

I assume they went for drum racks instead of group tracks to allow macros and allow kits to be created.

So the question is, if Ableton were to include group tracks to allow you have the separate clips for different chains, would they add it as a separate feature, increasing the complexity of the program further, or try to expand the rack idea to allow different clips, and types of track, effectively making a track rack with all the functionality of drum racks, instrument racks, effect racks and group tracks? The latter would be great only if it could be done in a robust and easy to use way. I imagine they’ve been sweating over this one a bit at head office. As with all of these feature requests we keep coming up with, implementing them cleanly could prove to be a massive headache.

Didn’t want to continue posting in the bug fix sticky about possible workflow improvements in Live. And I think we’ve kind of hijacked this thread as well. Perhaps we could start a new one to get everyone’s ideas about this and shout down people who we don’t agree with.

I don;t think we've hijacked at all - I think this is exactly what it's supposed to be about

track racks

create group track from selection
[/url]

forge wrote:
I don;t think we've hijacked at all - I think this is exactly what it's supposed to be about

track racks

create group track from selection
[/url]

Yeah, we’re still on topic. I can just see it spiralling out to include all sorts of other ideas and possible improvements. We definitely hijacked the sticky though. I do agree with most of the ideas you posted and would have added my own thoughts on them, but didn’t think it was the place for it. That’s why I suggested moving it.

Yeah, followed both of those threads. My contribution is in there somewhere. Group tracks, I’m a big fan of as long as they aren’t just for screen real estate. Track racks I like the idea of, but I see it turning into a big mess.

So is it possible to have everything in one all encompassing group track rack system and do away with the existing rack system, whilst maintaining backwards compatability?

There’d need to be audio, midi, return and master tracks, local sends, global sends, all routing options, all zoning options, pads, macros operating over several tracks. How would clips work with zones? Would a clip on a master track pass midi down to it’s children but a clip on a regular midi track only affect itself (unless you route the midi elsewhere)?

oddstep wrote: Rather than an impulse upgrade I'd rather see simpler get time stretching capacity (like impulse has). It'd be amazing.

bang fucking REVERSE in there as well. Who makes a sampler with no reverse function

forge wrote:


After getting Reaktor 5 last week and becoming re-acquainted with NI It's really reminded me where the Ableton interfaces are going wrong

yeah i agree completely. I wasn't that impressed with rack design but drum racks just look awful. Ive only played a little when the beta was out but I found it far from intuitive

andydes wrote: So is it possible to have everything in one all encompassing group track rack system and do away with the existing rack system, whilst maintaining backwards compatability?

There’d need to be audio, midi, return and master tracks, local sends, global sends, all routing options, all zoning options, pads, macros operating over several tracks.

yeah that's what I've been wondering - it does seem like one way of dealing with it - just make a super rack that has loads of show/hide buttons on it and you can choose whether you want pads/macros/key/chain - whatever - it's just a shell that contains the necessary items for everything and you just show/hide them and you could drag tracks into it

andydes wrote:How would clips work with zones? Would a clip on a master track pass midi down to it’s children but a clip on a regular midi track only affect itself (unless you route the midi elsewhere)?

the most awesome way would be group clips - shell clips that you can drag multiple clips into:

http://www.ableton.com/forum/viewtopic. ... 915#634915

http://www.ableton.com/forum/viewtopic. ... 556#356556

like a pop-up book were you fold them up and it's a single clip, then unfold it and it is several on their own tracks

jamester wrote:I'll chime in and say that while I think the Drum Rack's functionality is fantastic, I still prefer Impulse over Simpler by far. Sampler is better, but sometimes even too much. Impulse is just right for drum samples. I think they should make a one-pad "mini Impulse" specifically for the Drum Racks, based on Simpler but drum-specific.

+1
I think impulse is brilliant because it is setup just right for me. It forces a certain sound because of the parameters that I happen to like. One thiing that could have been better would have been to have drum rack like channels out.

i use impulse because i can pop 15 of them in a rack and use the chain selector to scroll between them..

forge wrote:

andydes wrote: So is it possible to have everything in one all encompassing group track rack system and do away with the existing rack system, whilst maintaining backwards compatability?

There’d need to be audio, midi, return and master tracks, local sends, global sends, all routing options, all zoning options, pads, macros operating over several tracks.

yeah that's what I've been wondering - it does seem like one way of dealing with it - just make a super rack that has loads of show/hide buttons on it and you can choose whether you want pads/macros/key/chain - whatever - it's just a shell that contains the necessary items for everything and you just show/hide them and you could drag tracks into it

andydes wrote:How would clips work with zones? Would a clip on a master track pass midi down to it’s children but a clip on a regular midi track only affect itself (unless you route the midi elsewhere)?

the most awesome way would be group clips - shell clips that you can drag multiple clips into:

http://www.ableton.com/forum/viewtopic. ... 915#634915

http://www.ableton.com/forum/viewtopic. ... 556#356556

like a pop-up book were you fold them up and it's a single clip, then unfold it and it is several on their own tracks

Yeah, always liked the idea of "metaclips" to hold a linear arrangement in session. Top of my wish list infact. Hadn't heard of using them as expandable clips across tracks though. Interesting.

So if you used grouped tracks this way for an instrument rack style group, would expanding the track separate out notes based on key/velocity zone? That would be good. If the notes were in multiple zones or the chain selector was used, such notes would have to be linked to ajoining clips. But then they would change if the clips were moved. Hmmm. Perhaps this is only really an option for drums or it could get very confusing.

Of course, a master clip launch button would be one way of triggering the parts in a group, but it wouldn't allow you see or edit the pattern as a whole.

Darn, it's a lot to figure out. And ultimately just speculating. Hopefully Ableton are at least aware of and considering the implications of these ideas.

Laters,

Des