Ableton Forum

Do you take into consideration getting back to some of your projects in say 6 years?

What do you do to make opening such projects possible then?


possible sources of problems

xp can be replaced for good
some plugs are not backwards compatible
Live 11+ backwards compatibility



Do you freeze? export tracks?

I don't use Ableton enought but i'm a user of Logic since v4.
For me, the main problem is always external plug ins. That's why i try to limit my use of external plug ins : it cost me less money and i don't have to upgrade each of them.

For synth, i try to keep all the synth bounced to audio files and all the midi files, so i can always use the wav files or i can recreate a sound with the midi parts.

For effects, bounce tracks with and without effects.

The other (extreme solution) is to keep an old computer (or buy an old one) and reinstall old version of software and plug ins.

The worst cas is when a manufacturer break or limit the backward compatibility with a new version (rewrite of te application ect...)

So to avoid main problem, open your files with a n+1 version and save to a newer version (for example : open V4 project with V5 and save V5, then few months later open your v5 project with v6 and save to v6 format etc..)
So ou'll be able to track problem. Of course, it'll take time.

I used to try and prepare for the prospect of needing to open projects years later, but evnetually I gave up. Technology moves too fast, and our tools get outdated too fast too. Some people will render each track seperately as an audio file, but I don't evne do that anymore. I save all my mixdowns as 24/96k, but that's about it.

The past is the past.

If you need to open a song that's 6 years old, you probably should just start a new one.

That's exactly the three ways of thinking I am actually considering



My idea was to rename and crop every audio part I needed to have all of them in the right place.

But now on a quad core I seem to need to export things only if LFO's are unpredictable or for additional loop mangling.


Recently I have been only saving JIC some presets which saved in case some settings leaked on program change. But with a new computer it is much more convenient to have several tracks (or instrument rack with and chaining) than change instrument programs and worry about the tail/clicks.



(When) do you freeze? I had bad experiences with and early version of SX3 that was unreliable, unpredictable and exported long silences between parts, and more, but in Live 6 freeze seemed to work fine.


Do your projects done with Live 4 still open in 7?

If Ableton maintain bkwrd compatibility the best option seems to be

keep the old windows (aamof xp will be good option for quite a few years more)
stay w/Live
not bother about bouncing unless necessary
carefully select a bunch of favorite VST(i) and stay with them


Something tells me there's not much that can be improved in today's instruments.

6 years? This gives me trouble after 6 months.

I make an every effort to finish my work and move on.

So when you're done - how do you store the music:

tracks
mixdown
?

Best idea would probably be to export a midi file for safe keeping, flatten all your tracks, and export all tracks individually.