When did it become cool to hate on Ableton?

[agent314]

Seriously - why are half the threads on the front page suddenly all about people bitching about the product they're choosing to use?

Is it cool now? Do I get disaffected-internet-dude cred too if I start one?

Did 8 have its hiccups? Absolutely

Is Ableton making a great show of support by openly spending so much time addressing many of the bug reports that have been submitted? Yep.

Is Live still an incredibly useful DAW with a great workflow? Sure seems like it to me.

Are people genuinely fed up with Live even as the fixes and enhancements keep rolling in? Or is it just in vogue to jump on the hate-train?

I mean, if Nanostudio or Maschine or whatever alternative is working out better for people, I'd much rather see them posting love threads on the other tools' respective customer support forums than using the Abes ones as a soapbox to launch tirades. Don't get me wrong - I genuinely think it's awesome that you found something that makes music creation easier or more fun or whatever for you, but making a thread just to complain about a product you're making the choice to use just strikes me as passive-aggressive.

Constructive criticism and actual suggestions for improvements are one thing. A potentially great thing, actually, and something that can bring about good changes to the product. But making a topic just to bash for the sake of bashing is something else altogether, and personally I don't think it has a place on the boards.

[starving student]

you didn't know?

alright I'm gonna break it down for ya.
Once upon a time there was no such thing as ableton live and the world was a dark cold place.
Then one day ableton live appeared and the world was still a dark cold place but alot more fun.

ok seriously.....there isn't any thing better at doing what Live does than live, and everyone
uses Live, which has finally become part of the problem, I'm aware of several people who use live
but don't even want to admit it. when this type of thing happens people start to turn on the app
publicly but they don't really mean it, not only does live do what it does better than anything else
but live does it quicker, in a more creative fashion, and most importantly Live does it with the highest
fun factor. If you hate to do some tedious complex task in live you probably wouldn't even attempt to do
it in another app, but live makes whatever you're doing a good time.

so it became cool to hate on ableton the second all these cats went to their gigs and every fuckin nerd they were playing with that night was using Live hahahaha, it's like being an 80s rocker and at your show
everybody in the 5 other bands playin that night were all wearing david lee roths leopard skin spandex, if that happened to you you'd start hatin on spandex too

[Tone Deft]

who's cool?

the 2 guys that critique Live while personally attacking anyone that disagrees with them?

if that's cool then go fuck yourself!

[ze2be]

edit: Ill be back when I can operate Live from the couch on an iPad, like Nano Studio. (And I suspect that to happen within the year actually. Touch-Able with step sequencer, etc.)

Until then, you know where to find me.

[alex.the.forge]

my guess is because they are so quiet these days… in the good old days Ableton had a strong public presence on the forum and as a result people were able to associate real people with the company and felt grateful for their time. When they are quiet people just see a big faceless company logo and feel they have to shout louder to get attention.

That, and the greater internet fuckwad theory comes into play. (courtesy of Angstrom):

[simpleton]

I heard Jeb Bush was running for office. That oughtta set the reset button.

[starving student]

I heard Jeb Bush was running for office. That oughtta set the reset button.

are you trying to drum up support for Jeb by strategicly placing that photo of John Gordon right under the photo of Jeb as if John Gordon is actually holding Jeb up?
If so you are dead wrong buddy.. dead dead dead dead dead dead dead wrong!!!! I'm talkin like six feet under wrong, and John Gordon doesn't appreciate people approprating his likeness for their
for shlackin their worthless political endeavors either, that's borderline slander pal

[dinaiz]

It's not realted only with live. Go on Native isntruments forums and you'll see plenty of people bitching about them as well !

[jeskola01]

Ah remember the heady days of Live 4, when Ableton could do no wrong

[dbfs]

Ah remember the heady days of Live 4, when Ableton could do no wrong

I remember that horrible lime green installer! That was wrong... Hand me my HD Visions!

[3phase]

Almost anything they implement, they implement in a half done fashion.. probably to build up in later pricy updates... after some years you feel a bit ripped off..when it than starts to crash on stage and you experiance dataloss on payed projekts you get really pissed off.. and when you finaly realize that they are to arrogant to listen you start hating it.

Lets face it..its a brilliant concept in the hands of a shitty company

[leedsquietman]

It has been well researched that if you excel in your customer service that the person you do a good job for will tell 2 other people (positive word of mouth recommendation), but do something to upset the customer and they will tell 12 people about how shit you are.

Live 8 has had so many issues as to force the CEO to do a public apology as damage control, so this is not just a few isolated cases.

A lot of the complainers really love Live and Ableton as a company.

Alex has a good point though - we used to see a lot more of Nico, Amaury, Dom, Henke etc in this forum and even Gerhard and Bernd from time to time with announcements. Maybe they are all so busy trying to fix L8 there is no time (they claim this is priority number 1) but this human contact and fast responses to support e-mails etc were part of the reason why I invested in Live, it was a refreshing change from the old stifled attitude and approach of Steinberg (it's our way or the highway). People like 3Phase, who has a lot of feedback (and many complaints) who (I think) has the best interests of Live and Ableton at heart, would have long since been banned from the Cubase forum.

Another beef is the pricing strategies employed from Live 8.

Before Live 8, updates were much less expensive, and you could even get educational upgrade pricing - I upgraded Live 6 to Live 7 Suite for a very reasonable price as a result, qualifying for edu status at that time. The educational upgrade discount was scrapped, the cost of the software was put up significantly at a time when Logic, Cubase, Sonar, DP etc were reducing prices significantly. So this cool, customer friendly company suddenly looks like money grabbing profiteers who hide behind a code of silence. Not good business practice really, even among the Live crowd, which is among the most loyal (fanboyish) around.

And let's face it - whining can come from a place of love of the product - if you genuinely didn't care, you'd just f*ck off live in silence and move onto another sequencer, no love lost, no regrets. A lot of the complainers just want Ableton to listen to them and to improve the stability of the product (and maybe look again at the cost, and maybe a run time Max4Live etc.)

It also doesn't help when people like Ricardo Villalobos and others who are semi-famous (as like C or D list famous but famous enough so that some on the forum have heard of them) have said negative things about Live, especially it's sound quality. That provides a bandwagon for others to jump on and also causes a 400 post flame fest

[ugboy]

STABILITY!!!

The reason I was drawn to Live was the appeal of a stable live platform... it's the one thing that made it a convincing live tool for a genuine musician.

Ableton - Stability = wtf?!

Understanding that the implimentation of max for live must have been an awesome task, and considering all the new plugins and effects... it's hardly surprising that there were going to be teething problems... especially when you have so many people using the program in so many different ways... it must be a near impossibility to bug test to perfection before releasing. I even don't mind the price hikes except that I feel there should have been a much more honesty regarding the lack of stability.

Why couldn't beta testing be carried out for an extended period... employing passionate users to test... maybe in return for a free upgrade?

Users have effectively become employees of the company if they are obliged to constantly relay information back to manufacturers regarding flaws in their product.

I'm simply PRAYING now that ableton put a hold on introducing any more "new" functions and get the program back to the rock solid application that it once used to be.

I've now spent over £600 on something that doesn't work properly.

[evon]

Hate? whatever gave you that idea? Are you saying that there is hate on this forum...motherf*@##2:?

[stringtapper]

you didn't know?

alright I'm gonna break it down for ya.
Once upon a time there was no such thing as ableton live and the world was a dark cold place.
Then one day ableton live appeared and the world was still a dark cold place but alot more fun.

ok seriously.....there isn't any thing better at doing what Live does than live, and everyone
uses Live, which has finally become part of the problem, I'm aware of several people who use live
but don't even want to admit it. when this type of thing happens people start to turn on the app
publicly but they don't really mean it, not only does live do what it does better than anything else
but live does it quicker, in a more creative fashion, and most importantly Live does it with the highest
fun factor. If you hate to do some tedious complex task in live you probably wouldn't even attempt to do
it in another app, but live makes whatever you're doing a good time.

so it became cool to hate on ableton the second all these cats went to their gigs and every fuckin nerd they were playing with that night was using Live hahahaha, it's like being an 80s rocker and at your show
everybody in the 5 other bands playin that night were all wearing david lee roths leopard skin spandex, if that happened to you you'd start hatin on spandex too

This is all true.

And I'll even let the OP in on a little secret. If you snoop around in The Lounge you will soon discover that starving student in fact is David Lee Roth's leopard skin spandex. That is to say he comes across as having been very fashionable at some point in time but doesn't really make a lot of sense these days. But by god he's our David Lee Roth's leopard skin spandex!