What happened to Ableton Live?

[EnjoyRC]

I've been an Ableton Live user since v2. I've seen so much trash talk on this forum for the past year about the stability and performance of Live. Live has been such a rock solid app for so many years. What major change happened in the past year or so that has made the developers cancel any new features, and stay in emergency fix mode? Was it a rewrite? If it were a code change, you'd think that they would simply undo it. What went south?

[TheDriller]

I can't speak for everyone but I believe the gist of it is that Live 8 seemed to have accumulated a number of bugs and problems left over from previous versions, which seemed to have been allowed to slip through the net in order to keep to the yearly update schedule.
One of the major features o v8, the collaboration feature has still yet to materialise.

Most users wouldn't be happy at all if Ableton had pushed ahead with Live 9 before 8 was even finished,
Hence. We have the current feature-freeze.

[n8tron]

http://forum.ableton.com/viewtopic.php?f=1&t=132761

that explains a little bit.

In any case Live has been rock solid for me for awhile now. In fact I never personally had much trouble with early versions of Live 8. Looking forward to the future.

[Tone Deft]

a mix of very patient moderation, a buggy product release and a handful of really whiny forum posters.

it's been quite stable for me. I've had it open for maybe two weeks now with the computer going in and out of sleep mode, APC and LP stay connected. worked on various tracks over the last few weeks, made a new one last night, just hit play on the APC and it's working.

[3dot...]

last time..
just when they've finished ironing out v7...(7.0.15)
they started (and finished very quickly)the v8 beta..
which was outrageously buggy..
(call me whiny..but I speak the truth!)
add to that..
the m4l factor...(integrating max/msp within/outside/allaround Live...)
+
the new grid-controllers...and their need to constantly communicate..

on the plus side though..
M4L is now a fact... and very nice things are already born from it..
(although some things still puzzle me about the implementation..
I keep telling myself that this is just the beginning..
and hopefully this world doesn't end tommorow)
we've got grids/monomes for all...
group tracks..
grooves..
mobile control and osc...
etc.
some very nice stuff indeed!
feature wise...v8 is an awesome release

[swishniak]

a mix of very patient moderation, a buggy product release and a handful of really whiny forum posters.

+1

[savyurrecords]

Yeah +1 to what everybody else said.

I have had very few problems with Live 8. I did notice some issues around 8.1.1(apx.). From my unscientific conclusions I feel it is alot in part to integration with MAX/MSP and Serato. Though that is probably not the whole issue, just a good part.

[H20nly]

Have you seen this program?
Missing since late 2009
black hair, multicolored face
8 years old





Ableton Live was last seen making sick tracks on a PC with no plugins at my house.


its rumored that 3Phase broke in to Ableton headquarters and ran all the code through his translator which subsequently changed the program from Live to Life. Ableton Life is a very naughty application that falls asleep at the wheel and changes the time on all the clocks. Rather than making music it dreams about the good old days and spends most of its time bitching, boasting or talking about fans, boys and a fetish for things that are brown.

[3phase]

a mix of very patient moderation, a buggy product release and a handful of really whiny forum posters.

it's been quite stable for me. I've had it open for maybe two weeks now with the computer going in and out of sleep mode, APC and LP stay connected. worked on various tracks over the last few weeks, made a new one last night, just hit play on the APC and it's working.

so you essentially say that it is "stable" as it allways was...the only difference is that some people complained too much on the forum so the illusion was created that L8 had serious problems?

but by now even you call it quite stable.. it was totaly stable for you up to the moment the ceo appologized in public for the buggy state.. bad guy somehow, falling in the back of you trusty fanboys that claimed any crashreport in public beeing ranting...

Problem is that this type of ableton loving and feature lusting people was the ones that did all this public betatesting without finding any of the thousend bugs.

so learn:
you cant let feature junkies do the betatesting..

thats one of the roots of the problem,
the others are the development politics in total ..that mainly adressed the feature lust.
And a grown arrogance within ableton by biz success that for example leaded to own trainig centers around the world before even applying timcode compatibility..
And.. the arrogant handling of bugs as user bugs...

Ableton sees ( or hopefully "has seen" ) any problems of the program as user related problems and the user has to proove a bug to the company before they address it.. That is of cause the wrong tactics to be quick in addressing random crash bugs..

Ableton thinks that its all perfect because the users give them the impression that there are no problems what so ever.. But can that really be the leading factor in development when your users give statements like this?

"Live ist totaly stable, it just crashes from time to time..."

with such a userbase and the dogma of ableton

Ableton live is perfect, all problems user made, and the program bug free as long its not prooven to be buggy ( book of Ableton , Psalm L6.6 )

you only can win... just the product might get a questionable quality.. a Behlinger quality.
Lots of features for little money...totally solid but eventualy might fall into pieces after a while.

thats what had happend with L8.. as a final consequence of what happens when you start to have real bugs in the program but have surrounded you with "friends" that never will tell you.

Thats the answer to the OP´s question.

Better question is what will happen with Ableton Live..
has Ableton learned anything from the L8 desaster?



next in this Theater

Live 9 unbugged

[3phase]

Have you seen this program?
Missing since late 2009
black hair, multicolored face
8 years old

.

Its 12 years old now... but was a nooun and therefore looks a bit younger.

[Pasha]

For me L8 was rock stable since I got it (8.0.3). I haven't got plugins except Zebra2 and got Live Suite.
Soundcard uses CoreAudio and no drivers needed on a Mac. Although this won't balance the bad experience someone reported, is also useful to remember that people whine and send complaints more than they send confirmations that they're happy.

- Best
- Pasha

[ninox_rufa]

Whiny forum posters aside, one only has to look at the list of bugs fixed since the release of version 8 to get a true picture.
Personally I suspect that they butchered it when they incorporated MFL and have been trying to get it back on track since.

[Pasha]

Whiny forum posters aside, one only has to look at the list of bugs fixed since the release of version 8 to get a true picture.
Personally I suspect that they butchered it when they incorporated MFL and have been trying to get it back on track since.

100% Agree. M4L was the reason of all this. The ones asking for two releases one with and one without M4L were not treated so well on the forum. However I am one of those voting for the split.

- Best
- Pasha

[H20nly]

Whiny forum posters aside, one only has to look at the list of bugs fixed since the release of version 8 to get a true picture.
Personally I suspect that they butchered it when they incorporated MFL and have been trying to get it back on track since.

100% Agree. M4L was the reason of all this. The ones asking for two releases one with and one without M4L were not treated so well on the forum. However I am one of those voting for the split.

- Best
- Pasha

i agree with this too. all jokes/jabs aside. integrating two products that deal with similar concepts (audio/MIDI/routing) but are vastly different is a HUGE undertaking. imagine Microsoft releasing PhotoShop for Excel, or Apple releasing AutoCAD for Logic. my bet would be on big growing pains, not success out the gate.

[EnjoyRC]

Thanks for the responses in this thread. I'm starting to get the picture of what has been happening to Live in the past couple years. As others have stated, it's pretty solid on my Mac OSX 10.6.6. But when viewing the Bug listings, it can be quite overwhelming.