Ableton Forum

In looking through the sounds installed with Live Suite 8.2.2, I happened to load Instrument Rack > Ambient and Evolving > Ambient-All Alone Pad. It's a very pretty sound ... but unlike any of the other instrument racks I've loaded, this one doesn't seem to have any buttons to allow the rack to be unfolded. The eight macro knobs are visible, but there's no way to get in and edit whatever is in the rack.

Looking in the manual, I see no indication that such a condition is possible. Is this a special Secret Soundware feature that developers can use, or is it perhaps a bug?

--Jim Aikin

midiguru wrote:... Is this a special Secret Soundware feature that developers can use, or is it perhaps a bug?

--Jim Aikin

The first one - almost. It might be because the rack uses an instrument that you don't have a license for.

They introduced a feature a few versions ago (I think it might have been when Live Intro was released) where they could include presets in the library that made use of instruments you've not paid for - but you are prevented from editing them.

crumhorn wrote:The first one - almost. It might be because the rack uses an instrument that you don't have a license for.

Erm ... I'm running Live Suite 8.2.2, and I seem to have licenses for everything. My actual stand-alone license for Max 5.1 has expired, but Max For Live still seems to work fine, allowing me to open up a patcher, so that might be the explanation, but maybe not.

If your explanation is correct, it would be swell if I could find out what instruments are in the rack, so I would know what to acquire a license for.

midiguru wrote:

crumhorn wrote:The first one - almost. It might be because the rack uses an instrument that you don't have a license for.

Erm ... I'm running Live Suite 8.2.2, and I seem to have licenses for everything. My actual stand-alone license for Max 5.1 has expired, but Max For Live still seems to work fine, allowing me to open up a patcher, so that might be the explanation, but maybe not.

If your explanation is correct, it would be swell if I could find out what instruments are in the rack, so I would know what to acquire a license for.

As you said you using Live Suite so you should have all the licence's, however that's interesting because I hae noticed that before on many instrument racks, however I don't have Suite so allways assumed it was because of that fact, not that it bothers me, because sounds are more or less, and with live or even 3rd party instruments, sampling and synth's tgether normally yield the result you want in the end. Live mallet#s are nice though.

I just had a look at that preset using my copy of Live (suite 8.2.2), It's a single chain with an instance of Collision processed through a Vocoder and a Reverb. All the little buttons for unfolding and folding the various rack sections are working OK.

I should report it to Ableton Support, something is obviously not quite right with your installation.