I have decided to compile all the requests and suggestions I have made in the past 6 years into one single post. What makes this post so special? Well, besides the fact that it is coming from me
, I feel that the following feature requests are essential little things that could make an application so much more user friendly. The requests are reasonable; I'm not asking for a native strobelight plugin, an Operator update with 47 operators, auto-mastering, or an export-to-cash function. I feel that these requests are not selfish. All Live users would benefit from them, from the established artist to the newbie with a future in grandeur. And lastly, these requests are not meant to make Live behave like X or Y program because X and Y are better. These requests are just what would be considered fundamentals in functionality, employed by other products to give the user an easier and more enjoyable experience.I could go on and on, but I only have a character limit of 60k, so I better stop here and present you...:
MP3 option in Render (or other formats): This one may not be obvious so I'll explain the reasons behind it. MP3 is probably the most used compressed audio format in infinity. It yields pretty decent audio quality for a pretty small amount of megabytes. It is tag-able. It can be played on pretty much every portable device, including MP3 players! MP3 files can be imported to professional audio and video applications like Ableton Live, and these professional application also allow to export to MP3, excluding Ableton Live. In all seriousness, the benefits of Live to be able to render to mp3 are obvious. Ableton helps keep the user within the Live environment, as there is no need to load a wav into foobar2000 and export the file to mp3. Ableton would help the user avoid that extra step. Logistically speaking, it just makes sense to be able to import and export mp3 files, just like it a two way communication makes sense.
While we're in the topic of rendering: it would be great for Live to be able to point to the directory a project files resides in automatically. Here's an example of what it currently does. Let's say you worked on song.x last week, and within Live you accessed the folder where song.x resided. Then you open song.y which resides in its own folder. You work a bit, save it, then decide to render it because you want to load it in foobar2000, convert it to mp3 (because rendering to mp3 in Live is not yet possible), and then load it to your Samsung Nexus S. But when you click render and the function asks you which folder to save it on, it first points the the song.x folder. Now, additional steps to switch to the right folder has to be made on top of the other hoops and obstacle courses to go through to covert the song to mp3. Ideally, it would be a workflow improvement of sorts if this steps could be omitted by Live just pointing out the correct folder in the first place.
And now that we're in the topic of workflow improvements: splitting clips in arrange view feels very "medieval" as another user once put it. Sure, pointing at a clip at a specific point in the timeline and pressing Ctrl+e works, and it coincides with the way other programs split their clips. But here's an argument. Live is not just a typical DAW, but also an amazing remixing tool. The beauty of remixing tools is that it allows you to cut and past and mangle things as you please. Fast. The current way of splitting clips is not fast at all. A proper way to speed up this function would be to cut clips at will completely separate from the timeline pointer and with as little keystrokes and clicks as possible. A better method would be to either implement something like Ctrl+click or a dedicated cut/scissors tool. It could be toggled by pressing Ctrl-b, which already toggles pencil to pointer. It makes sense in my opinion.
Time signatures: I won't bore you with the details. I can't cut/copy/paste time markers. I should be allow to control time at will.
Automation: here's one that irks me the most, and I can't help but to be bitchy about it. I cannot believe that in this day and age, where everything you do revolves around a computer of some kind, and software that for the most part provide a high level of precision for your needs, that Live still does not allow to make precise decisions with their automation system! Providing automation points that do not snap to the timeline is like providing someone with a pen and nothing to write on. And on top of that you cannot edit the value of that one point, like not being able to control the flow of ink from your pen. Messy. There are other things that could make automation a lot nicer, like curves, but I personally feel they are not as fundamental as snapping to grid. Everything snaps to grid nowadays! You can't change the casing of the pen or add rubber grip thingies to make more comfortable if the flow of ink is going to go crazy and ink is splattering all over the desk because no one gave a piece of paper to write on.
I'm sure there are other logical and fundamental things that Live is lacking but I can't think of them at the moment. If you care to share them, please do.
OK, I believe I'm done. I love you all!