Ableton Forum

I've read these forums for years but with live 9 on the horizon I wanted to share my (as well as many other live users) thoughts.

The lack of PDC in Live is a constant annoyance. In about 90% of my projects, the automation ends up falling out of time... sometimes by as much as half a second. Obviously this make intricate editing completely useless or at least much more difficult to get a nice smooth edit.
It seems like most other professional DAWs have had this feature for quite a while. I think we're at the point now were PDC is a basic feature but for some reason Ableton hasn't focused on this at all...? On the forums here I remember an Ableton staff member said that Live has never had PDC - but that it was in the works... that was over three years ago. What happened?

The lack of Bezier curves is crazy... just crazy. Everybody knows that.

No Floating mixer? Really? I read on these forums about two years ago that apparently the reason there are no detachable windows is because some head honcho at Ableton said he didn't enjoy the way they looked.Not sure if that's true but how about letting all your customers choose? From what Ive read, many of us want floating windows. It would make life easier. The people who could care less don't have to detach them. Everybody wins.

Better/deeper midi editing functions.

Wacky automap integration. Not the most important but important to people with Novation control surfaces.

There are so may other things on my wishlist but I decided to keep my list to features that are must haves for Live9 to not feel broken/less than it's rivals.

Live 9 could be the most well rounded DAW if it just forgets all the bloat and focuses on the basic functionality that is so desired by the community.

Surely those users who could care less about floating windows should detach them, whereas those of us who couldn't care less wouldn't have to...?

Not sure what you are saying there... Ive been awake for too long.
I think we're saying the same thing though.

Have Live fit nicely on a single monitor as it does now (arguably)... just allow people who have dual monitors to move the mixer and piano roll to the other monitor. Better workflow in my opinion.

True but I think it will be difficult because Live's gui is rendered with vector inside single window, as same as Excel's spreadsheet. You know you can't bring some cells out from a single window.

Kuzy wrote: From what Ive read, many of us want floating windows. It would make life easier. The people who could care less don't have to detach them. Everybody wins.

I hate floating windows on a laptop (too busy) and one of the top selling points of Live for me is the one-window system, use Tab to get between session and arrangement, easy as pie. I even dislike using VSTs inside Live because of the damn popup edit windows, I use the Live plugins as much as possible because of the way they appear on the screen.

Just because you read lots of complaints here at the forum about particular features doesn't mean that the majority (or even a large minority) of users are in agreement. You don't see lots of posts from guys like me who like the way Live works and have few complaints. Hey I wish it had some better MIDI editing but that's about it. I've bought, tried and abandoned Acid, Cubase, Reason and GarageBand so it's not like I've never used other DAWs.

Just a different opinion.

I didn't know about the gui rendering. I really hope they can figure something out.

I hate floating windows on laptops too and agree that it's way too busy and cluttered... but when I'm working on my desktop and I have the screen real estate, it would be nice to have things laid out across both monitors. The text on my tab key has worn off. Ive be tabbing a lot.

I'm not saying 'force everyone to use a wacky cluttered system" I just want the option too make it as wacky and clutter as I like and others can have it as clean as they like. I'm all for giving people options.

About those VSTs. You probably already know this... If you click on the little triangle then click "configure" you can map any parameters you want from any VST you have and they will appear next to whichever device you are using. After you've mapped the most important parameters, you wont have to look at your plugins as much. It makes them a bit more Ableton looking.

I felt cumbersome of forced single window during editing and sound designing, and I remember that finally I was shocked that I can't monitor the native spectrum analyzer during mixing. That would be joke.

I found single window gives benefit only in doing performance (and only for noob who can't organize workspace during composing.)

solve PDC issue.
+1

Check out Sonar's Skylight user interface
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BRQa8v2W ... r_embedded

Which is basically an expansion on what Logic has done for years.

It is about time Ableton kicks it up a notch.