Ableton Forum

Can I install the 32- and 64-bit versions of Live at the same time?

Live Versions: 8.4 - 9 Operating System: ALL
It is possible but we don’t recommend it. Please note that you will need to manually rename the application after the first installation (Mac) or choose a different installation folder (PC).

Yup that's right instal another 2GB of content to get both versions and get an ominous warning...

My old time codger DAW from the way back time machine of the 80's Digital Performer? It's the same dammed program! just do a "get info" and it has a button to switch between the 32 and 64 bit version. Really Ableton? this was the best you could do?? Sometimes I think the best days are behind us with this DAW, it's now lost the path.

I think it's mostly due to the fact that Live don't have no 'bit-bridge' by design...
but yeah I understand your frustration.. kinda sucks...
if it makes you feel better...
PC you always have to install 2 times (although the content is installed once)

I'm just surprised that a dinosaur company like MOTU would elegantly figure out how to deliver both versions, and Ableton not only don't deliver them as a package but recommend you don't instal both. Hell they recommend you don't use 64 bit in the first place?? just bizarre compared to earlier technical hurdles they encountered and were smooth as butter with, like the PPC to Intel switch etc. ??

Mostly I'm fully 64 bit with Digital Performer and wanted to use Live ReWired. Figured I would keep Live in 32 for working on songs without DP, and 64 for reWiring into DP. This is also due to the fact that my laptop is 32 bit for now. The fun time party implication of "we don’t recommend it" is it's a way of saying it causes problems. BTW DP has no bit bridge, so it's not that, it's Ableton deciding that people will either use the 32 or 64 bit version, not both, so they put no effort at all into integrating them, because according to their logic nobody ever does a slow transition to new architecture.

This whole 32 bit vs. 64 bit situation reminds me of the old Mac days when you had to run both OS9 and OSX because software developers hadn’t switched over to OSX yet and it didn’t seem like a priority for many. That sucked major ass and I’m sure inspired many Mac users to migrate to PC.

beats me wrote:This whole 32 bit vs. 64 bit situation reminds me of the old Mac days when you had to run both OS9 and OSX because software developers hadn’t switched over to OSX yet and it didn’t seem like a priority for many. That sucked major ass and I’m sure inspired many Mac users to migrate to PC.

It did I'm sure. Mostly It wouldn't be an issue for me to just run 64 bit but my laptop is 5 years old. I'm looking at decently priced used 2011 and above models, but honestly I want to wait for the Apple WWD event, since it's predicted that the macbook pro's get a boost then.

Jbridge M works just great actually. I don't like using this sort of thing since I tend to shelve ideas and come back to them a year later to find they inspire me to write a new part etc. and if there's some new development with OSX that ruins Jbridge M, which may get to the point to where the coder decides everyone is clear of the 64 bit mess, and drops further development of.... Beyond that it works great though. The main issue is that I do not have a laptop that can support 64 bit applications, so transparency between the two versions is an issue.

Blah! I'm actually surprised I'm the only one who thought this was a lame situation probably created by Ableton?

It seems like since they changed their installation procedure last year (around 8.3?), maybe to incorporate auto-update, it's made Live more of a PITA in some situations. In the good old days an update wouldn't delete skins and remote scripts. Now if you want to install over an existing one you have to make sure anything you put manually in the Resources folder is backed up somewhere else. It's actually less of a PITA to install an update to a new place, alongside older versions, than to update on top of one. For what? Auto-updates? Needing to install things in some OS locations? Soundcloud support? Anonymous logging?

But there have been a couple times when I tried to install over an existing one and it wouldn't complete, deleting EVERYTHING in the WHOLE Ableton directory, not just one version. And I'd have a custom 5kb script in there GONE, though fortunately I back shit up on a regular basis anyway, but it was still not completely recoverable. Bah

beats me wrote:This whole 32 bit vs. 64 bit situation reminds me of the old Mac days when you had to run both OS9 and OSX because software developers hadn’t switched over to OSX yet and it didn’t seem like a priority for many. That sucked major ass and I’m sure inspired many Mac users to migrate to PC.

And then Windows 8 came out and inspired those users to move back to Macs. :p

I haven't bothered with 64-bit Live on Windows yet and will probably stay on 32-bit until the memory limitation becomes a problem. But just in case:

QUESTION FOR WINDOWS USERS WHO INSTALLED BOTH 32-BIT and 64-BIT on WINDOWS: Due to Live's goofy default install directory inside the hidden C:\ProgramData folder, I'm not surprised that you have to make sure to install in separate folders... but I am curious about data/settings. Once installed, do the 32-bit and 64-bit versions of Live have separate application settings, or do Preferences changes you make in one version carry over to the other?

This is weird. I thought it was standard for 64-bit apps to be able to switch back a forth. Logic has been able to do it for years now. It's funny that if you use M4L they give you an option of downloading either the 32-bit or 64-bit version, but the Max 6.1 app has the feature that lets you choose!

stringtapper wrote:This is weird. I thought it was standard for 64-bit apps to be able to switch back a forth. Logic has been able to do it for years now. It's funny that if you use M4L they give you an option of downloading either the 32-bit or 64-bit version, but the Max 6.1 app has the feature that lets you choose!

Further proof it's laziness! Where are the torches, tar and feathers!

On a side note, all the third party dependancies Live has (Cycling, AAS, Cytomic etc. code in there), might be the reason that it's not possible for them to successfully just have it be a single application.

stringtapper wrote:This is weird. I thought it was standard for 64-bit apps to be able to switch back a forth. Logic has been able to do it for years now. It's funny that if you use M4L they give you an option of downloading either the 32-bit or 64-bit version, but the Max 6.1 app has the feature that lets you choose!

on Macs fat binaries that have both 32 bit and 64 bit builds in the one application package are reasonably common, however this is because Apple introduced their "Universal Binary" format years ago to make it easy to bundle PPC/Intel code into a single app package when they started phasing PPC machines out...

fat binaries are not an inherent feature of Microsoft Windows however. my guess is that the Abes are keeping the 32/64 bit Mac versions of Live separate so that their development and build process is similar for both Windows and OS X.

Machinesworking wrote:

Can I install the 32- and 64-bit versions of Live at the same time?

Live Versions: 8.4 - 9 Operating System: ALL
It is possible but we don’t recommend it. Please note that you will need to manually rename the application after the first installation (Mac) or choose a different installation folder (PC).

Yup that's right instal another 2GB of content to get both versions and get an ominous warning...

I too -ed at that... You don't recommend it, becaaaaause...?

I need to install the 32-bit version now, in order to check if video support is as fubar as in the 64-bit version, but I want to keep the 64-bit version. Ableton don't recommend it. Becaaaaause...?

It is possible but we don’t recommend it.

Uh, you want to unpack that one for us grandpa?

I've actually run into a scenario where keeping the two versions installed side-by-side can cause a bit of trouble:

Let's say you have an instrument rack in your library, containing a Sylenth1 patch with various parameters configured and mapped neatly to rack macros. Sylenth1's preset system makes it impossible to use the same version of the rack in both Live versions.

The possible cause of problem is simply that the two versions will share the Live 9 library, and to me it seems that the problems would almost exclusively pertain to plug-ins.

I've been saying this since the Live 9 beta days. Ableton's just being lazy to make a simple bridge.

Jbridge is not a solution. I'm still on 32bit Live here because I use way to many plugins that are only 32bit and may never be 64bit.

It's sad. Not being able to use Live to it's full potential. It sucks but what can ya do?
My 2 cents

I'm just leery of the Abes coding lately.
For whatever reason... the results are the same, Updating seems to cause more issues, problemss, or workarounds than before.
Fanboy turned Meh. Love the interface, loath the update issues.

I'm gonna pass on 9 and 64 bit for now...
I've even rolled back to 8.34 (as 8.4 had prob with some sets).