Ableton Forum

So another mysterious Ableton 9 change has been spotted by me

I don't know how to describe my methods here but i will try my best. I have always used this effect when making techno music, where id put a HUGE reverb on a certain stab sound. The reverb has to be on the stabs track (not via send)

I would have the reverb on 0% wet so you cannot hear it. The stab sound wouldn't happen regularly, but the reverb, although cannot be heard, is constantly playing underneath as it has such a huge tail.

This now leaves me able to do a cool sound when i automate the dry wet knob to do quick, 1 beat long swoops up to 100% wet and back to 0% thus creating a kind of choppy sound with the reverbs tail

However, ableton 9's reverb does not work like this no longer. No matter how long and big the reverb tail is, if its on 0% when the sound hits, if i turn up the dry wet knob afterwards, no reverb is heard. It acts much like a send / return knob i guess

So does anyone know what im talking about? Is this effecting anyone else? Is there a option that changes this back to normal?

theviewer1985 wrote:So another mysterious Ableton 9 change has been spotted by me

I don't know how to describe my methods here but i will try my best. I have always used this effect when making techno music, where id put a HUGE reverb on a certain stab sound. The reverb has to be on the stabs track (not via send)

I would have the reverb on 0% wet so you cannot hear it. The stab sound wouldn't happen regularly, but the reverb, although cannot be heard, is constantly playing underneath as it has such a huge tail.

This now leaves me able to do a cool sound when i automate the dry wet knob to do quick, 1 beat long swoops up to 100% wet and back to 0% thus creating a kind of choppy sound with the reverbs tail

However, ableton 9's reverb does not work like this no longer. No matter how long and big the reverb tail is, if its on 0% when the sound hits, if i turn up the dry wet knob afterwards, no reverb is heard. It acts much like a send / return knob i guess

So does anyone know what im talking about? Is this effecting anyone else? Is there a option that changes this back to normal?

Its odd because if i leave the dry wet, at 0.1% or more when the sound strikes, it acts as i would expect. Not perfect because there is a slight reverb sound in the back constantly now, although probably inaudible to human ear....

its as if 0.0% wet is infact "off"

I can confirm that it acts how you are saying. Not sure how it was before as I never tested. Should probably be submitted as a bug...my other reverb plugins do not behave this way.

You should definitely file a bug report. I also confirm this behavior: Live 9.04 32bit, Win7 x64

I would suspect this is by design, to conserve CPU.
If you picture many tracks worth of long tailed reverbs, all set on wet/dry :0% (dry), under the old system they'd all be silently using up CPU galore. It seems that Ableton have decided that if wet/dry is set at 0% they should not be processing silently. So,they deactivate the input to the effect on 0%

It's the sort of thing which seems a reasonably sensible idea, but obviously it doesn't work for everyone and Ableton sells to everyone, which means it isn't a reasonably sensible idea. L9 brought in a lot of these changes, they seem tailored to one guys way of working. He's a lucky man.

Angstrom wrote: He's a lucky man.

thanks! i really do feel lucky sometimes when i think about all that the Ableton team have done for me. i mean the box of chocolates and case of wine was nice but ALL of my feature change requests being made to my personal exacting specifications...
i thought i was only going to get a lump of coal... who would have guessed!!

the important thing to remember... is that there are no losers, because EVERYONE else is 2nd.

Maybe putting it into a rack (2. chain empty), then automating an utility after the reverb does the job....
I also think that the idea is to conserve CPU. But the behavior is wrong/unexpected.

yep, it's broken.
example vid: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YOW0bXzjduA

but it's not just L9 - it also occurs in 8.4.1

open this project in both 8 and 9 and you'll see the same issue:
https://copy.com/9kGelYMSQUODrob7
but when you set the tempo to 120 (type it in), it works again. weird.

Angstrom wrote:I would suspect this is by design, to conserve CPU.
If you picture many tracks worth of long tailed reverbs, all set on wet/dry :0% (dry), under the old system they'd all be silently using up CPU galore. It seems that Ableton have decided that if wet/dry is set at 0% they should not be processing silently. So,they deactivate the input to the effect on 0%

That would make sense if Live9 didn't have disable button.

I agree, but they didn't . So who is right?

It's me. It's always me.