Ableton Forum

Hi,

I am trying to do something basic in Live and this is just too hard. Fonts are too small and nothing I thought about can solve the issue. If I enable DPI scaling for Live, it screws up mouse interaction, making the controls unusable. If I set up the zoom to more than 100%, I have to constantly open and close panes to do anything. At 200%, some controls are just unusable. The program is constantly having me browse, browse, browse, long lists of options (in the Options/Preferences or when searching effects or instrument types) in too small fonts. Default MIDI settings don't work, not outputting sound to anything, and my MIDI out doesn't list as possible options. Yes, I have to reinstall, reinstall, reinstall, reinstall drivers, this is the only "solution" I can find when searching the web, but I'm just fed up of doing and redoing the same thing all over again, and just get nothing at the end except small and unreadable fonts. I just cannot use a Mac because things are even worse: all system fonts are too small and I'm just fighting against that all the times, not only with Live. I got the font issue since I purchased Live a few years ago; it happens on Windows 7, 8, 8.1 and 10, so downgrading to Windows 7 as I'm hearing all the times from many different people is just a waste of time, not a solution at all.

We all get older. Have you considered getting glasses? (or contacts if you are the vain type)

welcome to the smallest font DAW in the world.

In windows I use the built in magnifying tool. sigh. reminds me of my grandfather pouring over his stamps.

EricBuist wrote:Hi,

I am trying to do something basic in Live and this is just too hard. Fonts are too small and nothing I thought about can solve the issue. If I enable DPI scaling for Live, it screws up mouse interaction, making the controls unusable. If I set up the zoom to more than 100%, I have to constantly open and close panes to do anything. At 200%, some controls are just unusable. The program is constantly having me browse, browse, browse, long lists of options (in the Options/Preferences or when searching effects or instrument types) in too small fonts. Default MIDI settings don't work, not outputting sound to anything, and my MIDI out doesn't list as possible options. Yes, I have to reinstall, reinstall, reinstall, reinstall drivers, this is the only "solution" I can find when searching the web, but I'm just fed up of doing and redoing the same thing all over again, and just get nothing at the end except small and unreadable fonts. I just cannot use a Mac because things are even worse: all system fonts are too small and I'm just fighting against that all the times, not only with Live. I got the font issue since I purchased Live a few years ago; it happens on Windows 7, 8, 8.1 and 10, so downgrading to Windows 7 as I'm hearing all the times from many different people is just a waste of time, not a solution at all.

Live 9? I hear you but I use an external 20" display which solves it all to me. Glasses are nice too I suppose, but haven't gotten a pair yet. I guess it depends on your sight to a large extent as well as the size of the display and the resolution you are using.

I'm looking for a solution to this problem too. If I worked on a laptop it would be less of an issue, but with the display on the other side of midi and qwerty keyboards, some additional zooming is nice to have. FWIW, I wasn't having the erratic mouse problem until the Win 10 update.

If there's a fix for Win10 it should be updated in the Help d/base, I've just tried every solution there and none of them, including AbsoluteMouseMode, fixed the problem. The only thing that works is setting the Win10 display to 100% and for me that makes every other program too hard to read.

It would be fair for the OP to notice that the zoom feature in the preferences is unusable : above a value of 115 to 120 % you can't scroll anymore in the window because the scroll bars fall outside of the screen (MacBook Pro 15' OSX 10.8.5).

madlab wrote:It would be fair for the OP to notice that the zoom feature in the preferences is unusable : above a value of 115 to 120 % you can't scroll anymore in the window because the scroll bars fall outside of the screen (MacBook Pro 15' OSX 10.8.5).

I can't reproduce that here in newer versions of OSX, might be worth contacting support if you see this everytime: [email protected]

If the font is that unreadable in Live and across that many operating systems, I find it difficult to believe that this issue is exclusive to Live. You're not having an issue with any other fonts in any other applications?

look at that PB Range's tiny "2"


You can even count the number of pixels it consists.

While I agree it's very small, your's looks much more pixelated than in the current version of Live. What version are you using?

That was from someone's posted in ableton forum. maybe 8?

H20nly wrote:If the font is that unreadable in Live and across that many operating systems, I find it difficult to believe that this issue is exclusive to Live. You're not having an issue with any other fonts in any other applications?

The erratic mouse behavior is exclusive to Live, yes. At least in my case.
I've filed a help report now. I'll post the fix if we can find one.

nonanon wrote:

H20nly wrote:If the font is that unreadable in Live and across that many operating systems, I find it difficult to believe that this issue is exclusive to Live. You're not having an issue with any other fonts in any other applications?

The erratic mouse behavior is exclusive to Live, yes. At least in my case.
I've filed a help report now. I'll post the fix if we can find one.

is your mouse a Logitech? I have heard of driver issues with a few of their models.

also, when the issue occurs, are you at over 100% zoom in Live?

H20nly wrote: is your mouse a Logitech? I have heard of driver issues with a few of their models.

also, when the issue occurs, are you at over 100% zoom in Live?

So far I've tried two um... mice, both are from Microsoft. One is a wireless, the other is USB. Neither work correctly in Live (and near as I can tell, only Live.)

This happens whenever I zoom the Win 10 display settings, whether or not zoom is applied in the Live preference settings.