Please increase the number of Control Surfaces

[Machinesworking]

So I have a Slate Raven touch screen with the Ableton template, pretty great.
The caveat is it takes four out of the six Control Surface slots to control it, leaving two for other controllers.
Looking around I have at least four other control surfaces, only two get to be used if I use the Raven.
I can't be the only one, but Live is the only DAW that limits the amount of control surfaces I can use.

[Pitch Black]

NO MAN SHOULD HAVE THAT MUCH POWER

[Machinesworking]

[jlgrimes]

So I have a Slate Raven touch screen with the Ableton template, pretty great.
The caveat is it takes four out of the six Control Surface slots to control it, leaving two for other controllers.
Looking around I have at least four other control surfaces, only two get to be used if I use the Raven.
I can't be the only one, but Live is the only DAW that limits the amount of control surfaces I can use.

It only limits native control surfaces.

You can have as many dumb controllers you want but yeah 6 is kind of skimpy now. Maybe something like 12-18.

I'm guessing there probably was a limit for performance reasons and whenever they implemented native control surfaces, having 6 native controllers was probably pretty rare.

[dave baker]

This has been needed and asked for thousands of times over the course of over a decade.

A decade.

it's been totally obvious this whole time that it's been needed. If Ableton cared at all what their users want, there's no way we'd still be limited to six.

But after all this time, we are still limited to six. The conclusion is inescapable: Ableton does not care at all what their users want.

[Tarekith]

Well said. It's more than apparent that over the last 20 years Ableton has never once implemented anything their users want.

[dave baker]

If I'm not mistaken, I do believe I detect sarcasm. A snide remark from a forum administrator is a very poor substitute, on the part of the company, for implementing a much-needed and long-neglected improvement.

It's pretty sad when we can't get a glaringly obvious feature enhancement in ten years, but I can get a smart-ass reply in just a few hours.

[Tarekith]

Pretty sure it was only a few minutes actually.

[dave baker]

Quite right, i beg your pardon. It took less than a half-hour for my complaint to be officially ridiculed.

[Machinesworking]

Dave, one thing to note if you're to be a fan of, or feel decent about using Live IMO.
It's Abletons vision, not yours, not the overwhelming majority etc.

What I mean is for the most part the things I personally do not like about Live are sometimes explained by it's extreme adherence to WYSIWYG, no user definable key commands and a shorter list than most DAWs of commands in general. For well over a decade a single window interface, no hotkey to expand the piano roll, because their edit sub window idea was/is a wildly popular way to access editing features.

IMO some of the limitations were to prevent bugs, make it easier to troubleshoot etc. 128 parameter automation, 6 control surfaces at a time, no SysEx NRPM etc. The same logic in some ways of having a lower track count than other DAWs by not implementing a separate buffer for tracks not being manipulated, means that glitches in the audio simply don't happen.

This list could be endless, Ableton had and have a vision of what their DAW will do, and it's not going to align with everyone, there's a reason there's at this point at least 15 major DAWs out there. One thing that made my blood pressure go down is realizing that I don't have to stick to one DAW, and now I enjoy Live a lot more, because I'm not waiting around for them to implement Articulation Mapping for orchestral instruments, I'm using it when it's appropriate. It's entirely possible they raise the control surface count in the next update, and it's entirely possible that it's a niche concern that would require a serious rewrite of low level code.

[Pitch Black]

@Machinesworking, to your point, I saw Robert Henke give an Ableton presentation way back in 2004 and he said quite openly “I use Live and Pro Tools, not every tool does everything.”

[dave baker]

Those are totally valid points. I think my gripe and the original poster's gripes about too few control surface slots fall into a different category than the sort of design-philosophy things you mention. It's just a needless limitation I'm talking about, as opposed to a change in the functional paradigm.

[Machinesworking]

Those are totally valid points. I think my gripe and the original poster's gripes about too few control surface slots fall into a different category than the sort of design-philosophy things you mention. It's just a needless limitation I'm talking about, as opposed to a change in the functional paradigm.

Sure, but when they made the decision to limit it to 6, CPUs were pretty dammed slow. Back then it might have been a real concern not to have multiple control surfaces all accessing Live at the same time. So IMO maybe you're coming to an irrational conclusion based on what computers can do now as opposed to the early 2000's? and like I mentioned it might be some low level code that may mess things up to start tinkering with. It's worth requesitng it on centercode about though, which is what I plan on doing.

[dave baker]

It seems likely that when the 6 slot limit was imposed, there were good technical reasons for it. And 6 probably seemed like plenty at first. All true. It's definitely not plenty now, though, and whatever technical/performance reasons existed then have not applied for many years. So expecting we ought to be able to use more than six is rational. The fact that we still can't is what's irrational.

By all means, do put it on centercode. I did long ago and have seen many others do the same over the years. More people doing that will help.