Ableton Forum

I have been working professionally with Ableton for many years.
I have always avoided switching to other daws recommended as more professional, loving the workflow and interface of our Live.

But now we can't take it anymore. It's useless to add effects, tricks and cosmetics to each release when the engine sucks, you have to face reality: Ableton 11 crashes CONTINUOUSLY.
It crashes when you go to the bathroom, when you use native effects, when you load wave, when you mix, when you resize the video window, when you save something, close and reopen it (if it makes it reopen), when you duplicate something, when you scroll between presets, and it doesn't do it with a particular plugin or configuration, it always does it anyway. I changed machine (osx and win), I avoided all component plugins, I updated everything, I tried to work without plugins: no changes.
My wishlist? It consists of one request: Make 11 usable and professional, because 10 was and focus on that, not the shiny and catchy features.
Please, I don't want to change daw.

Can you expand on what makes it crash when you go to the bathroom, maybe with some examples? I went to the bathroom twice yesterday and Live was still working when I got back.

No crashed here either, and I have Live 11 running all day with no hiccups.

pedronico wrote: ↑

Sat Jun 04, 2022 1:56 pm

I have been working professionally with Ableton for many years.
I have always avoided switching to other daws recommended as more professional, loving the workflow and interface of our Live.

But now we can't take it anymore. It's useless to add effects, tricks and cosmetics to each release when the engine sucks, you have to face reality: Ableton 11 crashes CONTINUOUSLY.
It crashes when you go to the bathroom, when you use native effects, when you load wave, when you mix, when you resize the video window, when you save something, close and reopen it (if it makes it reopen), when you duplicate something, when you scroll between presets, and it doesn't do it with a particular plugin or configuration, it always does it anyway. I changed machine (osx and win), I avoided all component plugins, I updated everything, I tried to work without plugins: no changes.
My wishlist? It consists of one request: Make 11 usable and professional, because 10 was and focus on that, not the shiny and catchy features.
Please, I don't want to change daw.

i get crashes when loading certain plugins. I rarely get crashes on Abletons stock devices.

Usually the plugins are kind of known to be buggy. On most stable VSTs Ableton works pretty good.


Best to report your crashes to Ableton and submit an official bug report so they can get someone from tech support to assist.

There are many variables at play and crashes shouldnt happen esp when using native plugins on a system above the recommended requirements.

A crash fest is not the normal experience. I use it constantly and it hardly ever crashes. I'd be hard pressed to remember the last time it did. You may be doing things that I don't though. It might help to explain exactly what you are doing and the types of files you're trying to load, etc.

Tarekith wrote: ↑

Sat Jun 04, 2022 2:48 pm

Can you expand on what makes it crash when you go to the bathroom, maybe with some examples? I went to the bathroom twice yesterday and Live was still working when I got back.

Thank you for your answer. I also had a great-grandfather who smoked, he smoked until he was 95, so smoking is not bad for your health ...

Returning to more interesting and less careless speeches, the expression "fixed a crash that occurred when ..." is very frequent at every beta release, and those are just the fixed ones. Let's add that I happened to have EMPTY projects that crashed, continuous auto-scrollings to left or right, let's add that there is a world of forums where users go crazy complaining about continuous crashes ...

I use ableton, like many of you, for work, about 5-8 hours a day. I use it live to loop audio and check "things", in the studio to produce my own and other music, to make foley, to write columns sound, I teach it in a couple of schools in the area. This is not to bore you with my activities, but to make you understand that it is very difficult for me to say "ableton crashes when I do this precise thing", because it happens VERY often in completely different situations (and with different gears/plugins).

Now, with each new version the company introduces a couple of more or less interesting features, some effects and more or less innovative features, but (unfortunately I happen to use cubase and logic, as little as possible), there are MUCH more stable competitors. I can also stop writing and complaining, hoping that my message will pass: be careful because the "fame" of 11 is not as positive as that of 10.
Greetings to all, a really, really annoyed user

I noticed exactly the opposite since Live 11.

It has gotten veeery stable in comparison to Live 10.

Live 11 rock solid here too

Live 11 is rock solid too for me.
It was great on my mid-2012 macbook pro (only crashing because of CPU abuse), and great on my brand new M1 pro laptop (not only one crash since I installed it one month ago).

If it crashes on your system, I think it comes from your system, not Live.

I noticed too that Live is more sensitive to CPU abuse than before, and I've got impression that instead of just stuttering or clicking it crashes and becomes unstable.
But right now on my new M1pro machine it's rock solid.
I have very minor issues with some 3d party barely compatible plugins (Sonimus for exemple), but they are truly minor.

Calagan wrote: ↑

Mon Jun 13, 2022 8:46 pm

If it crashes on your system, I think it comes from your system, not Live.

If it were as you say it would not explain why at almost every beta release various "fixed a crash" notes appear.

pedronico wrote: ↑

Fri Jul 01, 2022 11:12 am

Calagan wrote: ↑

Mon Jun 13, 2022 8:46 pm

If it crashes on your system, I think it comes from your system, not Live.

If it were as you say it would not explain why at almost every beta release various "fixed a crash" notes appear.

The fixes are always very specific, and usually look like "when you do this very specific thing it was crashing before, but with this new version we fixed that".
For exemple, from the last Beta :
"Fixed a crash that occurred when opening the context menu of a clip in the Arrangement when different types of clips were also selected."

Personnaly, like I already said, Live was crashing on my system only when the CPU was being deeply abused (and it doesn't happen very often now since I upgraded my machine to the last M1 pro). It happened too that it was associated with the use of a certain plugin, but never like you describe, i.e. "VERY often in completely different situations (and with different gears/plugins)."

It happened to me in the past to have very unstable Live, and it was always an issue with my system, not Live : it could have been a faulty plugin I was using on every set, a bad way of setting my machine (for exemple, I had CPU peaks issues in the past because my iCloud account was open and trying to access internet while my wifi was turned off because I was on stage), bad driver with my audio interface... etc. etc.

I understand that it must be frustrating, but you need to test your system and try to figure out where is the issue. There's no point in saying that Live is a nightmare and all is the fault of Ableton, when it's not for a lot of people...

I used to spend hours and hours regularly trying to figure out where is the issue in my set : there's so much variables, so much third party plugins and M4L stuff, different hardware, chips and graphic cards, that you can't just say "Live doesn't work, they need to fix that".

I use Ableton with a lot of third party plugins and when sets get big I always get problems. I don’t trust it at all at this point. I’ve used it for years across multiple computers and operating systems.

They need plugin sandboxing like Bitwig, end of story.
I think a lot of people that don’t have problems use internal plugs and have smaller projects. People always blame the people with crashes for doing something wrong but it is actually Ableton that doesn’t have plugin sandboxing and has had multiple disastrous versions when it comes to stability. Fabfilter recently wrote to another poster that Ableton 11.1 isn’t very stable. I think I trust them more than the random people on here claiming it’s rock solid.

pedronico wrote: ↑

Thu Jun 09, 2022 3:45 pm

Tarekith wrote: ↑

Sat Jun 04, 2022 2:48 pm

Can you expand on what makes it crash when you go to the bathroom, maybe with some examples? I went to the bathroom twice yesterday and Live was still working when I got back.

Thank you for your answer. I also had a great-grandfather who smoked, he smoked until he was 95, so smoking is not bad for your health ...

Returning to more interesting and less careless speeches, the expression "fixed a crash that occurred when ..." is very frequent at every beta release, and those are just the fixed ones. Let's add that I happened to have EMPTY projects that crashed, continuous auto-scrollings to left or right, let's add that there is a world of forums where users go crazy complaining about continuous crashes ...

I use ableton, like many of you, for work, about 5-8 hours a day. I use it live to loop audio and check "things", in the studio to produce my own and other music, to make foley, to write columns sound, I teach it in a couple of schools in the area. This is not to bore you with my activities, but to make you understand that it is very difficult for me to say "ableton crashes when I do this precise thing", because it happens VERY often in completely different situations (and with different gears/plugins).

Now, with each new version the company introduces a couple of more or less interesting features, some effects and more or less innovative features, but (unfortunately I happen to use cubase and logic, as little as possible), there are MUCH more stable competitors. I can also stop writing and complaining, hoping that my message will pass: be careful because the "fame" of 11 is not as positive as that of 10.
Greetings to all, a really, really annoyed user

I use a few different DAWS, and i find Ableton about average in terms of stability.

About 14 years ago it was alot more stable, but that said about every other DAW I work with crashes as well. So im not sure if Ableton is severely behind the back but Im all for improvements in stability.

dolomick wrote: ↑

Tue Jul 12, 2022 11:57 pm

I use Ableton with a lot of third party plugins and when sets get big I always get problems. I don’t trust it at all at this point. I’ve used it for years across multiple computers and operating systems.

They need plugin sandboxing like Bitwig, end of story.
I think a lot of people that don’t have problems use internal plugs and have smaller projects. People always blame the people with crashes for doing something wrong but it is actually Ableton that doesn’t have plugin sandboxing and has had multiple disastrous versions when it comes to stability. Fabfilter recently wrote to another poster that Ableton 11.1 isn’t very stable. I think I trust them more than the random people on here claiming it’s rock solid.

Finally a user opinion different from "if ableton crashes it's your fault / you have to report crashes / it's a plugin fault", thank you.
I report a few sentences from the ableton website, which may respond better than me to the most common answer I was given - "If it crashes on your system, I think it comes from your system, not Live.":

- Fixed a crash when launching a clip via Key/MIDI mapping if the clip is in a track that's grouped at least twice, the outer group track is folded and the "Select on Launch" preference is on.
- Fixed a crash that could happen while moving tracks with Max for Live devices on it.
- Fixed a crash that could happen when zooming into a clip with a trackpad gesture.
- Fixed a crash that happened when a user requested Clip Warp Markers from a midi clip.
- Fixed a crash that could occur when applying extreme modulation to filters within various built-in devices.
- Fixed a crash that could occur when merging tracks from existing Sets that contained multichannel Max for Live devices.
- Fixed a crash that could occur when Live attempted to select a hidden track, under certain circumstances.
- Fixed a crash that occurred when loading a certain clip.
- Fixed a crash when running the "Convert Melody to New MIDI Track" command on a specific sample on Windows.
- Fixed a crash that could occur when freezing a track after recording, under certain circumstances.
- Fixed a crash that could occur when dragging an empty frozen MIDI clip to an audio track.
- Fixed a crash that occurred when inserting a take lane.
- Fixed a crash that could occur when clicking in a track's main lane after track content had been selected during recording, under certain circumstances.
- Fixed a crash that could occur when restoring the Arrangement View's zoom state using the "Z" keyboard shortcut after deleting a take lane.
- Fixed a crash that could occur when feeding notes into the Scale device that were not mapped to a target pitch in the matrix.
- Fixed a crash when scrolling in the clip detail editor with the mouse button held down.
- Fixed a crash that occurred when right-clicking on a track header to rename a track, or trying to edit the track's info text via the context menu, when a second Live window was open on Windows.
- Fixed a crash that occurred when clicking on a parameter in Live and adjusting the same parameter using an encoder on Push at the same time.
- Fixed crashes and error messages pertaining to corrupt documents that occurred when loading some Live Sets.
- Fixed crashes that occurred after deleting a device while a take lane clip has an envelope for that device.
- Fixed document corruption and subsequent possible crashes or other issues when restoring a Set after a crash under certain circumstances.
- Fixed a crash that occurred when freezing a track in a Live Set that contained an external MIDI instrument that was routing MIDI to a device in the Master track.
- Fixed a crash that could occur when undoing in a Set that had previously been restored after another crash.
- Fixed a crash that occurred when renaming a take lane inside of a linked track and then pressing Tab.
- Fixed a crash that occurred in certain scenarios if two instances of Live were running at the same time.
- Fixed a crash that occurred when pressing the [Space] or [Tab] key after clicking on Track Status Display in Session View if a clip in Arrangement View was being played.
- Fixed a crash that occurred if all return/delay tracks were deleted and then a track containing a take lane was duplicated and moved. Live would crash if undo was used twice after duplicating and moving the track.
- Fixed a crash that occurred when deleting a track while zooming in/out of Arrangement View using a trackpad pinch gesture.
- Fixed a crash that occurred when opening a Live Set that contained a plug-in with sidechain automation/modulation that could not be loaded.
- Fixed a crash caused by some VST3 plug-ins with certain undesignated MIDI CC mapping parameters.
- Fixed a crash caused by loading multiple instances of certain VST3 plug-ins when Live’s transport was running.
- Fixed a crash that occurred when going to “Save Set as Template” from the File menu, then typing the name of the set, and finally pressing the [Escape] key twice to cancel the process.
- Fixed a crash that occurred if non-supported MPE data (e.g. MIDI CCs other than Pitch, Slide, or Pressure) was sent to a Sampler/Simpler device.
- Fixed a crash that occurred when clicking on a parameter in Live and adjusting the same parameter using an encoder on Push at the same time.
- Fixed a crash that occurred if all return/delay tracks were deleted and then a track containing a take lane was duplicated and moved. Live would crash if undo was selected twice after duplicating and moving the track.
- Fixed a crash caused by pressing the Reverse button in multi-clip editing mode if the time selection did not match the time range of the selected notes.
- Fixed a crash that occurred when expanding a track with devices in a Live Set that was added to Collections.
- Fixed a crash caused by drawing MIDI notes in the lowest key track of the MIDI editor.
- Fixed a crash that occurred if Live couldn’t create or access a database at start time.
- Fixed a crash caused by copying and pasting a device from the browser into a Drum Rack’s return chain in the Session Mixer under certain conditions.
- Fixed a crash caused by clicking in a certain area of the Sample Editor when editing unwarped audio clips in Clip View.
- Fixed a crash that occurred if a user tried to change the scale of a Live Set from Push while having the Focus mode in multi-clip editing on without a clip selected.
- Fixed a crash caused by certain plug-in parameters if they no longer existed in a newer version of the plug-in. Plug-in parameters that are no longer available will be displayed as deactivated.
- Fixed a crash caused by pasting a track in Arrangement View immediately after scrolling with a mouse wheel or trackpad.
- Fixed a crash that occurred when deleting the last scene in Group Tracks under certain circumstances.
- Fixed a crash caused by dragging a devices chain that contained certain plug-in devices from Live’s browser onto a track.
- Fixed a crash that occurred when drawing notes in adjacent clips in Arrangement View in certain scenarios.
- Fixed a crash on Windows that occurred if a dialog window opened while a context menu was also visible.
- Fixed a crash that occurred when frequently switching the Max for Live Note Delay device on and off in between note on and off messages.
- Fixed a crash that occurred when unfolding Demo Song tracks from certain Live Packs in the browser.
- Fixed a crash that sometimes occurred when selecting tracks that contained missing VST2 plug-ins.
- Fixed a crash that happened when adding a preset of an unavailable plug-in to the end of a device chain.
- Fixed a crash caused by adding MIDI Effect Racks onto MIDI tracks that were routed to one another but contained no instruments in their device chains.
- Fixed a crash that occurred when opening Flux:: VST2 plug-ins.
- Fixed a crash caused by adding certain plug-ins (such as Omnisphere) to a track and then undoing the action. Live would also sometimes crash when trying to re-open the same Live Set after the initial crash.
- Fixed a crash that occurred when loading certain Live Sets containing more than 1,000 tracks.
- Fixed a potential crash when opening old Live Sets that contained devices that have since been removed from Live.
- Fixed a crash that occurred when using the header area of a time selection to select time in a MIDI clip when in the Expression tab.
- Fixed a crash that occurred when loading a Live Set with plug-in automation on the Master track, or on a return or group track.
- Live no longer hangs or crashes in certain scenarios when the Grammarly macOS app is concurrently running.
- Fixed a crash that would occur when VST plug-ins requested the dedicated GPU, or when the user changed the macOS Battery "Automatic graphic switching” preference.
- Fixed a crash that occurred when opening Live Sets containing VST plug-ins with a selected preset that was different from the first option in the preset bank.
- Fixed a crash that occurred when opening the context menu of a clip in the Arrangement when different types of clips were also selected.
- Fixed a crash when loading a corrupt Live Set containing non-unique Pointee IDs. Live now recognizes if the set is corrupt and displays a corresponding error message. Users can reach out to Support to see if their sets can be repaired.
- Fixed a crash that occurred when restoring a Live Set containing an AUv3 plug-in with automated parameters in a return track.
- Fixed a potential crash on Windows that occurred when closing Live right before the program tried to install default Packs.
- Fixed a crash that occurred during playback when switching from Arrangement to Session View in Live while in Clip and Note mode on Push.
- Fixed a crash that occurred when plug-in pop-up dialog boxes appeared as a plug-in or preset was being loaded.
- Fixed a crash on macOS that occurred when closing a video window in fullscreen mode by double-clicking on the window.
- Fixed a crash on macOS that occurred if a Live Set had only one video clip in it, by briefly closing the video window when moving the clip around. Now when moving a single video clip around, the video window remains open at its current position and size.
- Fixed a crash that sometimes occurred when loading a plug-in that could not instantiate its presets.
Improved Live's performance when many clips are selected or deselected.
- Fixed a crash that occurred when dragging and dropping another Live Set with Group Tracks into Session View as a new scene in certain circumstances.
- Fixes a crash during freeze or render.
- Fixes a crash on Command + Key Up/Down with selected main automation lane.
- Fixes a crash when deleting or moving a track that contains a video clip in the arrangement on Windows.
- No more crashes when navigating highlighted return tracks with the arrow keys.
- Fixes a crash that could occur when making a time selection while editing expression envelopes.
- Fixes a crash where pressing a high note on the computer MIDI keyboard would crash when the keyboard octave was set to C8.
- jsliveapi: eliminate crash when there's no 'this' for operations
- live.banks: fixed crash when adding a new bank with index 1 when banks are empty
- live.banks: fixed crash with certain 'edit' messages
- live.banks: fixed crashing with bad input
- Help patchers: fixed crash clicking '?' menu in Live
- Fixed a bug that could cause a crash when using MPE data with MIDI Effect Racks.
- Previously, Live would crash when loading a one-sample length file into the Hybrid Reverb device and adjusting the Size parameter.
- In the unlikely event that an extremely high amount of MPE control change messages come in, Live will no longer crash, and all notes will be stopped.
- Previously, Live's crash recovery would silently fail if the undo history contained an empty band file (e.g. after a power outage).
- Fixed a bug that could cause a crash when repeatedly adding and removing notes from a held chord when using the Arpeggiator device with the Hold parameter active.
- Fixed document corruption and subsequent possible crashes or other issues when restoring a Set after a crash under certain circumstances.
- Fix a crash when unfolding a nested group track with a selected clip in it.
- Previously, the Operator device could crash or calculate inaccurate frequencies when its Fixed Mode and Spread parameters were enabled.
- Accessing a dict that is too large from Max via Javascript or when the device is open for editing no longer crashes but instead prints an error.
- No more crashes when navigating highlighted return tracks with the arrow keys.
- Fonts: fixed crash on startup when font doesn't have a display name or full name
- live.banks: fixed crash when adding a new bank with index 1 when banks are empty
- Max for Live: fixed crash when deleting some devices
- Previously, some menu commands would not work correctly, or could even crash, when switching between note editing and per-note expression editing.
- This also fixed crashes that could occur when pasting, moving or nudging hidden linked take lane clips.
- Fix that Live would crash when stopping a recording after linking tracks while they are recording.
- Fixed: renaming in the browser might lead to a crash
- Fixed: copying folder or files from project to project might crash
- Fixed: instantiating a plugin with special characters in the plugin name might crash
- Fixed a bug where extracting a groove and then saving in the groove pool would make Live crash.
- Fixed a bug where Live crashed when pressing CMD/CTRL+A in MIDI Editor after first clicking in slide/pressure lane (Note Expressions).
- Live does not crash anymore with a beatseeker assert.
- Fixes a bug where dragging a groove onto either the groove box or the clip detail view caused a crash when content editing was disabled (e.g. because not all MIDI clips are looped or because not all audio clips have the same length and set of warp markers).
- On macOS, Live does not crash in rare circumstances when audio interfaces change.
- Fixes a rare crash caused by Live trying to show the user mathematically impossible colors.
- When closing Live, it does not crash anymore in rare circumstances.
- Fixed a bug where the Indexer crashes on macOS 10.15.
- Fixed a bug where the Live index quits unexpectedly.
- Fix that dragging & dropping clips including clips from a folded group track could crash in certain cases.
- Using the jump follow action to jump to a slot with no stop button will no longer crash and will just do nothing.
- Fixes some crashes related to (nested) group tracks.
- Live no longer crashes when right-clicking on a Send control in Arrangement view when that Send is controlled by Max (e.g. LFO).
- Fix that Live would crash when a user clicks on the link button on an arrangement track header and some linked tracks are contained in a folded group track.
- Users will no longer experience a fatal program crash when loading a True Stereo IR where one of the files is mono.
- Fixed a reproducible crash when pressing (CMD + A) in Pressure lane (Note Expressions)

This is hilarious, I was literally just coming to make the exact same type of post. How telling is it that there's already one here waiting. I've said it a dozen times, they straight up could have taken almost everything that came with Live 11 and thrown it in the fucking trashcan. All those bells and whistles don't mean anything if you don't have a stable DAW to work in. Ableton is RIDDLED with crashes, lag issues, and poor optimization that causes absurd CPU usage that make the DAW so miserable and borderline unbearable to even use. And that's not even getting into all the other quality of life features that are missing that other DAWs have had for years. And they are well aware of it too. Ableton cost way too much to be this shit. Like there's no other way to put it. Had I not already invested so much into this Ableton I'd have already been gone, but I've pretty much reached a breaking point where enough is enough and I'm trying to figure out where to move to. And I've spoken to many who already have, at least in the professional sphere. It's so sad and frustrating to see this DAW in this state. Like aside from the stability, there's just so much important shit missing that you have no choice but to use multiple DAWs anyway. But yeah, anyways, I will not be dropping a single cent more into this DAW until they fix their shit, and really wish others would do the same, because this is unacceptable. It is absurd that all I want from Ableton Live, is for it to just work...