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Radiapathy posted:I gotta admit, of the "Key Features" listed that you don't get in Intro the only one that means anything to me is Max4Live, and I haven't even used it yet. I just know I'm going to make a device for it at some point down the road. I don't use any of the other stuff. Even if you never crack open the edit window yourself, there are all kinds of cool and useful M4L devices on maxforlive.com and Ableton's own download section. Radiapathy posted:Only thing that could really hurt might be the track limitation. Intro's also not that great if you mostly work with external instruments. If you're mostly a plugins user, the I/O limitations don't mean much. Yeah, again, the 2in/2out limit means you can't do much with outboard gear, but if you're just using plugins it's not a big deal.
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Apr 25, 2013 07:48
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Rkelly posted:I thought intro made you use 4 or less vsts total or some poo poo and like only 2 return tracks. Only two aux sends, but no limits on VSTs. https://www.ableton.com/en/live/feature-comparison/
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May 1, 2013 06:52
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WAFFLEHOUND posted:This is probably not the right thread for this, how many people use a Mac vs. a PC to run Live, specifically with regards to external hardware sequencing? I've been using a Macbook for years and I'm kind of tempted to build my first desktop since 2007 or so and I'm not sure if I should switch my production environment over to it. I'm mostly concerned with stability, but also I want to make sure that transferring over licenses would be easy (Cubase, Live, Komplete, plus a few VSTs which obviously will be varying degrees of easy/hard) as well as how hard it would be to jump between a PC and Mac environment. Live + Komplete were pretty effortless to switch platforms and most everything else these days is too (and most licenses let you install on on 2 or 3 machines as long as you're not using them simultaneously). Stability is decidedly better under MacOS in my experience. If you're shopping for a new box to integrate with hardware synths, you should consider rack mounting a Mac Mini. h_double fucked around with this message at 00:51 on May 22, 2013 |
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May 22, 2013 00:32
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Oldstench posted:Counterpoint: I've can count how many times Live has crashed on one hand on Windows 7. Live itself was really stable for me under Windows, but there were a handful of plugins that gave me problems. Amplitube + Live was basically unusable for me on Windows (though it worked fine in Reaper) and Kontakt was pretty iffy as well.
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May 22, 2013 03:28
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In MacOS, all plugins go in /Library/Audio/Plug-Ins (with subdirectories for AU, VST, etc., and you can create your own folders inside those if you want). It's not a major difference, but it's nice having that specified by the OS so there's never any question as to what goes where.
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Jun 1, 2013 04:16
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The best thing to do is to save a new project when you start a new track, so everything (samples etc.) will be consolidated under that project folder, then you can save different versions/mixes/etc. as .als files within that project.
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Jun 8, 2013 22:08
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The pHo posted:I'm curious as to whether people instinctively like Ableton's interface on first use, if it's something they grow to love or something they just put up with. Mac wise, it's the little things like lack of using OSX's fullscreen mode, despite v9 coming out since Mountain Lion, that give me the sense of dread I get when using Adobe products that feel like ports. I'm hoping it'll go away, but that and feeling like it was designed by someone who loves Star Trek a bit much isn't a great first impression. I loaded Logic 9 side by side with it, and ignoring the fact that it's a totally different approach to making music, Logic is just so much cleaner looking. Ableton looks horribly dated next to it. I liked Live's UI pretty well when I first starting using it (Live 4 or 5) and I really like the fact it's barely changed since then. Consistency is a good thing, and I like that the focus is workflow and taking best advantage of screen real estate. I agree that text rendering could be a little better, but I do like that the Mac and Windows versions of the app are basically pixel-identical. Again, consistency contributes to a smooth workflow. (You can also change the text size by any percentage in the preferences). Live has always had a full screen mode btw (F11 toggles it), you do lose the menubar at the top but it's nice for live performances and whatnot.
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Jun 25, 2013 06:38
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The pHo posted:(Another example of silly things - the Live Lessons view can only be turned off from the View menu, virtually everything else that is removable from the default view has an icon or a keyboard shortcut to do it, yet the thing people will want to get rid of the fastest is hidden away in a menu toggle? That's not good.) Help View can be turned off with a big prominent X button at the top of the help window. Most anybody who uses Live is going to turn it off within a day or two and never turn it back on, though it can readily be turned back on from either the View or Help menu. Why do I want an extra icon that I would literally never use? vvvvv well said h_double fucked around with this message at 19:54 on Jun 25, 2013 |
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Jun 25, 2013 19:07
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Also Bitwig isn't going to use Cocoa either, they've already said it's designed to run the exact same code/UI on Mac/Windows/Linux (the only difference is the underlying audio VM they're developing).
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Jun 25, 2013 20:56
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Radiapathy posted:My only REAL complaint with SampleRobot is that when you use the "virtual cable" to route audio it's only 16-bit-depth, and this resulted in a few quality problems with some quiet samples. This is not something where you can ride the volumes during recording. So you just have to set it so you don't clip when recording the loudest sounds and hope the quiet ones come through with low enough noise that they're usable. Do you need to record directly into SampleRobot or can you import the samples from someplace else? Can you stick a compressor somewhere in the signal path (before or after SR) to even out the levels? Maybe a limiter directly before SR so you don't clip?
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Aug 4, 2013 23:15
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Sharzak posted:I'm trying to sample vocals for the very first time but there are instruments 'underneath,' or being played at the same time. Is there a way to somehow eliminate the other instruments so I'm left with just vocals in Ableton? I've owned the program for about a weekend and don't really know what I'm doing yet. To expound a bit on what Radiapathy said, the theory behind "vocal removers" relies on the fact that most of the time, the vocal track is the only thing in a song which will be exactly at the center of the stereo field, other instruments will typically be panned some amount to the left or right. Sooo, in theory you can separate the left/right channels, reverse the phase of one side (so that an individual sample frame that is +1 on one channel becomes -1) and this lets you isolate those parts of the signal which are exactly centered (I believe this is basically how mid/side processing works). It's far from exact though, because there's a lot going on in a busy mix, and for instance the kick drum / snare / bassline are usually kept at the center of the stereo field too. Also if you are going to try this kind of mid/side trickery, it's much better to use a lossless source (like a CD) rather than an mp3, because mp3 compression "blurs" the stereo field some in a way which basically makes m/s processing almost impossible. Aggressive EQ is usually a big part of isolating vocals, and planning to use the samples in a way where they will blend in and the background noise from the original source won't stand out. Really it's something you have to approach on a case by case basis, and there's not really a magic recipe other than "find an acapella of the original song".
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Aug 5, 2013 00:51
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echinopsis posted:So this question is proving elusive to answer. You can have the clip send a MIDI Program Change message. If you look in the Notes panel of the Clip view (below the "Orig. BPM" there are selectors for bank / sub-bank / program. Exactly how these are interpreted depends on the individual instrument. A more universal way is to create an Instrument Rack on the track with multiple instances of the instrument. Say you had two patches you wanted to switch between, "clean bass" and "dirty bass". Create a fresh Instrument Rack, click the "Show/Hide Chain List" button, right click -> Create Chain x2. Click the chain select button at the top and set the chain regions something like such:  That way you can just automate the chain select control (you can map it to a button or knob) to switch back and forth between the patches. Naturally more instruments running = more CPU load, but this is often a better solution, since loading patches on the fly can sometimes be glitchy or hiccup-y (especially if the patch has to load something like samples or wavetables etc.)
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Aug 12, 2013 00:45
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Popcorn posted:I don't know how we'd handle tempo though - we want to be playing to a drum machine pattern or whatever sometimes. Do we have to manually change the tempo on the project between songs or is there some way to bake that into the clip when it's triggered? Each scene (horizontal row in session view) can have its own tempo (and time signature) when you trigger the scene. Right click on the scene name and you'll see the option to change it. renderful posted:That really depends on the machine. On my 4 core i7 Macbook Pro Retina, I can play 16-24 simultaneous tracks with 1 instrument and 4+ effects each with no problem. Even with many of the plugins using 4x oversampling, it's fine. Don't forget about using send/return effects when it makes sense. That is, rather than having a separate tap delay or room reverb (or flanger or whatever) on each individual channel, just have one room reverb on a return track and mix in varying amounts of send from individual channels (read about sends/returns in the Live manual or look up some tutorials if you're not familiar with this way of working). Similarly, it can make good sense to combine tracks together into Groups (aka submixes or busses). Just highlight a bunch of tracks and CTRL-G/CMD-G to bundle them together. That way you might have 8-10+ drum channels but can put a touch of EQ or compression over the whole drum mix by putting effects on the parent Group track. Finally, remember you don't have to record effects live, it is often more sensible to add them in later. Also remember there is always a tradeoff between latency and CPU load. That is to say, you can record your takes with a small number of realtime-monitored effects, then when you mix/arrange the song, turn up the audio buffer size to some arbitrarily large number (512 or 1024 samples or whatever) -- the latency will be much higher, but you'll be able to run more CPU-hungry plugins without your system choking.
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Oct 21, 2013 09:19
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Knofle posted:I'm considering buying Ableton Live, but I'm unsure of what version to buy. I feel like "Standard" is pretty much a given, provided how many effects that I feel are essential are in this pack. Suite is probably worth it just for Max For Live. There are a ton of useful M4L devices you can download at http://maxforlive.com/ even if you don't get under the hood and build your own. It might not be as useful for everybody, but for me M4L felt like a kind of missing link to fulfill Live's full potential, to hack together things I couldn't quite do with the core Live functions. I haven't tried the orchestral instruments that come with Suite, though I really like Ableton Sampler a lot. It's super easy to use and very light CPU load. I use Kontakt too, which is an amazing and sophisticated sampler, but can also be a bit of a hog. If I'm making my own sampled instrument or downloading a sample library that's available in multiple format, I definitely prefer to use Sampler when I can.
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Oct 24, 2013 06:57
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j.peeba posted:Ah, good point. Can't think of any clean ways to send from instrument racks... It's of course possible to set up an audio track that gets its signal from one of the chains and sends it but that kinda defeats the purpose of using an instrument rack in the first place. Another ugly workaround is to place a compressor into the return track and point the compressor's sidechain to the chain you need and toggle on sidechain listening. I'm pretty sure this is not possible, that one of the limitations of M4L is that a device is limited to a single stereo pair in/out of Live. The only workaround for this I can think of is that if you have a full Max/MSP license, you should be able to create additional audio outs which would be handled by the Max audio drivers. It might then be possible to use your audio interface's internal mixer routing, or something like JACK or Soundflower*, to capture the Max audio, route it back into another Live track, and send it to a send effect from there. I don't have a full Max license so I can't test this myself. (* standard disclaimer that lots of folks have reported glitchiness with Soundflower and is probably not recommended for use in a live / mission critical environment).
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Oct 31, 2013 00:18
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BCR2000 works great with Live and is built like a tank. The only minor complaint I have about the BCR2000 is that it needs its own separate AC power, apart from that it's a great controller if you need a ton of knobs.
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Nov 13, 2013 21:04
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I'm pretty sure it has automap similar to the Novation controllers but honestly I always used it with manual mappings. There's a Yahoo Group for BCF/BCR-2000 users, you might want to try there if you have specific questions, but I think the general idea is that the automap assigns 8 of the knobs to the first 8 params of the currently selected track/plugin.
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Nov 14, 2013 04:49
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ejstheman posted:Does anybody know how to map aftertouch on either keyboards or pads like a control change? It seems like Ableton treats it as a completely different thing. You might be able to route your MIDI through something like MIDIPipe (OSX) or MIDI OX (Windows); I'm pretty certain there's no way to do natively in Live.
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Nov 15, 2013 04:44
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renderful posted:For a much more expensive set of options, but also more adaptive and geared towards programming(in the sense of writing code): Max/MSP and Reaktor could certainly do what you'd like as well as all kinds of other things(like allow you to effect or generate audio programmatically). The only (minor) drawback is, Max For Live and Reaktor both can only process info after it's passed through Live's API, and Live only recognizes channel aftertouch, not individual key aftertouch. But for converting to a CC, that's probably not a problem. Yet another option would be write a Pure Data patch to process MIDI (Pd is roughly a freeware equivalent to Max/MSP). On Windows, you'd still need some kind of MIDI routing utility to get the MIDI in & out of Live; on OSX you could just route the MIDI through an IAC driver (in Audio/MIDI setup, this is a built-in feature of OSX). ejstheman posted:Does/can Reaktor use scripts/modules of some sort? I was kind of bummed to find out that Max was visual-only. I much prefer typing my programs, personally. Have a look at ChucK (which, again, would require some kind of MIDI routing). h_double fucked around with this message at 03:48 on Nov 17, 2013 |
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Nov 17, 2013 03:45
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Mister Speaker posted:Another Max/APC40 question for you guys. I've got a knob on my APC mapped to the master tempo, but it doesn't control it finely enough - I can never seem to hit exactly X.00BPM, it's always a little off either way no matter how much I restrict the parameter range in the MIDI mappings. Is there (or is it possible to make) a Max patch, for example, that could allow finer (decimal-place) adjustment when the shift key is held down? Or have I just run into a limitation of MIDI's 128 discrete values? I'm not familiar with the APC40, but a quick google suggests that yeah it might be a hardware limitation, that the APC knobs can only transmit 128 values. The internal Live API, on the other hand, is definitely capable of finer resolution. I don't think it's possible to poll the shift key via M4L or the Live API, but you could probably make an M4L patch which uses some other key (on the keyboard or an APC button) as a toggle switch between course/fine resolution, or as an "adjust to the nearest integer when enabled" toggle. Mister Speaker posted:I've said it before, but what would be really cool is a nice platter/pitchfader controller that can bend the master tempo in Live. I'm pretty sure I've done this with the platters on my Vestax VCI-100 DJ controller (the original model, not the MkII), though it's been a while. I see them show up used on Craigslist pretty often.
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Jan 22, 2014 08:58
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Mister Speaker posted:Did you need to use Max for this, or did you just MIDI map your platter to the nudge +/- controls? I'm Hell of curious about this. I just had a quick look, and confirmed that rotating left/right on the platter produces a stream of MIDI notes (A#1 and B1 respectively on the left platter) which can be easily mapped to the +/- nudge controls. If you wanted to actually change the tempo setting with the platter, I think you'd need a (fairly simple) M4L patch.
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Jan 24, 2014 03:36
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Kilmers Elbow posted:
Unfortunately, Live doesn't really have any concept of a VST MIDI effect; if you put a MIDI VST onto a MIDI track, Live will convert it to a hybrid/instrument track which does not have a "MIDI To" routing. They way you are doing it is the "correct" way as far as I know, which is mildly clunky but works fine. You can always hide the extra MIDI tracks folded up in a track group (Ctrl-G), and save the config as a template if it's something you're going to use a lot.
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Oct 10, 2015 02:22
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Popcorn posted:I'm planning to buy my first Mac, mainly for Ableton/music stuff, and I'm looking at my options. Nah I don't think the extra CPU would make a huge difference. On a project of any size you're going to be freezing stuff anyways, you're unlikely to need more than a couple of live tracks of Guitar Rig at a time. Also I don't remember GR being a super big CPU hog, GR 4 isn't at least. You can get 16GB of good quality 3rd party Macbook RAM for about $80, and it's a 15 minute upgrade with a single screwdriver (you literally just unscrew the bottom lid of the Macbook and the RAM slots are right there).
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Jan 17, 2016 04:37
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thethuthinnang posted:Macbook Pros(all of them are Retina now) have not had user serviceable RAM for years now. You've gotta buy all of your RAM up front, it is soldered to the board. Ah yikes didn't know they'd done that to the Retina MBPs, thanks for the correction.
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Jan 19, 2016 02:40
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Has anybody used an Akai APC Key 25? Wondering about overall impressions and especially curious about how the Live integration works. How easy is it, for example, to jump to a different track and have the knobs smart mapped to a device on that track? How are the keys? I mostly want something for sitting on the couch and noodling with basslines, or to throw in my DJ bag for laptop jams.
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Jan 30, 2016 17:07
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MrSargent posted:I'm using the free version of Kontakt and just found an instrument called "Funk Bass" that I used in the VST. I don't see any option for sustain in the instrument rack but this is my first time using Kontakt so I'm probably noobing it up. It's hard to believe that something as simple as emulating a slide on a bass could be so problematic. Click on the "Options" tab at the bottom of the patch, below the woodgrain. On the Options page, turn the PB (pitch bend) RANGE DOWN knob to the left and the the PB RANGE UP knob to the right. This lets you bend up and down with the pitch bend wheel, but it'll sound more like a string bend or tremolo (whammy bar) dive than a slide. The thing about guitar/bass/etc. (or most any real world instrument) is that there is a lot of possible playing technique, fingerstyle vs picked vs funk slaps etc., there's not really a way to capture all of that other than to sample the instrument a bunch of different ways. MrSargent posted:On another bass note, I am looking for a technique to get the sub bass to throb a little bit. I feel like no matter what I do in the operator with Sin waves, it comes out too smooth. Yes I realize that's what a sin wave does but was led to believe that for sub bass, you should only use sin waves. Maybe detune one oscillator by ~7 cents or so?
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Feb 3, 2016 22:37
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MJP posted:I took a shot at Live about a year or so ago, simultaneous to try to learn basic production, music theory, and piano. Doing all this at once was a mistake, although now I think I understand the theory bits and pieces I know to progress into production. Ableton Live Power! is a good beyond-the-manual type reference book.
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Mar 29, 2016 00:11
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MrSargent posted:This helped quite a bit! There was also a distinct popping sound when the sample loops that I couldn't get out by adjusting the attack/decay/sustain but was able to EQ it out while still having a full sound. Make sure you zoom in and put your sample loop points on zero crossings (i.e. when the waveform is crossing the middle line in between wave cycles). That's probably what's causing the popping.
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Jun 16, 2016 15:07
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I'm set up so that Ableton is routed to my monitors, other apps to go desktop speakers. When I want to demo something, I render the mix to wav in an "exports" directory, then use Foobar/Cog to listen. I use command line LAME to convert to mp3 so I keep a terminal / cmd window open and "lame --alt-preset extreme test.wav" when needed.
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Jul 6, 2016 12:41
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