Ableton Live 11
ableton.com
ableton.com
In other fields of software development instead we dumb everything down to the lowest denominator, and power users can't be at their most productive because we're scared of complexity and build around the casual, computer illiterate user.
Imagine what Ableton would look like if they were only optimising for the user that wants to put a couple of pre-made loops together and call it a song.
It would look a lot like FL Studio, which caters more towards that end of the market.
GarageBand on the other hand...
I'd say the opposite: Ableton is more focused and simpler, streamlining lots of stuff (live VSTs) without being less powerful. Kinda Apple-ish in a way.
I disagree that software has a tendency to dumb everything down to the lowest common denominator, simplifying and automating things is the purpose of software in the first place, but there's a huge amount of software out there that is as powerful as it needs to be. To name a few examples: Blender, DaVinci Resolve, almost everything Adobe makes, and JetBrain's IDEs.
(This is only tangentially relevant to this thread, but the iOS App Store doesn't allow extensions or scriptable apps, and I believe those rules will single-handedly assure iPad only ever has marginal impact on creative fields until those rules are removed.)
1: https://blog.robenkleene.com/2019/08/07/apples-app-stores-ha...
I think the "no windows" and sandboxed apps/files paradigms are very limiting for pro work.
And you really need lots of customisable keyboard shortcuts for most pro work, most iOS apps are extremely lacking in this department.
I work primarily with Logic (been using it for 20 years) but the form factor of an iPad is pretty nice - it fits perfectly on music stands and laptops don't. If Macbook screens would tilt 180 degrees, all the way flat, you might be able to use them on music stands too - but they don't.
If you are both playing and recording a real instrument at the same time, having the iPad on the the piano/music stand in front of you is very useful. Many people use Logic Remote on iPad on the stand, and Logic on MBP for actual recording at the same time. But not sure why you should need two devices.
Touch screen is nice for some things too, like mixing or quickly toggling things.
AUv3 plugins are meant to be able to run on both MacOS and iOS in the near future (this has caused some concern in the plugin dev community, because of different pricing models). Just in iOS they are apps you install from the app store, because everything that executes code needs to be a sandboxed app in iOS.
In any case, I am still waiting for Logic Pro or Ableton to be ported to the iPad.
2)The form factor of an iPad makes more sense in my music setup, in that I don’t need to haul podium or standing desk on stage as well as my instruments.
3. In producing tracks, most of my time is spent twiddling knobs, adjusting levels, etc, rather than dealing with external audio interfaces or doing fine grained, fiddly things with a mouse. But now iOS supports a mouse, so I could even do that...
For instance, an iPad would be a great place to experiment and get an idea down, and then you could bring the idea to your other, more professionally oriented tools.
Actually I was impressed with what people do in GarageBand on ios. Unfortunately I haven't found anything comparable for Android. Only ridiculous $20/month apps.
Google would have to rip the heart out of Android and fix it for real time programming properly like OS X did way back in like 10.2?.
However, don't get me wrong, iOS isn't great--it's just at least possible. The fact that you can't actually send a defined packet (just a bag of bytes and you don't know how many until the call--"HAH! HAH! You device decided to prioritize something in the OS and your latency just quadrupled--sucks to be you.") to the Audio system on iOS is infuriating.
However, at least it's possible on iOS. On Android, not so much.
Didn't know. Looks like I'm little closer to replacing my android with iphone
There’s a large ecosystem of iOS music making apps and the iPad is actually an excellent interface for some applications, e.g. a kaoss pad.
For instance have a look at what Korg and Moog have available in the app store. Or check out drambo.
When Lightroom moved from v6 (iirc) to Creative Cloud a stunning amount of functionality seems to have been lost for the sake of making it idiot friendly.
I spent so many hours playing with that thing. Don't get me wrong, I still do, but now I have to make all those tweaks manually instead of rolling the dice and hoping for a gem. Sadly, I don't find nearly as many gems as I used to when I was able to roll the dice.
A couple of results came up, one is an official PDF about scripting AE CS6, the other a website about AE scripting. I assume most of the stuff from the AE CS6 PDF applies to AE CC as well.
https://blogs.adobe.com/wp-content/blogs.dir/48/files/2012/0...
From the PDF:
> When you use Adobe After Effects, you create projects, compositions, and render queue items along with all of the elements that they contain: footage, images, solids, layers, masks, effects, and properties. Each of these items, in scripting terms, is an object. This guide describes the ExtendScript objects that have been defined for After Effects projects.
I think it might be worthwhile to look into whether scripting might be used in order to randomize effects and effect parameters. My immediate guess would be that yes it would be possible. I didn't look into it closely, and if it turns out to be a dead end then I apologise for that but anyways I figured I might mention this in case it might be useful to you. Also, of course since I didn't look into it closely I can not make any guesses as to how much work it would take to get the type of functionality that you want.
FLS doesn't have a max for live equivalent, but I'd guess 90% of people don't use MFL. The edison recording workflow is hot trash IMO, or else I'd pretty readily move back to FL.
I really really enjoy using Ableton and have stuck with it for years now, but one of the first things that struck me once I swapped from FL Studio was how stupid it was that Ableton's piano roll lacked this fairly basic yet crucial tool..
CAD, rendering/animation, high end photo editing, and a lot of other higher end, professional software are script-able, provide libraries and APIs, and work closely with their end-users to give them what they want.
Photoshop is scriptable/extendable and Lightroom has the more intuitive GUI. Apple started the Lightroom paradigm with Aperture, which was kind of the GarageBand of photo editing softwares until Lightroom caught up with the ease of use.
I think with virtually any software out there, there are tools that cater to both audiences.
Same for their graphical programming thing ("grid" I think). A nice hybrid between skeumorphic and digital with e.g. stylized wires hanging down in gravity, but becoming transparent when crossing components.
Also super nice that most "visualizations" are also interactive (see the direct manipulation of the envelope at the end of the following vid)
Ableton is a beast, I haven't used it as much, but I know.
Can someone explain to me the point of a GUI knob?
Is it just the analogy to physical knobs on mixers that makes people comfortable with them in GUIs?
This skeuomorphism isn't without cause.
You could also ask users to just type in a number, but that interrupts the flow and pushes some other data out of their short-term memory. Composers and audio engineers would probably prefer to keep that part of their brain free to focus on other things.
Sliders can also be laid out in an array (as on a mixing console) to give at a glance a graphical representation of relative levels. Another example is on the classic "two turntable" DJ mixing setup where a horizontally-oriented slider is used to control the balance between left and right.
Knobs' advantage is they are particularly space-efficient.
So you tend to see sliders used for the primary controls in situations where its useful to compare them side-by-side, and everything else as a knob.
Virtual knobs (and sliders) invite experimentation where a numeric control or text box doesn’t (so much). You can play with them. The dragging action gives you a little bit of tactile feedback.
Just as a file isn't only a file, but an entity in a filesystem, a sound is not just a sound, but an entity in a sound environment.
The whole point of physical knobs is to leverage a person's thumb and forefinger (or tennis muscle if it's a huge knob) to twist precisely and efficiently to a desired position. With the two most popular digital input devices that torque doesn't exist-- you can't "twist" a mouse or tweak a touchscreen to change the position of a knob.
At least in most of the audio GUIs I've seen that use knobs, the author seems to have no idea that their skeuomorphic interface actually degrades interactivity. E.g., if they had simply used a slider the user could swipe their finger efficiently to quickly change several sliders in a row.
Even worse-- with a knob you have a similar "90-degree ambiguity" problem as with touchpad scrolling. Do you use dx, dy, or some other algo to choose the relationship between touch/drag and knob rotation?
Even worst, some devs try to "bring the torque back" by coupling the knob movement to the distance of the mouse from the center of the knob. I really wish someone would feed this awful behavior back into the physical world, and ship a mixing board with knobs that only update their value if you twist them using an included set of "knob tongs" :)
more words: scroll wheel with disengagable "clutch"
I don’t see the problem? If you give me a numeric input that doesn’t allow me to drag or swipe to change values then I’ll swiftly be looking for a different app.
Sure, you could map a knob to a slider or anything really, but it makes the interaction easier
Typing is usually out of the question since you need to do it by ear. Some controls obviously have numberic input in combination with the knobs, for extra flexibility (e.g. if you made some notes with settings and just want to enter them).
Many of the values use mappings that make little sense as numbers. E.g. a knob marked 0..10 could mean a filter cutoff frequency from 20 to the nyquist frequency, logarithmically. Entering values in a text box with such arbitrary limits is a terrible experience (is it 20...22000...or 20..48000? or 0..1? or 0..100%?). Knobs hide the complexity of the logarithmic mapping and it's easy to to quickly set a value by ear.
In a few cases the knobs are decorative and could just as well have been e.g. most fixed step knobs could be combo boxes. For example a vintage synth often had a rotary knob to select between 3 options (waveform, for example) so now you can see that in ui's too. Doing that in a computer interface is purely for visual appeal.
You need knobs and sliders to convey information visually.
Though, Ableton has been flat since 1.0 it seems.
I think it's quite the contrary. Look at the history of Logic, Cubase, Sonar, etc. For most of their time they didn't have flat UI. Ableton is the exception.
As a creator it allows me to flow and shift quickly between different modes of production. It emphasizes speed and intuition, and it allows me to excute powerful moves in far fewer steps than every other DAW I use (Pro Tools, Logic, Cubase).
With the announcement of track comping (long overdue) it resolves my biggest pain point.
Particularly interesting is it’s newly integrated tempo-follow feature which allows the DAW to follow the tempo of an external audio source, such as a live drummer. This bridges the performance gap between live bands with tempos that fluctuate and electronic instruments that typically adhere to a rigid clock source. It goes a long way towards resolving a long-standing tension between live musicians and sequenced electronic music. I’m thrilled to see Ableton doubling down on it’s essence as a performance tool and cannot wait to try it out.
Reading your comment about this new feature it seems obvious to me now that if the tempos in those mp3 recordings vary independently, like they do in much recorded music, it would be impossible to sync the tracks without this new feature. Right?
What I'm describing is composing music on the fly that is locked to a master tempo and clock (like most electronic music). Jamming with another musician and staying in sync is easy if they're also using drum machines or other hardware that can clock off the same source. What Ableton's new Tempo Follow feature does is allow the DAW to listen to the audio of live musicians (say a Jazz quartet) and then automatically speed up and slow in real time when they choose to. Now, when the band pushes the tempo my sequenced instruments wont lag behind the beat and get out of sync.
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I think what you're trying to do is synchronize the tempos of two songs that both push and pull their tempos a bit. That involves compromise and maybe some automation. Let's use an example of two different kinds of songs which we'll call 1) rigid songs and 2) loose songs.
Rigid songs are like house music or techno. They're clocked exactly to a given tempo that doesn't waver throughout the song unless the composer automates it. This is common in electronic and modern pop music. These are the easiest to synchronize because they don't have any tempo variations and require far less work to tempo match. Loose songs are songs that have subtle or dramatic tempo changes: Jazz, old rock and roll records, or classical music (which usually has a lot of rubato).
What I believe you're asking about is trying to sync two loose songs or a loose song and a rigid song. Well the short answer is that you'll likely have to compromise a bit. Let's say a Led Zeppelin song hovers around 80bpm. At some points the band slows down to 78bpm and other times they push the tempo up to 84bpm before ultimately settling back to a mean tempo of 80bpm. Well if you wanted to synchronize the Zeppelin song with a rigid song you can set the Segment BPM (What you're designating as the average tempo in Clip View) to 80bpm for the Zeppelin song and then use warp markers to snap the song to the 80bpm grid in the parts where the band pushes or pulls against the tempo and deviates from the grid.
At this point you might point out that manually aligning the audio file strictly to the grid compromises the emotional excitement and groove of the Zeppelin song by quantizing the tempo. You'd be absolutely right. It really comes down to what your intention is and how much you're willing to sacrifice that quality for the sake of making two songs synchronize. Preserving that feel then becomes more of an art and involves careful adjustment of the warp markers and using your ear to gauge the results. Often the more musically exciting choice is one that doesn't adhere strictly to a grid.
It also comes down the content of the songs. Without audio examples it's hard to be too specific about what choices should be made.
Does that answer your question?
If it can synchronize with live musicians, would it not be as easy (or even easier) for it to synchronize with a recording of live-musicians?
It's so easy to get jaded with software these days because of freemium apps, dark patterns, social media apps hijacking human psychology to drive up engagement, etc. Ableton Live reminds me that software can be beautiful and empowering, and how good and natural it feels to just pay money for a well-crafted product.
I used to tinker with beatmaking back when fl studio was still called fruity loops, and this post has made me very nostalgic. I would like to get back as a hobby, but it's been like 15 years and I'm quite lost.
Blezz Beats (8.68K subs) – https://www.youtube.com/blezzbeats
Synth Mania (126K subs) – https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCSGAKoBpUJI5jrJLgFQxiiw
Rick Beato (1.93M subs) – https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCJquYOG5EL82sKTfH9aMA9Q
Ave McRee (71K subs) – https://www.youtube.com/user/AveMcree
Dom Sigalas (23.5K subs) – https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCGGgrpgOZ-DMvjLSYxn8W3w
Accurate Beats (81.7K subs) – https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCoT0i4T3r3d4oYkdYQgZ4fg
Da Drank Kang (7.13K subs) – https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCD7cuqL0P3x8RGsLQxxTpAA
Poli Popo (3.55K subs) – https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCZv3Yw5jtvjwcrzJ90yscEw
JAde Wii ツ (36.2K subs) – https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCqjAXHR5DHTCahIHpg7vspg
Doctor Mix (486K subs) – https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCbzNcFN7cxA8HO18cTYyTfg
Swiftstyle (33.7K subs) – https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCHPY6JX3EBMo1N9SKIxNDmQ
Kirk State (1.05K subs) – https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCGGgt68KDkMsHaniWUhjbBw
Tube Digga (14.1K subs) – https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCCs9r5J_56ta_n_hI3RUcGw
You Suck at Producing (222K subs) – https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCapo4XcpVOlTLkbKIDL0WlA
Marlow Digs - mpc head (27.4K subs) – https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCXTqU3m3XZx_rWV_XaPiDcg
Youtube has a ton of stuff, but it's such a vast topic that even in the realm of something like Abelton there's a vast array of things you could be looking at and it's super easy to lose focus.
I have a FL license from around the turn of the century... I think it still works. You might see if you do and start there.
* Julian Earle
* Tom Cosom
* Make Pop Music
* edit: you suck at producing definitely makes the list
Youtube's the spot for info, but the CreateDigitalMusic blog has also been an impressive source since FL studio was still called fruity loops
EDM Tips is far less in-depth, but it's also more Ableton focused and he almost strictly used default Ableton plugins and sounds.
It is kind of overwhelming because the options are huge. Also, we're in a resurgence of electronic music hardware right now, which is super exciting but also ramps up the paradox of choice and analysis paralysis.
However, we have two things going for us: 1. Most music software has free demos or inexpensive lightweight versions. 2. The used hardware market is very strong so you can recoup most of the cost if you sell something (especially if you bought it used).
This means it's relatively feasible to sort of incrementally explore the space and see what works for you. I do think you have to treat it as an exploration. Unlike other music genres, electronic music lends itself to very personalized workflows. The gear and software you have and how you have it all set up is a big part of the creative process. Also, the user experience of hardware and software affects the music you make in profound ways that are hard to predict. You have to just sort of try stuff and see what gels with you.
I'd suggest:
1. Research the artists you like to see how they make their music. You can usually find video interviews with them, often in their studio.
2. Watch YouTube videos for the gear they use and see which things look inspiring.
3. Acquire a piece of it and give it a try. Make sure to force yourself to sink enough time to get past the initial learning curve.
4. If you like it, keep it. Otherwise, sell it and move on. Either way, go back to step 1.
Finding the right balance between just playing around, working to finish songs, and tinkering with your set up is a continuing challenge. Be mindful of it (i.e. don't just fetishize gear acquisition, or grind so hard you take the fun out of it) and you'll be OK.
I would be buying the upgrade if that was the only feature but there's so many!
Other than style, one killer difference is that Ableton has Push hardware, which is really an extension of the UI into physical reality. It’s a fantastic control surface that has no equivalent in Logic-world.
And of course, with all those features you can create amazing live setups with Ableton—thus the name “Live”! Logic’s comfort zone is very much as a studio tool.
Edit: I forgot to mention the higher versions of Live come with Max for Live, which is an amazing construction set for making audio/MIDI software. No Logic equivalent for that.
There’s lots of small differences, and obviously you can make any type of music successfully on either, but generally my advice would be:
If you prefer recording traditional instruments & band tracks stay with logic,
If you prefer experimenting with sound design & electronic music in general, try ableton out. Also if you’re a programmer because you’ll enjoy max for live and the max MSP ecosystem.
I ended up with an octatrack for doing what a lot of folks are using live for, tho, and that's been super fun for me.
Strictly speaking you can already do this using multiple tracks, but having a dedicated workflow will make it much easier.
I'm also glad they're starting to add more instruments to the default package (notably, finally; a proper 'Upright Piano') - as the value proposition of Ableton Standard at $400 vs Logic Pro at $200 has been extremely one-sided in Logic's favour for many, many years now.
I do understand, of course; I'm strictly speaking as a Mac user. I honestly have no idea about the DAW landscape for PC's. I am extremely reliant on exporting songs from GarageBand on my iPhone as I create beats on the go quite often - and opening those .garageband files in Logic Pro to seriously hone in on the sounds, keeping the original instruments and MIDI intact. It's an irreplaceable ecosystem for me.
Something that wasn't a problem for $200 Logic Pro or even $60 Reaper (with their two-person dev team).
Alchemy alone added a ton of value to Logic, and it came as a .x upgrade. Fantastic.
EDIT: One of the only selling points of an iPad I can think of is using it on a stand with Logic Remote as an actual digital mixing window. The experience is unparalleled.
However, what you get with ableton live suite is well worth the money. It’s good value.
But I’d still always run any DAW on a Mac. No audio drivers on windows beat CoreAudio on macOS.
It's true that generally speaking CoreAudio drivers are better, but then you have RME drivers on Windows which are just as rock solid.
My favorite is The Giant using either the "emotional" or "intimate" preset. Feel free to tweak those presets if you want, but good luck sounding better, it's already amazing.
Really is miles ahead of any piano sounds included in any DAW I’ve tried.
What truly amazes me though is the stability of the platform. Yes, it's great for home recording and casual use, but the same application is used as a core piece in live performances with huge audiences. There's not a lot of "consumer" software out there that I would trust with that. Ableton Live is certainly one of those.
I'm not full-time on this, but I'm trying to build an OSS DAW. Here is a first tiny demo: https://timdaub.github.io/wasm-synth/
I also wrote about it: https://timdaub.github.io/2020/02/19/wasm-synth/
You seem to know the challenges ahead. Mind sharing?
Can you not do it without the Push?
Even with a Push, there are a couple of WTF omissions that I would have thought would be easy to add, but I assume every DAW will have a few of those.
Lots of people use it Live, mostly negating your argument that the lack of this specific feature makes Ableton unusable live. Actually, is there an alternative DAW that is used live more than Ableton? I would guess the answer to that is "no".
Ardour is modelled on "traditional" "linear" DAWs, rather than the live "play this thing when i hit this" flow that Live has enabled so wonderfully. Not sure you'd want to use Live for large scale multi-tracking, movie post-production. Both will work for smaller scale "traditional" record-edit-mix workflows.
An entire DAW will be much more complex.
Also, I think any "on paper" description of a DAW that makes it appear that they "aren't that difficult" can just be ignored.
- LMMS[1]: The go-to cross-platform FOSS DAW solution, with VST support and a healthy community.
- Ardour[2]: Much like LLMS, it's a classic Open Source project that runs cross-platform and is quite fully-featured.
- VCVRack[3]: A brilliant FOSS EuroRack Simulator. It has a built-in package manager with an enormous selection of officially supported and community submitted plugins, complete with VST and Linux support.
- Waveform Free[4]: By Tracktion, Waveform is a robust DAW with VST sandboxing and great built-in FX.
- Audio Tool[5]: A great web-based DAW, featuring online collaboration. Last I checked, there was no VST support.
- Bandlab[6]: Another web-based DAW by the folks behind Cakewalk. While it lacks VST support, it offers online collaboration and straight-forward defaults.
If you like scripting, Reaper[7] offers a personal license for $60 and supports Lua, Python, EEL2/JSFX, and it's own ReaScript[8]. Reaper offers a highly customizable, robust solution for power-users. While the above projects are some of the more complete projects, there are many more scattered around Github. If you're interested in the more niche/experimental ones, let me know and I'll reply with my more comprehensive list.
That being said, I've been an Ableton Live user for over a decade and I recommend it for anyone who wants to invest into a more serious music project. These days, I tend to reach for Studio One[9] by Presonus for more involved projects. While it lacks the focus on live performance, it is more feature-complete DAW than Ableton. Studio One doesn't have the same friction-less workflow that Ableton is famous for, but it's an absolute powerhouse when mastered. It's very well funded and one of the youngest, so Presonus had the opportunity to adopt the best features of more dated solutions like Cubase, Logic, Pro-Tools, and Ableton, while stripping away a lot of the bloat.
[1] https://lmms.io/ [2] https://ardour.org/ [3] https://vcvrack.com/ [4] https://www.tracktion.com/products/waveform-free [5] https://www.audiotool.com [6] https://www.bandlab.com/ [7] https://www.reaper.fm [8] https://www.reaper.fm/sdk/reascript/reascript.php [9] https://www.presonus.com/products/studio-one/
I have Reaper and Ardour, but a friend suggested Bitwig.
For example, Ardour really isn't designed around the sort of workflows that many people use for EDM/House production, yet it still has a reasonable number of prolific users who use it for precisely that style. Needless to say, the way they work is fairly different than someone using Bitwig or Live.
It's not free but I like to plug renoise whenever I can. It's more of a tracker than a traditional DAW, scriptable in lua. If you are a programmer you might like trackers.
Cakewalk, MPC Beats, Tracktion Waveform,...
Usually Live Lite the free edition (8 tracks) is bundled with $50 MIDI keyboards, and is sufficient to get started with music production, recording and adding a few virtual instruments at least.
It's kind of like a gateway drug, because you can do a lot of stuff on the Lite version but all the "fun" things like all the bundled instruments and effects that let you use it like a modular synth or the scripting and automation goodness come only on the more expensive version.
Not thread-jacking at all. I ALWAYS want a sub-thread on open-sourced competitors to any product.
This isn't an optimization. https://ardour.org/plugins-in-process.html
And also, the kernel cannot schedule more efficiently than Ableton does, because it doesn't know the data dependencies between plugins.
> Live uses one thread to process a signal path. A signal path is a single chain of audio flow. In tracks where instrument or effect racks are used, with multiple chains in parallel, Live may use one thread per chain depending on how CPU-intensive each chain may be. If two tracks are "chained" by routings, for instance by a side-chain routing, a track being fed to a return track or any tracks being fed into each-other, they are considered dependent tracks and count as one signal path. Any dependant set of tracks will use one thread each.
https://help.ableton.com/hc/en-us/articles/209067649-Multi-c...
The way they allocate plugins to threads is very inefficient and wrapping each plugin in a separate process sidesteps it as the OS takes over the allocation to different cores.
Ableton's scheduling could be quibbled with, but it's better than the kernel can do.
Ps. I'm the original author of Ardour, a cross-platform DAW. We use a different model than Ableton for scheduling, but not that different. We run N threads (based on a user preference for how many cores to use) and they pull signal paths from a pool, process them, and go back for more. The result is "1 thread per signal path".
If you have plugins A, B and C spread across 3 signal paths, then you can certainly run them on different cores, which Ableton (and Ardour and almost any other DAW at this point) will do, by virtue on running each signal path in its own thread. The signal path/thread containing plugin A will execute on a thread/core, independently of the one containing B or the one containing C.
[ A, B, C ] --+
|
+--> [ G ]
|
[ D, E, F ] --+
However, sandboxing is absolutely not the simplest way to fix this. Ardour does not and will never sandbox plugins in processes. It just uses a topological sort and a dataflow algorithm to decide what can be run and when, and would execute [ A, B, C ] and [ D, E, F ] in parallel (or could, if on appropriate hardware), before finally running [ G ].
Moving plugins into a separate process has both overhead and complications, and is basically a crazy way to fix this issue, if indeed it is an issue as described.
Finally, please make sure you understand what Paul Davis has tried to explain you. He's a well-respected industry expert.
I think jBridge might actually collect the result of the subprocess in the next DSP tick. This means that the thread can go on to compute "C" because it can take the result of "B" from the previous DSP tick. Now you indeed have things run in parallel. However, this adds additional latency of 1 audio block. If you have several of such sandboxed plugins in a row, this can easily add up.
This is technique is sometimes called the "pipelining" (see "2.3" in https://www.complang.tuwien.ac.at/Diplomarbeiten/blechmann11...). Note that you don't need sandboxing for this. You can just as well dispatch items to a thread pool, so everything stays within the same process.
So I think the speed up you observe with jBridge has nothing to do with sandboxing per-se, but is just a side effect of its implementation. I can't prove this because I can't look at the source code, but for me this is the most likely explanation.
TBH, you don't seem to even try to understand our arguments. If a domain expert like Paul Davis tells you something, try to learn from him and not easily dismiss his arguments.
Even if that is the case, it doesn't change anything about the point I was trying to make... I acknowledge that jBridge gives you a performance boost, but you're wrongly attributing it to sandboxing. That's all I'm trying to say.
To put it short: I think jBridge does “pipelining“ to avoid the context switch overhead. But pipelining can also be done without sandboxing, leading to even better performance. Without pipelining, sandboxing only gives you a performance loss. Sandboxing does not imply parallelism.
Supercollider (scsynth) and Pure Data - both I'm contributing to -, have single threaded DSP. Users told me that they can use many more VST plugins when they enable the pipelining option in my extension, which matches your experience.
Again, I can't look at the source code for jBridge. The only thing I know for sure is that sandboxing itself only causes performance loss.
Are you sure? Because since your theory is based on grouping tracks, it is easy to test, by simply grouping all tracks in a Set with 20 or so tracks that use a decent chunk of CPU. Then all their CPU should shift from several cores into one single core/thread (according to your theory). Of course, being easy I already tested this with a Set that used Live's native devices (no CPU usage change), but I can't test with VSTs right now (none installed). Maybe VST hosting has that problem, but processing of audio summing, Live's own devices and M4L doesn't have any major problem with multi-core.
Sidechain is not mere grouping/routing like the chain PaulDavis described with ASCII art (different from Sends too), with sidechain the plugin needs the audio from the other track for actual DSP processing, that's why sidechained tracks become a single thread "dependant" signal flow.
That page also mentions Live can use one thread per Chain if needed (for non Live-users, Chains are internal routings inside one single track), so it clearly states Live can use more than one core for one single Track.
Also, plugins like u-HE's use multicore just fine for a single instance, if you disable their own multicore handling (which conflicts with Live's multicore handling).
For Live's own devices, I'm pretty sure multicore works just fine, just tested again with Groups and Sends.
Don't know what problem you have, but it is not simply Live's multicore handling, it is some specific scenario you hit upon.
Granted you can use a lot of heuristics to figure out simpler solutions since DAW graphs aren't arbitrary DAGs and you can get clever with how you allow them to be constructed, but it's non obvious. That's why parallel performance varies a lot between daw engines.
Sand boxing isn't done for performance reasons, and it's why you can disable it in bitwig. The sole purpose of sand boxing a plugin in its own process is because it is the only way to catch a segfault and prevent a shared library from crashing a host.
My experience from actually writing low latency schedulers in user space as well as the publicly available material - like in Ardour - suggests different conclusions from yours.
Keep in mind that a naive benchmark like "cpu usage" is entirely meaningless. What you look at is round trip latency required for a threshold of underruns/missed deadlines. Threading requires additional latency, and process synchronization even more. While I'm sure you report fewer underruns when splitting off into sandboxed plugins I'm suspicious if it's hitting the same performance as doubling or tripling the buffer size in terms of latency in the first place.
Speaking as an audio developer, you would certainly not run things in a seperate process to achieve parallelism. Instead you would use a thread pool.
This is the music I make[1]. The older, more piano-based songs are written in Overtone, and you'll here where they change up to be more textured and electronic sounding when I got into Ableton
Just curious: do you guys buy the full version? It's so expensive that I've never been able to justify it. I actually have been using the free version that came with a midi controller I bought a few years ago, and even that has been great.
(I'd rather spend the money on hardware synths)
What did they do to cripple the features of non-push interfaces? As far as I know the monomes, apc40s, etc of the world continue to work as they always did?
Pad controllers are dime a dozen. I've never gotten the impression that Ableton was willfully sabotaging the market there.
I owned a Push 2 for 2 years before I sold it, and in my experience there is very little (if anything) it does that cannot be done with a 1:1 analogue in the software.
If you are at all code-savvy it is very easy to make your own custom rig that does everything everything you need for live performing in Ableton. You can write your own control surface scripts in Python (unofficially, but google is your friend and Ableton said "we know they're out there and we aren't going to try to shut it down") and you can make anything you want be your own customized equivalent of push with Max for Live. You can do anything you want with your clips and loops from either control surface scripts or M4L devices. Ableton itself was originally just a Max patch!
Sure they've made it easier, but it's definitely not true that you can't do this without Push.
I'm completely baffled at why they can't just accept some standard designs that have become common practice over time and integrate them into the UI.
(I'm aware of the Options.txt hack which is unreliable and I'm not even sure it works with the latest Live 10)
What’s even more impressive is that they did not start out doing any user research. They made what they wanted and (pardon the pun) it struck a chord. If they had not had the courage to trust their instinct, but had done what so many designers do and focus on satisfying only the needs users can imagine and articulate, I think they would have made yet another Cubase or Protools lookalike. That’s a crowded market and they wouldn’t have made it.
Sure, I understand and agree with your criticism, but there are probably great tools that do what you ask for cleaner and better because those tools are designed around different ideas.
If they can squeeze this in and make it work: great. If they can’t, that’s okay too.
But for professional use, you do end up with a hundred or a few hundred track lanes in your projects, and mixing and tweaking the whole thing becomes an unavoidable disastrous chore.
If I understand this correctly, they planned on introducing it in Live 8 (hence a hidden flag in Options.txt which sort-of enables a preview of this feature but is extremely buggy), but it never fully worked out because they also introduced Racks with nested tree-like flow of plugins, which doesn't play well with a conventional matrix-like mixer view. That being said, I believe most pro users would be happy with a simplified solution like "if you fork a chain in a rack, its branches won't be shown in the mixer", which would cover the 95% of other simple use cases like, seeing where your compressors are at a glance without having to click on each track a hundred times...
There's many such things - like proper multi-screen support (e.g. with 3+ screens), which, hypothetically, could also couple well with a separate-window mixer view where they could introduce chain branching and all that (and become the first DAW to do that!). For pro use, there's lots of features like this that may sound boring but end up hampering your workflow a lot. It may not be as fun-sounding as 'yet another cool phaser bitcrusher spectral distortion plugin' but the reality is, professional users that they supposedly aim at do require core functionality that's been missing since the start.
1. Having all instruments and plugins in a horizontally-oriented trough allows quick drag-and-drop rearrangement. So if you want to rearrange their order very quickly you can do it. In Pro Tools it would be a two click operation at best and depending on how your plugins are arranged it could be significantly more than that.
2. It allows you to reach the knobs on their native instruments and plugins without the need to open/close plugin windows first.
3. MIDI mapping becomes much quicker and intuitive when you can simply toggle the MIDI/Keyboard mapping overlay for a given plugin.
4. Their Instrument Rack/Drum Rack/Midi Rack devices are very flexible in their capabilites. Being able to nest plugins within them like macros and then quickly hide or reveal a dozen plugins within a single rack is great for declutterring an otherwise busy interface.
As someone who mixes most of their projects in Ableton, their Rack paradigm allows me to condense a lot of parallel processing into a single instrument/audio channel. This makes for a very clean representation of very complex processing. To do a similar task such as having three channels of parallel processing on a single channel in Pro Tools involves either sending them to as many return channels, or creating duplicates of that channel which all have their own parallel processing chains. This creates way more clutter on the screen.
That said, you CAN still have Ableton's plugins displayed in the manner you prefer. It's a hidden feature that's not documented. Pretty easy to setup, but not discoverable. It's an option that they developed but decided not to include in the final version. Here's a tutorial: sonicbloom.net/en/ableton-live-insider-tips-options-txt-part-1/
I've specifically noted above, expecting this reply: "I'm aware of the Options.txt hack which is unreliable and I'm not even sure it works with the latest Live 10". It does NOT work properly and it's unsupported/unmaintained. You get misaligned circles, up to 4 per channel, instead of plugin names, because redraw logic is broken.
> Having all instruments and plugins in a horizontally-oriented trough allows quick drag-and-drop rearrangement.
That's true in most DAWs. E.g. in Logic, you just drag plugins around, either in the channel strip which would be always open for a given channel, but ALSO in the mixer view. Try dragging plugins across channels in Live and see how that goes for you.
> It allows you to reach the knobs on their native instruments and plugins without the need to open/close plugin windows firs
Same in Bitwig. In Logic, you can't but instead you can e.g. see all (native) EQ curves for all channels simultaneously in the mixer view and access it without having to select the track first.
> MIDI mapping becomes much quicker and intuitive when you can simply toggle the MIDI/Keyboard mapping overlay for a given plugin.
Same in Bitwig. In Logic it's a few clicks instead of one but the idea is the same.
> Being able to nest plugins within them like macros and then quickly hide or reveal a dozen plugins within a single rack is great for declutterring an otherwise busy interface.
True. But that comes at a price of those chains and effects being even LESS discoverable when it comes to mixing. Since now a particular plugin may be buried deep two layers down in a rack of racks.
So I'm extremely glad to see it being integrated.
The velocity MIDI effect already let you randomize all note velocities by a user-controlled range. This just lets you set random ranges per-note.
One thing I love about sound design is playing with randomization and effects to make really quirky sounds, and those new devices and features are gonna be a blast for me.
I know there is a forum and documentation but if all my time goes to trying to figure out technical solutions then all my creativity goes into finding technical solutions, rather than solving artistic problems.
Any musician has to learn their instrument. Commit to that.
I don't have the time or resources to 'commit to that". Ableton Live is NOT my instrument, I would like to just use it as a tool.
It takes years of practice to learn any musical instrument and become a musician that other people would want to listen to. Maybe the same applies to Ableton? It takes years of hard practice to master it? If so it would be proper that their sales literature would be up front about it. You will need years of study to master this instrument in order to produce something that other people would want to listen to. You will need to commit to it :-)
The difference between Ableton and "ordinary musical instruments" is that Ableton runs on a computer, therefore its use should be easy enough to not require years to learn.
You are expecting Ableton, a professional tool, to act as a toy.
Spend $100, Take a course, or watch some tutorials in the styles you want to make, and you'll build to proficiency.
Tools take time to learn. Toys less so.
I found that Ableton push was actually extremely helpful to take my understanding of Ableton to the next level. I then sold my push, and am more proficient with the software now.
If you don't have the "muscle memory" of other DAWs then ableton will be a new paradigm and absolutely hard to use and understand. Esp the difference between midi and audio.
Edit: I had a long day, so I might sound harsher than you expect, but the core of my message is: learning new powerful instruments is hard. Best of luck learning ableton, it's great. Go make some drones: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QdRcpRxYJK0
I play a bunch of instruments and have been on quite a few recording, but I had to spend the last couple of months learning a novation circuit and an electron octatrack for a project I am working on.
TBH, it took me about a week with abelton and a DVD course to learn enough to be fairly productive with it... that was back when there wasn't much on YTube.
These things are instruments and require just as much work to learn.
That said it's totally fair to not have the time to commit to learning a complex tool. There are other, more accessible DAWs out there you can use if you don't need the power this one provides. Garageband, for example, is easy to use and straightforward. Curious if folks know other ones similarly easy to use.
If you're not prepared to spend some time learning how to use it, then maybe the whole thing is not for you. Most people enjoy the whole process.
You are being unrealistic if you think that just because Ableton runs on a computer means everything about it should be automatic. Ableton is a professional level DAW and as such has a lot of complexity under the hood.
Ordinary musical instruments only have a few knobs and take a lifetime to master. I don't know why you would suppose it should be any easier to master Ableton which has literally thousands of knobs?
In the world of programming languages there's a lot of books called "cookbooks" - recipes for how to do things that many programmers will need to do. Say "C# CookBook". Is there such a book or resource for Ableton? If not maybe there should be. It might be a best seller :-)
I used one of these a few years ago for an earlier version. Was helpful. I suspect this one would be just the same.
Just to commiserate, I feel the same way about the pedal steel guitar :D
There is. The reference manual:
https://www.ableton.com/en/manual/welcome-to-live/
It is incredibly well-written. Possibly my favorite piece of technical writing ever, and am myself a technical author.
The point is I don't know it is a "small thing". I don't even know if it is possible. I don't want to commit to learning something that may not be possible (as far as I know at the moment). And I don't know where I should even start.
Can you post a link that explains how to accomplish this "most basic task"?
Software is just another tool, like a painter's brushes or a musician's instrument.
Edit: I’ve seen other folks online posting a price of $183 for Suite upgrade, so I would just login and see what price they give you. I think I came from Suite 9, so maybe that accounts for the price difference.
As an amateur, it's extremely hard to justify the doubling of the price of FL. (The $100 edition of Live is limited to 16 tracks so don't even bother.)
Don't get me wrong, these are nice additions for Live users, but VSL is simply one of the top orchestral libraries.
With MPE, you can think of it as each note having its own channel, with added dimensions like pitch bend, vibrato, timbre and more all encoded into a note.
This allows you to interface with new kinds of controllers like the Roli Seaboard for example, which are much more expressive than your standard midi keyboard.
In terms of Live, MPE wasn't supported until now and connecting an MPE controller to the DAW was a massive headache and super hacky.
I setup a discord channel the project https://discord.gg/a5ttYuG
Check out Agordejo, Carla, Non-Mixer/jack_mixer, seq66 (nsm branch).
It won't be open source if that's what you are asking.
Agreed, but I hope you realize this is pretty much why people are having such negative reactions to it in this thread. For something that is "easier to understood by seeing it", the biggest mortal sin is pushing it without having anything to actually show that people can see.
But the last 10 times I've seen you mention it, it's been without any details what so ever and without any ability to actually see/use it.
Might actually been more than 10 times now when I searched for it. https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...
Why do you think it's vaporware? How long do you think it takes to write a DAW?
If you had something to contribute to the discussion and then plug your project, then I'd say you're just plugging it. But you're not. You're just "appearing" in threads to plug you project. It's not a side-effect of your comment, it's the entirety of your comment. Hence "appear > plug" instead of just "plug".
And no, I'm not in charge of what's OK, just telling you that people are starting to see your constant, unrelated plugging as spam.
And yes, it is (currently) vaporware, no matter how long time it takes to build it. Why is it vaporware? You're advertising something that currently no one can use and their is no concrete information about it. When someone asks what it is, you ask them what they want. You don't even seem to know what the project you're building is yet.