Live 5....what happened?

[SaviorNeeded]

I'm a Tracktion fan/user from way back. I recently d/l'd the CM Live5 demo from the "Special" issue. All the things headquest said above are true. But the one BIG thing that I quickly saw was the difference in the attitude of Mackie toward Tracktion and Ableton toward Live. Mackie bought Tracktion to fill a gap in it's product line; they don't really treat it as something they love. Ableton gave "birth" to Live and boy does it show. Everything thing about it sparkles and shines, the "build quality" is superior--they care!! Just the way they set up the demo to teach newcomers like me to learn it ASAP is the best I've ever seen. I'm saving up. At this time, I think I'll stick with Tracktion for simple audio stuff but the main workload will be done on Live.

Tom

[dopet]

thanks folks for all the insight!

like i said i did try the v5 demo and didnt notice anything 'wrong' with it. i tend to agree with the poster who mentioned that live's userbase grew rapidly and there are, understandably, more complaints (ratio-wise). I guess i get the same feeling from perusing the sonar forums. you would think it was the worst piece of junk made.

[grymmjack]

So please, tell me why the switch and was it from T2 or T1? Thanks, and I beg you don't hold back.

Some of the reasons I switched to Ableton Live as my main host are:

1. Tracktion has a bug whereby the first note in a MIDI sequence using a VSTi (or rewire instruments) sometimes gets "dropped" and lost. Although users have commented on this for more than three years the developers have not fixed it. There are "workarounds" including a freeware third-party utility that a user knocked up one weekend... but using such workarounds adds another task to the workflow. Such a workaround is not necessary in Ableton, which "works properly" (from a musician's perspective) in the first place. Much easier!

Ok, that's annoying and troubling.

4. Mixing Levels: In Tracktion there is no mixer view. Instead there are volume/pan "filters" at the right hand side of each track lane. These can be strangely fiddly, especially because as VST instruments and effects are added to the track, the fader literally, erm, fades... into a very thin slither!

Yes I can see how that would pose a problem..

6. Once you have recorded and frozen a VST instrument track in Tracktion you can no longer adjust the volume/pan at all unless you unfreeze the track, which makes the freeze function of limited value. In Ableton of course you can continue to adjust the basic mix even when tracks are frozen. Naturally!

That's helpful (live).

7. The timestretch in Tracktion is simply unuseable (even Tracktion's most loyal supporters will confirm this). Ableton Live has a fantastic timestretch/audio warp facility, along with obviously better looping tools.

Yeah I didn't really figure out how to do it at all so far. It seems the pitch just changes and if I do apply any kind of timestretch from the pulldown it sounds very bad.

9. The development pace for Mackie Tracktion is so slow that I've seen faster moving whelchs. Bugs get ignored by the developers from one year to the next. New features are added at a snail's pace. The latest version 2.1 update is basically little more than a bugfix with a few neat extras... but comes a full year after the already disappointing version 2 update. Ableton add a ton of features and a full digit upgrade in that time.

That concerns me.. I don't want to buy in if it's going to be painful experience.

10. Marketing and Pricing - following on from the previous point, the marketing and pricing strategy of Mackie since they have acquired Tracktion seems caculated to alienate the original userbase, and this has cuased considerable upset on their forum. Their handling of the Tracktion 2 update should be used by marketing students as an object lesson in how to pissoff customers. a faster development rate, and far better development support.

That is good to know. I dont want to be alienated.

I hope I didn't hold back

Nope, exactly what I asked for. Thanks much!

[grymmjack]

I'm a Tracktion fan/user from way back. I recently d/l'd the CM Live5 demo from the "Special" issue. All the things headquest said above are true. But the one BIG thing that I quickly saw was the difference in the attitude of Mackie toward Tracktion and Ableton toward Live. Mackie bought Tracktion to fill a gap in it's product line; they don't really treat it as something they love. Ableton gave "birth" to Live and boy does it show. Everything thing about it sparkles and shines, the "build quality" is superior--they care!! Just the way they set up the demo to teach newcomers like me to learn it ASAP is the best I've ever seen. I'm saving up. At this time, I think I'll stick with Tracktion for simple audio stuff but the main workload will be done on Live.

Tom

Definitely the guides/walkthroughs and help system rocks in live. It was a pleasure to use and learn it when I tried the demo as well.

One thing I didnt' like about live was it's lack of 'midi' support in the way of choosing presets from banks and so on. Even T2 has this ability. I know the focus is on VSTi inside Live but some of us still have and love external gear... One day maybe...

[John Vulich]

One thing I didnt' like about live was it's lack of 'midi' support in the way of choosing presets from banks and so on. Even T2 has this ability. I know the focus is on VSTi inside Live but some of us still have and love external gear... One day maybe...

You should try reading the manual sometime. Particularly page 109 section 8.3.2.

[xsub]

Live 5 pisses me off, i just attempted a stab at it again, see what i can do, and whilst i was going through the prefrences to setup my VST's, i noticed i could only add one directory to the VST section, so i set 'c - program files ' and it scanned for ages, then crashed, and now it won't load up.

Jesus, why do they tihnk everyones VST's are in the same directory?.. if they were really thinking about the users they would realise they use more than one f**king vst, and they probably use SOME native instrument software, which they should know installs at 'program files/native instruments'

I went on the forum to get some help a while back and almost everyone just said 'there's different hosts' i thought 'f**king hell'.

radiculouse.

[xsub]

After going through that, i then went to tracktion, but i really need audio tools and such, and the interface really pisses me off most of the time, e.g. im trying to navigate around and i make one of the midi tracks smaller and the keyboard on the left is still visible and the keys get ultra small, aswell as the button at the top sitting there.

I also have no idea where the 'knife' tool is to cut audio.

[xsub]

Oh and even before that, i used cubase sx3, but that is a huge cpu hog it seems, and it always crashes on me, having used sx2 before that i hated most of the way i had to work, and i can't go back to it now.

Maybe i should just buy a f**king Imac?

[John Vulich]

Maybe i should just buy a f**king Imac?

That would be perfect, since you're obviously an idiot anyway.

[xsub]

Maybe i should just buy a f**king Imac?

That would be perfect, since you're obviously an idiot anyway.

well i've heard some good things about them, i am not an idiot to believe that.

[headquest]

@ xsub:

WHen you install Native Instruments plugins, the programme files are installed as you say in a NI directory... but you are also prompted during the installation to identify where your VST folder is so that the .dll launch files can be placed in your standard folder.

Even if you do wish to install the NI .dll files in the NI program folder, there is still no need to panic... simply copy and paste the .dll files into your standard VST folder, and Live will find them there. SO you can install the VST .dll files wherever you like, but simply copy them all into the one main VST folder that all your host sequencers scan.

I hope that helps.

[grymmjack]

Oh and even before that, i used cubase sx3, but that is a huge cpu hog it seems, and it always crashes on me, having used sx2 before that i hated most of the way i had to work, and i can't go back to it now.

Maybe i should just buy a f**king Imac?

lol. The slice in tracktion is easy to do. Position the playhead where you want to cut and hit / or \ (i dont remember which) my workflow is set loop in and out points, then use ] and / to cut the end, and [ and \ to cut the beggining.

As for your VST folder woes, there is a solution. By creating NTFS junctions to your folder you point live to, it will scan them (NTFS junction is like a symlink in linux -- think of it as a folder shortcut that actually acts like a folder and not a shortcut). Anyway if you want help doing it let me know. It's not hard.

I had to do it myself for storing some vst data files on another disk and the programs dont know the difference between junctions or real folders.

In this manner you could create c:\abletonVST, and create junctions to your various other folders, since the folder is recursively scanned. Pointing it to program files is going to be a huge bummer because of the amount of files there, but also because I think when it finds DLL files it tries to open them as VST -- this could explain your crash. I dont think Live5 has a feature that smartly disables plugins that fail to load or that aren't able to be opened as plugins either.

Hope that helps.

[xsub]

@ xsub:

WHen you install Native Instruments plugins, the programme files are installed as you say in a NI directory... but you are also prompted during the installation to identify where your VST folder is so that the .dll launch files can be placed in your standard folder.

Even if you do wish to install the NI .dll files in the NI program folder, there is still no need to panic... simply copy and paste the .dll files into your standard VST folder, and Live will find them there. SO you can install the VST .dll files wherever you like, but simply copy them all into the one main VST folder that all your host sequencers scan.

I hope that helps.

my point remains valid, not everyone wants to f**k about moving dlls, they can't they just add 'multiple paths' ?.

[John Vulich]

Jesus, why do they tihnk everyones VST's are in the same directory?.. if they were really thinking about the users they would realise they use more than one f**king vst, and they probably use SOME native instrument software, which they should know installs at 'program files/native instruments'

NI installs VSTis into your systems default VST folder and it also seems to keep backups in the NI program folder. Perhaps the .dll files in the program folder are used for a wrapper or something. I'm not really sure.

Either way, you can usually move all the .dll files to one folder with very little trouble. Sometimes you need to f**k around with registry setting though. I have a VSTi folder with 3 sub folders in it... "Effects", "Instruments" and "Misc". I'm not really sure why you would want to keep them in other folders anyway.

[Synthbuilder]

I've seen this commented on, but still don't really understand the issue I use Reason to create beats within Ableton Live constantly.

Without PDC and if you are using Reason's own sequencer then everything between Live and Reason is in sync. The render and real time play is spot on. However, without PDC some of your soft synths and effects in Live start to lag, especially if you have made some long VST chains.

This was the standard set up in Live 3 and earlier. Its workable, but not perfect.

Live 4 added midiclips and now in theory you can control Reason in Live. However in Live 5, there is a lag [an audible 5mS on my machine] between hearing the reason output and the midi message that fired it. This lag depends on sound card settings, but Live appears to treat rewire inputs as an external input and is therefore bound by the usual latency problems.

Live 5 added PDC, but PDC can't compensate for rewire inputs at all. Actually its worse than that, its broken. Try adding negative values of track delay on any midi channel that goes to either a rewire or an external midi instrument, and hear the effect it has on any rewired input. Its truly bizarre. In other words one cannot even manually compensate for the lag, as you could in Tracktion.

But even if you leave the track delays at the zero position, Reason will lag behind. Far more than the 5mS we got without PDC, it can be a full 20mS if you have VST effects in other channels. I don't mean VST effecting rewire inputs or outputs, I mean any VST effect in audio and Live based VSTi tracks.

Even rendered audio suffers from this. Its not just me though, the Abe's have confirmed it and it is to be looked in a future revision.