Ableton Live 10 Released

[zenophilix]

Group tracks and VCAs seem like they'd work pretty much the same.. Groups within groups doesn't hurt either.

Not at all, group tracks are essentially busses, all the audio from the sub tracks is routed through a single track, the sends are still separate in this scenario, so the sends actually act differently on the audio when you raise and lower the group master track or bus. the overall volume is being lowered but your sends are not being lowered since each track is still firing away at whatever DB it's set to.
VCA faders lower the volume of all the tracks without messing up the mix to sends etc. If you've ever lowered the volume of multiple tracks by temporarily grouping them by selecting them in Live you will notice that it messes with the mix you had as well when you do this. This is another scenario where VCA faders helps. They don't actually run audio through them, you assign tracks to them and they act like a master volume without damaging your mix. Basically for me and probably many of you, it gets rid of the problem of the mix getting too hot about the time you get it right!
This and MPE are modern things a modern DAW like Live should have.

Huh. Pretty much sounds like a description of how groups work to me, then again I've only been able to use them for a couple weeks.

Absolutely no offense meant, but you should look into it, it might be hard for you to grasp and you wouldn't be alone in that. Basically groups will change the mix between tracks in the group, VCA faders do not.

Will do, then. Seems odd, because when I used groups adjusting the volume of the group maintains the mix between the tracks in the group... then again, maybe I'm imagining things, as most of the time I try to get the levels right before grouping the tracks, then do compression from there.

[telecharge]

Does anyone know if there are DAWs other than Logic and Pro Tools which offer this type of feature? I'm thinking there is at least one other.

Tracktion / Waveform

Tracktion Waveform. Called "retrospective record".

This is the best video I could find: https://www.facebook.com/tracktionsoftw ... 954721074/

Thank you both.

[machinesworking]

Will do, then. Seems odd, because when I used groups adjusting the volume of the group maintains the mix between the tracks in the group... then again, maybe I'm imagining things, as most of the time I try to get the levels right before grouping the tracks, then do compression from there.

Thanks for not taking offense! I barely grasp it myself, but the main thing is relations between tracks and sends are not as affected as group tracks, or regular bussing. For me anyway this is a great thing because eventually after getting things right, things get to -3db or so real quick, no headroom so everything gets lowered and needs to be remixed. I don’t think group tracks solves this as effectively, although it does a great job in general. For instance a VCA fader group since it receives no audio doesn’t need to be made of things that need to be mixed similarly etc.

[zenophilix]

Will do, then. Seems odd, because when I used groups adjusting the volume of the group maintains the mix between the tracks in the group... then again, maybe I'm imagining things, as most of the time I try to get the levels right before grouping the tracks, then do compression from there.

Thanks for not taking offense! I barely grasp it myself, but the main thing is relations between tracks and sends are not as affected as group tracks, or regular bussing. For me anyway this is a great thing because eventually after getting things right, things get to -3db or so real quick, no headroom so everything gets lowered and needs to be remixed. I don’t think group tracks solves this as effectively, although it does a great job in general. For instance a VCA fader group since it receives no audio doesn’t need to be made of things that need to be mixed similarly etc.

True, although even with VCAs I'd probably assign them to similar instruments anyway. I'll probably go back and compare the behavior of Live groups to VCAs in Studio One at some point.

[machinesworking]

Will do, then. Seems odd, because when I used groups adjusting the volume of the group maintains the mix between the tracks in the group... then again, maybe I'm imagining things, as most of the time I try to get the levels right before grouping the tracks, then do compression from there.

Thanks for not taking offense! I barely grasp it myself, but the main thing is relations between tracks and sends are not as affected as group tracks, or regular bussing. For me anyway this is a great thing because eventually after getting things right, things get to -3db or so real quick, no headroom so everything gets lowered and needs to be remixed. I don’t think group tracks solves this as effectively, although it does a great job in general. For instance a VCA fader group since it receives no audio doesn’t need to be made of things that need to be mixed similarly etc.

True, although even with VCAs I'd probably assign them to similar instruments anyway. I'll probably go back and compare the behavior of Live groups to VCAs in Studio One at some point.

Same here, I haven't had too much time to play with it and compare since both Live and my other main DAW Digital Performer do not have VCA faders. Recently I picked up Logic with Final cut in a education bundle, and sprung for a Reaper license, so I can compare them now anyway.

The main thing I thought of being able to control volume wise outside of conventional bussing, group tracks etc. is the low end, so groups and bussing to traditional Stem tracks for drums, bass and low end, melody etc. then a VCA fader grouping of the kick and bass etc. Seems like it would be handy there. that and overall mix, so in that sense I guess Reaper has Logic beat since word is Reaper can do nested VCA faders and Logic cannot, can't verify that though since it's third party info..

[.jon]

Having that feature for those few times you'll adjust the low end levels isn't really as handy as one might think. You can just select the individual tracks and adjust their volume together. That together with groups is plenty enough mix routing in practice- I wouldn't get too hung up on VCAs.

[woodsdenis]

https://www.facebook.com/MikeyCHMST/vid ... 161487459/

[c_voltage]

Hehe BTW from 0:13 not a bad timbre.

[machinesworking]

Having that feature for those few times you'll adjust the low end levels isn't really as handy as one might think. You can just select the individual tracks and adjust their volume together. That together with groups is plenty enough mix routing in practice- I wouldn't get too hung up on VCAs.

Sure, there are many ways to skin a cat. you're still missing the point that collectively raising and lowering the volumes actually does change the mix more than VCA faders do. A track near the lowest level will eventually have no volume in your scenario, not so with VCA faders, at least not until that VCA is set to zero volume. Personally I've never liked mixing and mastering in Live, no visual cues when you have 32+ tracks it gets tedious for one. Plus Live's infamous heavy CPU use is a PITA with mastering plug ins. I render all tracks to audio for the most part and mix in another DAW.
If I had to pick a feature or two that I was interested in seeing in Live it would be a better SysEx implementation than what's offered in Max right now, and MPE, since both of these are about composing. It would be nice to see Ableton answer some performance issues Live has when compared to MainStage as well, but that's also not a priority, maybe since bedroom electronic music studios are 90% of what they market to these days.

[.jon]

Sure, there are many ways to skin a cat. you're still missing the point that collectively raising and lowering the volumes actually does change the mix more than VCA faders do. A track near the lowest level will eventually have no volume in your scenario, not so with VCA faders, at least not until that VCA is set to zero volume.

Really, no offense but you don't seem to really understand the VCA fader concept (or Live group tracks)- it's not as complicated as you think. It's nothing more than a control fader for x number of tracks. No audio flows through it, it just controls other faders without affecting their proportions, panning or send levels. It's a usability feature, there is no difference audio-wise between moving a bunch of faders together and controlling them via a VCA fader. It's just that with a VCA fader you have a single "virtual" point of control, and the individual faders stay intact. This is practical, no denying, if you need to constantly adjust the levels of a specific group of unrelated tracks while leaving their actual faders in place. The effect on the mix is identical, their audio still flows through whatever routes they are set.

Personally I've never liked mixing and mastering in Live, no visual cues when you have 32+ tracks it gets tedious for one. Plus Live's infamous heavy CPU use is a PITA with mastering plug ins. I render all tracks to audio for the most part and mix in another DAW.

Live has no infamous heavy CPU use. Or if it has, then Reaper has also infamously heavy CPU use- the CPU use is exactly the same in both. In some scenarios Live is even lighter on CPU. That said, I fully get the preference to mix elsewhere, Live's mixer is pretty crude and switching program also puts you in another mindset. I've mixed and "mastered" stuff made in Live in Reaper, something Reaper is actually really good at.

If I had to pick a feature or two that I was interested in seeing in Live it would be a better SysEx implementation than what's offered in Max right now, and MPE, since both of these are about composing. It would be nice to see Ableton answer some performance issues Live has when compared to MainStage as well, but that's also not a priority, maybe since bedroom electronic music studios are 90% of what they market to these days.

I don't really get why they didn't add MPE in Live 10. While MPE controllers are not yet mainstream, they will be soon now that the spec is officially released.

[Winstontaneous]

It would be nice to see Ableton answer some performance issues Live has when compared to MainStage as well, but that's also not a priority, maybe since bedroom electronic music studios are 90% of what they market to these days.

Curious what you mean by this? Are Ableton users like Caribou, Battles, FourTet, Jon Hopkins, deadmau5, Monolake, Bassnectar or Bonobo bedroom producers? Maybe, I mean they have to sleep somewhere I suppose.

On my 2012 MacBookPro MainStage uses far more CPU and craps out way earlier (system overload audio interrupt messages) than any other DAW or audio program I've used on this machine - I'm talking basic stock Apple AU synth channel strips with a few effects that use little CPU in Logic Pro X. This has been the case for many MainStage users every time I've checked at logicprohelp.com as well.

That's not to say Ableton can't or shouldn't improve Live CPU usage (I don't find it as efficient as Reaper or Logic) but IME MainStage is not known as a paragon of efficiency.

[machinesworking]

Sure, there are many ways to skin a cat. you're still missing the point that collectively raising and lowering the volumes actually does change the mix more than VCA faders do. A track near the lowest level will eventually have no volume in your scenario, not so with VCA faders, at least not until that VCA is set to zero volume.

Really, no offense but you don't seem to really understand the VCA fader concept (or Live group tracks)- it's not as complicated as you think. It's nothing more than a control fader for x number of tracks. No audio flows through it, it just controls other faders without affecting their proportions, panning or send levels. It's a usability feature, there is no difference audio-wise between moving a bunch of faders together and controlling them via a VCA fader.It's just that with a VCA fader you have a single "virtual" point of control, and the individual faders stay intact. This is practical, no denying, if you need to constantly adjust the levels of a specific group of unrelated tracks while leaving their actual faders in place. The effect on the mix is identical, their audio still flows through whatever routes they are set.

It's not exactly the same if the relation is kept mathmatically rather than the proportional change that moving the volume faders does. The relation between faders is going to change if you do this yourself or with selecting as a temporary group, especially if a fader is already near the bottom. VCA faders apply a much more even lowering of volume, over attempting to do this by hand on ten tracks etc. because of the relation to no audio that actually moving the volume slider affects. A low fader when moving it in a temporary grouped track in Live will get to zero volume much quicker than the highest fader. With moving a VCA fader all tracks get to zero volume at the same time. Granted if a track is already at -50db you might not hear it, but this is the most blatant reason for VCA faders I can give you. Group tracks in Live are similar in use, but they are not the same.

Personally I've never liked mixing and mastering in Live, no visual cues when you have 32+ tracks it gets tedious for one. Plus Live's infamous heavy CPU use is a PITA with mastering plug ins. I render all tracks to audio for the most part and mix in another DAW.

Live has no infamous heavy CPU use. Or if it has, then Reaper has also infamously heavy CPU use- the CPU use is exactly the same in both. In some scenarios Live is even lighter on CPU. That said, I fully get the preference to mix elsewhere, Live's mixer is pretty crude and switching program also puts you in another mindset. I've mixed and "mastered" stuff made in Live in Reaper, something Reaper is actually really good at.

Do some actual tests. Any DAWs performance can be affected by a badly coded CPU, so I can see why you might be so misled. Live comes in at roughly 60-70% of the plug ins that Reaper or Logic for instance can handle before the audio gets destroyed with artifacts. The only DAW I know of that has worse CPU handling is Bitwig. This has been a constant for years. Live is a CPU pig bar none.

Take a simple MIDI note run, add a CPU heavy instrument to a track and repeat that same track until the audio breaks up. Use the exact same plug in in Live and Reaper. A simple test of this with Diva in multi core mode and the default preset running a single 16th note MIDI file looped at four bars gives me 14 instances in Reaper 5 VS 9 in Live 10. So it hasn't changed one bit in ten plus years. This is about 65% CPU use in Live VS Reaper.

I've done this same test with smaller CPU using plug ins and FX added for larger track counts, with various plug ins to get rid of possible incompatibility issues and simulate "real world" scenarios. The results are always the same, Live is using more CPU than Logic, DP and Reaper, the DAWs I have copies of for testing. Other people have reported similar things in Cubase, which at one point scored much worse than Logic or DP but still better than Live. There is a price to pay for it's smooth operation when messing around adding plug ins while the sequence is running etc. So I don't see it ever changing.

Oh, and "to failure" tests are 100% the only reliable way to measure performance of a DAW since DAWs CPU meters are all over the place performance wise. Live tends to get to 80% real quick before using all your CPU cores effectively, so it gets much further for that last 20% than the 20% would have you think for instance.

[.jon]

It's not exactly the same if the relation is kept mathmatically rather than the proportional change that moving the volume faders does. The relation between faders is going to change if you do this yourself or with selecting as a temporary group, especially if a fader is already near the bottom. VCA faders apply a much more even lowering of volume, over attempting to do this by hand on ten tracks etc. because of the relation to no audio that actually moving the volume slider affects. A low fader when moving it in a temporary grouped track in Live will get to zero volume much quicker than the highest fader. With moving a VCA fader all tracks get to zero volume at the same time. Granted if a track is already at -50db you might not hear it, but this is the most blatant reason for VCA faders I can give you. Group tracks in Live are similar in use, but they are not the same.

If your VCA fader results in all the tracks reaching 0 at the same time, then it's not preserving their relations thus affecting the mix way more than any other method. However, that is not how they work. They simply control the gain of each assigned track, maintaining proportions.

Do some actual tests. Any DAWs performance can be affected by a badly coded CPU, so I can see why you might be so misled. Live comes in at roughly 60-70% of the plug ins that Reaper or Logic for instance can handle before the audio gets destroyed with artifacts. The only DAW I know of that has worse CPU handling is Bitwig. This has been a constant for years. Live is a CPU pig bar none.

Take a simple MIDI note run, add a CPU heavy instrument to a track and repeat that same track until the audio breaks up. Use the exact same plug in in Live and Reaper. A simple test of this with Diva in multi core mode and the default preset running a single 16th note MIDI file looped at four bars gives me 14 instances in Reaper 5 VS 9 in Live 10. So it hasn't changed one bit in ten plus years. This is about 65% CPU use in Live VS Reaper.

I've done this same test with smaller CPU using plug ins and FX added for larger track counts, with various plug ins to get rid of possible incompatibility issues and simulate "real world" scenarios. The results are always the same, Live is using more CPU than Logic, DP and Reaper, the DAWs I have copies of for testing. Other people have reported similar things in Cubase, which at one point scored much worse than Logic or DP but still better than Live. There is a price to pay for it's smooth operation when messing around adding plug ins while the sequence is running etc. So I don't see it ever changing.

Oh, and "to failure" tests are 100% the only reliable way to measure performance of a DAW since DAWs CPU meters are all over the place performance wise. Live tends to get to 80% real quick before using all your CPU cores effectively, so it gets much further for that last 20% than the 20% would have you think for instance.

I've done exactly those kinds of tests with several combinations of plugins (I tested Live thoroughly before abandoning Reaper, as it being particularly CPU efficient is a common myth) and two different audio interfaces, and the result has always been the same- there is no difference. There could be a number of factors causing your different results, but Live certainly isn't widely considered as inefficient.

[machinesworking]

I've done exactly those kinds of tests with several combinations of plugins (I tested Live thoroughly before abandoning Reaper, as it being particularly CPU efficient is a common myth) and two different audio interfaces, and the result has always been the same- there is no difference. There could be a number of factors causing your different results, but Live certainly isn't widely considered as inefficient.

Every single time I've done these tests over the last ten plus years it's been the same.
And yes, Live is near universally acknowledged as heavier on the CPU than other DAWs, it's pretty crazy to me you're even arguing this? Is Reaper the only DAW you tested it against? Reaper acts weird on some peoples systems, but it's fine here.

To add to my post on performance in various DAWs:
Running the test in Logic 10.4 gives 11 instances before things go haywire, roughly Live hits 80% of the CPU Logic can.
Same applies in DP 9.51 11 instances.

Live- 9 instances
Logic and DP- 11
Reaper - 14

So four different DAWs, identical tracks, exactly the same type of results I've been seeing for years with this.

So Live has improved in relation to Logic and DP though, it used to be that it was at 60-70% against those DAWs as well. Hard to say if that's CPU bloat on their part or improvements on Abletons? I suspect the later as I don't recall Ableton bragging about CPU improvements in the last couple years?

[bcm70]

I wasn't planning on buying the upgrade, but Live 10 doesn't filter out sysex like it used to. So I bought it solely so I could build a M4L device that will allow me to control my E5000 sampler from within Live. The new live.banks object also allows you to build up banks of controls on the Push with whatever names you want, different sorts of controls with icons and in whatever order you want, even leaving blanks in a bank if you like.