Why is Ableton so slow to release updates?

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antic604 wrote: Sun Apr 05, 2020 6:08 pm
bmanic wrote: Sun Apr 05, 2020 2:18 pm
DJ Warmonger wrote: Sun Apr 05, 2020 9:44 am ...what exactly needs to be updated?
How about adding such a simple feature as "transpose all selected midi clips". Yeah.. you can't do that yet in this amazing piece of software. You can transpose any audio clip, but not midi. :roll:
That's what MIDI FX are for - just put a note transposer in front of the devices chain (and automate on/off, modulate it, etc.)
No, that is NOT at all a convenient workaround.. it's a huge pain in the ass workaround. Try doing that on 90+ tracks instead of just CTRL+A (select all) and transpose.

It gets even worse if you just want to transpose a large amount of clips in the middle of an arrangement. Say you suddenly wanted the 2nd chorus all pad and orchestral instruments transposed by an octave.. now you need to start duplicating tracks JUST to do a basic transposing.

It's extremely convoluted and so weird that you can't transpose clips. You can do it with AUDIO.. so why not midi clips?? So stupid.

Frankly, I'm always shocked when I see people using Live for classical music arrangements and movie scores. It's like THE worst software for that because it lacks some basic stuff for batch midi processing.. stuff that much better midi sequencers have had since the 90's.

What makes all of this even worse is that this feature has been requested by users since forever. It's completely baffling how it hasn't been implemented.
"Wisdom is wisdom, regardless of the idiot who said it." -an idiot

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antic604 wrote: Mon Apr 06, 2020 5:14 am You can already do more with Bitwig's 'racks' (Layers, Selectors, XY, Splitters - 'containers' as they're called there) than with Ableton racks without ever opening the Grid.
Others, is there consensus on this?

It's just that I've heard before others say "more" in this context. I look on Youtube (here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DomfzKaZKhI) and find that Bitwig layers are the same as chains in a Live rack. Where is the "more" there?

I didn't see anything in Selector that can't be done in Live racks with M4L modulators (LFO, Shaper, Envelope, etc.).

Chain selector can be used to cross-fade between chains--not quite like the 4 that Bitwig can do in its XY, but there are possibilities with chains, MultiMap, XY Pad in Live (a bit of a hassle to figure out). So that is a bit more that Bitwig can do, although there are M4L devices that can cross-fade 4 instruments, IIRC (not sure if free options).

I couldn't find on Youtube exactly what Splitter is in Bitwig.
Doing nothing is only fun when you have something you are supposed to do.

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bmanic wrote: Mon Apr 06, 2020 3:00 pm
antic604 wrote: Sun Apr 05, 2020 6:08 pm
bmanic wrote: Sun Apr 05, 2020 2:18 pm
DJ Warmonger wrote: Sun Apr 05, 2020 9:44 am ...what exactly needs to be updated?
How about adding such a simple feature as "transpose all selected midi clips". Yeah.. you can't do that yet in this amazing piece of software. You can transpose any audio clip, but not midi. :roll:
That's what MIDI FX are for - just put a note transposer in front of the devices chain (and automate on/off, modulate it, etc.)
No, that is NOT at all a convenient workaround.. it's a huge pain in the ass workaround. Try doing that on 90+ tracks instead of just CTRL+A (select all) and transpose.

It gets even worse if you just want to transpose a large amount of clips in the middle of an arrangement. Say you suddenly wanted the 2nd chorus all pad and orchestral instruments transposed by an octave.. now you need to start duplicating tracks JUST to do a basic transposing.

It's extremely convoluted and so weird that you can't transpose clips. You can do it with AUDIO.. so why not midi clips?? So stupid.

Frankly, I'm always shocked when I see people using Live for classical music arrangements and movie scores. It's like THE worst software for that because it lacks some basic stuff for batch midi processing.. stuff that much better midi sequencers have had since the 90's.

What makes all of this even worse is that this feature has been requested by users since forever. It's completely baffling how it hasn't been implemented.
I wonder if this goes back to the technical debt thing people mentioned earlier. Obvious 'easy' improvements made difficult by some quirk of the existing codebase.

IIRC it's only very recently Live got PDC nailed down, and even with the incremental improvements since it's AFAIK still only partially implemented (automation is now delayed correctly since version 9.[something], timeline info sent to plugins is still sometimes not). I do love Live and I still use it as my primary tool, but things like PDC not being completely implemented in version 10 (10 whole number versions later!) convinced me that a ground-up rework is desperately needed. You're only as good as your competitors, many of whom are working on a newer codebase, so best invest when you've got the money before people jump ship.

I'm already using Waveform as a secondary DAW, and I've picked up every version since v8 because they've felt like real upgrades. On the other hand, I haven't felt the need to upgrade to Live 10 yet, and even Live 9 I waited until 9.5(?) when it was confirmed automation PDC was fixed. I just don't really see where Live can go from here with its current codebase. It seems to be so difficult for them to add/fix things users actually want, so the only solution in each new version is add more 'stuff' that bobbles on the surface (Max For Live being the obvious outlier.)

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Dirtgrain wrote: Mon Apr 06, 2020 4:31 pm I didn't see anything in Selector that can't be done in Live racks with M4L modulators (LFO, Shaper, Envelope, etc.).

Chain selector can be used to cross-fade between chains--not quite like the 4 that Bitwig can do in its XY, but there are possibilities with chains, MultiMap, XY Pad in Live (a bit of a hassle to figure out). So that is a bit more that Bitwig can do, although there are M4L devices that can cross-fade 4 instruments, IIRC (not sure if free options).
1. While you have to work with additional plugins it´s already premade for you in terms of Multiband, Mid/Side and X/Y which is all not available out of the box in Ableton...

2. Please tell me how can you send audio or midi from anywhere in the project into the chain to a plugin you decide...

3. Please tell me how do you modulate at audiorate any native plugin from anywhere in the project...

4. Look a few video´s about the DC Offset plugin and it´s possibilities...

The statement was 100% correct... You can already do a whole lot more with Bitwig racks compared to Ableton... and the most important part: with a whole lot of fun and completely latency compensated!!

Ableton has it´s advantages over Bitwig too, but the point about racks and internal routing goes 100% to Bitwig ... :tu:

PS: I am just a Bitwig noob...I think the experts can tell about a few hundreds things and more advanced stuff

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Trancit wrote: Mon Apr 06, 2020 5:52 pm 2. Please tell me how can you send audio or midi from anywhere in the project into the chain to a plugin you decide...

3. Please tell me how do you modulate at audiorate any native plugin from anywhere in the project...
I don't know; that's why I asked. I don't quite understand the benefit of these scenarios, not have actually used Bitwig yet (will have to demo it). Is this something you do often, and is it making noteworthy differences in what you produce, as to what you can do with Live?
Doing nothing is only fun when you have something you are supposed to do.

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Even if Live is slower, it is not that much slower than most other DAWs.

Bitwig is from 2009, Bitwig in in version 3.

In the same period there was Live 8, 9 and 10.

Even if you consider only 9 and 10, it is 2 versions to 3, not such a big difference.

Multiple other DAWs are older than Live and are in version 10.

It shows how similar the upgrade rate is for most DAWs, DAWs that are 10-15 years old are in the 5 or 6 version, DAWs that are 20-25 years old are in the 10-12 range.

For Ableton Live specifically, I thing dealing with OpenGL and the huge variety of GPUs in Windows slowed them a bit after 10.0.x and bug hunting VST3 slowed them a bit after 10.1, the betas clearly focused on those issues after those versions.

Anyways, the last beta finally stopped mentioning VST3 and asked users to check how the new Max versions were behaving, so I think VST3 is mostly finished and development for other stuff will pick up soon.

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pottering wrote: Mon Apr 06, 2020 7:53 pm Bitwig is from 2009
Bitwig was founded in 2009 but version 1.0 was released in 2014.

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Yeah, but they didn't start programming it in 2014, they started before 2009, as they already had a working prototype in 2009 that looked much like it does now (including the grid thing).

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You cannot count the pre release stage and I doubt that they had a working prototype already 2009 (but don´t know at the very end)...
Bitwig 1 was released (very buggy) in 2014... at the same time Ableton was I guess at 9.1 with a very stable version as they did very very much bug fixing in the V8 circle...

Now we are at Bitwig 3.1 and Ableton 10.1... plus a whole lot of bug fixing (I mean a whole lot) the Bitwigs had to do in between the release an V2 ...
So we are talking about Bitwig 1-3.1 with much bug fixing and very very big feature updates vs. 9.1-10.1 with not so very much feature updates (for me nothing really groundbreaking) on Ableton´s side...
On top of that has had Ableton the whole period at team of about 200 employees while the Bitwigs started with about 10 people and raised this to about 60 in the same time, so let´s say at average 200 employees vs. 30 employees...

For me the winner is clearly Bitwig...

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...in development time, maybe. But Bitwig is nowhere near as successful as Live. Maybe in the near future if they try harder. Competition is good, an scenario like that would force Live to become better as well. I hope this is the case.
Last edited by Yorrrrrr on Mon Apr 06, 2020 10:09 pm, edited 1 time in total.

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IMHO the reason Live take a long time to release updates is thorough beta testing. They consistently release generous free extras during each cycle of the program, rather than holding them back for the next paid upgrade. I'm more than happy to pay less than £200 every four or five years to upgrade, rather than the subscription model offered elsewhere. Live is popular because its great at what it does and other than the debacle with v8, its rock solid and reliable on stage.

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thecontrolcentre wrote: Mon Apr 06, 2020 9:39 pm IMHO the reason Live take a long time to release updates is thorough beta testing. They consistently release generous free extras during each cycle of the program, rather than holding them back for the next paid upgrade. I'm more than happy to pay less than £200 every four or five years to upgrade, rather than the subscription model offered elsewhere. Live is popular because its great at what it does and other than the debacle with v8, its rock solid and reliable on stage.
I guess I'm really lucky because all the DAWs I own do the same thing basically.
DP10 had as many features added in the .1 release as the original, Bitwig is incremental like Live, and same with Logic and Reaper. They're all also much much cheaper to upgrade than Suite. Plus let's not forget how expensive Suite is up front.

Subscription model wise, I don't think it compares, it's around $150 to "subscribe" in Bitwig, and $300 to upgrade in Live. The thing is though you do not have to upgrade, subscribe, with Bitwig. It's entirely possible to skip subscriptions, and you still get all the perviously released improvements. One could easily "subscribe" at a "stabilized" point after a .0 release then wait until the next one, effectively cutting your price to $150.

What I've had to do over the years to not be hit with $300+ upgrades in Suite is wait 9 months after the upgrade for the 30% pre Xmas sale. I appreciate the amount of time between upgrades, but I appreciate the control Bitwig offers me as an end user over when exactly I jump in and out of upgrades, Ableton doesn't offer that really. No one knows exactly when 11 will drop, not until the public beta, and there's no discount up front anymore, the real savings comes later.

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Yorrrrrr wrote: Mon Apr 06, 2020 9:24 pm ...But Bitwig is nowhere near as successful as Live. ...
If they would have been released at the same time I doubt that Ableton would have won through that strong...

Ableton has the advantage of having been the first DAW with more than 15 lead with this kind of workflow DAW and isn´t a bad product neither...
Bitwig had the advantage of having a example to learn from and not doing the same mistakes again...

But as a newcomer if I had to decide between those 2 I would pick Bitwig for sure... featurewise and in regards of the future

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I get the "don't change a winning horse" argument about Ableton Live. But it seems most people actually don't want a big change to Live, but rather quit small usability improvements to already existing features.

Maybe they really are struggling with the codebase.

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docbot wrote: Mon Apr 06, 2020 11:07 pm I get the "don't change a winning horse" argument about Ableton Live. But it seems most people actually don't want a big change to Live, but rather quit small usability improvements to already existing features.
Agreed :) I don't understand why anyone would buy a DAW then demand features it doesn't have.

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