KVR Audio

leeleema · Post by **leeleema** » Wed Oct 21, 2020 10:59 pm

I know a lot of people love this stuff but for me it is a cause of constant frustration. I've just spent the last hour using a M4L device to get around Live's lack of implementation of a scene follow action (basic!). I figured out how to use it, practised using it in a track, worked out why it wasn't working in one instance and finished with setting up a track template. Playing about with it a bit more, with no other changes resulted in it err, breaking, like a lot of other M4L devices in my experience. It's happened before and I can never understand why.There's no logic to it. There seems to be something just incompatible between M4L developed for a previous version of LIve maybe. Shaper was another classic M4L example - totally unstable. Works fine then randomly stops working. Do others have this experience?

leeleema · Post by **leeleema** » Wed Oct 21, 2020 11:01 pm

*There's no logic to it. When I try to edit this, it looks fine. Odd.

tooneba · Post by **tooneba** » Thu Oct 22, 2020 1:15 am

Even included Convolution reverb has quirkiness. Why wouldn’t third party have it :/ It’s not hard coded into softeware, rather bolted on.

Mumdad · Post by **Mumdad** » Thu Oct 22, 2020 10:13 pm

I've spent the past few weeks researching and messing around with other DAWs primarily because the M4L crashes are driving me mad. Looking at one LFO or convolution reverb the wrong way can be enough to set it going. It's really frustrating to have a big chunk of the motivation for shelling out on Suite be nigh-on unusable for me.

I'm probably kidding myself though, I've bought into the ecosystem that much and the Push experience can be so satisfying that I'll end up just gritting my teeth and getting on with it.

pekbro · Post by **pekbro** » Thu Oct 22, 2020 10:27 pm

Hmm, I don't use too many M4L devices these days, but aren't they supposed to be maintained by the developers to keep up compatibility with the latest MAX. Was always like that before. Methods and functions in MAX are apt to change with updates. So they have to be maintained, just like any other software.

liquidsound · Post by **liquidsound** » Thu Oct 22, 2020 10:28 pm

On windows 10 I have literally zero issues with M4L.
My system it’s quite clean though and no matter what DAW I use I’m blessed with incredible stability.

M4L has also been a blessing with amazing tools.
Sorry to hear you have such bad luck.

@pekbro
Yes absolutely, maintenance extremely important.

pdxindy · Post by **pdxindy** » Thu Oct 22, 2020 10:57 pm

I never updated to Live 10 cause I was moving on to other DAW's... but in the later versions of Live 9 M4L was always crash prone for me. I eventually just stopped using M4L devices and then Live was very stable. It was never one or two problematic devices, but rather most of them that would cause unexpected crashes. I could never pin down a specific set of steps to reproduce. It may also depend on what tasks and situations someone is doing why different people have different amounts of crashing issues.

In Live 10 M4L is supposed to be more reliable... but that doesn't necessarily mean super stable.

liquidsound · Post by **liquidsound** » Thu Oct 22, 2020 11:07 pm

It’s probably going to get better because I heard the same complaint about earlier versions and now more and more users are quite pleased with M4L performance.

The available tools are definitely worth the trouble if any.
There is nothing like out there.

leeleema · Post by **leeleema** » Thu Oct 22, 2020 11:10 pm

I'm glad others have experienced the same issue. Sorry, that sounds bad but I feel reassured, ha

Perhaps it is a mac issue as liquidsound says no such issue with it on windows. I wonder if you are only using post Live 10 M4L releases though?

pdxindy · Post by **pdxindy** » Thu Oct 22, 2020 11:33 pm

leeleema wrote: Thu Oct 22, 2020 11:10 pm I'm glad others have experienced the same issue. Sorry, that sounds bad but I feel reassured, ha Perhaps it is a mac issue as liquidsound says no such issue with it on windows. I wonder if you are only using post Live 10 M4L releases though?

I don't know if the user library has been improved since I was using it, but it was always having lots of broken or semi-working devices. And a Live update would come out and some user created device would start to have problems.

I imagine the commercial devices are generally better supported and updated for new Live versions, but then that is another cost on top of a fairly expensive DAW to begin with.

tooneba · Post by **tooneba** » Thu Oct 22, 2020 11:52 pm

pekbro wrote: Thu Oct 22, 2020 10:27 pm but aren't they supposed to be maintained by the developers to keep up compatibility with the latest MAX.

Yeah, that could be the part of reason people avoid m4l. No reliability of backward compatibility unlike native devices are carefully taken care by ableton.

liquidsound · Post by **liquidsound** » Fri Oct 23, 2020 12:00 am

leeleema wrote: Thu Oct 22, 2020 11:10 pm I'm glad others have experienced the same issue. Sorry, that sounds bad but I feel reassured, ha Perhaps it is a mac issue as liquidsound says no such issue with it on windows. I wonder if you are only using post Live 10 M4L releases though?

My commercial devices are post Live 10 release and are just fantastic like my latest Transient tool “Carver” perhaps one of the best on the market.

The ones that comes with Live are as stable.
I have an iMac but I use it for Logic of Bitwig since is in another location away from my daily production work.

As pdxindy noted, the commercial devices are probably better coded and maintained.
You pay some reasonable amount of money but the functionality added to Ableton becomes unrivaled.

Take a little time to explore the M4L world from professional users and judge for yourself if it’s valuable to your craft.

You may even be inclined to program yourself what you need.
Some people make it sound like a horror journey

Don’t pay attention, do your thing if you have the call for it.

Mumdad · Post by **Mumdad** » Fri Oct 23, 2020 9:40 am

leeleema wrote: Thu Oct 22, 2020 11:10 pm I'm glad others have experienced the same issue. Sorry, that sounds bad but I feel reassured, ha Perhaps it is a mac issue as liquidsound says no such issue with it on windows. I wonder if you are only using post Live 10 M4L releases though?

I'm on Windows 10 and bought Live after the 10 release. I think I'm pretty good at looking after/optimizing my OS and hardware but I still have no end of M4L crashes. All my other software is solid.

For a while I did wonder if it was my Focusrite interface because the drivers for that were terrible but it's no different now that I have an SSL2+. From what I've read in my various Google attempts it just seems like one of those classic PC things of 'it's fine for some but not others' and we'll probably never know why!

Aloysius · Post by **Aloysius** » Fri Oct 23, 2020 9:45 am

Windows 10. Live 10 Suite. I avoid M4L like the plague.

WasteLand · Post by **WasteLand** » Fri Oct 23, 2020 11:14 am

windows 10. live 10 suite. M4L. rock solid. (yes, not the earlier versions of 10.. but now.. o well over a year now...)

EDIT: so what is causing the problems, no probs with M4L devices of ableton or third party M4L devices, no problems at all.

Ableton M4L stability