Ableton Live 11.3 Beta is out

[Trancit]

Yes, it works well especially with the digital mode... but without any visual representation at all...
It would be nice if there would be some visuals what has been done to the signal...
Your ears can cheat yourself much easier than your eyes...

Not trying to stir up or upset you, really not my goal here, especially since you are (I guess) an experienced Live user. But with clipping it is exactly the other way around. You already have good meters in Live Mixer, you just clip it with Saturator and listen until you are "there". What do you want to see really?

...

Perhaps it´s just me, but especially after long "listening" days my ears always get a bit tired on the high end content (I assume it´s not just me...) and a nice visual feedback let me easily control I am not going too much "into the flesh" when clipping but not necessarily wanting to hearable distort...

It´s just an easy saftey measurment for me I got used to and which works well for me...

I don´t use the Saturator for clipping because of this issue and have already my set of clippers I settled on... all with visual feedback of course...

[VitaminD]

what the difference between "Bounce in Place" and freeze ?

BiP = Freeze and Flatten. It's one operation compared to two.

Also, BiP in other DAWs usually renders the clip in question on to a new audio track. Some DAWs allow selecting where in the plugin chain you want this bounce to happen.

What does it mean to 'Flatten' in the context of the discussion? I understand Freeze, but I've never heard of this Flatten before.

[sqigls]

rendering the frozen vsti to an audio file, like an export that replaces the vsti instance with an audio file

[andy-cytomic]

I wonder which filter is implemented in Drift. The Cytomic ones?
I also wonder if I missed something as Andy (from Cytomic) mentioned something with the release of Live 11.

[...] and continuing collaboration work with Ableton, which will soon be released to the public.

I didn't work on Drift at all, but I have licensed filters to Ableton for use in their products. Filter "type II" is the MS2 SD 4 pole filter (a more efficient version that still sounds very close to the MS2 MD filter which appears in other devices labeled MS2). The "type I" filter is not by me, but sounds good. From having a listen it's a 2 pole, most likely a Sallen Key filter like the MS2, but with only a single non-linearity on the resonance, and no filter drive or other non-linearities in the filter core, but a great low cpu option. For comparison the MS2 MD 2 pole contains 6 non-linearities (1 input, 4 filter core, 1 resonance), and the 4 pole is 2 x 2 pole, so contains 12 non-linearities total. The MS2 SD has 3 non-linearities (1 input, 2 filter core, and 1 resonance), so the 4 pole will have 6 non-linearities.

One of the great features of Drift is that it is efficient so you can run lots of voices. It supports SIMD processing of 4 mono (f32x4) filters at once (finally!). I'm pretty sure the rest of the synth engine is also SIMD f32x4 as well, which is why it is so efficient and you get multiples of 4 for the voice count when in poly mode - great work Ableton!

The work I delivered a while back includes a bunch of stuff I've yet to see in any alpha or beta yet, so fingers crossed it will be added at some stage. The folks at Ableton are keeping busy, this stuff takes time.

[manbuuren]

great news!

[carrieres]

What does it mean to 'Flatten' in the context of the discussion? I understand Freeze, but I've never heard of this Flatten before.

You can also decide to flatten frozen tracks, which completely replaces the original clips and devices with their audible result. The Flatten command is available from the Edit menu.

[HOTF]

Another demo of what is possible with drift (for my Techno heads) :

[SLiC]

Another update today- Auto-Warp Improvements looks very interesting....

Also if you haven't noticed there is a great free MAX devices and Learning Pack -41 Live Sets and 90 Max devices https://www.ableton.com/en/packs/building-max-devices/#?

11.3.1b2 Release Notes
New features and improvements:
Auto-Warp Improvements
Live now uses a new Auto-Warp algorithm. Both downbeat and tempo variations are more accurately analyzed, making it possible to work with longer samples and entire songs without the need for manual warping in most cases.
To run the new Auto-Warp algorithm on clips within an existing Live Set, use any of the Warp From Here commands (found in the Sample Editor's context menu) from any location in a clip.
Core Library
Fixed several presets
Added a small preset selection
Max for Live

Updated the bundled Max build to version 8.5.4. For the changelog, visit: https://cycling74.com/forums/max-8-5-4-released

Bugfixes:

The MIDI input ports of the APC Key 25 mk2 and APC Mini mk2 controllers are now visible in Live's Link/Tempo/MIDI preferences, which allows these controllers to be used for MIDI mapping.
Fixed a performance issue in Sets with many particular VST3 plug-ins, that caused the UI to lag or become unresponsive.

[SmajjL]

Ohh-lalah? So! curious to try some timeless songs on this improoved Auto-Warp
With all due respect for the timeless great songs, ok?
*yabba dabba dooo0!!

[ozinga]

Ohh-lalah? So! curious to try some timeless songs on this improoved Auto-Warp
With all due respect for the timeless great songs, ok?
*yabba dabba dooo0!!

Tried it with an old song and the result is stunning!

[HydrogenHuman]

Ohh-lalah? So! curious to try some timeless songs on this improoved Auto-Warp
With all due respect for the timeless great songs, ok?
*yabba dabba dooo0!!

Tried it with an old song and the result is stunning!

The french house/future funk producer in me is excited by this news!

[_leras]

Bitwig´s FM is for me complete rubbish ...it lacks completely the bite and grittiness I have in Operator or Sampler immediately with the slighest settings and Drift is no exception there...

The Reverb in Bitwig is by far the worst I´ve heard in 20 years plugin technology and they should be ashamed to have put such crap as one of the main fx processors in music production in there...
To have a pure convolution reverb as "replacement" doesn´t make the situation any better... especially not with this poor feature set...

For me it´s like (just in comparisson between those 2):
Ableton = much slower development pace but what they release is well thought through and very very pleasant sounding especially for electronic music...
If they don´t come up with better stuff themselves they hire or license 3rd party to do it for them...

Bitwig = spitting out without much thinking... the main thing is that it is technically correct but without any finetuning at all and (again) for me a nightmare and huge effort to make something useful out of the stuff...
Great ideas and for sure many improvements of DAW weaknesses compared to Live but very often poorly implemented and (again) not finetuned at all...

Again... that´s just me and I don´t know if I have expressed myself correctly to understand what I mean...
Feel free to have a different opinion and have made different experiences!

I think you may be out of date re: Bitwig. Phase 4 is a very capable synth, and it's super flexible with all the Bitwig modulations.

The new convolution reverb in Bitwig sounds really fantastic.

The previous Reverb has a brash natural sound, but as you can add EQ or filters into the FX path inside the plug in, it's very easy to shape the reverb sound. If you're not doing that, then you should try.

Personally I find the topic of stock daw reverbs a bit moot. Im lucky to have plenty of good options but if I didn't Valhalla Vintage Verb is very cheap and very good.

[mxbf]

the worst feature of Ableton really is the audio clip editing.

I really really do hope they add the features that Bitwig has for audio clip editing, that would be huge. it seems like such a basic feature to not have in this, on the 11th iteration...

no, I don't want to open Audacity that doesn't have a beat grid or features. nobody does. in Bitwig you can just do whatever you want inside of the audio clip itself, easily bounce down into a new clip, and go wild. hard to go back to Ableton in that respect.

I also was dealing with some really bad time-stretching the other day, like Ableton's beat-stretch warping algorithm is pretty bad compared to Bitwig. maybe its the transient detection, i have no idea, but if you've ever thought "Ableton's beat stretching sounds bad" it might not be your imagination.

[mxbf]

as for Operator, it's a classic, so simple yet so usable and powerful. one of the best ever. but it's not enough to make me want to write my music in Ableton, and I'm fine with Phase 4 or whatever if I can write in Bitwig. actually that might be harsh, i write tons of stuff in ableton. but i do think its lagging behind Bitwig in many ways.

that said, Ableton session view and its features are perfect for live performance, unparalleled. thats what im using it for now. bitwig is clunky, session view is more Logic-tier, kind of just there.

[Echoes in the Attic]

that said, Ableton session view and its features are perfect for live performance, unparalleled. thats what im using it for now. bitwig is clunky, session view is more Logic-tier, kind of just there.

How is bitwigs clip launcher any worse?