Ableton 12 - Generative MIDI, Multiband Distortion and more

[jules99]

Live 12 will be out on March 5

https://www.ableton.com/en/blog/ableton ... g-march-5/

[nusound mind]

For those using the beta or latest version how are things looking? I bought Ableton recently and dabbled w/ 11 but am holding off until the free upgrade to 12 kicks in so I'm looking forward to it.

I may hold off until a point release even as I'm pretty dialed in w/ S16.5 rn but I enjoyed Live the few hours or so I've tinkered w/ it and from what I've read in this thread so far 12 sounds promising.

[pekbro]

12 is pretty cool imo. I am gonna buy the upgrade tonight probably.

[bmanic]

I'm still on Ableton Live 10 Suite and am contemplating upgrading. Anybody feel generous with their time want to summarize what I would be gaining by going from 10 to 12 suite?

I've got a Push 2 so if there have been improvements to this then that's definitely a bonus.

Even though I seem to be going towards Reaper even for music composition I can still see Ableton Live as a nice little side distraction when I feel like I need to do things differently. Only question is, is it worth 160 euros for the upgrade?

[qtheerearranger]

Bmanic if your using reaper live 12 probably wont appeal to you. unless you were on the fence between using live and reaper and live was almost there for you live 12 wont put it over the edge of a daw with as many features as reaper. imo as a logic user what ableton 12 has done is great and impressive and has now put it on the fence for me. The browser if you take the time to catagorize all your samples, effects, and instruments, is an improvement. you can save specific searches too as one click tabs on the left of the browser. the piano roll is greatly improved. its far better then logics i will admit. (pls update midi transform features to 2024, logic team) its incredibly easy to do pitch bend and mod wheel modulation in the piano roll now. circling back to the piano roll i really like the grouping of notes and chancing of notes feature.

i mean the feature to find similar sample is great. it also helps for the browser organization. i keep finding samples in the wrong folder when im like why havent i heard this in my hand drums folder and its in the tom folder for some reason.

the ui imo is greatly improved and its something that is subjective. but i dont think enough youtubers have made videos about the ui changes. specifically with the themes. its very easy to use the color hue and color intensity with the different themes to create a very unique theme thats much more real then it was in 11 imo. this is something s1 tries to do and fails at with its color hue.

roar is genuinely my favorite multiband distortion the unique sounds you can get with the modulations are incredible and i find it to be infinitely more versatile then fab filter saturn with the different distortion types having a lot of unique characteristics and the way you can route.

oh yeah granulator 3 is sick with the way the modulators now work in 12 with seeing depth of the mod and being able to adjust the knob still.

hats off to the ableton team fr.

[bmanic]

My issue with Reaper is still that it's a bit difficult to find inspiration in creating full songs in it. Traditionally I've used FL Studio as my producer playground and when I bought Ableton 10 Suite + Push 2 combo (got a stupidly good 50% off price on that combo!) I switched to that and really liked the simplified and tight workflow with the Push. However, it could be that I was simply inspired by something that was new to me because during Covid I sort of neglected it and kept doing more things in Reaper.

Thus I'm a bit unaware of what Ableton 11 brought to the table and why Ableton 12 would be worth it. Been watching some youtube videos on it but nobody seems to touch upon small improvements and what happened to Push. Also, how well does Live 12 / max for live do backwards compatibility? I've bought some useful max4live plugins many years ago.. will they still work correctly?

Also, if I upgrade to Live 12.. can I still keep my Live 10 install for collaboration with a friend who has version 10?

[jules99]

You can definitely keep the old version. I have Live 10, Live 11.0, Live 11.3 and the Beta of 12 installed. It does take up quite the disc space, but I can load each one. You can't run more than one version of Live at a time, though. I accidentally did that when the Beta started, and Live 12 locked up, saying it can't access the Library.

The older version might get a licensing error once you install the new one, but Ableton's support helped me out with an additional license for the old version when that happened to me.

I'm very, very impressed with the feature set of Live 12. The only thing I'm not really gelling with is Meld. Sure it makes odd sounding, FM-y, Chiptune-y sounds, but it's in that No-Man's land of not bread-and-butter-y-enough but also bot weird enough.

[SLiC]

The only thing I'm not really gelling with is Meld. Sure it makes odd sounding, FM-y, Chiptune-y sounds, but it's in that No-Man's land of not bread-and-butter-y-enough but also bot weird enough.

Meld is pretty similar Arturias 'freak ' synth...Its unusual but you can get some cool sounds from it, one that will be appreciated by people who like modular and modules like Braids...to be fair we got a bread and butter VA (Drift) last release and a pretty good WT synth before that...most basis are covered in Suite! (I believe a lot of the AAS based synths are now going top be free with the Standard edition, lets see if t5hat happens on launch)

[SLiC]

Had an email from Ableton today saying payment will be taken in a couple of days...here we go!

[carrieres]

Live 11 :
MPE support at last.
Multiple takes and comping in the Arrangement view.
Powerful new audio effects.
Improved device rack features (16 knobs max).
Randomisation in MIDI clips.
Beautiful orchestral sound packs from Spitfire Audio.
Drift – a new synth (11.3)
yes, I have installed Live 9 to 11

[Artie Fichelle]

Strange, Live12 does install on win10, but when I want to start it nothing happens. Live 11 functions though.

[whyterabbyt]

I really need to try the 12 beta on Win7. 11 works if you excise the redundant Push drivers the install force on you, curious if 12 does.

[bmanic]

Hmm yeah forgot about that. I'm still running Windows 7 on the studio computer and it just keeps on working with most things but I guess I should probably update that old monster at some point, eh?

At home I'm on Mac OS but probably forever stuck on Monterey (just updated from Big Sur a few weeks ago!) as it seems to be the last version with reliable built in Firewire legacy support.

[bundoo]

First impressions:
- they changed the short cuts (annoying but ill get used to it)
- can't drag and drop multiple clips from an audio track onto drum rack anymore (eeesh)
- the gate option in simpler now allows u to use fades and not just the adsr

[HydrogenHuman]

First impressions:
- they changed the short cuts (annoying but ill get used to it)
- can't drag and drop multiple clips from an audio track onto drum rack anymore (eeesh)
- the gate option in simpler now allows u to use fades and not just the adsr

I would think that 2nd thing about audio clips and dragging to drum rack has to be a bug.