Ableton Live 12.1 is released! (Feb26 12.1.10 is out)

[nusound mind]

A few questions about Live;

a) How do people mix in it? I can't seem to gel w/ the gui, the mixer console is another page, it's also front and center, not at the bottom which feels weird to me and the sideways way mix plugins slot in also seems counterintuitive visually.

b) Does it work with Dawproject? I like what I've produced in it, but I don't know if I can get passed a) so it'd be nice to transfer over without bouncing it all as one or even as stems to keep settings in place w/ what i do manage to mix in it.

c) I can't remember c. I love the timestretching in Live, had some success with a tricky sample already that turned out quite well as compared to S1 and took far less work to do. So c) is more of a statement. I'm thinking of jettisoning it from the daw trial rotation due to how good the new Cubase looks as I don't have time to learn everything adequately enough. Or maybe I do idk.

And after all my galavanting around w/ other daws I'll end up using S1 near exclusively probably. But I'd like to incorporate Reaper, Cubase, Live into my work to take advantage of their respective strengths, in Live for getting things popping straight away, for Cubase it's depth & cpu efficiency and just to keep it fresh from time to time.

[qtheerearranger]

1. im not an ableton person but i would think a lot of people use command+option+m in the arrangement workflow of ableton 12 with the device view also shown. you can use the bottom right mixer controls to show what you want the mixer to show. what ableton users want is device slots in the mixer which they currently dont have. this is really the main thing thats missing.

2. no

3. yeah abletons stretching algorithms are top notch i still go into ableton to stretch some samples over s1 but ive been dabbling in cubase with 14.

imo as a s1 user the only reason im really looking at cubase is the modulators and the better stretching algorithms.

Presonus bought zplanes stem separator algorithm or rented it idk. either way thats what is inside of studio one. zplane is abletons stretching algorithms minus a few that ableton made in house (like s1 currently has). It boggles my mind they went to zplane and got the stem seperators and were like nah to the algorithms im sure they got offered a discount for the combo. Maybe they are cooking and we will see some better in house algorithms. i certainly know if the devs have the time for it the presonus devs can do amazing work. its just a priority.

[HOTF]

A few questions about Live;

a) How do people mix in it? I can't seem to gel w/ the gui, the mixer console is another page, it's also front and center, not at the bottom which feels weird to me and the sideways way mix plugins slot in also seems counterintuitive visually.

b) Does it work with Dawproject? I like what I've produced in it, but I don't know if I can get passed a) so it'd be nice to transfer over without bouncing it all as one or even as stems to keep settings in place w/ what i do manage to mix in it.

c) I can't remember c. I love the timestretching in Live, had some success with a tricky sample already that turned out quite well as compared to S1 and took far less work to do. So c) is more of a statement. I'm thinking of jettisoning it from the daw trial rotation due to how good the new Cubase looks as I don't have time to learn everything adequately enough. Or maybe I do idk.

And after all my galavanting around w/ other daws I'll end up using S1 near exclusively probably. But I'd like to incorporate Reaper, Cubase, Live into my work to take advantage of their respective strengths, in Live for getting things popping straight away, for Cubase it's depth & cpu efficiency and just to keep it fresh from time to time.

Let me start by saying you really don't have to use Live if you do not gel with it.

a) You can make the mixer appear in both Session and arrangement view in Live 12. The left to right Device view of Live is unique. It might seem weird if you come from other Daws but I personnaly prefer it. its one of the things I love the most about Live.

b) Live does not support Dawproject

[machinesworking]

a) How do people mix in it? I can't seem to gel w/ the gui, the mixer console is another page, it's also front and center, not at the bottom which feels weird to me and the sideways way mix plugins slot in also seems counterintuitive visually.

One thing to do with Live in terms of composing at home at least. Get two monitors!
I could as a long time owner of Live since v3 list dozens of things that tick me off about Live, but the one area where Live beats the snot out of every other DAW is the absolute perfect dual monitor support. Seriously, the fact that Live doesn't hiccup really when messing around adding tracks or instruments to it while the loop is playing, and the dual monitor support are both areas of praise.

Yes, the fact that you can't see in one swoop an overview of the half dozen plugins on your track because to this day Ableton still thing the subwindow is the way to go, even though it flatly cannot show all the plugins... is stupid. There is a hack that allows plugin slots like other DAWs, I haven't tried it in Live 12, it still works.

[qtheerearranger]

not my experience...

edit - clipped the photo it does work on master but not my channel

Screenshot 2024-11-13 at 11.05.59 AM.png

[machinesworking]

It has to be said that dual monitor support is the one user interface area that Live kills Bitwig in. I have two monitors and Bitwig flatly sucks for this configuration. In Bitwig with dual monitors enabled you lose access to full screen edting of MIDI and audio via key commands, you have to drag the edit windows to full size etc. Bitwig put in three monitor support, which of course then the third monitor is the Edit window. With Live the Tab key then becomes the key that switches the Arrange and Session windows between monitors, the Shift Tab for changing subwindows also does this if you have both subwindows open on both monitors.

In general Ableton are weird company. Dual monitor support is IMO the best in the industry, but then they release Push 3 standalone without an arrangement, follow actions, time signatures, or any way to really finish a song in standalone. Standalone is a +$1000 sketch pad addition to Push 3. Plus the fact that to this day, the above hack I posted to get plugin slots adds what is obviously a hidden function of Live that Ableton never have added in... it's a roller coaster of a ride.

[oscillik]

not my experience...

edit - clipped the photo it does work on master but not my channel

Screenshot 2024-11-13 at 11.05.59 AM.png

If you resize the track horizontally, it will show the device names properly.
This is precisely why this is a hidden option; it isn't ready for release.

[machinesworking]

not my experience...

edit - clipped the photo it does work on master but not my channel

Screenshot 2024-11-13 at 11.05.59 AM.png

If you resize the track horizontally, it will show the device names properly.
This is precisely why this is a hidden option; it isn't ready for release.

it's been a hidden option for near a decade now, so no, IMO this is more about Abletons crazy slow pace when confronted with UX traditions people want that they rejected. it took them 15 years to implement Command Alt/Option E to make the Edit sub window full screen.

[HOTF]

To be fair, I have tried this option.txt thing back in Live 10. I thought it would be a game changer and I feature I wanted. Turns out, I hated it. I personnally hope they never implement it.

[machinesworking]

To be fair, I have tried this option.txt thing back in Live 10. I thought it would be a game changer and I feature I wanted. Turns out, I hated it. I personnally hope they never implement it.

There's absolutely no reason to want it not implemented, it already exists for one, so it's not doing anything to the UX, and just like the crossfader you can hide it permanently in the Menu.

[HOTF]

To be fair, I have tried this option.txt thing back in Live 10. I thought it would be a game changer and I feature I wanted. Turns out, I hated it. I personnally hope they never implement it.

There's absolutely no reason to want it not implemented, it already exists for one, so it's not doing anything to the UX, and just like the crossfader you can hide it permanently in the Menu.

I mean sure if you can hide permanently the feature itself could not harm. However, developpement ressources are limited and I would prefer they put their energy and money into more meaningful things.

[machinesworking]

To be fair, I have tried this option.txt thing back in Live 10. I thought it would be a game changer and I feature I wanted. Turns out, I hated it. I personnally hope they never implement it.

There's absolutely no reason to want it not implemented, it already exists for one, so it's not doing anything to the UX, and just like the crossfader you can hide it permanently in the Menu.

I mean sure if you can hide permanently the feature itself could not harm. However, developpement ressources are limited and I would prefer they put their energy and money into more meaningful things.

It's already implemented, it's just not that important to them to finish it up, for reasons I already went over. You're literally doing that greedy end user thing about something that resources already have been used on.

Sorry not trying to dump on you, I just don't get people who want the developers to only implement what they personally will use? I'm happy there's an autotune plugin, a lot of people wanted it. I will never even open it up, but that's not important.

[HOTF]

To be fair, I have tried this option.txt thing back in Live 10. I thought it would be a game changer and I feature I wanted. Turns out, I hated it. I personnally hope they never implement it.

There's absolutely no reason to want it not implemented, it already exists for one, so it's not doing anything to the UX, and just like the crossfader you can hide it permanently in the Menu.

I mean sure if you can hide permanently the feature itself could not harm. However, developpement ressources are limited and I would prefer they put their energy and money into more meaningful things.

It's already implemented, it's just not that important to them to finish it up, for reasons I already went over. You're literally doing that greedy end user thing about something that resources already have been used on.

Sorry not trying to dump on you, I just don't get people who want the developers to only implement what they personally will use? I'm happy there's an autotune plugin, a lot of people wanted it. I will never even open it up, but that's not important.

I'm just expressing my preference, I am not saying that's what Ableton should or should not do. In fact, they probably should implement it being such a popular feature request. That option.txt thing has existed for such a long time, I wonder if there isn't a bug or some obstacle that would require a massive developpement effort. On the surface, it's already "done" as you said, they just need to beta test it and debug it. Perhaps something under the hood is acting weird.

[machinesworking]

I'm just expressing my preference, I am not saying that's what Ableton should or should not do. In fact, they probably should implement it being such a popular feature request. That option.txt thing has existed for such a long time, I wonder if there isn't a bug or some obstacle that would require a massive developpement effort. On the surface, it's already "done" as you said, they just need to beta test it and debug it. Perhaps something under the hood is acting weird.

I think they're just fine with it the way it is. IMO they really do not like implementing things that go against their UX philosophy. They have the subwindow, should be good enough, for editing like I mentioned and for plugin slots. Nevermind that some of us like looking at all the plugins at once.

I mentioned dual monitor support, they really want simplicity in design, they flatly back when they started mentioned not liking pop up windows for plugins, or that most DAWs at the time (PT, Logic, DP, Sonar, Cubase, Fruity Loops), worked best with multiple monitor home setups. They started with laptops in mind, (except CPU lol!), and are tough about it. The only consolation here is when they implemented dual monitor support, they did it better than the rest, by a long shot. I mean there's no comparison, everyone else's version is just dogshit compared.

But this is why I would love it if it was an option in Live instead of a hidden feature, it's not broken, but it requires resizing, a simple fix, but it's pretty awkward to requenst a fix for a hidden feature, and out of a company that takes forever to implement traditional feartures.

[nusound mind]

Thanks for the feedbacks. Yeah I suppose Live would be best dual monitored, the flipping back and forth is too stilted for how I'm accustomed to.

Looking at this vid, the very last view is really what I'm after. So it's good 12 has that at least. idk how to post "shorts" from yt in vid form, or if you can. "...A more mixing friendly workflow." bingo. So that's good news, I'll see how it works in practice.