Ableton live 9 released

[Ch00rD]

With that in mind, I find what Hibidy says about ableton not even interacting with testers in the beta to be quite inexcusable. What exactly was the point of that beta then?

Beta testing tries to find bugs/problems so they can be fixed. It is not an event where people suggest all sorts of nice features they'd like to see added.

Agreed. And it's not that Ableton staff has been completely absent during the test. They did interact with users to some extent.

The problem was rather that the way they interacted with users actually reporting bugs has turned off many of them, including myself. They typically did not respond very timely, if at all, to many serious bug reports (fwiw: I reported dozens of them), and they were remarkably one-sided or deliberately absent in many discussions. Let me just say that I much prefer the more open and reasonable style of discussion that I'm familiar with from my interactions with many other developers. The end of the beta test period seemed to have been dictated by only one major factor: the schedule for mass production of Push devices. The quality of the code in Live 9.0 does not seem to have been a decisive factor at all.

[djscorb]

Not used 9 much yet but I've had plenty of text messages from mates complaining about bugs.

So you base your opinion of software on the texts you get from others rather than your own experience?

No. Why on earth would you come to that conclusion?

I use the word "much" relatively speaking. I have of course spent more than a few days checking it out, but I haven't yet finished a track from start to finish in it and I don't have confidence enough in it from my own short experience (or that of other users, my friends included) to open and continue existing live 8 projects in it.

I've used Live 8 for an unimaginable number of hours. In comparison to that, then no, I haven't used Live 9 "much".

I found enough bugs and shortfalls to keep me away from it for serious work until such time I hear less complaints and find it smoother to work with myself.

That is plain common sense ime.

[djscorb]

With that in mind, I find what Hibidy says about ableton not even interacting with testers in the beta to be quite inexcusable. What exactly was the point of that beta then?

Beta testing tries to find bugs/problems so they can be fixed. It is not an event where people suggest all sorts of nice features they'd like to see added.

And my comment was about bugs and problems in the software, not sure what your point is?

I beta test for a couple of developers and am aware that beta testing is often more about stability and end user configurations rather than suggesting new features.

Ime though the two aren't necessarily mutually exclusive. Sometimes new features are required to solve problems just as some developers are happy to add new features right up to the release candidate and beyond. And at the suggestion of beta testers too I might add.

Good developers treat their creation as a ball of clay and aren't afraid to get their hands dirty. I prefer that to them treating it like an immovable block of granite.

[hibidy]

No. Why on earth would you come to that conclusion?

I use the word "much" relatively speaking. I have of course spent more than a few days checking it out, but I haven't yet finished a track from start to finish in it and I don't have confidence enough in it from my own short experience (or that of other users, my friends included) to open and continue existing live 8 projects in it.

I've used Live 8 for an unimaginable number of hours. In comparison to that, then no, I haven't used Live 9 "much".

I found enough bugs and shortfalls to keep me away from it for serious work until such time I hear less complaints and find it smoother to work with myself.

That is plain common sense ime.

Don't worry about it, you're not doing anything wrong. Like I've said time and time again, if 9 would have been a paid update for me, I wouldn't have touched it. 8 took YEARS to get right. I thought maybe live had learned from the experience, not so much.

[engine]

With that in mind, I find what Hibidy says about ableton not even interacting with testers in the beta to be quite inexcusable. What exactly was the point of that beta then?

Beta testing tries to find bugs/problems so they can be fixed. It is not an event where people suggest all sorts of nice features they'd like to see added.

nobody talks about features here.
just a simple "yes, confirmed" by the abe hq would have been fine.
if you hunt a bug and isolate it and you're giving a specific instruction
to replicate that bug, you would like to see a response.
e.g.: "need further instructions" or "got it..."
its just about real public beta testing.

edit: typos

[djscorb]

Yeah, I remember 8 taking an age to work out.

Live 7 was nearly half as CPU hungry for me and loads more stable back then. I didn't pull the trigger on 8 for a long time after release as I recall.

And you're right, they didn't really learn from that it would seem.

[justin3am]

8 took YEARS to get right. I thought maybe live had learned from the experience, not so much.

To me, it seems like the only reason Ableton offer a public beta is to see how pervasive existing issues are. By the time they're ready to release something to public beta, they may consider it "done" for a '9.0.X' release. Unfortunately, this may not give everyone a warm fuzzy feeling in terms of user experience. I figure they will have something that the majority of users feel is a 'solid' build, just before Live 10 is released for public beta.

As far as I'm concerned, Live 9 is totally useable, as-is. There are some things that I'm getting used to and my honeymoon phase with the new browser is just about over but it's not stopping me from getting work done.

Just my $0.02

[hibidy]

N/M, I'm not getting sucked into this.

IT'S A TRAP

So, about that live 9 eh?

[paradiddle]

I think that ableton not interacting with the beta testers is exaggerated a bit. I was there much earlier in the beta phase. They have however been avoiding direct questions about certain feature decisions (the browser for example) or simply not responding to bug reports you could file. They have said though that everything is taken into account and will be reviewed after the beta.

What pissed the most though is the amount of drama queens/idiots in the beta board threatening to leave the platform or simply being really arrogant with the Abes just cause some features weren't working as expected. However that was the point of the beta.

My feeling is that they did their best and will fix whatever needs to be fixed in time.

Not used 9 much yet but I've had plenty of text messages from mates complaining about bugs. Think I'll wait for a few updates before using it for anything serious.

I think it's really ironic that Ableton started out as a sequencer made "by musicians for musicians". With that in mind, I find what Hibidy says about ableton not even interacting with testers in the beta to be quite inexcusable. What exactly was the point of that beta then?

[Ch00rD]

Yeah, I remember 8 taking an age to work out.

Live 7 was nearly half as CPU hungry for me and loads more stable back then. I didn't pull the trigger on 8 for a long time after release as I recall.

And you're right, they didn't really learn from that it would seem.

And that leads to perhaps the saddest part of the whole story.

Typically, there will always be bugs here and there in a large software project like Live. So it becomes a matter of either accepting the software for what it is, including bugs, or trusting the developers to fix the (serious) outstanding issues.

In this particular case, however, Ableton's CEO had promised Live users more than three years ago, in response to the public outcry over the quality of Live 8, that measures would be taken to prevent this from happening again, that no new features would be developed until the issues were fixed, etc. Now, Ableton has obviously added new features to Live, even released a new product (Push), while many of the legacy bugs still exist. To me that counts as a broken promise. In this context, it just becomes really hard for me to put my trust in Ableton towards the future, or to reward their behaviour with purchasing an upgrade. And it's too buggy to accept it for what it is, imho, especially at its price point.

YMMV, of course. If it works for you, great.

[Dean Aka Nekro]

Will be upgrading from 8 pretty soon, Will have a read back through this thread but from what I've tried with the way I work with it is all solid as far as I can tell. I seemed to be one of the lucky ones with Live 8 never giving me any show stopping hassle at all, It'll crash on me still when I want it too. Maybe I am/use stuff very simple which might explain it

Gotta be keeping up with the jones's obviously

[pdxindy]

I think some statements exaggerate the situation with Live 9... Lots of people were having crashes with Live 8... Most of the complaints with 9 are about people being unhappy with changes in the software, not instability.

Also, lots of people describe feature limitations as bugs which is inaccurate. There is no PDC for automation. That is not a bug, but rather a feature limitation. At some point down the road, Ableton will add that feature, but it is not correct to claim they don't fix bugs and use that as an example.

It is rather easy to complain about what they should do. Maybe it just aint that easy. Maybe Ableton just aint that good. People talk about them like they are torturing kittens or something...

[djscorb]

............

In this particular case, however, Ableton's CEO had promised Live users more than three years ago, in response to the public outcry over the quality of Live 8, that measures would be taken to prevent this from happening again, that no new features would be developed until the issues were fixed, etc. Now, Ableton has obviously added new features to Live, even released a new product (Push), while many of the legacy bugs still exist. To me that counts as a broken promise. In this context, it just becomes really hard for me to put my trust in Ableton towards the future, or to reward their behaviour with purchasing an upgrade. And it's too buggy to accept it for what it is, imho, especially at its price point.

YMMV, of course. If it works for you, great.

That raises a very valid point yeah, I agree. They have done this kind of thing a few times. Adding stuff like serato scratch sync support when syncing two copies of ableton on two laptops simply didn't work (and may still not for all I know).

Also, the price of live Standard is actually pretty expensive when you look at some of the other DAWS around and what you get in the box. It's instruments and even the sampler have to be paid for separately but imo at least aren't of great quality with a very restricted front end. The Logic deal for the download version for $199 with it'a huge suite of effects and instruments represents far better value and it's cpu usage really shows Live up as well.

One of the main problems with Ableton that people are complaining about currently seems to be the PDC. I can only imagine that to fix it would entail changing something so fundamental and they either aren't prepared to do it or can't. I guess a lot of software eventually needs re-writing from the ground up to work efficiently beyond a certain feature set or to cure problems that additional features have introduced.

I might have to give Studio 1 a demo sometime as I've been hearing good things and I would guess that like reaper, being relatively new on the scene means the code and feature set are less at odds with each other than with the Logic and abletons of the world.

Cheers

Scorb

[djscorb]

I think some statements exaggerate the situation with Live 9... Lots of people were having crashes with Live 8... Most of the complaints with 9 are about people being unhappy with changes in the software, not instability.

Also, lots of people describe feature limitations as bugs which is inaccurate. There is no PDC for automation. That is not a bug, but rather a feature limitation. At some point down the road, Ableton will add that feature, but it is not correct to claim they don't fix bugs and use that as an example.

It is rather easy to complain about what they should do. Maybe it just aint that easy. Maybe Ableton just aint that good. People talk about them like they are torturing kittens or something...

Agree with everything you said, they aren't geniuses and you can't please everybody. Clearly they are a business and have an agenda (making money).

However, reporting problems that you are having as a user, whether a bug or not, is still something you would think they would rather know about than not. When a huge fan of the software (and I am) is complaining, then something ain't quite right.

So, you either stay silent and stop complaining, or you actually do raise the issues you are having and then remain silent knowing at least you didn't sit around doing nothing expecting it to be fixed!

It will be interesting to see what happens when they start having a bit of competition from you know who.

Cheers

Scorb

[pdxindy]

One of the main problems with Ableton that people are complaining about currently seems to be the PDC. I can only imagine that to fix it would entail changing something so fundamental and they either aren't prepared to do it or can't. I guess a lot of software eventually needs re-writing from the ground up to work efficiently beyond a certain feature set or to cure problems that additional features have introduced.

The PDC is not broken so it is not a matter of fixing it. It is working as implemented and it does not work for automation. What people are asking for is a new feature.

For the longest time, one of the main complaints was the lack of session view automation. As soon as that is there, something else takes its place. All the people who complained so much about the lack of session view automation, you hardly hear any mention of how useful they are finding it now that they are making use of it. The complaints just shift elsewhere. Complaining has become one of the main hobbies... heh

It is a perfection obsession and nobody is ever happy.