Ableton Live 9 now available!

[Berni]

I just finished downloading the 9 suite & I am still reeling from the sheer volume of sounds, instruments & FX it comes with. At $250 for the upgrade from 8 suite it has got to be the deal of the year so far, unbelievably great value for money. I will probably not buy another piece of gear this year as it will probably take that long to get through it all. You can check it out here...

https://www.ableton.com/en/live/new-in-9/

I can see this really pissing off a LOT of plug-in/sample makers.;)

[feedingear]

Been reading a lot of bugs and odd changes from 8-9. Was considering getting it as another creative tool and to get out of Cubase but I think ill be hanging on a few months until it gets a few new builds under its belt first.

[MBTC]

I'm always thinking about Live as a possible next path.. I like that it's cross platform and seems to be gaining big in momentum. I wish I could just learn one fucking DAW and be done with it, it's been so long since I've actually written music that I feel like chucking the technology and getting a kazoo or something just to allow me to focus on what used to be important to me :) I get enough techlust satisfaction developing software, when I do music I mostly just want to unleash the creative side and minimize workflow.

Has it gotten any better with regard to hardware integration Berni? Every now and then I see people saying "works great except in ________" fill in the blank with Live, Pro Tools, Logic, Reaper whatever... Seems like Cubase + VST is the one thing nobody every complains about so I thought seriously about going that route.

[oscillator]

Every now and then I see people saying "works great except in ________" fill in the blank with Live, Pro Tools, Logic, Reaper whatever... Seems like Cubase + VST is the one thing nobody every complains about so I thought seriously about going that route.

Just consider the unique Ableton workflow. You can record let's say 40 different takes of different instruments, and reorder them with just a click (pushing play on single takes), listening to unlimited kinds of layer/orders of musical ideas. This for me is a creative potential with no boundaries.

All the other daws do recording in a linear way, from a to b.

I lost many hours with other daws until i discovered Live that changed my (music) life.

If the music ideas childbirth is what is very important for you, you should consider it.

[TweakHead]

@Berni,

maybe you could give us some input on how it is working right now... I'm mostly a Logic user, got the LE version of Live with my controller, and later got more and more into it... sometimes I use it in rewire as I find there's some good features on it that I find many uses for. true that it's gaining more and more producers every day, and I think it's fair - as it's build with a new philosophy and very intuitive. And I love the design of it as well, very easy to know what's going on at all times. That and the jam approach to music making. I still think, however, that mixing is it's weak point, maybe that's changed with this new version, honestly don't know. The audio to midi function appears to be magic. Sort like Melodyne (??? or is it different?)... I think Ableton and Maschine is probably an excellent combo for really intuitive music making on this digital age - the basic concept is somewhat similar, laying down ideas fast.

Did you get Push as well? Or thinking about it, Berni? Like the way it allows to play many scales with good visual feedback, that's the thing that got me more curious about it...

Cheers

[MBTC]

Just consider the unique Ableton workflow. You can record let's say 40 different takes of different instruments, and reorder them with just a click (pushing play on single takes), listening to unlimited kinds of layer/orders of musical ideas. This for me is a creative potential with no boundaries.

All the other daws do recording in a linear way, from a to b.

I lost many hours with other daws until i discovered Live that changed my (music) life.

If the music ideas childbirth is what is very important for you, you should consider it.

That really appeals to me, the handling of takes. Logic handles takes pretty nicely I think, at least compared to FLStudio. One of these days I need to get the demo and start learning, I guess.

[Berni]

Well it's early days yet but so far so good. It has been out on beta for quite a while & ableton have a good rep. when it comes to software & are not the kind of company that puts out half finished, half arsed crap like a certain synth company I could mention but don't really need to.
Funnily enough it's because of access that I started to get really into Live. I have had it since Version 6, starting out with a freebie LE version but never really got that into it. I just used it to make a few DJ mixes & mess around with loops. I'm a long time pro tools user & know it like the back of my hand so it has always been my DAW just because I'm too lazy to learn another one properly. After many years of trying to get VC working in PT I gave up because it probably never will work properly & there is nothing I can do about it. The VST version in Live works fine for me however so a few months back I started to learn Live properly & now I'm totally into it. It was quite a bit to get my head around at first as it is NOTHING like pro tools (or any other DAW for that matter) but I did a ton of tutorials, joined some forums etc. & now I can honestly say that I will be using it for all my composition's & use PT for mixing down, mastering & any live recording.
I looked at the Push controller but decided not to bother for several reasons. 1. I already have a midi keyboard & the Maschine. 2. This is Ableton's first hardware controller which makes it a bit of an experiment & finally it looks a bit confusing & I don't want to have to learn ANOTHER thing.
Whats blowing me away right now are the max 4 Live devices, worth the asking price alone. I haven't tried out the audio to midi functions yet but they do what Melodyne does pretty much just not as many bells & whistles. Melodyne incidentally have been giving large discounts to people to upgrade there versions. I'll write another update as I get more into it but right now I'm like a kid at xmas with all this inspiring software. You can try it for free for 30 days so what have you got to lose if you are curious :wink:

[TweakHead]

True, will do that. Currently don't have my setup running. Moved in a few days ago, all my precious stuff is still in boxes. The world feels much more boring because of that :twisted:

and you're right about Push, except for the fact (I think) they're doing it with Akai - that's got much more experience on such matters and I think it will perform right from the start.

but all in all, it's good to see Ableton growing into a much more mature product that's got some unique arguments that should and probably will give competitors much to think about.

[MBTC]

You can try it for free for 30 days so what have you got to lose if you are curious :wink:

But it is working well with Virus Control for you as I understand? That's what I wanted to confirm.

It is saying a lot if so, because you've been one of the more vocal opponents of the TI's integration I've seen (and that opposition basically mirrors my brief experience with it). So, if they've got everything worked out, at least with regard to running stably in Live, maybe I should check out Live.

I could try the trial of Live for 30 days but I don't have a Virus TI to try it with so I'm more inclined to get as much feedback right now from those who have.

Long term I just want a DAW that works the same on either Mac or PC (obviously FLStudio is PC only and Logic is Mac only and that's what I use today) and is hardware integration friendly, specifically with the Virus and Ultranova plugins (although I'm somehow less concerned about the Ultranova plugin).

Do you use the VST format plugin inside Live or some other format?

[Berni]

But it is working well with Virus Control for you as I understand? That's what I wanted to confirm.

It is saying a lot if so, because you've been one of the more vocal opponents of the TI's integration I've seen (and that opposition basically mirrors my brief experience with it). So, if they've got everything worked out, at least with regard to running stably in Live, maybe I should check out Live.

I could try the trial of Live for 30 days but I don't have a Virus TI to try it with so I'm more inclined to get as much feedback right now from those who have.

Long term I just want a DAW that works the same on either Mac or PC (obviously FLStudio is PC only and Logic is Mac only and that's what I use today) and is hardware integration friendly, specifically with the Virus and Ultranova plugins (although I'm somehow less concerned about the Ultranova plugin).

Do you use the VST format plugin inside Live or some other format?

Yes I finally got the VST version working at least BUT here's what I had to do to get there (I am not saying all these steps/equipment are necessary but this is just my set up)
I bought a brand new macbook pro, late 2011 model. Installed a solid state hard drive in place of the optical drive which just about triples the speed of the computer. I also bought a thunderbolt 27" display that has a hub on the back for all my usb stuff, mouse, keys etc. So now the ONLY thing in the usb port of my lap top is the virus. Depending on your set up your mileage may vary, but right now it plays great in Live. Arp's are synced & no pop's, crackles, or just plain flaking out like it used to.
It's only because I'm a stubborn SOAB that I've kept at it so long TBH.

Live works with VST & AU plug-ins so your Logic stuff should work with it :)

[accvi242]

I am most excited about the new clip automation recording. It works for the track in which I have virus control as an insert. Normally I add new MIDI tracks to play all 16 internal parts of the Virus. But how is it possible to record clip automation by turning knobs for these other tracks which have no virus control inserted? I didn't get it.

[Berni]

I am most excited about the new clip automation recording. It works for the track in which I have virus control as an insert. Normally I add new MIDI tracks to play all 16 internal parts of the Virus. But how is it possible to record clip automation by turning knobs for these other tracks which have no virus control inserted? I didn't get it.

Your virus can actually play 16 parts! What did you do? Hot rod it or something ;) If you want to use the virus to control other functions then you have to use the midi mapping mode to assign the knobs to the parameter you want to automate.

[Berni]

OK my bad, I see what u are saying now. Although you can automate anything on the midi track the plug-in is on there doesn't seem to be any way of automating the midi channels playing other parts. I don't use multi mode too much so I have not noticed this before. There has to be a way but I'm still pretty new to Live & still getting my head around all the new stuff with 9.

[Berni]

So I have had a little time to play around with all the new stuff in Live 9 so here goes. It certainly is not quite as stable as 8 although it is certainly usable I find old sessions or even new ones take longer to load. It has crashed a couple of times when I have been really pushing it.
The new browser is cool although it could use more organisation but that is more down to me than ableton.
The audio to midi function is REALLY cool & works remakably well. It's not so good with samples that are very busy & have a lot of instruments/sounds in them but can provide some interesting results. It fairs better with solo instruments & drum loops that have clear transients. There are 3 modes to choose from, convert harmony, melody or drums to new midi track. Obviously the choice you make depends on the source sample. Depending on which option you choose Live will then assess the sample then put the resulting notes into a midi track along with a suitable instrument to play the result. If you have a drum loop for example it will split the midi notes into hihat, snare, kick etc. & load them into a drum rack. You can make any drum loop your own in a matter of seconds.
The other thing I'm in love with is the Max 4 Live devices it comes with. Max 4 Live is a totally user programmable language that lets the user create there own FX, instruments & sequencers. It comes with a lot of pre made stuff & there is a large community of enthusiasts constantly developing new stuff, most of which is free! Here's a short video about one of the devices that I really like, the monolake granulator...

http://youtu.be/9pn_b7OUO6I

[MBTC]

I realized I had a light version of Ableton Live 8, so I've been checking it out, learning the Live way of doing things etc.

One of the things I noticed was that CPU-intensive plug-ins start making cracking and popping noises if I push them even a little. For example something like Diva I tried the same patch being played the same way on Live8 and FLStudio. The ASIO driver for my Saffire Pro 24 has what I assume is a fixed buffer size of 384 and 9ms latency (I'm not able to change the setting either in Live or FLStudio, whereas it is adjustable if I use the Creative X-Fi Asio driver) but the symptom sounds similar to when latency is set too low. The CPU meter will show about the same % in each application, but the sound difference is like night and day, very clear in FLS and sounds like the monster synth Diva can be, whereas in Live the same synth crackles, cuts out, sounds like its robbing notes. I'm 100% sure the settings are the same in each plugin instance, same PC, same audio interface, etc.

I know its probably solvable with a setting somewhere and is not Live itself, but since I can't change latency / buffer size I'm not sure where to start. I seriously doubt there is any sort of compatibility problem with the audio interface or driver, because Ableton/Focusrite seem to have kind of a partnership here and Live is basically what the audio interface recommends by shipping a Live Lite CD with it.

I know this isn't the Ableton support forum and I've already been searching for clues there, but I thought I'd look for suggestions here as part of my research.

UPDATE #1: One thing I keep forgetting is that my latency / buffer settings are settable in the Saffire Mix software, then it applies to the ASIO settings for all apps. So I went back and experimented with different values and got same results. Plugin buffer size is set to same as audio interface.

UPDATE #2: Above I said if I start "pushing things a little". Pushing things a little to me might be overkill for some, but I noticed the popping before I started setting up ridiculously CPU intensive scenarios to reproduce and test. One that I've been using is the patch called "BS Mono Trancer" for Diva (under Patches > BrontoScorpio), then I change Mono to Poly and Accuracy to Divine. This is a brutal supersaw patch that will quickly put a major load on the CPU for sure, but this plays in FLStudio fine with plenty of room for more sound. Some of the less CPU intensive patches will play without pops of course. I can also reduce pops by choosing a ridiculously high buffer size, but that's no good because the latency is too high to play effectively (and there will still be pops even at 1024!)

[Berni]

[quote=MBTC;302758]I realized I had a light version of Ableton Live 8, so I've been checking it out, learning the Live way of doing things etc.

One of the things I noticed was that CPU-intensive plug-ins start making cracking and popping noises if I push them even a little. For example something like Diva I tried the same patch being played the same way on Live8 and FLStudio. The ASIO driver for my Saffire Pro 24 has what I assume is a fixed buffer size of 384 and 9ms latency (I'm not able to change the setting either in Live or FLStudio, whereas it is adjustable if I use the Creative X-Fi Asio driver) but the symptom sounds similar to when latency is set too low. The CPU meter will show about the same % in each application, but the sound difference is like night and day, very clear in FLS and sounds like the monster synth Diva can be, whereas in Live the same synth crackles, cuts out, sounds like its robbing notes. I'm 100% sure the settings are the same in each plugin instance, same PC, same audio interface, etc.

I know its probably solvable with a setting somewhere and is not Live itself, but since I can't change latency / buffer size I'm not sure where to start. I seriously doubt there is any sort of compatibility problem with the audio interface or driver, because Ableton/Focusrite seem to have kind of a partnership here and Live is basically what the audio interface recommends by shipping a Live Lite CD with it.

You can adjust buffer size/latency in Live's preferences.

[MBTC]

You can adjust buffer size/latency in Live's preferences.

Yeah, I wrote an update about that (see above). The reason the values were locked (read-only) in Live is because with a Firewire Saffire audio interface, you have to change it in the Mixer control.

But still, even with ridiculously large buffer sizes I still get crackles and pops with CPU heavy synths, yet I can do same in FLS without any problems. I did a lot of reading on the forums and some folks seem to never get past this point in Live :( This would be a deal breaker for me.

I saw one guy say that if you have more than one sound device (i.e. in my case the external audio interface plus an internal sound card) you have to be sure your system sounds are sent only through the regular sound card while Ableton uses the pro audio interface. I tried everything short of physically removing the soundblaster card. Maybe I will do that today. But it's frustrating to run into something like this that works fine in FLStudio.

[TweakHead]

That's not normal. In my system, which is a mac, it goes the other way around. I have a good performance on Logic, but I feel that Live is somewhat lighter on the system. What I think you should do is contact your soundcard's manufacturer with as much detailed info as you can, as I'm sure you won't be the only one with those problems. They may even have some step-guide to fix it - worth giving a shot I guess.

But all in all, Diva is one heck of a cpu eater. :twisted:

[MBTC]

That's not normal. In my system, which is a mac, it goes the other way around. I have a good performance on Logic, but I feel that Live is somewhat lighter on the system. What I think you should do is contact your soundcard's manufacturer with as much detailed info as you can, as I'm sure you won't be the only one with those problems. They may even have some step-guide to fix it - worth giving a shot I guess.

But all in all, Diva is one heck of a cpu eater. :twisted:

I have a feeling it is related to having two audio interfaces in the PC, but it's very weird that it doesn't occur with "light load" sounds. I saw folks in the Live forums that apparently just accepted this sort of limitation as the way things always are with software synths. It made me wonder if that's why software based synths have a rep for being inadequate compared to hardware? Maybe its due to underlying technical troubles like this.

The audio interface is Focusrite, the Live 8 Lite edition was distributed with it. Even when I load Live, the splash screen says "Focusrite Edition". The other sound card is a Creative X-Fi. That could be related to the problem, still investigating. I hope not, because I have yet another audio interface, the Ultranova (which is just not plugged in at the moment because I wanted to eliminate it as a culprit), so if multiple audio interfaces is an issue that could be a bigger problem for me going forward, as I could potentially have as many as five audio interfaces to a PC at once:

1. Onboard sound
2. Creative X-Fi
3. Focusrite Saffire Pro 24
4. Novation UltraNova
5. Virus TI audio (assuming I get another Virus in the future)

At least the first 4 above work like a champ, no questions asked with FLStudio on same PC. I really hope it doesn't come down to the PC version of Live just not being as reliable as the Mac version.

Scary to see people on the Live forums that have conceded that Diva, Zebra, Omnisphere and such are just too CPU intensive. That's not the case when things are properly configured.

[Berni]

I have a feeling it is related to having two audio interfaces in the PC, but it's very weird that it doesn't occur with "light load" sounds. I saw folks in the Live forums that apparently just accepted this sort of limitation as the way things always are with software synths. It made me wonder if that's why software based synths have a rep for being inadequate compared to hardware? Maybe its due to underlying technical troubles like this.

The audio interface is Focusrite, the Live 8 Lite edition was distributed with it. Even when I load Live, the splash screen says "Focusrite Edition". The other sound card is a Creative X-Fi. That could be related to the problem, still investigating. I hope not, because I have yet another audio interface, the Ultranova (which is just not plugged in at the moment because I wanted to eliminate it as a culprit), so if multiple audio interfaces is an issue that could be a bigger problem for me going forward, as I could potentially have as many as five audio interfaces to a PC at once:

1. Onboard sound
2. Creative X-Fi
3. Focusrite Saffire Pro 24
4. Novation UltraNova
5. Virus TI audio (assuming I get another Virus in the future)

At least the first 4 above work like a champ, no questions asked with FLStudio on same PC. I really hope it doesn't come down to the PC version of Live just not being as reliable as the Mac version.

Scary to see people on the Live forums that have conceded that Diva, Zebra, Omnisphere and such are just too CPU intensive. That's not the case when things are properly configured.

Well I don't know about anybody eleses set up but I can run the virus & dozens of soft synths, samplers & FX without any problems or getting near to critical mass so to speak so it's definitely not a limitation of Live only other peoples systems & lets face it EVERYONE is different. I have some pretty CPU intensive synths, Massive etc. & it runs many instances without a problem & my buddy who is also a Live user runs all the synths you mentioned on his set up all day long.
Abletons support is really very good so I would also contact them about the issues you are having with the soundcards.

[MBTC]

Well I don't know about anybody eleses set up but I can run the virus & dozens of soft synths, samplers & FX without any problems or getting near to critical mass so to speak so it's definitely not a limitation of Live only other peoples systems & lets face it EVERYONE is different. I have some pretty CPU intensive synths, Massive etc. & it runs many instances without a problem & my buddy who is also a Live user runs all the synths you mentioned on his set up all day long.
Abletons support is really very good so I would also contact them about the issues you are having with the soundcards.

I have a feeling it is something that Live doesn't like about my particular PC. I've tried just about everything at this point except for trying another PC which I might do in the future. I have no doubt the experience on the Mac is different -- that's one thing I commonly see with software that supports multiple platforms, sometimes one platform's version gets slightly more attention than another, and to be fair their QA department has a lot more work cut out for them on the PC and the myriad hardware possibilities than they do on a Mac.

I tried disabling everything that might remotely interfere, including the NVidia HD Audio drivers (which are weird, they are there apparently for the HDMI port on the video card... don't remember asking for these!).

Anyway without meaning to, I've kind of screwed up a thread about Live 9 with a bunch of woes about Live 8.4, so I should probably just bug out - sorry for that, as its not really the right place. I might bail on Live for now and try it later with a different version (as far as I could tell, Live 9 Lite was not a download option for me). If anyone is using Live 8 on a PC and can possibly help, even if a PM, its appreciated.

[Berni]

Live lite has been replaced by Live intro, its $119 usd. They will probably throw it in for free on future gear bundles.