Ableton and the whole soft synth thing

[forge]

To easily map controllers to the parameters you want to control should be a priority.
The simple things should be fixed before bulking up the software with (imo) needless 'features'.

the two are not exclusive

they are handled by different people and developing the instruments etc hasn't affected the development of Live at all

@3dot - if it was like the image I posted and the view selector was MIDI assignable then you could do that - just assign a button to go up or down a bank

[jonny72]

I reckon everyone complaining about the Ableton instruments needs a reality check.

Live Suite comes with 6 instruments (Sampler, Operator, Electric, Analog, Tension, Drum Machines) and costs an extra €230 compared to Live 7 which works out at under €33 per instrument.

Reaktor on its own costs more than €230 and whilst you can get some pretty awesome package deals from Native Instruments even with their best value package you're still paying three times as much per instrument.

I'm not saying the Ableton instruments are perfect, but when you consider the price and what you get for the money I don't think there are any grounds for complaint.

[forge]

I reckon everyone complaining about the Ableton instruments needs a reality check.

Live Suite comes with 6 instruments (Sampler, Operator, Electric, Analog, Tension, Drum Machines) and costs an extra €230 compared to Live 7 which works out at under €33 per instrument.

Reaktor on its own costs more than €230 and whilst you can get some pretty awesome package deals from Native Instruments even with their best value package you're still paying three times as much per instrument.

I'm not saying the Ableton instruments are perfect, but when you consider the price and what you get for the money I don't think there are any grounds for complaint.

firstly, the discussion was not about price

and secondly, you are allowed to state your "complaints" - in fact I don't know why you'd see it as complaints - what is wrong with constructive criticism? that's part of what forums are for

[jonny72]

I reckon everyone complaining about the Ableton instruments needs a reality check.

Live Suite comes with 6 instruments (Sampler, Operator, Electric, Analog, Tension, Drum Machines) and costs an extra €230 compared to Live 7 which works out at under €33 per instrument.

Reaktor on its own costs more than €230 and whilst you can get some pretty awesome package deals from Native Instruments even with their best value package you're still paying three times as much per instrument.

I'm not saying the Ableton instruments are perfect, but when you consider the price and what you get for the money I don't think there are any grounds for complaint.

firstly, the discussion was not about price

and secondly, you are allowed to state your "complaints" - in fact I don't know why you'd see it as complaints - what is wrong with constructive criticism? that's part of what forums are for

How can a discussion like this not include price?

My point is the Ableton instruments cost a fraction of other alternatives that have been listed in this thread yet people have been making direct comparisons.

Sure the Ableton instruments could be a lot better and come with a lot better presets but then that is likely to increase the price. Plus they're never going to be perfect for everyone but then everyone has the choice of not buying them. They're perfect for me as my music making is for fun rather than anything serious - I'm happy sitting down with the instruments and seeing what I can come up with.

It would be good if they released some extra patches / samples for users to download for free. Having a decent download section where everyone could upload their stuff to share with others would be very useful as well.

[forge]

It would be good if they released some extra patches / samples for users to download for free. Having a decent download section where everyone could upload their stuff to share with others would be very useful as well.

that's what I was talking about - presets = patches

anyway most of what I was talking about was more general about the way Live is set up to change presets

[jonny72]

It would be good if they released some extra patches / samples for users to download for free. Having a decent download section where everyone could upload their stuff to share with others would be very useful as well.

that's what I was talking about - presets = patches

anyway most of what I was talking about was more general about the way Live is set up to change presets

From what I can tell the AAS supplied instruments have only a fraction of the presets that come with the full price stand alone versions. Plus AAS sell some extra factory preset collections and they have a community download section on their website. So if Ableton ported all the patches over it would be a good start.

I can't comment on the rest of it though as I've only got Live, so its the only thing I know - I just work the way I have to with it and don't know any better.

[djsynchro]

There's the original AAS synth if you like it a bit more colourful.
I vastly prefer the Ableton version!!!!

[scientist]

Reaktor on its own costs more than €230

while i understand your argument about cost per instrument, reaktor is the worst possible example to use. buying into reaktor is like buying into the world's largest free vst library. my dollar to instrument ratio is around two to one.


my 2 cents: i've been using live since v1.5, and have watched things develop year by year. while i've been really happy with the improvements they've made, i have yet to buy any of the add ons. the more things stray from the original concept, the more obvious it is that the new stuff is shoehorned into a paradigm that isn't the best for sound creation tools. the way something looks needs to express something about its sound character. live's look reflects its workflow concept perfectly, but does nothing to tell you what the add on components do. its like taking an entire studio of moogs, steinways, neves, and mpcs and painting every square inch medium gray.

[forge]

my 2 cents: i've been using live since v1.5, and have watched things develop year by year. while i've been really happy with the improvements they've made, i have yet to buy any of the add ons. the more things stray from the original concept, the more obvious it is that the new stuff is shoehorned into a paradigm that isn't the best for sound creation tools. the way something looks needs to express something about its sound character. live's look reflects its workflow concept perfectly, but does nothing to tell you what the add on components do. its like taking an entire studio of moogs, steinways, neves, and mpcs and painting every square inch medium gray.

you've summed up perfectly exactly what I've been trying to say!

[doc holiday]

then the second, and probably most glaring thing is the fact that as I am playing the sounds on my keyboard I can use the program change button to change through the presets -

add that to the fact session automation which I can do to a degree with the vsti synths, then the 128 param limit then these are some enormous gaping wounds that really don't do anything to sell the Ableton instruments


[/2c]

+1
very strongly agreed

these things i have wanted forever, imho these features would put more live into live then a lot of the things that have been added

[leedsquietman]

The digidesign Velvet sounds no better than Electric to me. Electric is fully capable of producing those sounds.

[Machinesworking]

To me anyway, the only advantages of the Ableton instruments are the integration into Live. They cut back the features of the AAS version to, you guessed it, fit into 128 parameters, and unlike a regular VST/AU instrument they beta tested the hell out of them for stability.
Re/preset changes: Urs heckman among others mentioned that the one reason he decided to make changing presets in Zebra, Filterscape etc. a mouse click instead of MIDI controllable via preset change commands was that with bigger soft synths with hundreds of parameters that would be morphed instantly by this, it was entirely possible to crash the plug in too many ways. I remember reading that about five years ago, and seeing it in action with reactor. Nowadays NI instruments in general haven't had any issues with preset changes crashing the host, probably as much to do with the CPU of my laptop now as their stability fixes over the years. I would be willing to bet money that at least half the reason for the way Live does program changes is to slow down the process, preset changes can happen at the speed of MIDI which is faster than you can mouse.

All this comes back to the same things over and over again. Live was audio only at first, and when VSTi's were added in v4, nothing changed with the MIDI on a core level. 128 parameters are the limit, and in many ways it remind me of Unix people who talk about the core of Windows being built up from some bad ideas to begin with. In many ways I feel they rushed into integrating VSTi, and now are stuck with this.
In that respect, it's another argument against the internal instruments, they bulit them to work with their own limits, so it's something that they can sell you that fully integrates with Live, unlike say my copy of Symptohm, which has at least double 128 parameters, and is crippled by Live to a degree because of that.

My reason for buying Kore, and pretty much never using Live's racks etc. was this. Kore hosts VST and VSTi's, and can address all the parameters of a plug in, plus you can map those parameters to the controller permanently for that preset or plug in. Sure, racks are more stable, but access to the parameters is as important to me.

I'll add in that despite all that, Live is still my favorite DAW, and I'm a DAWslut at this point, Logic, Reason, ReNoise, Digital Performer, and Live. At some point I'm going to par down here, to three.

[jonny72]

my 2 cents: i've been using live since v1.5, and have watched things develop year by year. while i've been really happy with the improvements they've made, i have yet to buy any of the add ons. the more things stray from the original concept, the more obvious it is that the new stuff is shoehorned into a paradigm that isn't the best for sound creation tools. the way something looks needs to express something about its sound character. live's look reflects its workflow concept perfectly, but does nothing to tell you what the add on components do. its like taking an entire studio of moogs, steinways, neves, and mpcs and painting every square inch medium gray.

you've summed up perfectly exactly what I've been trying to say!

I'd agree with that as well, but I kind of like it.

Even a quick glance at Live will tell you that the look of it is a lot more important to Ableton than most (if not all) other music software companies. Obviously all the instruments have been shoehorned in to Live, given the Live look and way of working and then forced to be workable in the strip across the bottom.

I wouldn't totally disagree that a music app shouldn't sacrifice looks for functionality but that is what Ableton have done to a degree. On the flip side, it means all the instruments have a lot in common, work in similar ways, look similar and so on which I Like and find beneficial. But as I said I can't really argue with those that disagree.

I guess the biggest question here is the direction that Ableton should go in. Personally I'd prefer them to continue doing their instruments differently and fitting them in to Live rather than the other way round. If you don't like it then you've always got the option of 3rd part plugins, which means everyone can be happy.

[Machinesworking]

My biggest gripe is that underneath it all Live needs some fundamental changes to make it possible for me to give up Logic. I'm NOT saying make Live Logic by any means, just that sysex, and more than 128 parameters are important, workflow when MIDI editing is important.
I would love Live to have not integrated FX or instruments as embedded, but all DAWs do that, so I can't blame them. I understand that the teams are different, but that's a smokescreen to a degree, Ableton as a company has a certain amount of money they can spend on development, and it's entirely possible that the time invested in instruments could have been used on the DAW development, and generated money thusly. The thing is from a business perspective, it makes more sense to throw out a new instrument for your already established audience, then to develop your DAW and live performance capabilities to some new level in hopes that new customers will notice that Live now addresses more than 128 parameters and SysEx etcd.

Thing is I really want to give up on Logic or Digital Performer. I really want to not be thinking about Cubase, because Cubase works with hardware better than Live does, even using a third party VSTi to automate parameters in the arrangement etc. I would venter to guess Live cannot use this VSTi since it uses SysEx to make more parameters than the hardware allows via MIDI availible!

Anyway, I don't slam it because I hate it by any means. It's because it's within a hairs breadth of being the only DAW I use, and I'm lazy, I don't like transferring songs back and forth.....

[JJarvis]

I like operator myself. This was a true innovation and is really fun to program sounds. Sampler is usefull as well. However, I think the new batch of synths are kind of lacking. I hate digital analog emulation.