Live 9 Pricing

[jonny72]

For me the only reason for the suite upgrade is MaxForLive as that's not a standalone option now and I would not pay $300 for that. $99 most likely. Neither that impressed with most of the basic new Live 9 features. Sigh. Miss the good old days.

M4L is still available stand alone. Click on the shop link and scroll half way down.

[kitekrazy]

Studio One also gives you a Melodyne license. ($99 value) That can be used in other DAWs.
Sonar-much of the included effects and instruments can be used in other DAWs.

Then there's Image Line-do we dare go there?

So what's so great about Suite that one would consider as a $300 upgrade?

For me the only reason for the suite upgrade is MaxForLive as that's not a standalone option now and I would not pay $300 for that. $99 most likely. Neither that impressed with most of the basic new Live 9 features. Sigh. Miss the good old days.

The Suite download may be worth $99 at best. Usually some DAW companies always throw in stuff for free with a great upgrade price (Ableton failed on this one). That's to take advantage of impulse buyers. After a while you find yourself hardly ever using any of the extra included bloat when you start buying more 3rd party stuff.
I think one of the main attractions to Reaper is you are only buying and upgrading an audio engine. (a good one at that) I know some Sonar users would rather have a price where they could by the audio engine. I'm the same with every Kontakt upgrade.

[kent_sandvik]

For me the only reason for the suite upgrade is MaxForLive as that's not a standalone option now and I would not pay $300 for that. $99 most likely. Neither that impressed with most of the basic new Live 9 features. Sigh. Miss the good old days.

M4L is still available stand alone. Click on the shop link and scroll half way down.

And then I need to upgrade to the suite 9 when that's out for M4L support in Live 9, anyway. No thanks. Ableton makes it really hard for us existing consumers to get excited about this release. This all it maybe another reason M4L will not really take off big time inside Ableton again. Which is a shame, we could build and share modules and make Ableton exiting again by putting in cool new features.

[stringtapper]

For me the only reason for the suite upgrade is MaxForLive as that's not a standalone option now and I would not pay $300 for that. $99 most likely. Neither that impressed with most of the basic new Live 9 features. Sigh. Miss the good old days.

M4L is still available stand alone. Click on the shop link and scroll half way down.

And then I need to upgrade to the suite 9 when that's out for M$L support in Live 9, anyway. No thanks. Ableton makes it really hard for us existing consumers to get excited about this release.

Wait a minute. How do you figure that you "need" to upgrade to Suite 9? You just said you're not impressed with its features and that the only thing you would want from Suite 9 is M4L, so I'm not clear on why you feel you need to upgrade at all. Why not just get M4L now. I guarantee if you start working in Max and go through the tutorials it will take your mind off of this terrible thing that's happened to you.

[kent_sandvik]

Wait a minute. How do you figure that you "need" to upgrade to Suite 9? You just said you're not impressed with its features and that the only thing you would want from Suite 9 is M4L, so I'm not clear on why you feel you need to upgrade at all. Why not just get M4L now. I guarantee if you start working in Max and go through the tutorials it will take your mind off of this terrible thing that's happened to you.

I don't want to get stranded with an M4L that suddenly does not work with the next OS and so on and I need to upgrade using an expensive suite where the only component I need is M4L.

Now, Ableton should move M4L into the basic non-suite Live, that would be awesome, get some excitement behind this Live 9 launch.

[stringtapper]

Wait a minute. How do you figure that you "need" to upgrade to Suite 9? You just said you're not impressed with its features and that the only thing you would want from Suite 9 is M4L, so I'm not clear on why you feel you need to upgrade at all. Why not just get M4L now. I guarantee if you start working in Max and go through the tutorials it will take your mind off of this terrible thing that's happened to you.

I don't want to get stranded with an M4L that suddenly does not work with the next OS and so on and I need to upgrade using an expensive suite where the only component I need is M4L.

M4L is the last thing you'd have to worry about not working on the next OS. It would be against the entire Max ethos for something like that to occur. The C74 folks have gone as far as to leave out requested features for *years* only because they might break people's patches from 20 years ago from before Max was even a commercial product! If you're worried about 64-bit it's looking very likely that there will be a 64-bit Live 8 and a 64-bit Max 6 and that they will work together for years to come. No excuses.

[kent_sandvik]

M4L is the last thing you'd have to worry about not working on the next OS. It would be against the entire Max ethos for something like that to occur. The C74 folks have gone as far as to leave out requested features for *years* only because they might break people's patches from 20 years ago from before Max was even a commercial product! If you're worried about 64-bit it's looking very likely that there will be a 64-bit Live 8 and a 64-bit Max 6 and that they will work together for years to come. No excuses.

I'm not worried about Max. I'm worried about getting stranded with Ableton Live 8. I.e. having projects that I can't open and so on... Ableton's track record is not as pristine as Max's.

[jonny72]

I don't want to get stranded with an M4L that suddenly does not work with the next OS and so on and I need to upgrade using an expensive suite where the only component I need is M4L.

Now, Ableton should move M4L into the basic non-suite Live, that would be awesome, get some excitement behind this Live 9 launch.

Bit confused as to why you'd need to upgrade to Suite to be able to use the standalone M4L. Ableton have already said that the Suite 8 components will continue to work within Standard 9.

If they put M4L in to Standard 9, where is the money going to come from to pay the licensing fee to Cycling 74?

I get the feeling you won't be happy until Ableton are paying you to use their software.

[kent_sandvik]

I don't want to get stranded with an M4L that suddenly does not work with the next OS and so on and I need to upgrade using an expensive suite where the only component I need is M4L.

Now, Ableton should move M4L into the basic non-suite Live, that would be awesome, get some excitement behind this Live 9 launch.

Bit confused as to why you'd need to upgrade to Suite to be able to use the standalone M4L. Ableton have already said that the Suite 8 components will continue to work within Standard 9.

If they put M4L in to Standard 9, where is the money going to come from to pay the licensing fee to Cycling 74?

I get the feeling you won't be happy until Ableton are paying you to use their software.

Well, now I'm even more confused as Ableton said they would roll MFL into Live 9 suite. I assumed that was then the only official support channel for MFL when 9 is out. I doubt Ableton is keen to support old versions forever, they need to move on like any other SW company. And will 32-bit MFL Live8 work with the Live 9 64-bit runtime? Are they using a separate process to communicate with 32-bit MFL components to handle the 64-bit versus 32-bit runtime? You can't exactly mix-and-match 64-bit and 32-bit pointers.

I would hope Ableton was forward-thinking and bold, rolled in MFL into Live standard set and paid a little bit extra and I would think it would have been fine to increase the base price. End result an open-ended Live where good end users help Ableton make new synths/effects/sequencers. Now they again rolled it into an exclusive suite that few will purchase and MFL most likely still will be a small niche experiment.

FYI I think I've spent about $4k so far this year in SW and HW. But I tend to support good companies with a long-term customer relationship. Looks like Sugar Bytes is the next company I will support, they have an excellent customer support and relationship and their products are forward-thinking.

[artpunk]

Kent, would you be better off just buying Max? Unless you specifically need to build integrated stuff into Live...but from what you have been saying I thought you have other DAWs and won't reall ybe supporting Ableton in future due to the pricing confusion thing and your perception that their customer support isn't up to your standards.
I'm confused. Exactly what do you want?

[kent_sandvik]

Kent, would you be better off just buying Max? Unless you specifically need to build integrated stuff into Live...but from what you have been saying I thought you have other DAWs and won't reall ybe supporting Ableton in future due to the pricing confusion thing and your perception that their customer support isn't up to your standards.
I'm confused. Exactly what do you want?

Well my plan was to build effects and synths integrated into Ableton as freebies for anyone to use. I could buy Max separately but the beauty was this extensibility of Live. Especially as we don't really get that many exciting new features in Live 9, anyway. I was about to get MFL for Live 8 in November and then all these announcements happened, MFL moved into suite, Live 8 suite upgrade for existing customers for good price that was adjusted due to a mistake that made it also somewhat annoying to be an existing customer. Plus pretty little understanding from Ableton.

[pencilrocket]

If Ableton spent less time (and money) on faux Steve Jobs unveilings then maybe they wouldnt have made such a colossal mistake.

Yea it's epic fail. They are spending their effort not on essential qualities but how much they look like something. So superficial and dissapointing...

[artpunk]

Well my plan was to build effects and synths integrated into Ableton as freebies for anyone to use. I could buy Max separately but the beauty was this extensibility of Live. Especially as we don't really get that many exciting new features in Live 9, anyway.

Admirable sentiment too, but unfortunately it doesn't seem the standard 9 will have M4L according to their comparison chart https://www.ableton.com/en/live/feature-comparison/
But you think that the new features in 9 aren't that exciting either (along with pencilrocket who posts after your reply) You talk about the beauty of extensibility into Live, so is that just 8? Why don't you just get M4L for 8 then? I personally do think the new features in 9 are exciting, perhaps I'm stupid or something, but I can see how they could be very useful for me & perhaps others, so once again it's down to individual choice.

I was about to get MFL for Live 8 in November and then all these announcements happened, MFL moved into suite, Live 8 suite upgrade for existing customers for good price that was adjusted due to a mistake that made it also somewhat annoying to be an existing customer. Plus pretty little understanding from Ableton.

Yes, got that too. You may remember I posted that a similar experience happened to me the last time they had a big % discount offer on upgrades from standard to suite. Sure I was disappointed, but never had any problems with customer support. They were fast and polite in their response, but I understood they weren't going to virtually give their stuff away...and as I hadn't actually spent any money at the time, I wasn't actually ripped off was I? I decided not to upgrade at that time and wait.
In the end I did upgrade THIS time. I wanted the new features and am pretty sure I want a push eventually and that needs 9 to run, I would have to upgrade eventually anyway.

It all leads back to the same thing though. You wanted something or you didn't? It has features attractive to you or not? Or just at a price point you are happy with? Understandable, but what I don't understand from all the naysayers is this ongoing, continuing talking down of the product. Only the beta testers have their hands on it anyway, so who knows what will be useful to who or not?

So it's down to personal choice... But all this negativity really starts to sound like sour grapes after a while... Why can't you just decide you don't want it and move on? Only you can decide what you want to do....

[kent_sandvik]

It all leads back to the same thing though. You wanted something or you didn't? It has features attractive to you or not? Or just at a price point you are happy with? Understandable, but what I don't understand from all the naysayers is this ongoing, continuing talking down of the product. Only the beta testers have their hands on it anyway, so who knows what will be useful to who or not?

So it's down to personal choice... But all this negativity really starts to sound like sour grapes after a while... Why can't you just decide you don't want it and move on? Only you can decide what you want to do....

I'm still waiting for some kind of definite answer from support so I don't know the status. But yes it looks like I better get the Sugar Bytes compete set and switch back to mostly using Logic and upgrade to Live 9.0.3 or 9.1 some time next summer when all the 64-bit bugs have been resolved for stability purposes.

It would have been fun to debug and help Ableton with their Live 9 betas but you have to understand that it's strained to spend one's free time analyzing MacOSX stack dumps and send them in as reports when the company is not exactly doing much support-wise in situations where you expect them to reach out to existing customers.

[artpunk]

It all leads back to the same thing though. You wanted something or you didn't? It has features attractive to you or not? Or just at a price point you are happy with? Understandable, but what I don't understand from all the naysayers is this ongoing, continuing talking down of the product. Only the beta testers have their hands on it anyway, so who knows what will be useful to who or not?

So it's down to personal choice... But all this negativity really starts to sound like sour grapes after a while... Why can't you just decide you don't want it and move on? Only you can decide what you want to do....

I'm still waiting for some kind of definite answer from support so I don't know the status. But yes it looks like I better get the Sugar Bytes compete set and switch back to mostly using Logic and upgrade to Live 9.0.3 or 9.1 some time next summer when all the 64-bit bugs have been resolved for stability purposes.

It would have been fun to debug and help Ableton with their Live 9 betas but you have to understand that it's strained to spend one's free time analyzing MacOSX stack dumps and send them in as reports when the company is not exactly doing much support-wise in situations where you expect them to reach out to existing customers.

...and yet there seem to be a few here that have the free time to talk down a product they say they don't even want & I am not speaking just of you. I do understand you are frustrated but what does 'reaching out to existing customers' mean to you? Are we back to the fact you want the mistaken discount? Or features that aren't there for you at the price point you like? As for everyone else crying foul, why don't they stop wasting their time and use it making music with whatever DAW they prefer instead? If it's a case of missing features, keep posting in the features requests...
As a newcomer to this forum, I found the negativity quite strange and kind of depressing, so have been engaging trying to get some insight into it all. Still can't entirely understand it, but what the hey.
I wish you all the best and hope you get resolution from this. For now, I think I'll go and play my guitar.


P.S. I note the sugar bytes complete set is about the current asking cost of a suite 8 upgrade( depending on what licence(s) you are upgrading from of course).... & that's with %50 off! They must be good! Have fun and stay creative (& positive!)