Interestingly this came up in another thread where someone was asking why there is skepticism around M4L. I’m have Suite, but I have a lot of hesitance around using M4L extensively. It’s one of those things where on paper it’s an amazing thing to allow people to mess with Live and come up with cool ideas that Ableton themselves wouldn’t. But in reality, it’s kindof a double edged sword.
The key weakness because the lack of official integration means that at any moment a device you like & pay for could stop working - and that is far less likely with a paid vst. I tend to look at the names who have some form of relationship with Ableton. My feeling is that if they have some ties with Ableton, they are likely to want to keep their devices updated to show what Max is capble off, but maxforlive.com is a graveyard of semi-working devices from 5+ years ago. I don’t blame the creators for not having the time to keep them updated and they are free. But I have found that 1 in 2 devices either just don’t work as advertised or fail to relaunch or have some other technical issue. Nothing lost because it’s mostly free, but it can be a time sucker.
For me, I’d say a known name and a reasonable price is cool, because chances are that will be updated - but if it isn’t you haven’t lost too much. And you can find some absolute gems. Does anyone else get the double edged sword vibe from M4L?
Honestly? Not very much at all. No offence, it’s just the issues that @holonology mentions in his post above. There’s no guarantee it would get maintained. That’s no offence to you or to say that your time and effort isn’t worth the money. I’m a working software developer so I know things take time and effort but I also know that things often don’t get maintained. I have old open-source bits that I have long since abandoned.
To be honest, as a coder I’m sceptical that it hasn’t be done in the core software. They will have mappings for their own devices (probably in a common format) but the better-quality native device mapping helps them sell within their own ecosystem. It might even be the case that with a bit of digging I could find where those mappings are stored, but if it’s just in a DB or a file then they ought open that up to the mapping interface or at least document it.
Its worth it to me since most of the older stuff I have still works. Plus the price is incredibly good. If you put these sequencers and devices in hardware, you could charge tons and people would be flipping out and saying “take my money”…etc.
I got a Cirklon after owning ableton suite for a year or so and while I thought the Cirklon was amazingly cool with a really nice build, I didn’t have mountains of hardware to sequence so I sold it. I can honestly do more in M4L easily than on a Cirklon and that is probably the king of hardware sequencers. I think I have spent maybe a couple hundred bucks at most for all my M4L plugs.
So to me, it is worth it. Plus now we have Elektron style boxes like Opal in M4L and that gem is only $40! It would easily be $800+ in hardware form.
Ah for sure, I think the sub $40 range is where it starts making sense. If you think, some of those more random VSTs like Digitalis are $30. So some of the semi-official M4L devices like K-Devices or Grain Scanner are in the $25-$40 region. For that money, yeah it’s worth it even if it only lasts for a few years - but I also tend to think that using a preferred maker or Ableton themselves makes it more likely to be supported for longer.
Haha I thought that might be the answer, as I’d probably think the same (I’m a developer by day too). The other option I guess is to open source what I have and hope there’s enough community interest to get it to a better place, but I’ve not had great experiences with that in the past…
I apologise for the slight off-topic but I would encourage any alternative sequencing fans to check out Bitwig if you haven’t already. The note generation and processing devices are many and varied and that’s before you even get into the Grid modular environment. It’s a very deep rabbit hole for making unusual sequencers and doing generative stuff.
I have many thoughts on this. I’m a product designer rather than a developer, but my view is that what’s needed is an open standard for plugin developers, host developers, and hardware manufacturers to align on that makes controller mapping less tedious and more flexible for two-way communication like with Push.
I feel like Native Instruments kind of started in this direction with NKS, but they weren’t quite asking the right question to begin with. At the risk of this scenario, I would say we need something that is ecosystem-agnostic, prioritizes zero-configuration mapping, and supports rich two-way communication.
Just thought I’d drop this here in case anyone else was interested. K-Devices are doing a quickfire 50% off until the end of today, which brings many of their M4L devices to 9 euros.
Another quick one. The Max Devices that were previously hidden to new/Live 11 users are “discontinued” but downloadable (previously they were just hidden). Might be worth grabbing if you’re new to Ableton, as these were previously greyed out to newer users, so not sure if this is an accident or time limited. Note: I haven’t tested they actually work yet, so there could be technical stuff to come but thought I’d share and I have 100% grabbed these. The arpegiator for example has other options than the standard one that are pretty cool.
There’s a sample pack called “Tape Choir” by Soniccouture… I recall it’s free, and there used to be an Ableton version of it. Thing is, I can’t find a mention of the Ableton version on their website, it’s like it never existed. I want to find it because I don’t want to get into the Kontakt ecosystem.
I have the Tape Choir Ableton rack it in my old projects, so I’m sure it existed. Anyone knows where to find it?
Just a heads up to any of you Ableton heads that are still using live lite and maybe got it with a novation controller that you registered on the novation website, novationhave teamed up with Ableton and are offering a 50% off upgrade from live lite for a limited time, time to get on over to your novation account and check if you have it on there… That’s a proper good deal…
As far as I can see the only caveat is that you must have registered a qualifying product after sept the oneth 2022
I’ve been trying to get better at Ableton and making excellent progress on the whole. One thing I’ve yet to figure out is how to route midi from one track into another track so that a second VSTi plays the midi information being sent to it. I’ve watched a number of videos on the subject and think I understand the steps involved, but I’m not seeing what appears to be a key aspect of things when I setup the routing. I’ll explain it as I understand it and perhaps someone can help me to understand what I’m missing.
So for the sake of explanation, let’s say Track 1 has Scaler 2 on it generating a piano performance. The sounds aren’t great though, so I want to route this midi information over to Track 2 that’s got XLN Audio’s “Addictive Keys” plugin on it. As I understand it, I go to the I/O section of Track 2 (Addictive Keys) and under “Midi From,” I use the pull-down and choose “Scaler 2”.
After choosing “Scaler 2,” I then go immediately below the first pull down to the 2nd pull down labelled “Post FX” and click. In all of the videos I’ve watched on this subject, below the normal 2 choices in this pull down, “Post FX” and “Pre FX,” there should be a new 3rd choice that again says “Scaler 2.”
I’ve thought perhaps there’s something not right in settings, but I’ve looked and can’t find anything. I’ve also looked online and have yet to see someone duplicate the problem, so I’m sure I’m just missing something.
Does anyone know what I’m doing wrong? If so, I would be very, very grateful if you’d help me suss this out.
I’m not familiar with the Scaler plugin but if you’re not seeing every option it might be that you’re using a version that does not support it, try using different one, like try using VST2/VST3/AU versions and see if it works.
sometimes VST2/AU supports features that are not available in VST3.
if that fails, you can check their FAQ which seems to cover this:
