Ableton Live 12

Oh man, that is so brilliant. Can’t wait for it. Hopefully all of this will also be on the Push3

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I upgraded from 9 Suite to 11 Suite last year and got the full discount so you should be fine.
I’ll probably skip this one too.

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As stated in the push 3 user thread, at the end of the Sonic state video it’s mentioned that none of this is on push 3 as of now.

Honestly the overall feeling that push 3 was ignored here is so odd. I’m sure stuff is coming but you’d think they would want to be flaunting new features that are actually implemented on their new hardware device at the same time. They didn’t show anything on the push 3 in that 30 minute video.

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Wow this looks great! I’ve been using ableton a lot more recently and these changes and additions all look stellar to me!

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Yes, unfortunately I’ve seen it now too. A small damper on the anticipation. But I can kind of understand that because the last few releases have been very push-centric. Not everyone liked that. But I’m still happy.

It seems like it wouldn’t be hard to strike a balance. Or even have a separate Push 3 centered video to coincide. I honestly have felt the Push had been largely ignored for several years before the Push 3 came out and this announcement feels more like the typical Ableton launch. Other than the Push 3 launch videos it never really felt like push was over emphasized, or even mentioned that much, in ableton videos but that might just be me.

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A bunch of cool stuff but it’s "mixer in arrangement " that got me excited.

Worth $300 AUD to save pressing TAB during mixing? Definitely

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It does feel a little odd. Hard to believe none of it is implemented though - some of the stuff on show in the videos would surely be inherently linked to devices that will have a Push 3 GUI?

But generally speaking, I do wonder why they didn’t make more of an effort with early demonstrations on what is their flagship hardware device.

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To clarify the “none of the stuff” I meant was the midi note tools found in the piano roll menu.

The new instrument, effect, and midi effect CC tool should all be coming to Push 3. I’d imagine the pitch locking stuff must be coming to a degree as well. But the most interesting stuff to me was the midi note generative stuff and the cool tweaking stuff with midi notes and that was mentioned that it hasn’t been implemented on the Push 3. I’d imagine it would have to come eventually though… :crossed_fingers:t2::crossed_fingers:t2:

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I’m hoping it’s because they’re saving that for another marketing splash closer to release time.

But it could well be that they’ve been focusing on the desktop product and features first and they’ll get round to Push 3 stuff when they’ve released that.

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Yeah, I think it’s a marketing thing. Their main objective now is getting normal Live users to upgrade without feeling like they are paying for features for hardware they may not own yet.

… and they succeeded. Instant buy.
usually they release some goodies afterwards with a 12.1 and 12.2, which might then involve Push features.

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If this is implemented in Push 3 in a performance focus fashion, I might be tempted to get one, that’s what’s missing for me.
Seems also odd to me that nothing on this Live 12 announcement talk about push 3 …

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I hate editing piano rolls, so this feature alone makes it totally worth it.

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Some very nice stuff coming, and in my personal very odd use case - some potential hopes dashed based on the initial views.

The good

  • No subscription, and reasonable pricing. No AI guff
  • The MIDI editing update looks fantastic, specifically Transformation tab. The ability to create arps & chords easily looks very intuitive & interesting. Personally, I do about 50% playing and 50% piano roll editing, so this one I feel would be a big workflow enhancement.
  • If they apply that MIDI scissors concept to audio as well, that would be incredible.
  • Generative MIDI looks useful. I can just imagine grabbing a sequence from XO but then running it through all this to create variants on the fly.
  • Freeze & Flatten is one button
  • The browser upgrade is very nice. I cannot tell you how annoying it is to try and find a sound only to be presented with titles like “16 Lazers” or “Drunk Washes.”
  • Roar looks like a natural complement device to Drift. The saturator currently is fine, but I was looking at devices like Thermal from Output for something a little more robust. This would probably mean that wouldn’t be needed.
  • Mixer in arrangement view is definitley going to save a lot of tabbing.
  • Granulator 3!

This is all very very nice, and it’s certainly enough to warrant the upgrade fee in my opinion. But it’s not totally clear cut on first viewing.

The "hmmm"

  • Meld sounds fairly experimental, which may work for some, but it’s not an upgrade for me personally. (That’s not a knock btw, Drift was right up my street)
  • I would rather they had put some time into updating the GUIs of the likes of Analog & Operator, which could use a lick of paint, just like Granulator 3, rather than introducing a new synth. It’s no good having great stock synths if they don’t see a bit of TLC once in a while.
  • Some basic and common requests such as freeze & flatten updates have not been implemented.
  • Perhaps the biggest miss is there’s basically no upgrades in the mixing and mastering department. (Of course this is Ableton LIVE and they see the DAW as an instrument, not a mixing and mastering suite, so I get that this was unlikely)
  • I think they could have done some QOL mixing updates like a mastering grade Limiter and a few subtle upgrades in the EQ department wouldn’t have gone amiss, like dynamic EQ, the ability to control 2 tracks from within 1 instance of EQ8.
  • Should this have been Ableton 11.5 or something like that? 3 years between paid upgrades feels a little short.

Putting those 2 together, I’m tempted, but on the fence.

I think this all depends a lot on what your workflow is as a producer. The way I see the trajectory of all DAWs, they are essentially trying to completely remove the need for paid plugins. Ableton is focussing on the front end of the creative process, negating the need for Scaler or other music theory/MIDI based stuff, and of course the MPE stuff. To me, some of these moves in the Piano Roll are pulled directly from either FL or Logic. If they have a hope of people moving more towards Ableton only, stuff like the advanced browsing was 100% necessary. But all the while, Logic is becoming an all round creative suite. Eg; the new auto mastering stuff is aimed squarely at iZotope, and Sample Alchemy is the first genuinley unique stock plugin since…? I can’t remember one.

Either it seems like the DAW wars are back on. The goal before was to be the host of all your amazing VSTs. The battle this time seems to be who can kill off the need for VSTs completely.

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What I’m painfully missing is the possibility to automate Macro snapshots.
I thought this was a no brainer, but I was wrong.

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Yeah the piano roll looked specifically to target the FL Studio crowd, or at least to retain people who kept drooling over those features.

It would have been cool to see a built in stem separator like Fl studio just got (for free, like all their updates, I might add). Stem separation has definitely blown up the past year, would have been nice to have that built into Ableton but I wouldn’t expect that:

But I do agree with the idea that DAWs seem to be focusing on making you not need plugins which I enjoy. I haven’t really felt the need to buy any software plugins in a few years. Ableton creative tools have been great and for everything else I have Fabfilter.

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Awesome update.

100%. I think whoever can create that all in one suite will win out.

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This one looks very good but Sooner then expected and YouTube is already full of reviews on most channels i follow.