Live 11.1.5 Issues

Hi there lovely people from Elektronauts,

Ever since last week I’ve experienced hanging/freezing and crashing issues with my Live. I’ve never experienced performance issues like this before, and then I saw that they just released the 11.1.5 version.

I’m wondering, are any of you here experiencing similar problems? I’m running Live on the M1 Pro chip and before this version, everything was running flawlessly.

I messaged their support team along with the crash file but I haven’t gotten a reply yet.

I’m really hoping this gets fixed soon, I have Bitwig but I don’t really like the design and I’m used to using Live with all the shortcuts embedded in my muscle memory.

No problems here. If you use Time Machine on your Mac, you may be able to return to the previous version of Live.

Download previous versions here.

(link says login in the preview, but it will take you to the download archive)

You can have different versions of Live on the same computer, just rename the app to include the version number, so you know which is which.

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Same, I’m on M1 Max and Live is not very stable. I’ve also sent a support request and crash log to Ableton’s support but no response yet. I’ve heard many people having similar issues with Live 11, so my guess is they must be getting a lot of similar messages from users and are a bit overwhelmed. For the moment I’ve stopped using it for my work until the issues are fixed. I’ve also had an issue with Live 11 creating clicks and glitchy noises when starting and stopping the transport - this issue is specific to my M1 Mac but only when using Ableton, not any other app or DAW I use. I’ve tried all the obvious settings and trouble shooting when faced with such an issue but nothing has worked.

I’ve actually found in general since upgrading to Live 11, even on my old intel Macbook Pro and Windows PC it crashes a lot, so I’m not so sure these issues are specific to the new M1 Macs, and that they could be related to something much deeper in Live’s architecture - but I’m not a audio software developer so I’m just speculating. I just wonder how such an expensive piece of software, with such a big userbase has ended up becoming so unreliable. BTW, I’m not hating on Ableton or anything, it’s just frustrating because I really enjoy, and have relied on Live for so long, and I have given the company a lot of money over the years through buying packs and version upgrades.

I don’t own Bitwig but I have been using the demo for years whilst I get used to it as a potential replacement to Ableton Live. Although I can’t save projects using the demo, it has never once crashed on me, even on my new M1 Mac. My only real gripe with Bitwig is that the sampler / drum machine functionality is a bit clunky and a bit basic (in certain aspects) compared to Live’s Simpler and Sampler. The interface I’ve gotten more used to over time, and it feels similar enough to Live, just with some more advanced features, different editing workflow and a busier UI. Bitwig keeps getting better with each update, and I imagine that I’ll switch to it as my main DAW if it improves the sampler and gets video support.

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It’s good to know it’s not just me! But yeah, I understand your pain. I had a whole day of work planned today and stopped everything because of this. Will need to delay work on some projects as well until this gets sorted out. I might try to download the previous version and see if that helps in any way, but yeah, this is quite frustrating.

I might switch to Bitwig, but I really dislike the UI. Let’s see if they have a fix for this soon!

Thanks! I might try this. :slight_smile:

Yeah it’s really frustrating when you rely on it for work. I’m sure they’re aware of the issues and will get it all sorted, but knowing my luck it’ll be sorted by version 12 by which time I’ll have to pay more!

I do know what you mean about Bitwig’s UI, I’ve felt the same but have become more used it recently. The UI defintely needs a more refinement, and definitely a few colour scheme options. Based on other daws I’ve used over many years, this kind of thing gets improved upon gradually. Bitwig is still very young, but I imagine it’ll be a very popluar DAW in a few years after a few more versions.

Let us know how you get on with trying an older version, I might give it a go myself!

Ok, so it doesn’t work with an older version since I can’t open files created with a newer version. :frowning:

Oh man that sucks. I was going to try this myself but don’t think I’ll bother now. Let’s hope Ableton sort out these problems soon!

I’ll post any updates on here once I hear back from Ableton’s support and make progress on getting the issues sorted - hopefully this will help anyone else who is having similar issues with Live 11.

It seems like it’s an issue for many. There’s a thread for it on the official Ableton forums: MASSIVE ABLETON 11 ISSUE * HANGING * DROPDOWN MENUS * - Ableton Forum

I can only try to empathize with the developers right now, they must be having a rough few days. I’m also downloading the latest beta which maybe has the problem fix. Let’s see, I hope it gets fixed soon in the official one. :slight_smile:

Installed the beta, the same thing is happening again. :frowning:

Yeah, the dev team are probably having a bit of a rough time at the moment! I’m sure they’re working hard to address these issues.

Interesting to know others have noticed crashes being related to dropdown menu use. I will have to test this to see if this is causing the crashes on my setup. I wonder if any other M1 Mac users experience the clicks and pops I get when stopping the transport, and also the issue of projects instantly crashing Live upon loading.