Recording audio with quantized clip lengths - help

The Lounge Other Gear
1

I am fortunate to own both Ableton and Bitwig. Bitwig is able to record audio clips at a fixed length - in other words, you can set it to record for two bars and either stop recording or start looping. It’s fantastic.

Is the same thing available in Ableton? I have been trying to track this information down for years witbout a clear answer.

Thanks in advance. I would like to set up Ableton to record Patterns/audio from Drambo as quickly as possible (sort of a Blackbox substitute). I will a Launchoad X to control Ableton. (Using Bitwig in the same way currently presents various hurdles that require aownsing money to uodate to the latwst version, which I am trying to avoid.)

Thank you very much in advance.

2

I don’t think there is a way to set a clip recording length,
But there is the looper audio effect which I imagine it is possible but I’ve never used it tbh.

You can set record on scene launch so you can record then when click next scene
it will record the next clip so a continuous recording of new clips

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Yeah, the looper would work. You can also drag&drop the recordings from there into Live which makes a clip from it.

Not sure if there´s another way, never thought about it. The looper works, tho. Looper on a return channel is pretty convinient.

If you have a launchpad you could ofc manually start the recording and then (quantized) stop and play it, I guess. If you set quantization to 1 bar or higher, you an hit stop clip immediately after recording has been initianted which basically would set the length.
Also scenes can be used to start, rec/stop all clips in a row.
It´s been a while since I had my Push and I´m mostly working in arrangement view (which has punch in/out and can loop sections these day…so not 100% sure.

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4

My deepest thanks to you both @DanJamesAUS and @Schnork

Looks like I need to sort my Bitwig issues or look for another solution… bleh

Or try a blackbox, realize it doesnt solve my problems, then go back to looking for another solution lol

5

This is one of my top annoyances with Ableton. You can have fixed length clips with Push IIRC.
Akai Force allows fixed length audio loops and sessions can be exported to Ableton.

It’s an odd omission as the AL looper feels like an awkward work around.

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It is completely bizarre to me that it is not possible, especially now, 11 versions later. I have found threads from 2007 on the issue!

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I understand that you asked about Ableton Live, but since you’re using an iPad and Drambo, couldn’t you use AUM’s fixed-length recording feature? with AUM’s + Drambo’s AU multi-output feature? And then transfer the audio stems to your computer?

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Thanks, but that won’t work because I sm hosting AUv3s in Drambo. Can’t run Drambo as AUv3 in AUM and host and AUv3 inside of it. Something about spacetime continuum.

10

Thanks! Honestly, think I am just going to give up recording Clips and just dump/record into Arrange. That’s where it will all end up anyway! :slight_smile:

11

Yep, Push has a ‘fixed length button’.

I just had to check if it works with audio tracks, wasn’t sure if that’s a midi track only feature and indeed it needs workarounds if you want fixed length for audio clips.
It works, though.

Another way might be max for live, this one might work?

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12

Is this something you could do with Audio Damage’s Enso? ?

13

Hey - I hope you got this solved already? If not and if you have the Suite version with Max for Live - I just released a few devices which you can use for setting a fixed clip length for a whole track or for each clip clot individually. You will find more info on that here: https://blog.abletondrummer.com/how-to-set-fixed-clip-length-in-ableton-live/
Cheers Tobi

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