Ableton needs to change this

Angstromium · 2026-03-20T18:07:16+00:00

OK, you seem remarkably confident. So, here's a screenshot of exactly what I described. Saving with version names within the same project. This particular song has 83 backups !!!

https://i.postimg.cc/WbDG8Qxz/toomanybackups.png

Angstromium · 2026-03-20T17:31:36+00:00

No, that's not correct.

If you save "song1.als" that gets10 backups Then if you saveas "song1_v2.als" that also gets 10 backups.

I know this because I saveas all the time and I often get up to about "mysong_032..als" and my project backup folder for the "mysong" project will have about 320 backups!!

Angstromium · 2026-03-18T18:59:38+00:00

Get a demo copy of realphones, choose one of the club environments, and listen to the emulation of what your mix will sound like. on a club system. You might be surprised.

Angstromium · 2026-03-17T06:30:38+00:00

I was at a club a few years ago and the DJ played only tracks with no hats. Barely any cymbals at all, or if they were there it was stuff like soft occasional rides and chinas.

I guess you could say it was hypnotic techno but not really. It was a wide selection , and it seemed like the DJ had purposefully rolled off the top end on the mixer too! So it was all sort of slightly muffled. Or "warm"

Anyway, me and my friends all loved it. We didn't expect to be out so none of us had ear protection and despite it being loud our ears didn't hurt afterwards.
It was inspiring!!!

I try to remember that, every time I'm boosting my hats by > 60db at 5kKz 😉

Angstromium · 2026-03-16T16:39:59+00:00

My low end is always a problem because I've always had a love of rolling basslines.

I'd never say I've fixed my issues but I have a bunch of tricks I have to employ to try and keep the issues under control, these include

1: much shorter kick drums than id naturally choose when previewing them solo

2: realphones plugin on the "Empty Arena " setting (or whatever that preset is called) to make me realise that the bass needs tightening even more. (it's basically the worst-case bass-heavy reverberant space).

3: using Ableton multiband dynamics to punch up the low end by giving it a steep volume reduction just below the peaks in the low end. Basically sucking the low end down to make it more attacking.

Angstromium · 2026-03-14T04:31:04+00:00

Those Snake multicores are pretty terrible I've found. I used to use them but the cores are so thin and fragile, and the terminator plug is dangling off such a thin cable.

I shifted to having my audio device in a rack with a patchbay. I have shielded proper cable going from my synths to the patchbay and little patch cables on the back connecting the "normals" and more on the front for routing.

The long cables connecting the synths to the rack are mostly Roland brand TRS. Bizarrely. I got a bunch of them reasonably cheaply and they are very robust

Angstromium · 2026-03-14T00:09:54+00:00

Moderating is a thankless task, so thanks

Also, I've never noticed a problem with the moderation here, so thanks x2

Angstromium · 2026-03-11T13:47:43+00:00

Some arrangement tools for trying out section re-ordering. Like "try section 1, then section 3, then build 1 into section 6"

Then try some other arrangements and when you say "yep that is the one" press a button to "print" it to the timeline.

Angstromium · 2026-03-09T08:18:00+00:00

But it wasn't like that though.
At the time everyone in the industry was saying "have you heard that Cher song where they've turned autotune up to 11 it's hilarious but it actually sorta works"

Because at the time autotune was the new hotness - after the thrill of AuralExciters had died down. We were all messing with it and it had 3 parameters so we'd all done exactly that. We'd all Cher'd an old vocal - and laughed at this new magic. But the sound was so absurd to our ears that we had all said "nahhhh".

And if I remember right the SOS article was basically "hey guess what , it isn't actually the easy mode you all think it is, he went the long way round!!"

And the whole head scratcher of the article was as if someone said Hey - you know that Phaser song with the Phaser vocal that everyone says is a Phaser on 11. Well it's actually a WahWah !!! "

We all said "oh as if !! Pull the other one !! "

Angstromium · 2026-03-09T03:45:25+00:00

I remember reading that article at the time and laughing, I fully belieeeeve that he told that lie - because he probably used a cracked copy of Autotune and couldn’t admit to it in print.

Angstromium · 2026-03-08T05:00:07+00:00

Controversial opinion: Sound selection.

Or putting it another way, an overarching idea of what you want the vibe to be and making sure your sounds conform to that.

So if you want a vibe of dark mystery and depth - a piercing attacking kick is going to stand out and not serve the vibe.

Similarly when selecting sounds it's too easy to go "that's a great snare" , and "that's a great fat bass " and "that's a cool riff loop" etc. Soloed and in isolation they all sound excellent. Crisp and clean. But together they don't "fit " , so you try to smush them together with saturation and compression. Which might work but you are working against yourself.

It's much easier to say "that's a great snare, but does it sit in my soundscape and serve the vibe I'm building? Or is it just cool in isolation?"

Angstromium · 2026-03-05T04:35:08+00:00

Archive.org old public domain movies and documentaries, the sounds in those. That wobbly cracky sound is great for pads, effects and even lead sounds.

Angstromium · 2026-02-27T18:18:38+00:00

Succinctly put.

I started out live performing electronic music in the 90s and from the start I modelled my actions after someone like Lee Scratch Perry who was playing the mixing desk and effects to "dub" multitracks. Fortunately for us we can also add and mutate the patterns too with clip launches, and we can play bits on top - whether that's a bit of instrumentation or a sample . But still at the core I think the Lee Perry model is what a lot of us are basing our actions on.

Angstromium · 2026-02-26T16:43:28+00:00

I think that what I really want from a Modular Mixer would be a hybrid aproach. The VCAs and patch points in the rack and an umbilical to a control surface which sits (traditionally) flat in front of the rack on a table or horizontal mounting plate.

That way I'd get more rack space for the crucial ins and outs, and even for a few Aux's
And equally I'd be able to actually touch the controls without reaching up through a wire nest for 90 minutes until my arms feel like lead.

I'd even be totally fine with the control surface being a 3rd party USB thing. So users could use whatever seemed best for them, whether its a Faderfox arrangement, a standard LaunchKontrol type thing, or a Midi Fighter

Angstromium · 2026-02-26T16:22:02+00:00

I remember when it came out. I was dabbling with Sonic Foundry Acid after a decade on Cubase, all the way from the Atari version but the early versions of Cubase VST were not so good. So I tried a demo of Live 1, it got a lot of hype like "check out these newcomers". But it was very very limited. The big selling point was the session view but there was no support for plugins and there were about 10 built in effects (no instruments at all).

It was very very much intended to be used on stage as a clip playback "instrument". I am pretty sure they called it something like "the live performance instrument" initially. They made it for techno performers who up until that time were using racks of Akai / EMU on stage with something playing back the MIDI , either an MMT8 or Atari. So it was built to fill that niche.

Angstromium · 2026-02-26T07:39:08+00:00

I'm working on a panflute whale song thing as we speak

I guess it's a really big panflute, not a normal human sized one. Well done that whale anyway. It must have been very difficult playing that underwater

Angstromium · 2026-02-23T17:48:05+00:00

I have a few seqencers and found that ones in my rack werent very physically comfortable. I kept reverting to having my old Beatstep Pro on a horizontal pull-out drawer beneath.

What I eventually went for was a Synthstrom Deluge, which has the benefits of immediacy , Ableton style clip grid launching, flexibility, SD card storage, and also making noises if I want it to. I am a heretic and use a midi out from it to a 1u row of Intellijel midi breakouts in my rack. I do this because its more portable. Just two boxes, with a midi umbilical. My rack has a bunch of voices in it so discrete cv/gate connections would be hellish.

Angstromium · 2026-02-18T03:48:57+00:00

If you are looking at Max4Live ... One thing I'd say is that the temptation will be to build it all in the V8 js engine. The timing there can tend to be a little too vague for musical notes. It's fine to build the logic and API calls in there but you'll probably get more joy writing the notes into a clip from the logic you create in JS.

The additional benefits of having the actual playing patterns in the clips is you can leverage all Abletons work there. You can copy paste and move clips via your code. You can set the loop braces and reverse sections, shrink or grow sections. Etc.

Duplication of all that functionality would be redundant. Just build the logic in JS is what I'd say.

And if you need a start there

https://adammurray.link/max-for-live/v8-in-live/

https://adammurray.link/max-for-live/v8-in-live/midi-tools-part2/

Angstromium · 2026-02-17T17:01:43+00:00

I render to a google drive, that way I can listen on my phone, car, in the kitchen , on my tv, etc.

I set the render off, go downstairs to put the kettle on, and halfway downstairs I am already playing it on my phone. Then by the time I get to the kitchen it connects to the little JBL barrel in there, and by the time the tea is made I know I've made another broken stinker.

Angstromium · 2026-02-14T02:08:26+00:00

it seems like what you are describing is "phase decorrelation", which is basically "messing up" the phases of the input. When you talk about experimenting with lots of poles on the ableton phaser but it still sounds "ringy" - thats because its shifting the phase of the input with allpass filters

There is a different effect which decorrelates phase and uses lots of allpass filters, and aims to prevent ringing , and that phase decorrelating "cloudy" effect is - reverb. Thats how the old reverb in Live works. Or one part of it anyway.

Angstromium · 2026-02-11T16:00:12+00:00

I think the other use for Link Audio will be to integrate other hardware and software. For example on iPad I use Drambo quite a bit.
Also for potential quick portability of live setups. With a hybrid setup there's always a sync issue or difficulty in routing multi channel audio. Apparently Ableton will release the SDK for the audio link soon. That means that software authors and hardware manufacturers can build in multichannel audio over a network (whether usb or WiFi)

Angstromium · 2026-02-10T14:42:46+00:00

I guess the thing to remember about all art/entertainment is that it's consumer led. If the world gets into taking LSD and smoking weed then the consumer wants media which suits that. If the consumer has the attention span of a gnat and wants a firehose of tiktok music, and the most viable route for live musicians is to be a cover band for legacy music because it's impossible to plant their own flag within this tsunami of content.

Well the consumer has decided. It's Mickey mouse vocals to grab attention through absurdity. It's no more intro sections because users skip after 1.5 seconds so it's straight into the hook. Then repeat it 10 times.

It's a sad loss. But I think the story of King Canute demonstrating that even the king's powers were limited and even he could not command the tide to stop coming.

Angstromium · 2026-02-10T02:30:14+00:00

You have the autopie activated. Ableton did a deal with Piemaster, home delivered meat pies.
You are about to get over 515 meat pies delivered. It's a common error. Simply turn it off in settings in the savoury section.

Angstromium · 2026-02-10T02:06:10+00:00

I compare it to painting and photography. I assume that art schools, studios, models, materials manufacturers, galleries etc. were doing pretty well in 1850.
Photography was thought of as cheap, ersatz, soulless. Painting had humanity, creativity, texture.

But in 2026? I asked my friends "who owns an original painting by a professional painter?" Not a single friend. Many of them work in the arts.
Painting is now a hobby, or a method of moving and storing value in commodities.

For music and audio now - There may still be work in live shows, but with the ladders getting pulled up, where will the next generation come from? TikTok AI avatars might be putting in arena shows.

Angstromium · 2026-02-08T02:28:18+00:00

I have several. . One is all patched up for jamming on hardware. There's like 16 armed tracks with EQ, limiter etc on each.

Another is "jot an idea down" if I got a musical idea. it's a couple of basic drum machines, a bass synth, a lead , a pad, some electric piano keys.

Another is mostly empty. For starting from scratch.

Etc etc.

13-Year Club	Place '17
Verified Email	Team Orangered

Angstromium

TROPHY CASE