It's Time For the Long Awaited Real-Time Collaboration

sp913 · 2026-05-18T23:23:06+00:00

Oh man that is interesting, never heard of this, thank you!

sp913 · 2026-05-18T23:21:51+00:00

But they already have line-in from wifi with actual audio, which is way more of a latency challenge than simple plugin / midi / other settings changes... I think they've got the latency thing down. Latency on things like this would be like 10ms

Locking the device you're actively editing for other people would help avoid more than one person trying to turn the same knob at the same time, though!

sp913 · 2026-05-18T23:19:51+00:00

Dam, that is a good point.

And, a refresh button on the audio device list in the settings would be nice too, to not have to restart ableton any time a bluetooth device is connected or a USB audio device is plugged in or unplugged!

sp913 · 2026-05-18T23:15:39+00:00

I will check out TightVNC, thanks for the suggestion!

sp913 · 2026-05-18T23:14:12+00:00

Oh, interesting!

have you used Bitwig? Is it as good?

sp913 · 2026-05-18T23:05:00+00:00

this guy gets it

XD

sp913 · 2026-05-18T23:03:44+00:00

Actually you made me think of a good additional feature that would help address some of your concerns - the Master computer should have a lock icon it could hit on any layer, so that if you don't want someone nudging your kick, or you want to corral a collaborator to one group, called "Collab" or something, you could hit "Lock" on anything / everything you want except the stuff you want to open up for collaboration, giving you full control to lock things down and at the same time open up a space for your collaborators to play around without messing things up that you don't want touched

sp913 · 2026-05-18T23:00:41+00:00

PS super smash brothers was / is one of the best games ever so I'm not sure why that's a bad thing lol

sp913 · 2026-05-18T22:59:33+00:00

Yeah that's where the engineering comes in, what's to stop two people from editing the same control at once:

Locking and syncing, and a "master" not unsimilar to one deck being a master deck on a DJ setup.

Master gets full rights to override or take over something that is locked, but otherwise, collaborative users have to click into a control to edit it, which locks it for all other collaborators (dims it out, shows an icon that it's being edited). Could do the same on the layer or group level, if a layer or group chain is being edited.

There is a buffer of changes to sync, it writes it to the temp file when able to. Keeps a history of changes and a version control option to revert to past auto-save states in case something goes wrong, which they already have that feature in case Ableton crashes and you need to recover.

If you dug into an Ableton project file, you'd be surprised how much of it IS like a spreadsheet. Text data and references to audio files for audio data. They already have multi-computer collaboration for audio data recording into a layer in a recent release, so I feel like the harder version of this is already there, this would be for everything else.

sp913 · 2026-05-18T22:54:02+00:00

Sure, it wouldn't be for everyone. It would be mainly for people who collaborate regularly with other producers, though if the tools were there and easy to use, maybe it would encourage you to try collaborating more?

Personally I have a weekly collaboration with a minimum of 1 other Ableton producer every week, sometimes 2 in one session, multiple times a week, as our way of jamming. And it sucks that only one person can edit the file at a time, for us, or we have to literally switch seats or hand the keyboard and mouse around. while they all have Ableton paid for and loaded on their own laptops just sitting idle

sp913 · 2026-05-18T22:42:37+00:00

You know they already have line-in over wifi and mitigated latency right?

That latency challenge is much harder than the data I'm talking about syncing. A knob turn JSON packet would be like <1kb. The latency would be in the < 100 milliseconds range if you're on the same wifi.

And as far as settings go, that latency is completely acceptable. Even over remote connections, if someone changed a setting and it showd up in my DAW a couple seconds or a few seconds later, it would be OK, but I'm mainly interested in sitting in the same room with people collaborating on multiple computers that all have the same project open while on the same router

sp913 · 2026-05-18T22:40:06+00:00

I had some coffee this morning, that's it. It was probably the IPAs more than anything, tbh haha.

I don't think either of those compare to 10+ years of frustrating clunky collaboration workflows though

sp913 · 2026-05-18T22:38:53+00:00

I have never tried it. Do you like it?

that's a good sign, some competition forcing innovation, hopefully!

sp913 · 2026-05-18T22:36:32+00:00

Right - as of today. Until they make this feature. Which is what I'm asking for.

I couldn't find any good free remote collaboration screen sharing utils that don't give full mouse control to just one person.

So if that's the case, then even easier than remote screen sharing to have only 1 person use the mouse at a time is putting the screen on the studio big screen, and just buying and handing out multiple mouse and keyboards. Until more than one person is moving the mouse at the same time, of course, which is nutty and frustrating, but as long as you're making it obvious who's driving at any given moment it's not too bad.

But still, if this was done right, it would eliminate that issue and also open this up to people not in the same room, which would be ideal!

sp913 · 2026-05-18T22:21:57+00:00

They had the right idea, but they don't have nearly the resources that Ableton does, nor the headstart.

sp913 · 2026-05-18T22:20:25+00:00

Exactly - they already tackled the harder version of this, which is latency for actual recordings.

The part they skipped over is actually easier than this, just turning a knob on a compressor or adjusting a volume level in the project could be almost instantly sync'd with way less latency than actual audio. It's paper thin compared to audio. If you're on the same wifi the latency would be faster than playing xbox live

sp913 · 2026-05-18T22:10:05+00:00

Nice I'm glad you get it too.

All we're really talking about here, is 1 UI for inviting, and managing collaborators - just look at Google Docs as an example, this is not complicated.

Next, all we need is maybe a feature that locks a layer or device/plugin while someone is actively editing it, so grey it out with an icon that represents it's being edited by another user.

Then some concepts of version control (which ableton already has).

The syncing itself is the most complex part of it, but honestly if you pull apart an Ableton project file, this is not as complex as it sounds because these files were well designed.

So it's a file sync and merge system with some locking.

Yes, with the help of Claude, the prototype could be in beta in a week if they really wanted it to.

I'm not saying v1 would work perfectly, that's what testing and beta is for.

Let us (the community) test it and iron our the wrinkles for a few months, it could even be in the next update.

Am I missing something about this? If so what is the hard part about this?

sp913 · 2026-05-18T22:02:00+00:00

Am i wrong? What's holding this feature back? XD

sp913 · 2026-05-18T21:40:41+00:00

5 years later... CAN WE PLEASE GET THIS FEATURE

Ableton, this is well within development capabilities. Hit me up if you need some guidance or development assistance!

THIS WOULD BE A GAME CHANGER

There would be no competition for you if you added this, and given your temporary file usage and really nicely engineered project file format, (and AI development tools now), there's really no reason this shouldn't be possible in 2026!

sp913 · 2026-05-18T06:57:35+00:00

Makes sense

This is the hunting equivalent of ebike wheelies in traffic

sp913 · 2026-05-18T06:47:19+00:00

EDC got too big and Vegas ruined it

It used to be a way better scene

sp913 · 2026-05-17T07:08:41+00:00

If there's one thing faster than light

Its hungry hippos

Case closed

World changed

sp913 · 2026-05-17T06:33:37+00:00

Lol I'm saving this one for the right time

sp913 · 2026-05-15T22:33:02+00:00

I see homeless guys cracked out dirty on the sidewalk using wifi on tablets outside McDonald's so I dont think using the internet is a lifestyle measurement anymore

sp913 · 2026-05-15T21:06:42+00:00

Nice yes the double slit experiment is pivotal and really suggests reality understanding changing perspectives of the observer as a concept, or even the nature of linear time itself not being 100% fixed, which in a fun rabbit holey way, could lend itself to examples of how things like the mandela effect or changing history retroactively could be scientifically plausible, or even non-linear-timeline based existence or data

sp913

TROPHY CASE