the production thread
Yup. 12 out next year.
Have to say that 11 has been the most disappointing version to date. Didn’t even make it to 11.5. I’ll probably upgrade to 12. But have to say that some of the functionality that Bitwig has, puts pressure to make 12 a more substantial update than 11 was.
Henry The additional Midi tools look interesting. I have a ridiculously large sample collection so the sound matching could be interesting - if it’s able to scan your collection and match from there.
But they’ve left me behind at the moment. I’ve mentioned (about a million times before, sorry) that I’m running windows 7 on my music PC which works flawlessly. I’m not going through the pain of a new system or faff around with dual booting systems for a some midi tools which a max for live device could probably replicate.
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apyssjw Will Ableton 12 only run on a particular Windows chipset?
As for browsing, this looks like nice upgrade to the previous. Finding samples has always been a pain. I was using a plugin called ‘Atlas’ for a while which is supposed to match similar sounds, but quite often failed. Hope the implementation in Ableton 12 works better.
The ‘flagship’ updates for 11 were things like MPE and comping, which they were really marketed hard during the release campaign but are actually overrated. The only other memorable update in 11 was a synth called ‘Drift’, which was memorable in that I can recall only ever using it once.
12 seems like a proper update to me. It looks to me like they’ve taken a look at Bitwig and decided to focus on improving time spent browsing and looking for stuff, adding better ways to view plugins in arrangement/session view etc. And it looks like they’ve added a decent synth this time.
I still think from what I have seen of Bitwig, they are still behind some basic functionality. I would love to be able to open multiple projects up in Ableton and copy ideas seamlessly between them. Or have contextual menus, to avoid having to hunt for plugins. Having said that. I am too old to start learning another fecking DAW.
Henry Will Ableton 12 only run on a particular Windows chipset
11 was the first to be windows 10 only. Its the operating system which isn’t necessarily hardware dependent - but if I upgrade I’ll lose incompatible software, drivers etc. it’s just not worth it when my machine runs like a dream. A tipping point will come at some point, but I’m not at it yet.
That said I have a laptop running Windows 10 so could buy the update to run on that…
Upgraded to 11 yesterday, my template looks like a ghost town of plugins that won’t load. Guess I’ll be spending a day on software housekeeping to get it functioning again. Really looking forward to the midi/piano roll updates with version 12 and roar looks interesting too (despite the awful name).
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303abuser
Which plugins are causing issues? The only issues I had were because I was going from Intel to Silicon, and anything that was VST2. But I know you are already on an M1 chip so that won’t be the case.
Soundtoys are doing the big bundle for $239. I would go for this, only that I bought the Arturia FX Collection a few years back, and apart from a few things here and there I generally haven’t used many of the FX. Echoboy looks really good, but can get this for $49, so might just go for that. I got the freebee Littleplate this week which is really good.
Still in two minds whether to get Plasmonic or not, now that is has been reduced to $99. Trackspacer also. Although I managed to find a decent dynamic EQ which probably does the same job with a little more effort.
Henry Not sure about issues, just lots of vst2 instances apparently. I think I can get around some of the non-m1 compatibility via AU versions, but we’ll see. I suspect voxengo span is going to be a problem and I use that one constantly. Basically my entire master channel chain is greyed out. 
And the soundtoys fx are so much better than arturia. I use the spring reverb and the space echo emulation, but if I had to pick one or the other, it’s soundtoys every time.
I’m watching for a discount on morph2 still, but I think I’m done spending.
303abuser I’m using Span as a VST 3 no issues at all. I have it bunged on my master track too.
Yeah, the VST 2 thing is an absolutely pain in the hoop. All of my work before moving to M1 was done using VST2 plug ins. Which basically meant that if I wanted to use any previous work, I would have to save each plugin as a VST 3/AU or bounce the audio. I had hundreds of tracks and as you can imagine this is impossible to do. My back up is my Intel iMac which is at the back of my wardrobe and I fire it up once every 6 months when I want to recover something.
The Soundtoys bundle sounds tempting because, like Syntakt, you are always banging on about it. And you were right about Syntakt, so I should probably pay attention. 
Henry Good to know with span, I’m going to start tackling it all this afternoon, hopefully it isn’t so bad. And luckily I’m just starting a new album project and I typically don’t go back to borrow from old projects, so hoping that’s not a huge thing going forward too.
If you’re looking for creative colour, then soundtoys is it. They’re not designed as clean mixing tools, like fab filter for example, so be aware of that. When I installed 11 yesterday, it scanned 350ish plugins (for perspective) and I go back to soundtoys over and over again. The only ones I use as often are pro q3, novatron and blyss from kush audio, and modnetic.
You’ll be on the watch list down at MI5 for typing those two words, MC.
There are also plugins called “Little Alter Boy” and “Phase Mistress”, so I’m not sure all is quite right with the lads over at Soundtoys.
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XLN Audio have their transient shaper ‘DS-10 Drum Shaper’ for sale at $22 (it’s ace):
https://plugindiscounts.com/product/ds-10-drum-shaper/
XO at $55 is a bargain to (same webshop).. I already bought it 2 last year for $70 otherwise I’d be all over that deal.
I am eying the Cableguys Shaperbox 3 bundle for $89 though… need to play around with it more.
Quick Overbridge question for you. Given that the FX in Syntakt are sends, is there any way to route each track wet individually into Ableton? I can only see a set up using dry channels, with a separate FX send track. However, it’s pretty muddy running in one Ableton channel, and I would rather EQ the wet tracks individually.
The only way I can see around it would be to solo each track and record them individually with their sends.
Henry That’s the one drawback with how these boxes are set up, insert fx would be helpful. I have a few ways of doing things: one is to do what you said, basically solo each channel and record individually (this is my main method); use the fx on the syntakt as a place holder and just add them back in with ableton; do longer jams with a mix of wet and dry and cut them up after.
I’m doing a lot more resampling now, so it doesn’t bother me as much as it used to. Recording each track solo is a bit of a pain, but you get used to it.
Thanks for confirming and that has saved me a few hours scraping the web looking for a way around it.
Not really a big issue for me either. I don’t intend using ST for arranging entire tracks and performing them in song mode etc. More just as a starting point to a track, get a bunch of patterns together, export them out into Ableton and finish the arrangement there. The only faffing around I can see is soloing each track, because for the life of me I cannot find a quick way of doing it!
I ended up buying Echo Boy, which is some plugin and I don’t have anything that comes close to it. I figured that I wouldn’t use most of the other plugins in the bundle, plus I have Arturia’s collection.
One last question, and I promise to leave you alone! Do you get any latency issues recording into Ableton. For example, if I have hat coming in on the first beat, the hat comes in slightly slower. Which is expected due to latency (I have set the buffer to 256). If I try to compensate for this using Track Delay (on the Syntakt channel) I can get it there or there about to where I want it. The problem is that it is not consistent. So if I record the hat again, using the exact same Track Delay, both fail to record at exactly the same time. So there is no consistency with it. Setting the input monitor to Off also failed to work.
Looks like I’ll have to warp all of the recorded audio?