I know when they released the beta back in October/November 2023, they said it would be released in Q1 of 2024 with February being the timing they were working towards, though may slip to March if anything needs more work.

I've not really tried the beta versions, so just curious more than anything about how close is it to a release and whether there are any significant issues at all?

Anybody in the know about any potential release dates (obviously NDAs don't apply when you hide behind forum identities )?

 

Ableton was always beta

 

they just made the beta public to all users, so i would imagine its close. yes there are issues, we'll see if they get ironed out... ive lost a lot of faith in abelton over the last couple releases

 

Anyone used 12 enough to make a judgement about how it compares to 11 performance-wise?

I used 12 for a while and when I went back to using 11 I found it felt much snappier generally. I get the impression that 12 is quite bloated.

 

It's been pretty solid with the most recent betas. All of the advertised features seem to be there (and I'm liking them!), but I guess it could do with some QA still. I'm pretty sure some of the presets for the new things have been glitchy and/or unpolished, but that's pretty minor.

Some of the earliest ones bugged out the indexer for me which was annoying because it reported the indexer crashing, then said that Live will be shut down, get the crash dump and report it, but it never did shut down and carried on working, restarting indexing and repeating this every couple of minutes.

Waiting for the next beta, then nuking the index fixed this. I've not encountered any glaring issues besides that. Performance is pretty much the same, but since the interface is slicker it just feels faster, weird, huh?

So I'm happy with it so far, a solid release after the "duh, meh" 11 one. If it was just the new browser I would've welcomed this with gleeful giggles, but plenty more on top of that.

 

All sounds pretty positive for a release within a matter of days/weeks then it seems!

I'm so impatient though. Been holding off trying the beta versions because I didn't want to come across potential issues that would always leave me paranoid post-final release I'm tempted to potentially try it out now though, mainly because I want to try out some of the new MIDI and music theory aids and improvements.

 

ive been using the beta for months and i've had 0 issues. sometimes the mouse/clicking acted funny, but a simple restart would fix it.
actually, i started a serious project on the beta and now i'm continuing on it since i can't backport it and am too lazy
i kinda dislike the way they changed the browser for plugins, but i guess there are some settings to set it up properly, i don't want to tag my vsts or use search everytime i need to bring something up...

 

I have used all Live 12 Betas and they run smooth without Problems.

 

This is the only thing I am hating. The browser with the filters and tagging takes up WAY too much screen real estate, especially when you consider they seem to have removed the option to display the old way of folders and the tagging and filters ONLY work on pre-tagged stuff, meaning most plugins, samples, projects etc will not be tagged, which is a HUGE workload to tag everything if running Ableton as a centrepiece for a studio setup with lots of ready-to-go stuff connected or installed.

I don't doubt filtering and tagging has benefits if things are properly tagged, but I feel like they put all their eggs in that basket too early and need to at least provide the option to display as folders as in previous versions, at least until some effective AI solution is available to auto-tag everything pretty effectively for users.

 

There's no way to make it the browser work like ableton 11?

 

lets be honest here..

i'll say it since everyone else seems to be mousing around it like a dog thats been beaten once too often.

WHEN IS ABLETON THIRTEEN COMING OUT????????

Ableton 13, thats going to be the one.

13 squirells sitting on a branch
at my uncles ranch.

 

I don't believe so. I think it has the option of the filtering and tagging (which can have filters/tags for certain things hidden), and/or everything in one huge list, so no more vendor or category folders for plugins etc, instead they are all just in one long list.

You can see this guy cover it here at about 14:30 onwards:

 

Yeah it's been absolutely rock solid for me, in some cases with my bigger projects it was more responsive/loaded faster than it would in 11. It feels like quite the improvement so far to me.

 

I agree. The browser is still a hot mess really. Scanning is still painful and PDC is still broken. Its essentially a point release dressed up as a major release. I mean, Ymmv, but the theory stuff is just Meh for me.. If I wanted that stuff I'd use m4l addons. Bloat.

This happens so often with mature software, the really fundamental problems are not addressed but instead the dev puts on a juggling show to take your eye off the real value.

 

Its great, the new midi editing tools are very useful. I like the sample finding tools but I don't like that I've lost my nicely organised VST 2 directories. And the new multiband distortion rocks. Its stable and smooth, already feels ready to release.

Except ALL my old 11 projects wont run properly in it. And no traditional project fixes work - clean installs, removing VSTs etc.

So it seems for me, ONLY new projects in 12 and a new workflow because I cant use 3 years of prebuilt track parts and racks.

When it gets out of beta, IF this issue continues I might get a refund and stick to 11. I seem to have the one machine 12 hates.

 

Last edited by a moderator: Feb 16, 2024

No. But after some time using it I found it very useful

 

Did you tag all your vsts? What's your workflow?

 

We can also consider the human being a beta version of a release that will probably never come out