Five things I HATE about Ableton Live

Before you get the wrong impression here, Ableton is my joint-main DAW alongside Reaper. I love it to bits and it is an essential tool in my workflow … but does that make it perfect? No.

I thought I’d dive into a few of the things which drive me mad about it, in the hope that they are resolved or people offer solutions.

It is worth stating that all of these gripes I have should not put you off buying Ableton.

Pretty much all of the issues listed below are presumably the result of the developers making Ableton accessible and easy to use out of the box without need for customisation. But sometimes the KISS rule and choice to make things accessible to the lowest common denominator means that more advanced options are ruled out … here’s what I mean.

Lack of customisation

Coming from a DAW where I was spoilt for choice (I adopted Ableton Live after years of experience with Reaper), the complete lack of customisation was a bit of a shock to me.

Reaper is very much a DAW where you can go (really should go) deep into the customisation of its interface and settings. This is true to the point that you can code your own additional features in Reaper and go deeper than any of my skills allow.

In Ableton Live, you have your keyboard shortcuts set for you and that’s it, no way to adapt it to your workflow, you get what you are given. There is no way to make custom actions (or macros if you can handle the multiple meanings) like you can in Reaper.

READ MORE: How to use Reaper’s Custom Actions

This is why I never fully moved from Reaper to Ableton, and I still use Reaper for editing jobs which require lots of routine edits. Ableton suits me fine for making music, but if I’m editing a podcast or speech package, I really don’t want to be repeating the same five keyboard shortcuts for each change – that can easily be something chained to a single button shortcut.

To put into perspective how powerful this is, I have created a one button action in Reaper that splits a podcast of any length into slices at pauses, deletes silences over a certain length, and brings it all together.

To see some of the potential this could bring to Ableton, check out these useful actions that I miss when using Ableton.

Volume Automation is a nightmare

In Ableton Live, I really hate automating volumes. It is the worst DAW that I have ever worked with for this task and here’s why.

If you automate the normal volume fader and have it set (let’s say with Vocal Track verses 5dB quieter than in the chorus) then want to bring the whole track up by a few dB but keep the automation proportional, it ruins everything.

To get around this, you need to add a Utility plugin and automate that volume instead.

This is stupid and a waste of time. Sure it’s a small workflow change compared to other DAWs, but it is really jarring to the process.

Why is spacebar not the pause button?

Seriously? In every other piece of software I use, from DAWs, to video editors, to YouTube, hitting spacebar stops playback at the playhead, then hitting it again continues from where you have left off.

In Ableton, it takes you right back to the start. To unpause and play from where you left off, you hit Shift+Space.

This would not be an issue for Ableton if it has customisable shortcuts but it doesn’t.

For people used to using Ableton and Ableton only, it’s perhaps not a big gripe, but considering most people in the industry use various creative content editing software (as well as YouTube and other video players), you’d think they’d stick to the trend.

The only place this design choice makes sense is in triggering clips for live performances. If you are in session view then I can accept it. But arrangement mode is just not the place for a de-streamlined shortcut scheme.

Frozen tracks are frozen and you can’t do anything about it

This is a gripe that I’ve not had to worry about since getting a PC that can handle projects without freezing tracks – but for many, freezing a track is essential.

It renders the audio and effects so it doesn’t have to process all the plugins in real time, and saves CPU resources.

Problem is, you can’t add any effects to the frozen track unless you flatten it or unfreeze it.

This is a problem because you might want to make a small tweak to a frozen track but are limited to system resources. If you flatten it, you can’t go back and edit MIDI notes or other previous effect settings.

Why can’t Ableton allow you to add an effect on a frozen track, and should you wish to unfreeze it, simply add that effect on the end of the chain?

You can’t customise waveforms

In many DAWs, there are ways to set the waveforms to show frequencies with colour.

This is one of the most essential tricks for fast editing. I use it extensively in Reaper when editing audio to the point where I can find problems without even listening to the audio.

If the waveform is coloured based on its most prominent frequencies, you can rapidly identify kick drums or hi-hats, find nasty mic pops in vocals, and have a better idea of where you want your edit to be just by looking.

This feature is not a replacement for listening to the track but it is a significant convenience that should be afforded to the users of the software.

Conclusion

I really love Ableton, and making music in Ableton is much faster and streamlined than making it in Reaper and other DAWs I’ve worked with. The interface is shallower than a lot of others which, for better or for worse, makes the process a lot more simple for everyday users.

It doesn’t stop me from thinking Ableton is the best DAW for electronic music, but when you work on more than just in-computer music such as live bands/artists or podcasts, it has these really annoying quirks that mean it has never become my exclusive DAW of choice.

Let me know what your biggest gripes are, and more importantly, if you know of any solutions to my melodramatic complaints, I’d love to hear them!