Hi, I’m having some issues using Ableset that only seem to occur when a song starts on a non-round “time” value (i.e. when the “time” value in the .json file when you export a setlist, in beats, is an ugly looking decimal):
When a song ends midway through a bar, playback will continue until the bar is completed before jumping (even if the global quantization is set to 1/4 note, for example).
If there is a song immediately next on Ableton’s timeline that ISN’T next on AbleSet’s setlist, this will result in a few beats of the next song being heard before playback continues into the next song on the setlist as normal
If there is rather a SONG END marker and a couple of beats of silence before the next song on the Ableton timeline, there will be some extraneous silence and AbleSet will jump to and play the first song of the setlist rather than the next song in the setlist.
It’s harder to explain this than just show it so here’s a video of the behaviour:
Hey @Ciaran, welcome to the forum, and please excuse my late reply to your post!
The issue you described in your video is two-fold. Basically, a bug in Ableton is triggering a bug in AbleSet.
When the playhead comes close to reaching a SONG END locator, AbleSet instructs Live to jump to the locator at the beginning of the next song, and Live takes care of doing so while respecting the global quantization.
I’m unsure as to why Live doesn’t respect the 1/4 quantization you set up, but that’s likely the issue we’ll have to focus on fixing in your project file as that also triggers the bug in AbleSet.
When the playhead overshoots the SONG END locator and gets close to the start locator of the next song, AbleSet thinks this marker also defines the end of the previous song in the timeline and jumps to the next song in the setlist, or the first song if the previous song isn’t part of the setlist.
For now, the easiest workaround for this would be to add more space between the SONG END locator and the start locator of the song that follows it. That doesn’t fix Live overshooting the SONG END locator, but at least AbleSet won’t jump to an unwanted song in the setlist.
I’ll see if I can reproduce and fix this in the next update. Could you DM me the project file you’re working with so I can take a closer look at it? Just the .als file should suffice for this. You can either send it to me on the forum or upload it to my support inbox.
No worries, Leo. Sorry for my own delay in replying.
Here’s the .als as requested. It’s the chunk of fragmentary time at the start of All The Small Things that is affecting every song after it in the Live timeline. Causing them to start at a non-round-number-of beats, etc. The issue I showed in the video can indeed also be observed after All The Small Things since there is just two beats between that and the next song on the timeline. The problem only occurs from that point in the timeline on, and not when there are only two beats between songs earlier on in the set.
The reason for that fragmentary time is that the intro sample of All The Small Things is a certain length in seconds that doesn’t conform to an even number of grid divisions (at least not at the tempo of the rest of the song). I have a few options there:
Make the sample conform to a certain amount of beats by shortening it or warping it.
Complete the truncated beat and just live with some small amount of silence at the start of the track before the sample kicks in.
Adjust a small section of the tempo track such that it fills the length of the sample with a certain number of beats.
Any one of those options should avoid the issue entirely. And the other workarounds I showed in the video and your suggestion of having at least a bar between songs are useful options to have if for some reason having such fragmentary time is unavoidable.
But while it’s good to have and know about the tools to avoid the issue it’s all still ultimately a workaround for whatever bug is causing Live to not respect the global quantization setting in these circumstances. It’s not hard to imagine similar situations cropping up for and confusing other users if they have parts of songs that don’t conform to grid divisions, but I understand that might not be common enough to make it a priority and I also understand there might not be much you can do on your end if it’s ultimately an Ableton bug.
The behaviour is still present with Live 12.0.5, for what it’s worth.
Thank you for the project file! I can reproduce this issue on my end, but other than the workarounds you described, I don’t think there’s a way to fix this from our end, unfortunately, as this is a bug with Live.
