Hi, I recently encountered an issue in ableton where my recorded tracks will disappear if I move them and hit control + z. It shows "sample offline". I can get these files back if i click "Go" on the missing media files page, but working in the fashion still makes me uneasy. I also noticed that if i click "File" -> "open recent sets" all of the sets are greyed out. And when I save files it defaults to my desktop instead of where it used to which was my ableton folder where I keep everything. All of this leads me to believe that ableton is set to point to the wrong file location. I dont know how it changed or how to fix this issue. Does anyone have any insight? Thanks!

Hi - It does seem like Ableton is saving audiofiles to the desktop instead of into some other default location (like the current project folder, as with pretty much all DAWs..?) It's reasonable to assume that whenever Ableton has to re-locate them and doesn't find them in the expected place(s) you get the error message.. Assuming you've tried the usual troubleshooting steps (shutdown/restart, blow out Preferences (to restore any relevant factory defaults, etc), off the top of my head I can think of a couple of things to try by way of troubleshooting.. - Try creating a new empty project from scratch (as opposed to using a template that might have default settings changed by accident), and duplicate the workflow that leads to the problem—that might give you an idea of whether the issue is due to a global default setting, or something specific to a particular project or template - If you locate the files on the desktop and move them to the (previous) normal/default location, maybe that would eliminate the problem? If it does, then you'd just have to figure out how to re-set that location as the default location for audio recordings Besides blowing out the Live Preferences, I guess I'd look for options for setting the default audiofile location in the Manage Files dialog(?), or in one of the related Preference tabs..? I don't have Live installed here to check it out, but maybe there'll be something in the video below that'll be helpful.. I'll also link this thread to one of our Ableton Live courses—maybe one of our Ableton gurus will recognize the issue and have some more specific advice to offer..

Guys, can you recommend any alternatives to Format Factory?

I'm not sure how this last post [alternatives to Format Factory] relates to this thread, so I've started a new thread for it over in General > General -- please respond there. https://www.macprovideo.com/forums/general/general-general/thread/9776-alternatives-to-format-factory-?afid=E470KLQ7r9 Please always start a new thread for a new or branching topic..