Ableton Live 11 builds on the tremendous power of its two-decade-long solid reputation. One of the best audio editors for professionals, not to mention one of the best Adobe Audition alternatives, the latest version of the program adds rich features.
Look out for the likes of songwriting, linked tracks, and follow-up actions to complement your skill set. Hybrid Reverb, Spectral time, Warping and MPE are just some of the features users can enjoy. Meanwhile, tempo tracking can be set up in your digital audio workstation (DAW) or you can change the tempo with external beats.
Power up your audio PC or laptop for music production - we take a look at what Ableton Live offers today's audio professionals.
Ableton Live: costs and plans
- Flexible plans, educational discounts, XNUMX-day trial period
Ableton offers 3 lifetime licenses, each adding more advanced tools to the mix, for a fee of course.
The live intro costs €8/€8/AU$4. It gives sixteen audio and MIDI tracks, XNUMX "Scenes", XNUMX channels of simultaneous recording and two sends and returns, twenty-one effect plug-ins and XNUMX virtual instruments totaling up to five GB.
The live standard is €XNUMX / €XNUMX / AU €XNUMX. This has unlimited tracks with two hundred and fifty six inputs and twelve sends and returns. You also get audio distortion and clipping, audio to MIDI, six instruments, ten GB of sounds, and thirty-seven audio effects.
The Live Suite, at €XNUMX / €XNUMX / AU €XNUMX, adds a Max sound-creation glitch and realistic sample bundles totaling up to XNUMX GB of sounds, with XNUMX instruments and sixty audio effects.
With a XNUMX-day trial period, you have plenty of time to discover if the music creation software fits your creative workflow.
Ableton offers free licenses to young students in schools, who can also get discounts on Push, Ableton's fully integrated and programmable Live suite hardware. Organizations with little or no budget for instruments can also order free push units.
Mac users will need at least High Sierra 13, an Intel Core or Apple M1 processor, a high-resolution monitor, and a Core Audio-compatible audio interface. Live 11 is compatible with Windows 11 (Series XNUMX and later) and Windows XNUMX. Windows can use either an Intel Core processor or an AMD multicore processor. Windows requires ASIO-compatible hardware for Link support and best audio performance. XNUMX GB of RAM is the minimum, but XNUMX GB of RAM is recommended.
(*11*) Ableton Live: interface
- Session view lets you arrange and randomize loops, once you get the hang of it; Arrange view is going to be more familiar to linear DAW users
Ableton Live 11 is powered by Global Launch Quantification. While it might take a minute to get used to if you're not used to working with loops, it's a pretty logical approach. The count is always reset to the beginning of a measure before your next selection starts playing on the first beat, it's that simple.
Having never worked in a linear DAW before, this approach would make the most sense at the moment. Essentially it helps if you can count to 4, but if you can't, Live will do it for you and it's next to impossible to mess around with.
The next thing to understand is Ableton's two views, Session View and Arrange View, as they are designed to work together.
Session View looks like a mixer at first glance, but it's really built to be the most plastic loop machine ever. The Arrangement view has a more familiar timeline look. The two views have the same clips, but you can edit them in different ways.
If you're familiar with video editing software, using the term Scenes to describe audio may seem strange, but Live 11 uses the term to describe a horizontal compilation of clips designed to play together in Session View. Each row of clips, or scene, can have a particular mood or atmosphere, a set of effects, or a combination of processes. They can be configured to play in specific orders or be scheduled randomly or a combination of the two.
It turns out that scenes are a great way to trigger loop sets. If you've never made music in a DAW before, you'll love the way Live 11 is built and organized from the ground up. With no preconceptions about linear editing, you can simply plunge (or gently back your lilo off the edge) into the center of the globally quantized set of beats.
Ableton Live: Tools
- Take Lanes allow for a simple composition, Linked Tracks allow for massive operations, Schedule Follow Actions are precise or random.
The tool has been attached to the collection part and can do this on recorded MIDI tracks, such as vocal tracks. It's very simple: just use the Pen Tool to pick the part of each take you want, and Live 11 organizes them into one main "take" on top. Now, you can collapse any and all compounds inside if you don't want to suppress them.
Audio editing software now also has advanced track linking properties for bulk editing, effects, processing, and just about anything else that will cut down on the time it takes to polish your creations.
There is an irony in the fact that early sound technologies were used to hide many of the unique human alterations inevitably present in recorded live music, while today's innovations often seek to put these elements back in place. . Live's follow actions can recreate a sense of spontaneous inventiveness, a lively alteration among the same. They go by detailing actions to continue playback of a particular clip (or scene), including 'play', 'next', 'first', 'last', etc.
Track actions can be applied from Session or Arrangement view, can be tied to clip duration just like scenes, and can be precisely ordered or timed by probability to satisfy randomness.
Ableton Live: Warp, tempo and reverbs
- Tempo Follower molds to external beats, Hybrid Reverb creates new sounds for your experimentation, Warping applies multiple flavors
Distortion alters the rhythmic flow of music in time or other attributes, including pitch, texture, and tone. These options can be found in the Audio tab/panel of the clip view.
In addition to Warping, Ableton Live also features a nifty tempo follower; found in the Tempo MIDI Link tab of Live's preferences. Click 'Show Tempo Tracker Change' to put the little track button on the top left of the desktop. You can also select here which channel will be the default beat that all the others will follow.
Once activated, you can use it to lock in to another beat playing across the room or on another device. You can even just clap your hands and watch the tempo change on the digital tempo meter as the music slows down or speeds up.
The new hybrid reverb combines a mathematically calculated logarithmic reverb with a surround reverb, in series or parallel. Surround Reverb can be layered with different presets or take on the character of the samples being fed into for original hybrid sounds.
- Warp, Tempo and Reverb: 4/5
Ableton Live: new features
- MPE support adds note distortion to MIDI editing, macro snapshots help organize workflow, ghost time allows for better wet/dry control
If you're a user of MPE (MIDI Polyphonic Expression), you'll be happy to know that this standard is now supported by Live 11, including its software (Wavetable, Sampler, and Arpeggiato). It also supports certain hardware push functions. MPE gives you greater control of individual MIDI notes, allowing you to apply bends, glides, and pressure individually.
You can spruce up your workspace with Live 11's macro snapshots, which streamline your workflow even by mapping remote devices to an accessible destination.
Live Suite users also take advantage of Spectral Time, which uses 'Freezer' and 'Delay' individually or in series. Wet/dry signals are displayed on a spectrogram that can be turned on/off. When you're done, the export is super fast and hassle-free.
All of these quirks and more add even more layers to Live's inventiveness. It is an uplifting experience. One thing is for sure when it comes to working with loops: if you choose Live 11, and with a XNUMX-day free trial, you're going to have a hard time getting rid of .
Ableton Live: Tabletop
Swipe to scroll horizontally Zero Row - Cell Zero Zero Row - Cell 1 Zero Row - Cell Two Costs and Plans Flexible lifetime licenses to match the tools you need four Interface Beautiful design, not a traditional linear editor four Tools Comes with tools to studio-quality productions4 Distortion, Temptation and Efficient Reverb4New Features The latest version adds a lot, including support for MPEXNUMXShould I buy?
Buy it if...
You want to join a supportive community of committed Live users and grow your creativity in surprising ways: by the end of your trial, you'll be hooked anyway, so you might as well support it.
Don't buy it if...
You are a committed linear audio editor and don't want to create in this part of your workflow or use many of Ableton Live's features in other DAWs or through plugins.
Ableton Live: Alternatives
Some alternatives to Ableton Live that we recommend trying are Adobe Audition, Apple Logic Pro, and Acoustica by Acon Digital.