#1 most frequent
United States of America
59.3%496 installations of 837
What is Ableton Live?
Ableton headquartered in Berlin offers Ableton Live, the company's flagship digital audio workstation and audio editing suite.
Categories & Use Cases
Who Buys & Uses Ableton Live
#2 most frequent
Mexico
12.4%104 installations of 837
#3 most frequent
United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland
4.3%36 installations of 837
Incredibly powerful, intuitive and quality sounding DAW!
Use Cases and Deployment Scope
I've used Ableton Live since version 4. I'm really impressed with how well it keeps up with the times and continues to further our abilities as producers and engineers. There are many other DAWs out there, but for me and my studio, I use Ableton. The ability to work with others is unparalleled also. Sounds great. Very Intuitive. And very easy to learn as a new employee.
Pros
- MIDI
- Sample Management
- Sound Quality
- Overall Usability
Cons
- Integrated collaborative features
- Triple monitor ability
- Mobile support
Most Important Features
- Speed
- Ease Of Use
- Sound Quality
- Capability
Return on Investment
- It helped me to grow my business.
- The return Investment only took one good session.
- The price is right!
Alternatives Considered
Avid Pro Tools, Propellerhead Reason, FL Studio, Logic Pro X and Cubase
Other Software Used
Waves, Adobe Audition
Ableton Live is better than you think.
Pros
- Edits audio levels.
- Composition.
- Detailed automation.
Cons
- I would like to see more automation capabilities for already recorded tracks.
- Cleaner UI.
- Better lessons.
Return on Investment
- Great audio quality in our videos.
- Great music.
- Everyone in the office understands it.
Alternatives Considered
GarageBand
Other Software Used
Adobe PhotoShop, Blender, DaVinci Resolve
Easy and fast from brain to written music
Pros
- Fast workflow, can go from idea in mind to actualy music in short time
- Big community, always easy to find an answer
- 3rd party bolt-ons like Max4Live
Cons
- Version 10 chews up all my CPU but prior versions didn't
- Midi channel automation isn't intuitive, have to make an instrument group
- New version install should overwrite older versions
Most Important Features
- Support of AU and VST
- Simple and fast VST parameter automation
- Owkrs perfectly with Push hardware
Return on Investment
- I use Ableton for pleasure, so no impact on business objectives...
Alternatives Considered
Cubase and Propellerhead Reason
Other Software Used
Chrome Remote Desktop, Audacity, Microsoft Powerpoint
Helps Creators Be Creative Through Mix-and-Match Experimentation
Pros
- User Interface - Instead of countless windows and menus, everything in Ableton Live is readily available in expandable and collapsable tabs.
- Grouping and Routing - Easy and intuitive multitrack grouping, routing, and effects buses.
- Creative Experimentation - This program is designed for experimenting and helping producers and composers come up with new combinations and variations of sound. Intuitively integrates with a workflow based on experimentation and loop-based iteration.
- Automation - Ability to copy-and-paste automation envelopes, along with expected features like recording automation, makes it a breeze to modify effects sends and VST settings on the fly in realtime.
- Bouncing to WAV - The "Freeze" option is invaluable for bouncing tracks to WAV, either to save precious CPU resources or because you want to edit the WAV itself rather than the computed track.
Cons
- VST Plugin Management - Once you get 100s of VST plugins, it is a major pain to keep them all organized.
- Replacing Moved WAVs - When you move the WAV samples, there is the ability to auto-search and replace, but it rarely works. Most often, you have to manually replace the WAVs.
- Latency - The ability to autocorrect sync issues due to sound card latency is supposedly a feature offered by Ableton Live, but I have not been able to get it to work correctly, and often have to fix the latency issues myself.
- Freeze Occasionally Doesn't Work - Theoretically, you can freeze any track to bounce it to a WAV, but sometimes these WAVs end up blank. This happens with the Access Virus TI-2, for example.
- Clicks at Loop Points - Due to quickfades, loops sometimes have clicks in them, particularly if they have a lot of bass frequencies.
Return on Investment
- Ableton Live allows me to rapidly sequence multitrack music as needed, without getting stuck at any step of the process.
- Ableton Live also allows me to quickly export or upload to SoundCloud for easy sharing. This is a big time-saver.
- The only negative ROI I can think of is the cost. There are competitors like Reaper that are much more affordable and have many of the same features.
Alternatives Considered
Avid Pro Tools, ACID Pro, Logic Pro X and GarageBand
Other Software Used
Avid Pro Tools, Sound Forge, Logic Pro X, Audacity, WaveLab
Ableton Live for Music Teachers
Pros
- Great ability to "play" music software like an instrument.
Cons
- User interface could be more intuitive.
Alternatives Considered
Logic Pro X and Avid Pro Tools
Other Software Used
Avid Pro Tools, Google Classroom, Google Charts