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Ableton Live

Score8.6 out of 10

21 Reviews and Ratings

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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

Reviews

What users are saying about Ableton Live.
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Incredibly powerful, intuitive and quality sounding DAW!

Eric FoxView profile
producer/engineer/mastering engineer at eleven.five studios (1-10 employees employees)

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.

Incentivized
Dominic Farrow
Graphic Designer in Corporate at Blkmarket (1-10 employees employees)

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

Incentivized
Eric Reithler-Barros
CEO (Chief Executive Officer) in Corporate at Fold Artists (1-10 employees employees)

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

Incentivized
Jonah DempcyView profile
Web & Mobile Developer in Engineering at Bluefire Productions (1-10 employees employees)

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

Incentivized
sam heminger
Teacher at Synergy School (11-50 employees employees)

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