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Ableton Live has become a go-to software for both professional and personal music production projects. With its intuitive interface and …
Starting at $79
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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.
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Pricing
Live 10 Intro
$79
On Premise
Max for Live - Crossgrade
$79
On Premise
Live 11 Intro
$99
On Premise
Entry-level set up fee?
- No setup fee
Offerings
- Free Trial
- Free/Freemium Version
- Premium Consulting/Integration Services
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What is Ableton Live?
Ableton Live Technical Details
| Deployment Types | On-premise |
|---|---|
| Operating Systems | Windows, Mac |
| Mobile Application | No |
Frequently Asked Questions
Ableton headquartered in Berlin offers Ableton Live, the company's flagship digital audio workstation and audio editing suite.
Reviewers rate Support Rating highest, with a score of 9.6.
The most common users of Ableton Live are from Small Businesses (1-50 employees).
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TrustRadius Insights are summaries of user sentiment data from TrustRadius reviews and, when necessary, 3rd-party data sources. Have feedback on this content? Let us know!
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Ableton Live has become a go-to software for both professional and personal music production projects. With its intuitive interface and conducive environment for creative experimentation, it has gained popularity among early adopters and experienced users alike. Users have praised its ease of use, quickness, and ability to handle a wide range of tasks, making it their preferred Digital Audio Workstation.
Professionals rely on Ableton Live for various music and audio production needs. It excels in producing interstitial music, multitrack audio, advertisements, film and video game soundtracks, and even rich media ebooks. Its session view and arrangement view allow users to quickly produce background music for corporate events, which can then be seamlessly embedded in music videos before being published. The software's seamless collaboration capabilities also make it highly valued by professionals working in limited departments dealing with music and video productions.
Not only is Ableton Live favored by professionals, but it is also used for personal projects. Music teachers have found it useful for arranging music, showcasing its versatility beyond the professional realm. Additionally, with its easy learning curve, amazing shortcuts, and relatively light footprint compared to its capabilities, Ableton Live has established itself as a reliable tool for both beginners and seasoned musicians alike.
Efficient and User-Friendly Interface: Many users have found the user interface of Ableton Live to be highly efficient and user-friendly. They appreciate the design choice of having all the necessary features readily accessible in expandable and collapsible tabs, eliminating the need for countless windows and menus.
Facilitates Organization and Management: Reviewers highlight the ease and intuitiveness of multitrack grouping, routing, and effects buses in Ableton Live. This feature greatly facilitates the organization and management of tracks, making it simple to create complex arrangements.
Fosters Creative Experimentation: Users praise Ableton Live for its ability to foster creative experimentation. The software is specifically designed to assist producers and composers in exploring new combinations and variations of sound. It seamlessly integrates with a workflow based on experimentation and loop-based iteration.
Difficulty Organizing VST Plugins: Several users have expressed frustration with the challenge of organizing their VST plugins, particularly when they possess a large number of them.
Ineffective Auto-Search and Replace for Moved WAVs: Users frequently encounter difficulties with Ableton Live's auto-search and replace feature for moved WAV samples, as it rarely functions properly. As a result, users are often forced to manually locate and replace these samples.
Latency Issues with Autocorrect Sync Feature: A significant number of users have reported struggles in getting the autocorrect sync feature to work accurately, resulting in latency issues that need manual adjustments.
Users commonly recommend the following when using Ableton Live for professional music production:
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Users highly recommend trying out the free demo version of Ableton before making a purchase. It is advised to use the trial period to evaluate the user interface and determine if the software meets your needs.
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It is crucial to invest time in learning the program and watching YouTube tutorials. Users emphasize the importance of familiarizing yourself with Ableton Live's features, and some even suggest taking a course to fully understand how to use the program effectively.
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Ableton Live is especially well-suited for electronic or loop-based music production. Many users agree that it excels in these areas and recommend taking advantage of its strengths, such as sound tinkering, DJing, sample artistry, live performances, and electronic music production.
Overall, users believe that Ableton Live is a powerful tool for audio sampling, recording, and mixing. It comes highly recommended for electronic dance music production, loop-based music production, and all general music production needs. Users also suggest exploring both the Session and Arrangement view in Ableton Live and utilizing an external controller to enhance performance capabilities. However, it is worth noting that some users may find the built-in instruments and MIDI creation tools to be lacking in quality.
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Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
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.
- MIDI
- Sample Management
- Sound Quality
- Overall Usability
- Integrated collaborative features
- Triple monitor ability
- Mobile support
April 12, 2021
Easy and fast from brain to written music
I use [Ableton Live] for personal use, not organizational use...
- 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
- 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
March 12, 2021
Ableton Live is better than you think.
We use Ableton Live for a lot of our sound editing for videos as well and to make beats for our advertisements. The ability to edit the audio levels for our YouTube channel and to create the music all in one place has been an awesome feature for our company.
- Edits audio levels.
- Composition.
- Detailed automation.
- I would like to see more automation capabilities for already recorded tracks.
- Cleaner UI.
- Better lessons.
I was an early adopter of Ableton Live, making the switch from MAGIX ACID Pro (formerly Sony, and Sonic Foundry before that) way back in 2002. I have used Ableton Live on countless projects, both personally and professionally, including my electronic jazz music project Revolution Void as well as producing many other artists. Additionally, I use Ableton Live in a professional capacity to produce interstitial music and when I need to do multitrack audio for such applications as advertisements, film and video game soundtracks, and now, for rich media ebooks to show off EPUB3 capabilities. It is my preferred Digital Audio Workstation, although I have used just about every DAW there is at one time or another. Ableton Live is simply the easiest, quickest and most conducive to creative experimentation that I have found. Most DAWs are full of menus within menus, and countless windows, while everything in Ableton is available within a single window that has expandable and collapsable tabs. Fantastic!
- 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.
- 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.
February 24, 2020
Ableton Live for Music Teachers
I use it personally as a music teacher to help work up arrangements.
- Great ability to "play" music software like an instrument.
- User interface could be more intuitive.
October 16, 2019
Ableton Makes Music Easy
Ableton is the best music creation DAW (Digital Audio Workstation) I've used in 13+ years of scoring films, television and advertising. I've used to to score an Emmy-Winning show for Amazon called "After Forever," and I've also used it to create, edit and mix podcasts for myself and for others. It's easy to learn, the shortcuts are amazing, and it's got a fairly light footprint for everything it does!
- Writing with MIDI
- Shortcuts
- Implementation of plugins
- Audio Mixing
- Writing music to video
- Price is a bit higher than competitiors
July 06, 2019
Make Professional Music in minutes using Ableton
Ableton Live is used for making background music for all the corporate events in our organization. Ableton's amazing features which include session view and arrangement view quickly helps us produce background music for corporate events and then we can embed the music in the music video before publishing it.
This software is being used by very limited departments in our organization which deal with the music and video productions.
This software is being used by very limited departments in our organization which deal with the music and video productions.
- Session View: This is the biggest advantage of Ableton. It provides you this view in which you can create different tracks for the same part of the song. For example:- If you are making the chorus of the song, you can save one thread. Now if you want to try and listen to a different drum set in a new thread, you can simply do that and listen to the new track while preserving the older one. Once you are satisfied with what you're listening, simple record the same in arrangement view and you are done. You can switch to the arrangement view and listen to the final song.
- Pre-installed instruments and loops:- Ableton's library which is included with the software itself while you purchase it is amazing. I bet you will ever need third-party plugins for it. It comes loaded with hundreds of loops and number of instruments which are completely professional and free to use.
- Amazing Graphical User Interface:- Even if you're a beginner in this field, Ableton can be learned within a few hours. The basic functionality of this software is very easy to understand and use. Of course, advanced stuff comes with practice but the basic functioning can be learned and within a few hours you are producing your own music.
- Price Tag:- Ableton is one of the expensive Digital Audio Workstation (DAW) in the market. You can find many DAW's at a lesser price tag and pretty much same functionality. However, the quality that this software produces is unmatched which is the sole reason why professional music produces prefer Ableton.
- High computer specs:- You will need good computer specification for running this software smoothly else it brings lags and ultimately the experience becomes not so very good. So this is one of the important points before considering this software for production.