TrustRadius Insights
Ableton Live has become a go-to software for both professional and personal music production projects. With its intuitive interface and …
Starting at $79
View PricingOverview
What is Ableton Live?
Ableton headquartered in Berlin offers Ableton Live, the company's flagship digital audio workstation and audio editing suite.
Recent Reviews
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
Product Details
- About
- Tech Details
- FAQs
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).
Comparisons
Compare with
Reviews and Ratings
(19)
Community Insights
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!
- Business Problems Solved
- Pros
- Cons
- Recommendations
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:
-
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.
-
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.
-
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.
Attribute Ratings
Reviews
(1-4 of 4)Companies can't remove reviews or game the system. Here's why
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
- Speed
- Ease Of Use
- Sound Quality
- Capability
- It helped me to grow my business.
- The return Investment only took one good session.
- The price is right!
I cannot say that the other programs listed aren't capable. They surely are. But for what I do and my workflow environment, Ableton suits my needs better. I know a lot of people that use Pro Tools and Logic Pro. They are both very powerful programs. I have knowledge of how to use them all. Going into different studios and collaborating with people, you need to know at least the basics of them all. But for me and my studio, we will continue to primarily use Ableton for the foreseeable future.
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.
- Great audio quality in our videos.
- Great music.
- Everyone in the office understands it.
Ableton smokes the competition any day. I believe it is a way better program all around than the rest of the industry leaders. I have used FL Studio as well as GarageBand, and I can safely say that there is no other program that I would rather use for my production needs.
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
- It's helped me spend less time troubleshooting and more time writing
- It's allowed me to make my studio mobile, so I can work from anywhere
- It's known in the industry, so it's easy to collabrate
While I love Cubase and used it for many years (still do for certain projects), I definitely love Ableton better when it comes to writing music. The shortcuts are much easier to learn and make more sense than Cubase's, which means the time you have to spend setting things up is less, and you don't waste valuable creative time. The layout is also easier to use than Cubase, which tends to be more detailed than I need.
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.
- I am not sure about the ROI from this software, but the music it makes helps us make the videos highly user-friendly and intuitive. The content delivery is maximized to its limits. Overall the people are able to understand the content in a much better form which ultimately helps the company. I cannot specify this in figures but yes, it is helping us and our people in a number of ways.
These software are not direct competitors of Ableton, but yes we use them in conjunction with Ableton. Filmora is used for video production and Audacity is used for Audio Editing. So we use all the three software for getting our work done. This combination is highly successful as it contains all the software which is used by an organization for making corporate videos end to end.