Skip to main content
TrustRadius
Ableton Live

Ableton Live

Overview

What is Ableton Live?

Ableton headquartered in Berlin offers Ableton Live, the company's flagship digital audio workstation and audio editing suite.

Read more
Recent Reviews

TrustRadius Insights

Ableton Live has become a go-to software for both professional and personal music production projects. With its intuitive interface and …
Continue reading
Read all reviews
Return to navigation

Pricing

View all 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
Return to navigation

Product Details

What is Ableton Live?

Ableton Live Technical Details

Deployment TypesOn-premise
Operating SystemsWindows, Mac
Mobile ApplicationNo

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).
Return to navigation

Comparisons

View all alternatives
Return to navigation

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!

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:

  1. 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.

  2. 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.

  3. 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

(1-7 of 7)
Companies can't remove reviews or game the system. Here's why
Eric Fox | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
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.
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
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.
Jonah Dempcy | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Ableton Live has just the right feature set for electronic music production. It offers more professional features than GarageBand, while not featuring the level of hardware integration or other high end features that you find in Avid Pro Tools. However, I prefer Ableton Live over Avid Pro Tools for electronic music and loop-based or sample-based music production. Pro Tools is great when you are in a studio that has the hardware and you are laying down track after track of recorded audio. But Pro Tools does not have any features to help with songwriting, production, composition, or arrangement. Ableton Live is made with the creator in mind so it has features like the Live view, as distinct from Arrangement view, which allow the creator to easily mix-and-match different sounds and arrangements as a way of discovering what works and what doesn't for a song. Pro Tools is better when the song is already written and you just want to record it, but Ableton Live is better when you are still searching for the eventual arrangement of the song and want to experiment with a lot of different options.
October 16, 2019

Ableton Makes Music Easy

Rob Gokee | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
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.
Jaspreet Singh | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
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.
Return to navigation