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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.

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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 …
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Pricing

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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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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).
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Comparisons

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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)
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Eric Fox | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
The program allows me to creatively express myself while maintaining professionalism in sound, functionality, and features. It's best suited for MIDI users but certainly can easily handle live audio coming in. In fact, in my studio, I use it with incoming audio consistently. I record guitars, basses, live drums, etc. Ultra-low latency is key when using DAW and a lot of that stems from the computer it's deployed on, but some of it also relies on the audio interface. The program is also not CPU intensive like others I have used.
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Ableton Live works great for any serious producers who have a small understanding of production. It could be confusing for a beginner, so it would be helpful to provide more in depth tutorials for the user. Ultimately, Ableton is a great program for anyone; producer or sound engineer or just someone who needs to fine tune some audio levels.
Jonah Dempcy | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Ableton Live is a perfect fit for loop-based music like electronic music of all varieties. It is especially suited to minimal techno and IDM, but is really suitable for any style of music that relies extensively on loops and samples. Ableton Live is also well-suited for sequencing out loop-based music through its Live view, while the Composer view allows for enough arranging features that you can take a song from concept to completion fairly easily.

Ableton Live is less well-suited for fully recorded music that has no sample-based or looping components. It is less well-suited for non-electronic genres, although it is perfectly fine, but many of the features would not be useful or necessary in these cases.
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Ableton live is great for anybody who wants to perform their personally produced music live. It allows you to have a lot of freedom. It has a bit higher of a barrier to entry than some other music production softwares so it isn't as well-suited for beginners.
October 16, 2019

Ableton Makes Music Easy

Rob Gokee | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Ableton is most known for being used by DJs and producers for live production, but it's excellent at all levels of music production, including video import and scoring to scene. I've used Ableton to write songs, score television and feature films, create podcasts from scratch, mix and master podcast audio for others, and record voiceover.
Jaspreet Singh | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Ableton can be used in all the scenarios where music production is required. Whether it be professional studios or if it is home productions. It can be used almost anywhere as the features of this software can fit almost in any place. It is also used by professional teams in big companies for marketing and presentation music.

I cannot think of any scenario where this is not well suited. If you're making music the professional way, Ableton is the ladder to success.
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