Ableton Live 11
Following on from the public beta, Ableton Live 11 is here in all its full release glory. Is this an update to get excited about?
£539
It’s been three years since Ableton Live 10 was released, although in some ways it feels longer. The world’s cluttered with ever more hardware synths, beatboxes, samplers, and sequencers, we’ve got MPE (MIDI Polyphonic Expression) threatening to finally go mainstream, and Ableton’s competitors haven’t been idle. Logic Pro has got Live Loops, which provides a very familiar Live-like loop jamming experience, Bitwig Studio has beaten Ableton to embracing MPE, and the old favourite Reason can now run as a plugin, which makes it much easier to integrate into our projects. Now, after a public beta, already reviewed in Computer Music, we have the final release of Ableton Live 11, and there are still things to talk about.
When opening Live 11, the first obvious changes are in the Browser, with two new categories available. The Grooves category contains the .agr groove files from your library, while the Templates category represents Live projects saved using the new ‘File/Save Live Set As A Template’ command – quite an improvement over the previous one-size-fits-all template, as is the new, easy-access, ‘Save Live Set As Default Set’ command. Audio effects are now organised into categorised folders, like Drive & Color, and Pitch & Modulation, and Max For Live instruments and effects are also now found in the standard Live content categories.