Ableton Live is the only solution designed for each stage of the musical process, from creation to production to performance. In the creative stage, Live is transparent, intuitive and responsive, capturing inspiration and encouraging the flow of musical ideas. During production, Live provides all of the professional tools and studio compatibility required to complete and perfect projects. On stage, Live delivers the expressive control and stability that innumerable performing artists have come to rely on. Live 5 — from inspiration to studio to stage. Create. Produce. Perform.

Extended information

NEW in Live 6:

* Multicore and Multiprocessor Support - Today's new Macs, and many new PCs, have processors with multiple "cores," providing, in effect, several processors in one chip. In addition, some machines have multiple processors (which in turn have multiple cores). Live 6's audio engine takes advantage of these new architectures by distributing the computation load from virtual instruments and effects among the multiple cores/processors. Depending on the machine and the instrument/effect setup, the available processing power can be several times that of previously available systems.

* Movie Import - Movie import is one of the most frequently requested features—particularly by film and commercial composers. Live 6's new drag-and-drop movie import makes it easier than ever to improvise, compose and warp music to picture. Use Live's spontaneous workflow to launch sound effects on the fly, align musical cues using warp markers and much more.

Like WAV or MP3 files, QuickTime movie files can be dragged from the Live Browser into the Arrangement, where they show up as clips. A video window displays the clip's video, which can also be shown full screen on a second monitor. You can trim the video clip to select parts of it and use Warp Markers to visually align the music in the Arrangement with the video. The clip displays the location markers imported with the movie file to help match the music to key frames. Movie clips play their original audio just like any audio clip in Live, allowing it to be processed using effects, routing, warping and more.

* Essential Instrument Collection - The boxed version of Live 6 ships with a multi-gigabyte library of meticulously sampled and selected instruments from the SONiVOX (formerly Sonic Implants) premium collections. The Essential Instrument Collection provides a choice selection of acoustic and electric pianos, orchestral strings, brass, woodwinds, plucked strings, and mallets. Using Ableton's Simpler instrument, which is included with Live 6, the Essential Instrument Collection is ready to play right out of the box.

The Essential Instrument Collection contains the following multisampled instruments:

Acoustic Keyboards
* Steinway Grand
* Harpsichord
* Celesta

Electric Keyboards
* Fender Rhodes MK 1
* B3 Jazz Organ
* B3 Rock Organ

Orchestral Strings
* Solo Strings (legato): Double Bass, Cello, Viola, Violin
* Ensemble Strings (legato, pizzicato)

Orchestral Brass
* Solo Brass (legato): French Horn, Bass Trombone, Tuba (Eb), Trumpet
* Ensemble Brass (legato, staccato)

Orchestral Woodwinds
* Solo Woodwinds (legato, legato vibrato): English Horn, Bassoon, Clarinet, French Oboe, Concert Flute, Alto Sax
* Ensemble Woodwinds (legato)

Plucked Instruments
* Harp (fingers)
* Jazz Upright Bass
* Fender P-Bass (fingers, picks)
* Six-String Nylon Guitar (tones, chords)
* Fender Stratocaster Clean (tones, chords)

Mallets
* Glockenspiel (hard mallets)
* Xylophone (hard mallets)

Voice
* Mixed Choir (ahh, ohh)

* Instrument and Effect Racks - A Rack recalls a custom grouping of instruments, effects and plug-ins along with a simplified set of controls for tweaking the sound. The controls allow you to expressively play the Rack without having to deal with its technical intricacies. Within a Rack, you can have parallel device chains, VST/AU plug-ins and even other Racks. Preserve that carefully crafted crunchy guitar effects chain, complex instrument layers and splits, or your favorite arrangement of EQ and compression settings for mastering. Drag and drop to and from the Browser to save and recall your custom Racks.

* Racks can contain any number of parallel device chains. They can be used to layer instruments (e.g., a pad sound with a percussive sound) or to set up key or velocity splits (e.g., play a bass sound on the lower octaves, a lead sound on the upper octaves).
* A Rack can contain any number of Live instruments and effects, VST and AU plug-ins, and even nested Racks.
* Every Rack has eight Rack controls, each of which can be assigned to multiple controls on the devices within the Rack. Each control mapping has its own range and polarity. The turn of one Rack control can, for instance, increase the volume of a pad sound, decrease the volume of a percussion sound and raise the depth of the chorus.
* You can create, save and share your own customized Racks, making it easy to share your skills and ingenuity with other Live users.
* Live 6 includes many preconfigured instrument and effect Racks—a wide range of sampled and synthetic sound creations and tools for specific creative and technical tasks such as guitar and bass distortion, drum processing, mastering, and voice processing.

New and Improved Devices:
- EQ Eight, which replaces EQ Four, is a significant upgrade toward a fully featured studio EQ. Not only does it offer up to twice as many independent filter bands, but it also features individual control of left and right channels as well as a mid/side mode for subtle-to-drastic color manipulations of the stereo field, a feature often used by mastering engineers to give productions depth and space. A new global scaling control allows continuous morphing from the current filter curve to bypass. In EQ Eight all filter bands can be set to shelf, cut and bell curves for maximum flexibility.

- Dynamic Tube emulates the classic warm distortion sound of vacuum tubes with its unique dynamic behavior, but it's also possible to push the tube characteristics to never-before-heard extremes. Enjoy new subtle coloration and a universe of distorted compression, gate and expansion effects—all achieved with just a handful of controls.

- Saturator has been improved with the addition of a true analog saturation curve, a user-definable waveshaper and an optional second output saturator stage. The second saturator stage ensures that the output level never exceeds 0 dB, even if the main saturator makes heavy use of pre/post equalization for dramatic effects using the color controls. For those in search of unique distortion sounds, the waveshaper allows you to create custom curves by adjusting six parameters of a complex mathematical function—a feature perfect for long journeys into sound. All parameters, including the waveshaper parameters, can be adjusted and automated in real time without clicks.

- Note Length quantizes the lengths of incoming MIDI notes. In addition, Note Length can be set to generate new notes when incoming notes are released, allowing for the sophisticated emulation of the release behavior of instruments like the piano or the harpsichord (or any synthetic instruments).

- Operator has been augmented with a new set of 24 dB filter modes, simplifying the creation of analog subtractive sounds, as well as new FM algorithms for more flexibility in the digital domain, giving you more sonic possibilities than ever.

- Live 6 also brings the introduction of Ableton's second add-on instrument, Sampler, the big brother of Simpler. With Sampler you can import third-party multi-sample libraries and create new and wonderful sounds with its uniquely expressive sound design features. To find out all about Sampler visit the Sampler Showcase.

* Deep Freeze - The new Deep Freeze feature keeps most editing functions available while a track is frozen. Here are some of the things you can do with tracks that are frozen:

* Edit, cut, copy, paste, duplicate and trim clips
* Draw/edit mixer automation and mixer clip envelopes
* Consolidate
* Record Session View clip launches into the Arrangement
* Create, move and duplicate Session View scenes
* Drag frozen MIDI clips into audio tracks

Deep Freeze is a great time saver—no more freezing, unfreezing and refreezing. You can also "flatten" frozen tracks, which replaces the original clips and devices with their audible result.

* Project Management Tools - Comprehensive new project management tools help with organization, archiving and transfer of your projects. Live 6 introduces project folders, which let you conveniently organize collections of Live Sets, Live Clips, Racks, presets, and the samples and movie files they are using. With Live 6 you can self-contain a project and pack it with lossless compression for easy archiving or transferal for collaboration. Other convenient tools for project management include the ability to search for missing files and purge the disk of unused files.

* Important Improvements:
- MIDI Remote Mapping
* Live 6 provides automatic, adaptive mappings for many popular control surfaces, saving you the trouble of manually mapping hardware to the currently selected instrument, effect and rack controls. Automatic control mappings are planned for: Akai MPD24; Alesis Photon X25, X49; CME VX 5, 6, 7, 8; Behringer UMX25, 49, 61; Korg microKONTROL; KONTROL 49; M-Audio Axiom 25, 49, 61; Novation ReMOTE 49, 61; ReMOTE LE X25, 49, 61; ReMOTE SL 25, 37, 61.
* Multi-destination MIDI and key mappings. For instance, with a single knob you could open a filter cutoff, increase the resonance, decrease the feedback of a delay and increase the project tempo. All assigned parameters can be inverted and scaled to a particular range for accurate control.
* Soft takeover and pickup modes for resolving mismatches between physical controls and actual software parameter states.

- Mixing/Recording/Routing
* Optional large mixer view with numeric peak level readouts.
* ReWire master applications, such as ProTools, Logic and Cubase, can route MIDI to Live's MIDI tracks, making it possible to use Live's instruments.
* Convenient warping of multitrack recordings.

- Browser/Organization
* Option to render the individual tracks in a Live Set simultaneously.
* In-place sample "hot-swapping" for audio clips, Simpler, Impulse and Sampler (works just like hot-swapping device presets).
* Sample crop/trim function for isolating parts of a sample.
* Complete or track-wise merging of Live Sets.
* Options to show file type, size and modification date in Live's built-in browsers.
* Live's built-in browsers can store folder locations as "bookmarks."

Technical specifications

MIDI:
* Complete sequencing, combination and reorganization of MIDI clips
* Straightforward MIDI recording, editing and pattern creation
* MIDI bank and program change settings for individual MIDI files
* Graphical MIDI controller data for intuitive drawing and editing
* Play MIDI notes with the computer keyboard
* Manipulation of MIDI timing through adaptive quantization and swing/groove settings
* Drag and drop import of Standard MIDI files and their individual tracks
* Export of MIDI tracks and patterns as Standard MIDI files

Audio and Remixing:
* Preview and combine AIFF, WAV, Ogg Vorbis, FLAC and MP3 audio files of any sample rate, size and bit depth
* Real-time time-stretching of any audio file to play in sync with the project tempo
* Auto Warp — automatically detects the tempo of audio material and sets Warp Markers
* Sample reverse of individual audio files
* Rhythm and time warping for audio tracks, notes and sections within audio files
* Real-time swing and groove manipulation of audio files
* Clip Envelopes — complete control of volume, pitch, timing and effects for segments or notes within audio files through drawn curves
* Flexible audio file exporting
* Clip Transport — scrubbing, nudging and navigation within files
* Live Clip format for easy storage and retrieval of musical ideas, including associated devices and settings

Recording and Sequencing:
* Comprehensive audio and MIDI recording and sequencing
* Unlimited 32-bit/192 kHz multitrack hard disk recording
* Detailed on-the-fly recording and editing (with continuous breakpoint envelopes) of automation for mixer, effects control movements and song tempo
* Complete nondestructive editing with unlimited undo
* Track Freeze for conserving CPU resources and simplifying project sharing
* Track Delay controls for managing human, acoustic and hardware delays
* Drum machine-style loop/overdub recording for building MIDI patterns
* Punch-in and -out points for recording
* Count-In recording
* Creation of perfectly cut samples and loops through optional record quantization
* Launchable Arrangement Locators
* Instant resampling of audio and MIDI while the music plays
* Multi-selection clip editing
* Mackie Control support

Playing and Performing:
* Nonlinear audio and MIDI file organization and triggering for imaginative recombination and improvisation
* Audio and MIDI files can be mapped to MIDI keyboard ranges and computer keys for instant triggering
* Detailed control over the launch and play properties of individual files
* Follow Actions — create groups of files that can trigger each other to generate specific or random output
* Scenes — configure groups of files that play simultaneously, store tempo changes and advance automatically
* DJ-style crossfading between any number of tracks
* Hands-on control of any interface element with a MIDI controller or the computer keyboard
* Flawless recording of all aspects of a set for later in-depth editing

Effects and Instruments:
* Ableton Audio Effects: Auto Filter, Auto Pan, Beat Repeat, Chorus, Compressor I, Compressor II, EQ Four, EQ Three, Erosion, Filter Delay, Flanger, Gate, Grain Delay, Phaser, Ping Pong Delay, Redux, Resonators, Reverb, Saturator, Simple Delay, Utility, Vinyl Distortion
* Ableton MIDI Effects: Arpeggiator, Chord, Pitch, Random, Scale, Velocity
* Ableton Instruments: Simpler, for creative sample-based synthesis, and Impulse, for dynamic percussion sound design
* Endless expansion through VST and Audio Units Plug-in instruments/effects and ReWire
* Automation and remote control of all instrument and effects parameters
* Device groups for saving multi-effect combinations together with instruments
* Plug-In Delay Compensation automatically compensates for delays caused by effects and plug-ins

Routing and Sync:
* Track-to-track I/O routing for complex mixes, post-effects recording, MIDI-to-audio conversion, submixing and synth layering
* Individual instrument outputs and multi-timbral instrument input and output routing capabilities
* Private cueing and previewing through separate audio outputs
* Complete MIDI control of ReWire clients
* Intuitive signal flow management of effects and instruments by drag and drop
* Pre- or post-mixer effect grouping/bussing on up to twelve sends/return tracks
* Tempo sync to any external source through MIDI Clock master or slave; MIDI Timecode slave
* Audio and transport sync through the ReWire protocol as master or slave
* Unlimited audio and MIDI tracks
* Unlimited audio and MIDI inputs and outputs
* ASIO, MME, DirectX and CoreAudio audio interface support

Also includes:
* Valuable Live Pack library of clips, device presets and Live Sets
* Built-in program tutorials and starter sets
* Printed reference manual*
* Multilingual program help and PDF manual in English, Japanese, German, French and Spanish

* Available in Live 5 boxed version only.

Macintosh System Requirements:
* Any G3 or faster
* 512 MB RAM recommended
* Mac OS X 10.2.8 or later

Windows System Requirements:
* 600 MHz CPU or faster
* 512 MB RAM recommended
* Windows 2000/XP
* Windows-compatible sound card