6/06/2011

Ableton Live 8 - Fabulous Music Software

By Garrett Mickley


Ableton Live 8 since it's birth in 2001 has been something of an enigma in the world of music production software. It has long been accepted as one of the most reliable and efficient tools for professional quality music production, but it has somehow managed to evade the notoriety that is so often afforded to many of it's competitors. Some have questioned whether this almost flawless record has come at the cost of some of the bite of the others, the ghost in the machine as it were. Here's an Ableton Live 8 review.

The music production aspect of the software remains it's most widely used and praised function. Tending to lean more towards loop based production it nevertheless provides an incredibly impressive sequencer alongside, allowing professionals and amateurs alike to express themselves creatively through the incredibly intuitive interface which has long been Ableton's pride and joy. Hopefully this Ableton Live review will convince you it's the software for you.

This ability to easily include software synthesizers and effects from other developers is one of Abletons key strengths. Compatibility issues are virtually unheard of and no special software is needed to use plugins be they VST, Reason, Cubase or any of the other major formats. Again the process is incredibly simple and knowledge of computers or music software is not required at all.

Additionally, ReWire can be easily used with Ableton, working as either a slave or master device is no problem. External controllers, sound cards and so on are also highly unlikely to experience compatibility issues. This is not something that users need to worry about for any type of music or music production. It's simplicity is at times deceptive.

For recording live performances Ableton has done a fine job of creating a virtual recording studio where artists and would be artists can easily record and edit live performances. Once they go into the program, files are automatically converted into digital format with the sounds being able to be visualized and more easily edited and sequenced and so on. Sound quality is naturally at a professional level with the right equipment and sound card.

Perhaps the main strength of Ableton is it's incredibly simple interface allowing users to learn the basics in under an hour even without any experience of music software. The tutorial is very well put together and it will only take a couple of afternoons to learn all of the basics of recording and editing.

As a tool for live performance it is also developing into a serious option which can be used by DJs simply to mix music or as an instrument itself with specialized controllers which allowing fast access to hundreds of samples which can be mixed and edited on the fly producing some incredible sets and pieces of music. It is also a fairly safe platform with crashes and bugs incredibly rare. This was a complaint often made about earlier versions but with this edition they seem to finally have all of the crashes and bugs ironed out of the system.




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