Ableton Live 8 (Mac/Win) Review

Jul 1, 2009 12:00 PM, By Len Sasso

           
 

A MAJOR UPGRADE TO ALREADY IMPRESSIVE SEQUENCING AND PERFORMANCE SOFTWARE

Plugged In

Live 8 comes with six new audio effects plug-ins. The three self-explanatory effects — Limiter, Multiband Dynamics and Overdrive — fill gaps in Live's bread-and-butter effects processing. Looper, Vocoder and Frequency Shifter are new special-purpose plug-ins.

FIG. 3: The audio effects plug-in Looper emulates classic tape loop–style overdub recording.

Looper is an audio recorder optimized for classic tape loop-style overdubbing. You insert it directly on an audio track or as a send effect, depending on how you intend to use it. It can record whether or not Live's transport is running. If Live is stopped, then Looper will either guess the tempo from your playing or set the tempo based on a number of bars you specify (see Fig. 3). Tape-like features include pitch-shifting speed adjustment, reverse playback and feedback amount. A convenient multipurpose button that you can map to a MIDI footswitch lets you cycle through record, overdub and play modes. You can drag audio from Live tracks to Looper's record buffer for overdubbing, as well as drag recorded loops from the buffer to Live tracks.

You insert Live's vocoder in the track that is playing the modulator signal (voice in the standard usage) and then choose another track or an internal source (noise, the modulator or a pitch-tracking oscillator) as the carrier. An additional noise generator provides the source for unvoiced sounds, which is essential for speech clarity but often missing in low-end vocoders. You can set the vocoder's resolution from 4 to 40 bands, limit its detection stage's frequency range and threshold and vary the bandwidth from very narrow to broadly overlapping.

The Frequency Shifter (aka, single-sideband ring modulator) performs a linear shift of the frequency spectrum of audio being processed, thereby distorting harmonic ratios and producing dissonant, metallic effects. Live's model doubles as a standard ring modulator with built-in distortion and includes a dual LFO for modulating the modulator frequency.

Suite Enhancements

Among the virtual instruments in Suite 8, the FM synth Operator has been significantly reworked, adding new filter types, more robust modulation and wavetable synthesis. Four other instruments — Sampler, Electric, Tension and Analog — are carry-overs from Live 7.

The new entrant is the physical-modeled mallet instrument Collision, developed with Applied Acoustics Systems. An expanded version of Collision's resonator section is included as the audio effects plug-in Corpus. Although billed as a mallet instrument, Collision is extremely versatile. Among its presets you'll find keyboard emulations, plucked-instrument models, sound effects and evolving sounds. Corpus is great for spicing up sampled keyboard, mallet-instrument and percussion loops without mangling them beyond recognition (see Web Clip 2).

Latin Percussion is the new addition to the sampled instruments. It comprises a large collection of sampled Drum Racks and 50 Live sets in a variety of styles, along with groove templates for the Groove Pool. The sampled instruments are superb and the sets offer plenty to get you started. Suite also carries over the Drum Machines sampled-instrument collection.

Box It Up

Both Live and Suite come in downloadable and boxed editions, and when purchased directly from Ableton, the boxed editions give you access to the downloads. Aside from the printed manual, the only difference between download and boxed is the audio content. For Live, that includes a substantial selection of audio loops and the Essential Instrument Collection of sampled instruments. To that, Suite adds the sampled-instrument collection Session Drums. The same plug-ins and features come in both editions.

Version 8 is an across-the-boards winner. For Live aficionados, the move up is a no-brainer for the audio-warping and MIDI-editing features alone. Considering the redesigned Operator, the new Collision and Corpus plug-in combo, and the sampled Latin Percussion, the upgrade to Suite 8 is very attractively priced. And for those unfamiliar with Live, the modest entry fee for Live LE merits serious consideration.

Len Sasso is an associate editor of EM. For an earful, visit his Website at swiftkick.com.