Product Reviews

Ableton is promoting the release of Live 7, its audio performance and recording application, as a root-and-branch overhaul of the inner workings of the program: 'renewing the core of Live.'

As such, what Live 7 may appear to lack in headline-grabbing new features, it more than makes up for in operational improvements. It may not be sexy but it's just what Live needed to confidently square up to the big boys in a highly competitive marketplace. And appropriately top of the list this time round is an enhanced audio engine - obviously a fundamental, critical aspect of any audio-related software.

Live now employs precision 64-bit summing at all mix points throughout the program, which allows for higher fidelity and greater headroom. This, in turn, creates a more open, natural sound to Live's recordings. Live 7 too offers the same dithering algorithms as Logic Studio: the widely respected Pow-r 1, 2 and 3. Along with improved sample-rate conversion, these additions ably upgrade Live's audio-handling capabilities.

In keeping with this uprated audio fidelity, certain plug-ins now feature a high-quality mode: Operator, Dynamic Tube and Saturator are now better equipped to eschew digital artifacts. Similarly EQ Eight has been given an interface overhaul and a dedicated 64-bit mode for greater precision.

For good measure Live 7 finally introduces the ability to sidechain plug-ins such as the Gate and Auto Filter, as well as the Compressor. The latter has additionally acquired a rather nice-sounding new mode based on the feedback design associated with certain famous vintage compressors.

There are a couple of entirely new plug-ins that have been added to this release. Spectrum is an audio analyser providing real-time visual feedback on a track, allowing you to see where the main energy of a signal is focused. Even better, the graph can either sit in the rack as a thumbnail sketch or it can expand to fill the entire width of the

ADVERTISEMENT

main window below the track lanes. It's no competition for dedicated signal analysis tools but it's a neat addition to Live's palette.

Also new - and further bolstering Live's mix appeal - are the External Instrument and External Audio Effect devices. With these, hardware synths and effects units can be dropped into software that's like a device chain. You specify the inputs and outputs to be used on your audio interface and Live deals with the signal flow, automatically compensating for any delay incurred.

The big new feature in Live's beat creation arsenal is the Drum Rack. Any sample can be assigned to a pad in the Rack via drag and drop - and each pad has its own device chain and dedicated mixer channel in the session view for the ultimate in signal processing control. The overall Rack has its own sends, returns and sub-mixes separate from the full track mix. Very cool.

Even better, the Slice to New Midi Track option automatically fills a Drum Rack with slices created from any loop in Live or from a Rex file. These slices are then represented as a Midi clip and can be further manipulated, inverted, reshuffled or triggered to taste.

Ableton has also answered long-standing requests from Live's user-base, introducing support for time signature changes in a single Live Set. There's better automation support (multiple lanes per track can be displayed and edited), a great Tempo Nudge feature, Rex file drag-and-drop import (although no Rex export for loops yet) and tighter Midi timing.

Overall, Live 7 delivers on its promise of operational refinement. However, there are some requests still on the wish list - certainly the application would benefit from the ability to display the Arrangement and Session views on separate monitors, or a way to freely position (or float) editing windows.

While the pace at which Ableton has updated Live is a phenomenal achievement, delivering a better product every time has one obvious drawback - the flipside of this perpetual motion is that enthusiasts face an annual upgrade bill.

It's worth noting too that while the total package price for Live 7 represents good value, Apple's seismic decision to halve the price of Logic must be making it supremely tough for any other sequencer to turn a customer's head.

For our part though, we still feel confident in recommending that every Live user seriously considers upgrading to 7. The reason: building on the features added by each previous iteration, this is the most complete version yet - both inside and out.