Product Reviews

Described by its developers as a 'sequencing instrument', Ableton's Live was one of the audio highlights of Apple's recent Mac OS X tour. Live is designed as an on-stage tool for music performance that encourages improvisation while avoiding the studio features of MIDI and audio sequencers.

Ableton's development team has put considerable thought into helping new users. A printed manual and an on-screen Info view provide explanations of Live's interface and routines. The installation CD-ROM contains great demos and tutorial documents.

The installation routine uses the Challenge/Response method of copy protection, and we found the registration on Ableton's site was nearly instantaneous. Live's interface is uncluttered, but we found the text fields difficult to read under normal conditions, let alone under stage lighting.

At the heart of Live lie two production tools. Live Session View is essentially a clip-oriented soft sampler. Clips, typically samples or audio files, can be triggered in real time using the mouse, Mac keyboard or controller messages from a MIDI device such as a keyboard or a digital mixer. You can make your own clips (from a mic or turntable) by recording directly into Live. Live can cope with any length of audio file from single-shot sound effects to percussion loops or even complete mixes. Loops can be shifted in tempo and pitch, fades and pan parameters can be tweaked

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and effects applied. All processing is nondestructive, so your audio source files remain unchanged.

Beating time

The other main window is the Live Arranger View, which is a multitrack clip sequencer. The Arranger View has a conventional layout with tracks and buses displayed vertically along a horizontal time axis. Audio clips are displayed as coloured rectangles.

Mixes can be created by dragging clips into Arranger View, and built by entering automation parameters from a MIDI controller. Alternatively, you can drag clips into Session View to record an improvised performance.

Live features powerful effects processing, including support for VST effects plug-ins, and most parameters can be automated via MIDI controller messages. Live's own high-quality internal effects include compressor, distressor, vinyl distortion, chorus, four-band EQ and four delays. We were especially wowed by Live's time-stretch capabilities. Live employs amplitude peak recognition algorithms similar to those used in the ReCycle .REX format, enabling tempo to be changed in rhythmic audio clips without aliasing or other discernable loss of quality.

Live 1.5 needs a Power Mac G3 300MHz with 192Mb of memory and a fast defragmented hard drive. More powerful systems will be able to cope with more tracks and effects. Live supports Sound and ASIO audio card drivers. Its MIDI functions require OMS 2.3.8.

Other computers, hardware sequencers, arpeggiators and audio/ video recorders can be synchronised to Live 1.5 via MIDI clock or MIDI Time Code (MTC). From this version, Live can also act as the Rewire master clock if you are running Propellerheads' Reason or ReBirth virtual instrument ensembles.

We were disappointed with the lack of a CD import feature and the illegibility of some of the on-screen fonts. However, Live 1.5 impressed us with its power and versatility. It lacks some of the features and finesse of high-end applications but it's still an excellent production tool.