If electronic musicians wanted to play together with real drummers, the latter usually had to follow the strict tempo guidelines of a sequencer. Live performances lost a lot of their spontaneity as a result. Ableton Live 11 wants to simplify the interaction between man and machine. The just announced new version of the music software brings with it a follow function. This listens to a microphone signal from the drummer at the audio input and adapts the tempo of the sequencer to the drummer.

In the video, Ableton demonstrates how well Live 11 can follow a drummer.

In addition, Live 10 brings a whole bouquet of new functions with it. The patterns of the internal drum sequencer can now be varied more easily by specifying probabilities and loudness variations for individual hits. The suite’s internal sampler and wavetable synthesizer implement these. The Push 2 controller will also output its aftertouch polyphonically in the future. When you press a struck chord, you can control each note individually. However, the new MIDI 2.0 standard is not supported.

In other functions, Ableton Live is finally catching up with other digital audio workstations. So several takes of a vocal track can finally be selected and merged via comping.

Hybrid reverb The suite version in particular benefits from the new instruments and effects. The new Hybrid Reverb stands out: The mixture of convolution and parametric reverb allows real-time manipulation of the impulse responses of real rooms, which was previously only possible to a limited extent in other convolution reverb plug-ins. Experimental musicians are looking forward to six new software instruments that were inspired by natural phenomena.

Otherwise Ableton has worked on many details. Live 11 shows the CPU in order to keep an eye on the processor load and to identify resource-hungry plug-ins – Loads on each individual lane. The number of macro controllers in racks has been increased from 8 to 16. The bottleneck of a maximum of 12 send / return tracks was not eliminated. You can find an overview of all new features on the Ableton website.

In the video, Ableton demonstrates how well a drummer performs live 11 can follow.

No ARM support The system requirements have increased. If the version still ran with 4 GB of RAM, at least 8 GB will be required in the future. Windows 7 and macOS computers up to 10. 12 are left out. Live 11 sets at least Windows 10 or macOS 10. 13 ahead. For the latter, the specifications only list Intel processors. ARM processors are not natively supported, the manufacturer announced when asked by c’t.

Ableton has closed the beta phase of Live 11 already started. The prices of the Intro, Standard and Suite versions for Windows and macOS remain unchanged at 77, 340 and 583 euros. Until the start of sales of the final 11 version in the first quarter 2021 grants Ableton 16 percent discount. Whoever buys the new version will get version 11 free of charge. Previous owners of the suite otherwise pay for the 11 he upgrade for example around 150 Euro.

(emw)