Ableton today announced a public beta for Live 9.7.
Live 9.7’s new features will include:
- New slicing options – chop samples by beat divisions or regions, as well as manually or by transients (a new Simpler feature that also works without Push).
- New drum layout – with 16 set velocity levels for playing and programming more dynamic beats.
- Hands-on audio routing – select and record ins and outs directly from Push for sampling internal or external audio without disrupting your flow.
- Visual feedback for tighter recordings – new display info shows clip phase and count-in so you can start and finish clip recordings more accurately.
- Hands-on color customization – color pads, tracks and clips using Push to make your live performance easier
- Better playability – pad sensitivity adapts to what you play, whether it’s drums or sustained chords.
They also released a pair of videos, demonstrating some of the new features. In the video above, TecBeatz showcases some of the new features in Live 9.7.
The second video, below, breaks down his performance and how he’s using the new features:
What’s New in Ableton Live 9.7:
Improvements and feature changes:
- The Link beat time will be realigned when starting Live’s playback with Tap Tempo or via Looper.
- New Simpler Slicing modes (Beat, Region, Manual) are now available.
- As a consequence of the new Simpler features, Live Sets created with this version cannot be opened with previous versions anymore.
Bugfixes:
- When resizing the left edge of a frozen Clip to the left, audio would still begin playback from the Clip’s former start position.
- Live would crash when canceling a freeze action, if this was performed on a previously frozen and flattened Clip.
Changes for Push:
- The new Simpler Slicing modes are available on Push.
- It is now possible to set the color for Tracks, Clips and Drum Rack pads from Push 2.
- It is now possible to adjust the Input and Output audio routing and the Monitoring state from Push 2. This is accessible via Track Mix Mode, where a dedicated ‘Input & Output’ button is added.
- Introduced a third layout for Drum Racks and Simpler’s Slicing mode, which enables triggering the currently selected pad / Slice with 16 pre-defined velocities.
- When transport is active, a progress bar on the display indicates the playback phase for each of the currently playing Clips.
- Added a visual feedback for the count-in on the Push 2 display.
- The Push 2 Firmware has been updated to version 0.59. This delivers a new pad algorithm that improves the sensitivity of Push pads when playing with wrist pressure. It also contains a fix for cases where Push 2 buttons might double-trigger, and improves the stability of the MIDI data sent from the Push encoders.
- Improved the matching between pad and display colors on Push 2.
- Improved the matching between Live and Push 2 colors.
- On Push 2, the color white in Live is translated as yellow, since white is used to indicate selection.
- The intensity of the LEDs in the lower display buttons has been dimmed to create more contrast against the currently selected track.
- Improved the performance when moving the Session Ring horizontally with Push.
- When routing via Push 2, Pre FX, Post FX and Post Mixer routings are available in a separate list, in order to reduce the amount of routing sources.
- When the focus is set to Arrangement View, ‘New’ is not available on Push anymore.
- The Push Record button now takes into account Live’s focus on Arrangement and Session View. If the focus is on Arrangement View, the Session Record button will trigger Global Recording, while the Shift + Record button will trigger / stop Session Recording. The logic is reversed when focused on Session View.
- Session Record and Arrangement Record are now independent from each other.
- Different sensitivities are in place for the Push 2 pad matrix, depending on the function of the pads in the current layout. This is specifically aimed at avoiding inadvertently changing the loop selector while playing Drum Rack pads.
- It is now possible to delete the currently selected Clip in Arrangement via Push 2.
- If the selected Clip was in Arrangement View, Push 2 would not display its content in Clip View.
- When step-sequencing a Clip in Arrangement View, the playhead would not be shown on Push 2.
- When a Drum Rack or Instrument Rack was frozen, it was still possible to edit the Chain’s mix parameters.
- The Clip length would not be displayed in Clip View, when performing a recording with Fixed Length.
Ableton Live 9.7 is currently in beta testing and is available to members of their Beta Community.
How about Ableton dropping the price to $199 like Logic X and get rid of any upgrade path?
I dare anyone to disagree.
They won´t. Because they don´t sell pricey dongles for Logic (Macs) and they don´t do 40 bill profits a year. They are a small company and they actually have to live from their products.
If they were to take cues from Logic I’d rather see Live learn a lesson or two from how automation works there. I couldn’t care less about the pricing model as long as it’s reasonable and they don’t rely on a hardware dongle (i.e. Push 2) in the future.
logics work flow is like an analogy i have not tried but seems fitting……….
“LIKE TRYING TO MASTURBATE IN A PAIR OF BOXING GLOVES”
Ableton is not a hardware manufacturer who can afford to lose money on their software products just to sell the hardware.
all i know is logic after apple bought it went down the toilet.
Will this run on my Ableton Book Pro?
id rather pay for a quality product (ableton) then some software apple will probably cancel in another year
I would love for them to do something with the “Re-Enable Automation” button. Like a drop down of all the automations that are effected. As of right now, I just click that button and usually have no idea what I’m changing. It usually works out… But still.
Is it just me or have I been waiting for a few millennium for SYSEX to be included in Ableton, even after directly emailing the company? Or has it been staring me in the face this whole time? I’ll be first in line to purchase it when SYSEX is part of the mix.
not straightforward but its possible w/ m4l
BTW, before I forget, Synthtopia… WAY AWESOME job on the site. Thank you for all your efforts. Much appreciated.
Still no note slide feature on piano roll like FL Studio. Fail
I would love for Ableton to fix how much CPU it uses *thumbs down*
If you are not a push user there has t realy been anything new in Live for years and BITWiG has raced ahead in both features and stability. Live realy has segmented its self as a live instrument, absolutely nothing wrong with that, it is the best as what it does….in a way I am glad it’s not trying to be the generalist DAW in a saturated market .
ummm….M4L has cool new shit that is added all the time for ableton…and yeah the new stuff is better with a push but u can still use most every feature without a push. I’m not sure what u can’t use.
For the love god… Still no Multichannel audio !!!!
how so? can have l and r or stereo inputs, have personally gotten 16 outs from plugins that can all be routed externally. dont have to use master chan so all outs can be summed or mixed externally as needed. elaborate? sounds like an interface limitation
Why no poly-rhythmic drum programming?! It’s literally the main reason I’m selling my Push 2 and reverting back to five12 numerology
what do you mean polyrhythmic programming? 3 on 2 cross rhythm is possible with triplets (and on push in 1/12 etc) and you can define loop lengths to get whatever metric cycles you want. then theres m4l drum machines designed for polyrhythm. what are you trying to do?
Live is not my main daw but i have to say that title looks a little bit over the top.
And btw exactly how does it help to have a mediocre performance along the news of the update?
So, 2 updates to the Daw, and 22 updates to the dedicated dongle.
Alright, back to making music in Bitwig.
dongle? push is not needed to run software.
just cuz its an awesome controller does not mean its needed.
WOW ………a lot of DAW envy on this these comments!
Biggest reason to use Live is Max for Live. Plus with Push (1 or 2), you can control and automate all device parameters, and M4L give you so many possibilities. Still disappointed how quickly Push 1 will fall more and more behind Push 2, though I’m holding out upgrading for now. Let’s hope there’s no Push 3 next year. That would be ugh annoying.
The audio routing feature sounds nice, sounds like that Simpler and Push would make it a live sampler. Route audio, sample, transient slice. Hoping to see how it works.