Ableton Live 11 Coming February 23, 2021

Ableton today announced that Live 11 , the latest major update to the popular DAW, will be released February 23, 2021.

Live 11 introduces a huge array of new features, including:

  • Flexible comping tools;
  • Support for expressive performance with the MPE standard;
  • New devices;
  • Creative randomization options;
  • Live tempo follow;
  • New sound libraries and more.

You can get a deep dive into Live 11 with the official intro videos, embedded below:

Pricing and Availability

Ableton Live 11 will be available February 23, 2021, with the following pricing:

  • Ableton Live 11 will be available for purchase from Ableton.com and at local retailers.
  • Download versions of Ableton Live 11 cost 79 EUR / 99 USD for Live Intro, 349 EUR / 449 USD for Live Standard and 599 EUR / 749 USD for Live Suite.
  • Existing Ableton Live owners should log into their accounts to check upgrade pricing.

See the Ableton site for details.

22 thoughts on “Ableton Live 11 Coming February 23, 2021

  1. Using the AL11 beta since a while.
    Unfortunately there’s a tremendous CPU load in comparison to AL10. They’re working on it, but….
    Let’s hope that all the bugs and issues will be resolved until then.
    I still would like to see a few more features as surround support (VST/AU) , more sends/returns and global tuning.. No response just yet.

  2. Yes, Someoneouthere I’m with you.
    There are a lot of bugs in the beta, so many, that I hope and pray that Ableton will not release 11. They announced it for the first quarter – please Ableton take your time to fix

  3. They give updates by small drops . There’s nothing breathtaking there , to wait years for such a small improvement, leave us still hungry . It is obvious they want to spend as less money and time as possible just to keep us in the loop.

    1. this is a bad take lol. some of these new changes and feature are gamechangers for many users, and often the most helpful changes are the least flashy, just subtle adjustments. this latest is a mark of steady and deliberate progress, and now in a relatively shorter turnaround than some other major update jumps. the price is good too. i just don’t get choice to have such a wildly pessimistic and unflattering vision of this when you just don’t have to

    2. Ableton is inexorable, though.

      They have more users than anybody else in the world, and they can’t screw up, as a result. So they don’t burden you by releasing minor updates every other month and they don’t release versions that are going to trash your files. They release significant updates, they make them backward compatible to version 1 and they make them stable for the majority of users.

      Big releases every two years or so is probably the right pace for users, too, so you don’t feel like you’re getting nickel and dimed, and so you’ve got time to actually learn all the new features and start using them.

    3. They are in effect moving towards a subscription model like Bitwig and others.
      Which is understandable, since they need revenue, but not pleasant.

      (Bitwig is open with subs, but even then some updates feel calculated, one can sense a multi-year plan ticking in the background… Otoh they are required to make it interesting regularly to get us to pay the annual instead of waiting)

      1. Pure invented bullshit, there is no sign whatsoever Ableton is moving towards a subscription model.

        In other cases you could see signs.

        With NI the CEO gave speeches praising Adobe’s model, there were news of they getting “investment” from equity funds (later they fired 1/3 of their employees and changed CEO too).

        With ex-Propellerheads there news of getting “investment” from equity funds, they changed a long-time held stance about VSTs, then announced sale of 60% of company to equity fund, then changed CEO, then changed even the company name.

        With Bitwig they were simply a relative commercial failure (at least compared with the “Live-killer” nickname people stuck them with), and had to extract as much money as possible from their small userbase to keep paying their 15 or so employees, which is actually a large number of people to pay with you are a new DAW in the market (compare with Reaper, which has only 2 employees). It is not mere speculation, Bitwig is a German company that has to file data which is publicly available in a German gov site (www.unternehmensregister.de). Anyone can see their data (or lack of, which is also telling) and have an idea of their company size.

        With PreSonus they rised dept capital with “help” of investment bankers and changed CEO in 2015, started a similar rent-to-own plan in Splice, plus they are a software hardware company that competes in a similar space as Avid.

        Magix was bought by a equity fund recently (not sure that predates their Loops Unlimited thing).

        The CEO that organized Magix’s sale to that fund became Image-Line’s CEO after that, and IL recently killed their VSTs development.

        While (like Live) FL has no subscription and it is very unlikely there will be one, I mention IL because if you are going to speculate OUT OF THIN AIR about a company turning towards subs, then there are more bad signs about IL than about Ableton (zero signs).

        1. Another sign, recent price drops and fire-sales for $150 or even $100 (“crossgrade” offers) for stuff that nominally costs $500.

          Reason, FL, S1, BW, Cubase, Magix (and others) all had sales in recent years where you can buy at a huge discount, like a 75%.

          They always try to make it look like a unique special offer, but then 1 year later the offer re-appears.

          That is, you can see the unusual (compared to how the company used to behave before) attempts to rise sales in other ways, before a company switches sales model to subscription.

          Ableton on the other hand, is even mocked for keeping their price and sales model stable for the last 20 years (even rising the prices).

          And yet another sign: pumping out a large perceived quantity of proprietary content to justify the subscription.

          Reason, Roland Cloud, Sphere, etc. all try to project an image that they have large quantity of paid proprietary “exclusive” synths, FX and samples, and that they will have a fast rate of adding new stuff.

          So you could see the companies rapidly adding proprietary stuff before a subscription model appeared.

          With Ableton, most of their Packs are actually 3rd party, and they are not pumping out new synths, FX and samples in large quantities/speed, Live 11 doesn’t even have any new synth, it is the same careful (or slow if you will) rate as always.

          M4L stuff is mostly free or 3rd party.

          Well, again, there are signs you can see a sub model may be coming, but Ableton doesn’t show those signs (thankfully).

          (Sorry about those out-of-proportion posts, but I hate subs and use Live, so I will take the fight to any notion linking Ableton with subscription model. Otherwise you can’t complain later right?)

  4. The most recent updates of Cubase and Logic added Ableton-like functionality. Ableton 11 adds Cubase/Logic-like functionality. We’ve achieved the DAW singularity, people.

    1. Absolutely agree. Still, for live performance ableton is king. Trying to use cubase live is a mess, though I prefer it for the studio.

    1. Rewire still exists as a “-EnableReWire” option in options.txt. it was downgraded to “not supported” (since Propellerheads themselves halted its development) but it is still there, the ReWire.dll is there to see in the install folder too.

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