When it first debuted, Ableton Live offered a revolutionary new view on how to produce music. Since then, it has earned award after award from critics around the world and become integral to many top artistsÕ creative processes. Now Ableton Live 5 turns up the volume even further, delivering the goods at all stages of the music making process—creation, production and performance.

Introducing Ableton Live 5.0! The version 5 feature set extends each aspect of Live - from creation to production to performance - while making the program easier and even more fun to use.

Live 5 also brings countless improvements to existing features; for instance, you can change the properties of multiple clips at once, resize and minimize the width of tracks in the Session View, use right-click context menus for most functions and use a count-in for recording. Version 5 is even easier to learn thanks to a new set of lessons and an improved lesson reader.

Ableton Live 5.0 5 User Lab Pack Highlights:

• Clip Freeze The new Freeze command has two purposes: freeing up CPU power and easing the transfer of projects between computers. Freezing a track transparently creates sample files for all clips in the track. These sample files are then played instead of CPU-intensive real-time instruments and effects. While a track is frozen, you cannot change the details of its clips - but, unique to Live 5, frozen clips retain their real-time launch capabilities. This means that you can improvise, perform and sketch out song arrangements even while tracks are frozen. You could transfer a project from your big studio PC to an older PowerBook and keep working - even though the laptop is not powerful enough to handle all the virtual instruments and effects in the project, and even though the project is using plug-ins that are unavailable on the laptop!
• Plug-In Delay Compensation
  Live 5 now automatically compensates for delays caused by Live effects and plug-ins, including those on the return tracks. The compensation algorithm keeps tracks in sync while minimizing delay between the player's actions and the audible result. In addition, both audio and MIDI tracks have a manual delay setting, adjustable in milliseconds, that can be used to compensate for human, acoustic, hardware and other real-world delays.
• Launchable Arrangement Locators
  Live 5 offers locators with MIDI mapping and quantized recall. Using the mouse, computer keys or MIDI messages, you can drop locators on the fly during playback or recording. Each locator can be named and assigned to a computer key or MIDI message. Jumping to a locator is subject to real-time quantization, just like launching Session View clips and scenes. Previous/Next buttons allow you to jump from locator to locator.
• Mackie Control Support
  Live 5 brings dedicated support for Mackie Control-compatible mixer surfaces such as Tascam's FW-1082/1884, Yamaha's 01X and Mackie Control, allowing for mouse-free program operation. Using the mixer surface's controls, you can navigate arrangements and the Session View grid; launch clips, scenes and locators; and access instruments and effects. Through bank switches, one surface unit can control any number of tracks in a Live Set. Live feeds data back to the control surface to make the faders move and the displays report values.
• MP3 and Automatic Tempo-Matching
  Live 5 guarantees instant remix and mash-up gratification. Not only is your music library in MP3 format immediately accessible to Live, but the music also automatically synchronizes to the project tempo. State-of-the-art signal processing automatically tracks the tempo of imported songs and sets Warp Markers for you. This works well not only for electronic music but also for songs with human tempo variations.
• New Complex Warp Mode
  Now that Live works with your entire music collection, there is a dedicated Warp Mode to accommodate all types of music. Live 5 introduces Complex, a new real-time Warp Mode to complement Beats, Tones, Texture and Re-Pitch. Complex is a frequency-domain warping method specifically designed to accommodate composite signals such as mixed-down music.
• New Clip Transport
  Navigation within Live's Clip View has become much easier. Just click anywhere in the waveform to jump there - in sync and subject to real-time quantization. In Live 5, the clip start and end points (In and Out) are now decoupled from the loop. You can prepare a clip to run into a loop or use the new Set buttons to catch a certain part of the music in a loop as it plays. The Set buttons, the loop switch, the loop position and other Clip View controls can now be mapped to MIDI controllers to allow for mouse-free loop tweaking using your preferred controller.
• New Live Clip Format
  Individual clips can now be exported to disk in Live 5's new Live Clip format for easy retrieval and reuse in any project. The exported Live Clip not only retains MIDI, audio, envelopes, warping and other clip settings but also the associated instrument, effects and plug-ins. In Live's Browser, Live Clips are as easy to browse and preview as samples. Once you drag them into a Set, you regain full control, so you can take the original idea wherever you want. Using Live Clips, you can build your own personalized library of: MIDI sequences with matching instrument and effects, e.g., a MIDI drum pattern with associated Impulse and effects settings, Different regions or loops referencing the same source file , Variations of a sample loop created by applying Warp Markers, clip envelopes and effects , Ideas that may not fit your current project but could be useful in the future. Never lose ideas again!
• New Preset Management
  Presets for Ableton instruments and effects are now managed through the Browser as well. You can organize presets in folders at will and search for presets across folders using the search field.
• Device Groups
  Device Groups allow you to save powerful multi-effect creations, effectively adding all the capabilities of Ableton's MIDI and audio effects to Simpler, Impulse and Operator presets.
• New Library
  Live 5 comes with a completely new two-part library of sound ideas. The first part is a large preset collection for Live devices, including more than 40 new Impulse drum kits in various styles, from electronic to acoustic and more exotic variations; more than 100 new Simpler presets using the instrument's improved feature set; and over 50 new and improved Operator presets. Many presets in the collection take advantage of the new Device Group feature. The second part of the library is a collection of Live Clips, sorted by instrument category (bass, pad, etc.), which offers a large stylistic variety of sound ideas. Thanks to the openness of the Live Clip format, every item in the library is both a ready-to-use sound bite and a set of creative options, serving as a starting point for your own creations and as a resource for learning new sound design tricks.