Ableton Live 10 will cost you in the region of £150 to upgrade from Live 9 to Live 10. Is it worth the money?

What you get, plus Tom’s review of it so far:

A new synth, Wavetable

• This brings a whole new palette of sounds to Live, a different way to approach modulation routing which is REALLY easy to set up, and it sounds great.
• Users of Push 2 will love the tight graphic integration, sound design from Push is really easy with Wavetable and very visual

• A new audio effect device, Drum Bus
  • I’ve used this extensively to add colour and punch easily to a variety of sound material, not just drums. It’s immediately become a go-to tool to bring sounds to life
• A new audio effect device, Echo
  • This is a combo of a tape-type delay plus a reverb. The delay can be modulated in a number of ways and provides lots of über-screaming feedback options. It’s replaced my Space Echo plugin!
  • There’s also lots of visual feedback when using it with Push
• A new audio effect device, Pedal
  • This models a few different distortion/fuzz stompboxes, and again sounds great not only on guitars, but on a range of other sounds to add colour. More character to it than the standard Overdrive device
• New Packs, and a new way of managing Packs
  • Packs can now be downloaded from within Live’s browser rather than having to launch an external web browser, which aids speed of workflow

There are also a range of workflow enhancements: subtle improvements which won’t stilt the workflow of the existing user, not hinder. As always, Ableton Live updates are incremental rather than sensational, and I’m loving them!

• The headline feature is the new “Capture” functionality
  • In short, Live is always listening to MIDI input, which means that even when you’re having a practice without record on, Live will be recording your MIDI
  • Often when you come to record, stage nerves get the better of you and it becomes impossible to recreate the idea you had whilst you were messing around. Now you don’t have to worry, hit the capture button and a MIDI Clip will be created for you – magic!

• Updated browser functionality
  • COLLECTIONS: so good! Assign anything in your browser (samples/sounds/VSTs/Clips etc) to one of the coloured collections for quick access. Using keys 1-7 on your computer’s keypad you can assign different colours
  • Hide things from the left-hand panel of the browser. Don’t use the “Clips” option? You can hide it away in edit mode

• Navigating Arrangement view
  • Zoom into selection with Z
  • Zoom out to view entire arrangement with shift+Z
  • The follow option in the control bar will also have Live follow the progress of the selected Clip in Clip view
  • Selected Clips can be moved with the arrow keys
  • Selection can be adjusted using shift+arrows
  • You can now drag existing Clips on a track to create new tracks in Arrangement, without having to create a new track first
  • Automation, rather than being visible at all times can now be hidden/accessed using “A”
  • Fades are always visible
  • Audio can be manipulated and stretched directly in the arrangement by holding shift while resizing
  • The audio content in the Clip can be “slipped” left or right by holding shift+alt+dragging with the mouse
  • In short, these small adjustments are my favourite part of the new update, they will speed up my workflow no end.

• Push integration!
  • When compressing you can see the effect graphically of your adjustments, including the amount of gain reduction, setting the threshold etc.
  • When EQing with EQ8, you now see the actual EQ curve on screen, plus a spectral analyser

• Other bits
  • You can now name audio inputs and outputs in the preferences, VERY useful when you have a large interface/desk/live show to execute
  • Max for Live is integrated into Live itself – no separate software required. Loading times for Max devices are therefore much shorter
  • The EQ8 device low cut goes down to 10Hz
  • How could I forget… the metronome now has 3 possible sounds!!

In short, having used Live 10 for a short period, returning to 9 feels slightly limiting. I’m not the sort of person who likes an update for the sake of an update, but everything here feels measured and valuable. This is not an exhaustive list of improvements, I’m sure I’ve neglected to include some of the other new features, but I find myself using all of the above frequently*.

Is it worth the money? Definitely.

* With the exception of the metronome bit, I never had a problem with the original click sound…