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PRESS RELEASE

AES: Live 3 Released Today

October 10, 2003

Arranger Window in Live 3 Beta
(Click for a close-up)
Session Window in Live 3 Beta
(Click for a close-up)

The 115th AES convention in New York marks the release of Live 3, a new upgrade of Ableton's audio sequencing instrument for Mac OS 9, Mac OS X, and Windows.

Where the previous versions of Live provided the ability to easily and cohesively mix and match samples of any tempo and pitch, Live 3 now gives users control "inside" of the sample. Live 3 offers sound designers and musicians a whole new world in which they can easily and flexibly animate their samples. In Live 3, changes in volume, pitch, pan, effects controls and more can be drawn onto any section of a sample as clip envelopes–thus adding unlimited dynamic musical expression to previously static samples. Live 3 allows the user to create infinite variations from just one sample in real-time–anything from subtle corrections to entirely new sounds.

"Live has already changed and simplified the way many people make electronic music," says Adam Castillo, M-Audio's Marketing Director. "The new features like clip envelopes in Live 3 take the creative process to an entirely new level of inspiration and innovation."

New features of Live 3 include:

  • Clip Envelopes: Clip envelopes extend Live's "elastic" approach to audio by allowing musicians to achieve endless variation of a sample. Every clip in Live 3 contain independent envelopes to draw pitch, volume, warping, mixer and effects parameters. The sample is processed non-destructively and in real time.
  • MIDI Key Mapping and Velocity Sensitivity: In conjunction with Live's beat-synchronized playback and real-time quantization, the MIDI keyboard becomes a song arrangement aid. Improvise new melodies over vocal phrases or spoken passages, or play variations of an instrumental solo on the fly–and capture it all in the Arrangement for further editing. With MIDI key mapping, velocity sensitivity, clip envelopes and the new Legato Mode, Live 3 has become even more of a musical instrument.
  • Consolidate: Live 3 has a new Consolidate command which turns each track within a selected time range of the Arrangement into a new clip, ready to be looped or dragged into the Session View for instant use.
  • New Effects: Resonators, Compressor II, EQ Three, Utility
  • Insert Captured Scene: The Insert Captured Scene command captures all running clips as a new Session View scene.
  • New Quantization Values: The Quantization menus now include triplet note values; the global Quantization setting includes values greater than one bar.
  • VST Plug-In Improvements: View multiple VST Plug-in editor windows; new VST Plug-in program and bank handling; Mach-O VST Plug-in support for Mac OS X.
  • Recording Improvements: Automatic handling of audio input monitoring; automatic thinning of recorded automation data.
  • New Clip Settings and Features: Clips can individually be set to play from RAM instead of from disk; dropping a sample from the File Browsers onto the Clip View replaces the clip's sample while retaining all other clip settings; increased ranges for clip volume and transposition; Session View clips keep playing when dragged to other clip slots; all clip Launch Modes are now available for the computer keyboard.

Pricing and Availability

Live 3 for Mac OS 9, Mac OS X, and Windows is available in stores worldwide, the Ableton Webshop, and M-Audio.com for EUR/US$399 (MSRP) now. Upgrades from previous Live versions will be available online at www.ableton.com. Upgrades from LIVE 2 are EUR/US$69 for the download version and EUR/US$99 for the boxed version. Upgrades from LIVE 1 are EUR/US$99 for the download version and EUR/US$129 for the boxed version.

Users that buy or unlock Live 2 for the first time after August 1st 2003 will be eligible to receive a free upgrade to Live 3. (Ableton uses a challenge-response copy protection. When running Live the first time, the user will need to unlock the program.)

For more information, visit their web site at http://www.ableton.com/.

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