Ableton releases Live 7,new add-on instruments, Ableton Suite
Posted by Dennis Sellers 
Nov 29, 2007 at 2:08am
Ableton has released a range of new products available today: Ableton Live 7, several new add-on instruments and Ableton Suite.
Ableton Live 7 renews the core of Live, according to the folks at Ableton. An enhanced audio engine improves fidelity with 64-bit mix summing, POW-r dithering, optimized sample-rate conversion and other advances. A new compressor device integrates three compression models. Fully integrated side-chaining capability is available for the new Compressor as well as Gate and Auto Filter.
High-Quality modes have been added to Operator, Dynamic Tube and Saturator for anti-aliased processing, reducing typical “digital” artifacts. EQ Eight has an improved user interface and a 64 bit mode for increased accuracy. The new Spectrum analyzer provides visual feedback for any audio signals within Live. The MIDI engine has been reworked to minimize timing error (jitter) of recorded MIDI.
Hardware integration has been streamline; hardware synthesizers and effects can now be inserted into device chains just like software plug-ins. New memory management technology allows users of large sample libraries, such as Ableton’s new sampled instruments or third-party libraries imported via Sampler.
Then there are new add-on instruments. The palette covers physical models of electric pianos, analog synthesizers and string instruments, as well as multi-mic/multi-layer sampled acoustic drums, and drum machines. The instruments integrate tightly with Live, both in terms of workflow and resource management.
Tension is a physical modeling string synthesizer based on the technology found in String Studio from Applied Acoustics Systems (AAS). Electric offers the sounds of classic electric pianos. Analog emulates the circuitry and irresistible tweakability of vintage analog synthesizers.
Session Drums is a multisampled library of acoustic drums. Drum Machines offers a choice selection of classic drum machines.
Essential Instrument Collection 2 is a a multi-gigabyte collection of meticulously sampled and selected instruments, offering a selection of acoustic and electric pianos, guitars, bass, drums, orchestral strings, brass, woodwinds and more.
Ableton Suite is a combination of Live 7 plus a choice selection of Ableton instruments. All products are available today.
Ableton Live 7 costs US$499 for the downloadable version and $599 for the boxed version. The new Ableton instruments are $159 each, while Essential Instrument Collection 2 costs $119 (for owners of EIC 1, a free upgrade to EIC 2 is included with the boxed upgrades to Ableton Live 7 and Ableton Suite). Session Drums is $179 and Drum Machines is $79.
Ableton Suite is priced at $799 for the downloadable version and $999 for the boxed version.
For upgrade pricing info go here.
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Dennis Sellers
Dennis has been a newspaper editor/reporter (seven years) and teacher (seven years). He has over 10,000 magazine, newspaper and online articles to his credit. He has also covered the Mac and tech industries for over a decade for such online publications as MacCentral, MacMinute and now MacsimumNews.
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