Ableton Live Intro Reviews

I got it because I compose electronic music. I kept hearing that this is the program everyone is using. I didn't realize that this is mostly for performance and less for composition. Once I found that out, I started to record a band project and it worked great as long as you don't need a tone of tracks or effects.

When I saw this deal just 7GB. Of Loopmaters loops for $66.00 seemed enough, but Ableton give's you so much more. Full version Live Effects, Midi Effects, 16 audio and 16 midi tracks with enough scene spaces. To just copy the loops and instruments library and jump right in. Within 1 hour, a2nd hour and 3rd hour just passed as if they were minutes. I was a kid in a candy store and just going from one loop to another or mixed with a third, or improvising melodies with my keyboard controller. Live is layed out so simply yet creatively enough to just dig in, stay in, laugh, tap your feet and say "I can jam on a DAW?" 40 yesrs past my first keyboard , the Minimoog and 30 from my T-1, 20 from my StylusRMX and ths will be another BIG mark from wherever music production goes from here? I'm extremely happy, impressed and improvising like i am in a dream world! Great deal, Sweetwater make's me happy and impressed yet again! This is a great place to start "Live"ing in a whole new musical world and environment Big shout-out to Ryan W. my sales assistant and Sweetwater Guru, who hasn't let me down! Five stars all catagories, as usual!

So far, this DAW is doing everything I need, which isn't much - I'm just creating clicks for a live recording. But it was so easy to get the hang of with their quality tutorials that I was in business very quickly.

Wow! Ableton live intro is amazing for the intro! Its great for almost any type of genre! I'm using it to make Dubstep. It's really simple and easy to use! I recommend i! If your starting off as a new music producer because ableton live intro will introduce you to the music making world!

I was new to Ableton when I bought Intro. It didn't take long to get in and figure out the workflow. It does have two main recording "areas" and this part took me a minute to figure out. The session view holds all the colored blocks or clips. Each block or clip is what you record into your computer,this could be virtual instrument midi or audio sources. You have your "rack" at the bottom portion of the screen. This is blank and it's where you drag and drop instrument racks(pre built live sets of sounds like synths and drums kits)you can also drop your effects in here as well. Once you build a few parts and have them ready to go in the session view you can then hit the record button for a global record. This means that from the time you hit record everything you do in your "session" be it knob turns,clip launching,all gets recorded and sent to the second recording view that is the more common view timeline like most other DAWs.

When I first started up intro I wasn't sure how the whole thing worked. I had to watch a few YouTube videos to see this workflow and to fully understand how powerful this makes Live. You can,if you like,start recording directly into the arrangement view if you prefer but if you pass up Live's clip launching you are missing out. Clips turn everything you record into them into almost like an individual instrument. It's hard to think about but imagine if you recorded five guitar parts. You can now fire off those parts in any order at any speed to arrange the song however you'd like. Turning a basic recording more into a playable instrument. It's very cool.

That's the basics of Live. The program itself is VERY deep and has so many tools and options as you'd expect from any other DAW like logic and cubase with all the bus options and channels. One thing I love about Live is how easy it is to set up external devices,controllers,interfaces,and even use your iPad as a dedicated controller with native apps that mimic the full interface. Doing things in Live that might take a while to figure out in other DAWs are front and center and open with no confusing menus or hidden routing speak.

Now that I've used Intro for a while I have to warn you that you WILL want to upgrade. Watching 100's of tutorials on tips and tricks on YouTube has brought a very clear problem to surface. Intro,while a VERY good price and VERY powerful and stocked with tons of useful features. It lacks the BIG features that everyone in the tutorials use. You will quickly have to resort to "work arounds" due to the limitations imposed by the "lite-ness" of the beginner Live. Things like grouping tracks,chains,and other Major selling points that make Ableton Live such a great and powerful tool are disabled in the intro version. While you get 64 audio tracks you are limited to only 8 midi/virtual instrument/VSTi or AU tracks at a time. This limitation can be reached very quickly if you are a producer making your own music. There are work arounds,like you can freeze/flatten any midi track turning it into audio but you lose your midi flexibility and lock the track to waveform. The next limitation that I run into EVERY session is you are ONLY allowed to use 12 effects TOTAL in the whole project. If you put a reverb,eq,and compressor on every track you can only have effects on 4 tracks! This is a severe limitation that makes mastering and return tracks difficult to juggle(you are also limited to maximum of 2 sends/returns for effects routing).

Some of these effects limitations can be avoided due to the clever use of instrument racks Intro comes preinstalled with. Think of racks as a base instrument(piano,synth,drums)with effects and "special" tweaks added and then Ableton pre-groups these things into what they call, a rack instrument. They are very high quality instruments with ample amounts of effects added. The downside is those effects and tweaks are locked into each on. Granted you get 500 to choose from. The real power of Ableton comes from grouping with macro controls to create your own instrument/drum racks but alas,this is disabled.

There is so much here and there is so much more to get into. I am just starting out so this is just what I've learned so far. Also,I am a music "producer",meaning I don't use loops and other peoples "clips" for remixes and DJing. I write all my own music,play all my own synth parts,and program all my own drum tracks. The software is really designed as a tool for this kind of work but I'm here to tell you thar traditional musician types can find powerful resources in Live Intro and it's not just a cool DJ tool to play the latest loop packs you bought for $30 to create "instant producers". This is a real tool for real musicians. If you do like to play around with loops and dj stuff then this should work pro. I just can't attest to that portion. For $69 you would be hard pressed to find a more powerful toolset for modern dance music and traditional music creation. If you have $69 and want to get Live well now you can. This is Live albeit with some disabilities thrown in to bait you into expanding your horizons. I give this a 4.5.

If you are in need of a great, inexpensive digital audio workstation, (DAW), then you are going to love Ableton Live Intro! Withing minutes of setting up Live, I was playing some of the great stock sounds within Live. (There are nearly 500 of them!) Live Intro is great for someone who is just getting started in pro-audio. The price was extremely reasonable, and the capabilities that come with Intro are amazing! I have already created two somgs with Intro and I am hoping to make more. Keep up the good work, Ableton!

First of all, I primarily bought this as an instrument, not a DAW. Nearly a year after I bought it, I am still discovering things about Ableton Live Intro. Ableton Live Intro is the perfect DAW for beginners(and I had to relearn from the old analog recording) to cut their teeth on, especially for electronica, hip-hop, and other electronic and urban styles. It has so much to it that it minimizes the need for outside instruments. For the more experienced producer this makes a great plug in instrument when used in the ReWire slave mode. There are aspects that could be improved upon, but Ableton needs to give you reason enough to upgrade to the full version, but I think for most beginners this is ideal.

Honestly, I'm totally new to Ableton Live, so I decided to get 'Live Intro' to get me started.

Overall Live Intro is excellent value considering what's included in the box, lots of great content with a very nice user-interface.

After install and easy setup of hardware settings for audio and midi, I got to work for about six hours solid, no glitches, no crashes, no clicks, no pops, no pffssss. Perfect! Already I had the beginnings of a new song and it sounds great. Live Intro is 'Awesome'

The file browser is very well organized, also very simple to setup external third-party VST/VSTi plugins. Cool! Now I have more than enough to get the job done!

I highly recommend either Ableton Live or Intro.