Ableton Live 12 Standard (Upgrade from Live Lite)

An ideal DAW for creative artists

From the beginning, Ableton Live has been as much a creative tool as a DAW. This duality essentially has to do with the way Live lets you construct tracks and play with audio in real time. There are two main parts to Live: the Arrangement View and the Session View. The Arrangement View is more or less a standard linear DAW, with time on the X axis and tracks on the Y axis. Where Live differs from other DAWs is its Session View, which puts individual tracks on the X axis and scenes on the Y axis. Each scene contains a slot on each channel for a clip. Clips are usually short pieces of audio or MIDI, a few measures longer or shorter, that loop to create grooves. Launched individually, these loops let you experiment with your arrangements, trying out various combinations of grooves and riffs.

Since everything from modern electronic music to classic rock and blues is heavily based on repeating sections, Live's Session View makes it an ideal creative tool for all kinds of songwriters. In fact, the songwriting tools don't stop there. In addition to launching individual clips, you can launch entire scenes, complete with automatic advancement to subsequent scenes, scene repeat instructions, and other logic options.

Using scenes makes it easy to arrange entire songs in parts (verse, chorus, etc.). When you record your progression to the linear Arrangement View, you add the possibility to record lead lines and other performances that fall outside the rest of the song structure. What's more, all of the loop-/riff-based arrangement options are still available on the timeline, so you can continue to edit and build on your song even after you record it to the Session View.

Raising the bar on standard included content

In the ever-escalating battle to provide the most content for the money, Sweetwater can confidently say that Ableton Live 12 Standard more than holds its own. Packed with more than 38GB of content, including 13 software instruments, 42 audio effects, and 13 MIDI effects, Live 10 Standard is no joke. It puts drums and sample-based instruments at your fingertips, old-school breakbeats and modern electronic music tools at your disposal, and all of the distortion, modulation, and other basic effects you could ask for right in your DAW. Of course, you also get essentials such as EQ, dynamics, and real-time analysis tool, and with unlimited AU and VST plug-in support, the included content is only the beginning.