While Ableton has some very advanced functions, especially its seamless integration with Max For Live, it still lacks some features. While it does impart a bit of a sound on your productions if abused, it’s still pretty transparent. Since it first came out, Ableton has also had one of the best audio warping algorithms around, and many users still find it to be one of the fastest options for quantizing audio loops. On top of that, Live 10 introduced “Collections” which allow you to quickly organize your favorite sounds, presets, MIDI files, etc so you can have your sonic toolkit easily available for your next project! The drum rack implementation is also among the best options for contemporary beat-making and for quickly creating exciting-sounding drum performances.

The MIDI editing in Ableton is very fast, and while it lacks some of the advanced features that Logic and Cubase have (such as switch chord inversion) you can achieve great results and figure out how to make it do what you want quickly. I constantly find myself MIDI-mapping the mod wheel on my keyboard to a parameter like the cutoff frequency of a synth filter and then performing my filter sweeps live, allowing me to lay down my automation super quickly and organically. This also makes it a phenomenal DAW for producers who like to be hands on in their mixing. You can select a knob in a softsynth or effect plugin, press Command+M to activate Midi Map mode, and then move a knob on a MIDI Controller and it’s instantly assigned-allowing you to map your MIDI Controller to your favorite synths for a live show or quickly map a fader bank to physical faders for individual tracks.

As a live performance tool, nothing compares to Ableton.

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