LIVE 8 is out

[Kithsa]

Ableton Live 8 and Ableton Suite 8 are out now. Two new instruments, Collision and Latin Percussion are also available; both are included in Ableton Suite 8.

http://www.ableton.com/nl235

Live 8 and Suite 8 enhance the Ableton vision of creative, real-time digital music with a wealth of new techniques, effects and most-wanted workflow improvements. These include a new groove engine, revamped warping techniques, live looping, five new effects (including the Ableton Vocoder), crossfades in the Arrangement View, group tracks and a reworked MIDI editor. Ableton Suite 8 includes all that plus a massive, inspired sound library and all the instruments a musician could hope for, including a wide range of synths, a sampler, electric and acoustic drums (new: Latin percussion), mallets (new: Collision), numerous sampled instruments and a new, even mightier Operator.

New in Ableton Live 8:

- New groove engine: new groove library, extract grooves from audio or MIDI, real-time groove quantize. Includes grooves from the legendary Akai MPC and E-mu SP-1200 machines

- New warping engine: warp audio events by adjusting the events on the timeline, updated Beats Warp Mode, new Complex Warp Mode, slice audio files to MIDI tracks based on transients

- Looper: classic sound-on-sound looping without the limitations of a hardware device. Record, overdub, undo and more without touching the computer. "First loop sync," simple loop management

- New effects: Vocoder, Multiband Dynamics, Overdrive, Limiter and Frequency Shifter

- Workflow enhancements: including real-time crossfades in the Arrangement View, enhanced MIDI editing, group tracks, multiple track selection, a screen magnifier and more

New in Ableton Suite 8:

- World-class sound library: completely new sound library with real-world "Sound Objects", presets, grooves, templates and, above all, over 1,600 beautiful sounds

- Collision and Corpus: a unique physical-modeling instrument for authentic mallet sounds and creative percussion. Includes Corpus, a separate effect that reproduces Collision's resonator section*

- Latin Percussion: a collection of acoustic percussion instruments from the worlds of Brazilian, Afro-Cuban and African music, plus a wide selection of clips and grooves for authentic usage

- Operator, Ableton's renowned do-it-all synthesizer, has been given a major overhaul. New filter types, more modulation routing options and additive wavetable synthesis with drawable partials make Operator more powerful and flexible than ever.

Plus these existing Ableton instruments: Sampler, Electric, Tension, Analog, Drum Machines, Session Drums** and the Essential Instrument Collection 2**.


*Collision and Latin Percussion are also available separately.
**Boxed version only.

[squarehero]

Hmm, I'm still on the fence about upgrading. I still haven't fully used live 7 but some of the workflow enhancements are pretty cool. Maybe I'll just upgrade for compatibility's sake. I think the vocoder is pretty fun though. Haha.

[holyct]

I find out live 8 is out when I was looking for some April fools jokes online.

[Kithsa]

I kind of share the same views with you, sqHero.

Besides Vocoder, I think I'll like the upgrades to Operator and the new Looper. Pretty accustomed to the old system of warping, though.