Ableton Live 9.2 Released

After being in beta for a long time, Ableton has finally released Live 9.2. The update comes with an extensive list of improvements and new features for both Live itself and also Push. Let’s have a look at the most prominent changes.

New Tuner Effect

There’s a new tuner device that you can find in under Audio Effects in the browser.

Warping

There’s also been a lot of improvements to warping, particularly auto-warping and downbeat detection to better recognise fixed tempos, as well as improvements to the Complex and Complex Pro warp modes.

Latency compensation

The Ableton developers have also been working on reducing the latency issues introduced by Max for Live devices or third-party plug-ins. Automation and Modulation are now fully latency compensated – previously a big complaint by lots of users. You can check the amount of introduced latency of a device in the status bar when hovering over the title bar with the mouse.

64 Pad Drum Rack Mode for Push

The Note button now toggles between the Drum Rack three section layout and the 64 Pad Mode.

Improvements to Aftertouch & Modwheel Functionality for Push

The aftertouch response on Push was improved and there’s now an aftertouch Threshold setting in the Push User Preferences. Tapping the Ribbon Controller while holding “Select” toggles between Pitch Bend and Modwheel function.

Added Features for the Push Encoders

Ableton have obviously been watching what features users had added through MIDI remote scripts like nativeKONTROL PXT-Live and Max for Live, so some of you might be already familiar with the workflow of these added features.
Now you can reset parameters to the default setting by holding “Delete” and tapping an encoder on Push. For making changes to parameters with a finer resolution, hold “Shift” while turning an encoder on Push.

Dropped Compatibility of older Operating Systems

There’s a downside to users working on older operating systems though. The compatibility for Windows XP and Vista, OS X 10.5 and 10.6 were dropped. This means you can either no longer update Live or you’ll have to upgrade your OS. From what I’ve heard, there are quite a few users affected by this (including me – as I’m still on OS X 10.6 on my iMac).

If you have automatic updates turned on in the Preferences, Live will update itself automatically to 9.2 the next time you start Live and be active, the next time Live is launched. I’m not sure what this means for us with dropped operating systems, as I have it turned off on my iMac, but if you’re suddenly experiencing issues I’d suggest to check which version you’re on and possibly downgrading again manually.