Ableton today released Live 9.1, an update to its performance-oriented DAW that adds dual-monitor support, new sequencing options, improved audio rendering and more.

Here’s what Ableton has to say about Live 9.1:

Live 9.1 is now available for all owners of Live 9 Suite, Standard, Intro and Lite editions – head to your account to download it. This update is free for all owners of Live 9, and provides several significant improvements for users of Live 9 and Push.

Live 9.1 introduces support for two windows, including the option to place the windows on different monitors. Want to use the Session View mixer while keeping an eye on the Arrangement? How about using one monitor for tweaking effects parameters and another monitor for editing a MIDI clip? We hope this feature will please those users who told us how keen they are on dual monitor support, and it certainly promises to be a workflow booster for many music-making scenarios.

For Push owners, Live 9.1 introduces a brand new melodic step sequencer. Enter notes manually, or play them in, then edit each note in the sequence precisely – all via the hands-on interface of Push. Plus, you can now edit automation with step-by-step accuracy – maybe open up a filter for single notes, or add a splash of reverb to the last notes of a sequence. Learn more about this new sequencer in the tutorial videos below:

Finally, there are a couple of under the hood changes that we’d like to draw your attention to. Live 9.1 includes a new rendering algorithm for better quality audio when exporting from higher to lower sample rates – for instance, going from 96kHz to 44.1kHz. Also, rendering now uses multiple cores, which can result in much faster exports. Ultra high-quality rendering and faster renders – now in Live 9.1.

Here’s a demo of the new step sequencer mode:

This video looks at step automation in Live 9.1:

New in Live 9.1:

• Added dual monitor support.
• When exporting audio, sample-rate conversion is now done using the high-quality SoX Resampler Library, resulting in higher quality exports when rendering to a lower sample rate.
• Live now uses multiple CPU cores when exporting audio and the normalisation process is faster than before.
• When exporting audio files from Live with the option “Create Analysis File” enabled, Live will now save warp markers with the .asd file, so that information about the original tempo and tempo changes are correctly reused when re-importing the audio file into Live later on.
• The ‘Export Audio / Video’ export dialog has been improved.
  • It shows the same options whether launched from Session or Arrangement View.
  • Some of the export settings have been regrouped to provide a better overview.
  • ‘All Tracks’ has been renamed to ‘Individual Tracks’ in the ‘Rendered Track’ chooser.
  • The export dialog now shows information about the source and target sample rate.
• The ‘Open Recent Sets’ menu now has a ‘Clear List’ and ‘Remove Unavailable Sets’ option.
• The menu item ‘Close Live Set’ has been renamed to ‘Close Window’. It will now close any secondary window that is open. If no secondary window is open, it does nothing.
• The audio buffer size is now restricted to power-of-two values. Windows users should note that not all ASIO drivers support this and may still allow to use non power-of-two values. This can lead to a higher CPU load and higher latencies. Ableton recommends to always use power-of-two buffer sizes, i.e. 64, 128, 256, 512,… samples.
• Optimised default presets for Auto Filter, EQ Eight, Saturator, Tension, Simpler, Sampler, Analog, Operator, Electric.
• Added 10 new Simpler presets to the Core Library.
• Updated manuals, lessons, info texts and translations.
• Minor improvements for usage data reporting.
• When creating a new track by dragging an instrument to the clip/device drop area, Live would keep the last selected clip stand-by-selected. Now it moves the selection to the clip slot that matches the Session View’s crosshair.

You can download Live 9.1 from the Ableton site.

If you’ve used Live 9.1, leave a comment with your thoughts on it!