Ableton Introduces Live 9.5 – Here’s What’s New

ableton-live-9.5

Ableton has announced Live 9.5, a free upgrade for Live users that introduces a number of new features.

Most notably, the Simpler device has been overhauled, waveform displays and metering have been improved and new analog-modelled filter modes have been introduced.

Designed in collaboration with Cytomic (who also developed the Glue compressor introduced back in Live 9.0), the filters are integrated within the Sampler, Simpler, Operator and Auto Filter devices.

Here are the details:

Live 9.5 introduces new analog-modeled filters based on classic vintage hardware models that will self-resonate, feedback, and distort beautifully. These filters were built in collaboration with Cytomic and are included in Simpler, Sampler, Operator, and Auto Filter.

Simpler, Live’s powerful but easy-to-use sampling instrument, has been completely overhauled with a new interface, warping, slicing, and new analog-modeled filters built in conjunction with Cytomic. Here are their video demos:

Other updates include:

  • Improved waveforms and coloring
  • Peak and RMS meters
  • More sounds, samples, and drums
  • New Max Essentials
  • Play in time with Link
  • Create a song with Push 2

See the Ableton site for full details on Live 9.5.

22 thoughts on “Ableton Introduces Live 9.5 – Here’s What’s New”

    2. Maybe, just maybe, darker UI is “improved” because in apps that require big screen, sitting in front of big bright white lamp is tiring?

    4. Let’s be honest… easily the worst thing about Ableton is it’s ugly low-contrast UI color sets. Upgrading those would be a huge improvement.

  2. I was about to post a slightly critical post about 9.5 based on the videos here:

    Filters = nice.
    Improved waveforms and metering = needed for years but impossible to get excited about them.
    Improved Simpler = better for everyone I guess but hardly a priority on the “stuff to do” list at Ableton.

    But then I checked out the new feature run down on ableton.com and… Wow. “Link” could be a game changer. Honestly, Link all day everyday. Wifi probably won’t be reliable enough in a gig situation but for connecting people in the studio… Amazing.

    Still, these videos are boring as hell.

  5. Fantastic upgrade!!!

    Warping within a simpler/rack leads to endless possibilities, and pad slicing makes the idea of getting an MPC redundant for me….

    There’s other stuff I’ve noticed which will be really enjoyable to test out, but I’m still miffed that there’s no comping.

    But this with PUSH 2 means I’ll earn my spend back in about a month, as I can truly say Ableton (also Novation Twitch & a to a lesser extent Ensoniq ASR-10) is the only piece of tech that has earned it’s cost back and more in an incredibly short amount of time.

    low impulse control…I’ve pre-order PUSH 2.
    …£350 with the discount.

  6. Some nice new features for a free update indeed, still waiting for “takes”, and many more, any kind of smpte start time/different time code implementation for video, better comping…. just things that will get people off my back when comparing to some of the other “big boy” daws… love Ableton, my favorite thing to write with, but sometimes hard to work with in a “pro” setup with others for just simple things one would think they could implement…. but a great songwriting partner for sure! thanks ableton for this!

  10. where did they hide the filter envelopes etc? its really way more uncomfortable if they put it on a 2nd page or so.. anyway they just made simpler shite!

  12. this is bitchin’. Seems the last update was only a couple of months ago, so this is pretty damn good, but stop rushing towards Live 10!?!?!

    Filters sound nice. All the new functions within Simpler make things, well yes, simpler.
    And Lync? Wi-fi midi? (or Mi-Fi). Seems i can now delete rptMIDI, (which is great freeware that was my first excursion into wireless MIDI.)???

    Thanks Ableton, my first DAW and now my one and only….

  13. This is a pretty solid update, however it has some strings attached. The new audio filters are very good and when comparing them (the old filters are still available) you can clearly notice the differences.

    I was also positively surprised with the new Max for Live devices and their responsibility. In the past some of the instruments and effects could turn out to be resource hogs, but with this release all seems well.

    But… There are also some small issues. First of all the upgrade itself. If you have Suite 9 or Max for Live as an add-on you’ll need to download the new ‘Max for Live essentials’ pack. This isn’t really made clear, and it shows a small flaw. Where Live 8 could tell you what version of a Live pack you had installed Live 9 doesn’t seem capable of that anymore. I would have expected them to provide an installer with the new Livepack(s) so that those get automatically installed after starting the program for the first time.

    And a change which I personally dislike is how all the clips in session view now get the same color assigned as the track they’re on. You can turn of the option which gives tracks an automated random color, but you can’t turn off the static color assignment for clips. I dislike this because if you record several variations of a take it becomes a lot harder to differentiate between them. Fortunately this is something Max for Live can fix with my RecClipColor M4l patch.

    But in the overall this is a very solid update. And free!

  14. What a boring update! This hardly justifies them skipping 9.3 and 9.4. There are way WAY to many missing features. They continue to ignore long standing and basic feature requests from their users. So disappointing!!!

  15. Enjoying Ableton 9.5. “Although” when i want to start a new session, I have to restart my computer, Ableton will not reopen. I’m running OS X 10.11.1. Is anyone else experiencing this issue?

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