Create Digital Music » Still on 7? Ableton Live Update Improves Controller Support, Fixes

Nov 16 2009

Still on 7? Ableton Live Update Improves Controller Support, Fixes

Ableton-er-size! It keeps you healthy. Photo (CC) Riley Nagler as Live and the APC40 play Halloween.

Not all users upgrade to the same version at the same time – least of all when it’s a paid upgrade. So, it’s welcome to see that a number of improvements and fixes are making it to the previous version of Live, 7.x. Not only does CDM count numerous Live users among its readers, but users of 7.x are especially frequent, and we’ve been getting your questions – like whether you’ll be able to use the Novation Launchpad controller.

John Kuan, DJ and “culture industrialist,” alerts us that release 7.0.18 brings a lot of improvements, including:

Support for the Novation Launchpad, Akai MPK line, and improvements for the APC
Major bug fixes for the APC40 and Novation Remote SL under Mac OS (something I think I’d seen people complaining about in comments)
Major, bug fixes for show-stopper crashes

There’s even an M-Audio Axiom Pro fix in there. In short, if you’re using 7.x, it looks like you want this upgrade. Full details on the Ableton forum:

Live 7.0.18 change log

And yes, this news is from last week, but it’s news to me.

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17 Comments

Ilan Kriger

What are the “Several improvements for the AKAI APC”?!

thanks

November 16, 2009 @ 12:23 pm

SoundsAndGear

Yeah man, I was happy to see this. I’m still on Live 7 so even though I don’t have any of those controllers yet, it’s good to see the update. I’m seriously considering an apc, even though I don’t do anything live, I’d like more control over ableton during production.

Also thinking of upgrading to an axiom pro so it’s also good to see that continued support, you don’t really see that from companies, especially when they have a new version out.

November 16, 2009 @ 1:13 pm

bliss

Ha ha! I’m pretty sure that photo wasn’t taken sometime during the early 70s.

November 16, 2009 @ 3:17 pm

Justin Reed

I would love to run live 7!
unfortunately Abelton will no longer let me upgrade from 6 to 7….it’s 8 or bust as far as I can tell…slice to midi – oh how i covet thee!

:0
j

November 16, 2009 @ 5:11 pm

malaventura

Greats news for ableton7 users like me! I found the price of the upgrade to 8 a little bit overpriced for a version that stills renders the audio so arbitrary… Yes! Villalobos is right in his point about the frequencies and the audio engine of Ableton. Ableton! You have to improve seriously your audio render and I’ll pay what you want.

November 16, 2009 @ 8:08 pm

malaventura

This track was made with ableton 7 but no render on it, because ruin all the mix!! http://tr.im/tierraearth

November 16, 2009 @ 8:09 pm

Damon

That guy has a better thigh than me! That bums my thigh. I now have thigh envy.

November 16, 2009 @ 9:59 pm

Peter Kirn

Session View + treadmill.

Just sayin’.

November 16, 2009 @ 10:11 pm

John Kuan

Thanks for the mention Peter. It’s great to know that I would neither have to roll back to Boring Leopard as well as being able to continue working on Ableton 7.

Here I was thinking that they were trying to force an upgrade to 8, which would have been an unethical practice.

VIVA ABLETON!

Now back to writing music without those ‘complex-mode’ crashes.

November 17, 2009 @ 12:01 am

agentgomez

sounds like good news to me !

November 17, 2009 @ 12:14 am

JohnKuan.com » Blog Archive » Thank You Ableton For Not F*cking Your Ver. 7 Users Over

[...] I found it hard to believe that Ableton didn’t send a a release to Peter Kirn over at Create Digital Music. He’s been such a great supporter of the Live software and he carries allot of credibility among digital musicians. Here’s his coverage of the Live 7.0.18 fixes. [...]

November 17, 2009 @ 12:47 am

Austin

I’m afraid to break stuff if I upgrade, but i realllllly want a launchpad.

November 17, 2009 @ 4:40 am

bauer industries

it’s great that ableton support users on the older version/s. one fix i’m waiting for is a mappable way to open and close plug-in GUI windows.

what with the increasing emphasis on controllers, i’d really like to be able to open/close the edit windows for my plug-in devices, without touching keyboard or mouse.

currently, there is only a keystroke that opens/closes whatever plug GUIs are already open – you can’t launch any new ones. support say that it is on their wishlist.

November 17, 2009 @ 9:48 am

sam

God, that’s Boris Becker playing live !

November 17, 2009 @ 9:23 pm

Jason G

I’m still on 7, and glad to get an update. I (foolishly, I know) upgraded to Snow Leopard and Live has been… Let’s say unpredictable.

I do want to upgrade to 8, and could scrape up $159, but I really want to hold off and upgrade to 8 Boxed Suite. I don’t think that $349 is a bad deal for that, but my money is just too tight right now.