Ableton has released version 1.5 of its “sequencing instrument” software Live, the live music performance software I reviewed here last week. (I referred to the beta release of version 1.5, which I found to be stable and trouble-free.) 1.5 is cross-platform native for Windows, OS 9, and OS X. (Ableton’s press release is Okamoto-compliant, meaning they’re supporting X and have Apple bragging about it! Ron Okamoto is Apple’s VP of worldwide developer relations.)
Live 1.5 is now both a ReWire client and master, for interfacing with software like Digital Performer, Cubase, Logic, and Reason, will sync with MIDI devices as a client or server, is MIDI controllable via fader boxes or any MIDI device, and can finally render audio to disk for exporting AIFFs or WAVs. The upgrade also adds a new reverb plug-in, English, German, French and Japanese localization, and is less CPU intensive than the last release. (In my testing, idle CPU cycles were significantly reduced.) The upgrade is available free from Ableton’s website.
