You may have seen it pop up on your socials, but Ableton just announced they’ve opened up the Live 10 beta to the public. So if you already own a license for either Live 9 Standard, or Live 9 Suite, you can give the beta a whirl. You’ll need to create a Centercode account before going through a very short questionnaire about your level of skill with music production, various bits of kit, and Ableton Live itself.
The current download clocks in at around 1.3 GB.
My thoughts
Since you’re all such massive fans of DJWORX and never miss an article, you’ll have read Ray’s thorough and optimistic ‘first look’ at the new features you’ll see in Ableton Live 10. Ray put the feature run-down into words far better than I could, and we at DJWORX defer to him on all matters production related (unless it’s Max4Live, right Darren?).
Something I would like to say is that there is seemingly some backlash against Ableton for supposedly ignoring the community’s highly voted feature requests during the closed beta. While the issue of a company listening to feedback (or not) is always going to be a hot topic amongst fans of a product, there needs to be some clarification about what a beta test is.
The big issue is about why a popular feature won’t get implemented, and the reality is that a beta test is not that time. By the time software reaches beta, features will be locked in, and testing is there simply to find ways to break stuff, and maybe tweak the user experience. You can expect bug fixes, and setting to move, but the idea of adding a new feature just isn’t feasible, because you then have to do another round of testing on that update.
With that in mind, if you do sign up for the beta, try to get involved with the community. Give feedback. Break shit. Submit bug reports. Try different hardware and software combinations. This is the time to help Ableton make the software as sturdy as possible, not as feature-packed as The Homer.
Your thoughts
Have you had a play with the Live 10 beta? What did you think? Share your tracks in the comments to show us what it can do!
If you already own Live 9 Standard or Live 9 Suite, head over to the beta signup page to start testing!