Ableton Suite is the XL version of Ableton Live. Suite 8 gives you all of the features in Live 8 plus SOUND, with a radically new Library packed with beautiful new sounds and a wealth of useful resources. Suite 8 contains 10 Ableton instruments including synths, a sampler, electric and acoustic drums, mallets, numerous sampled instruments and the new, reworked Operator. Two completely new instruments, Collision and Latin Percussion, round off the set. Ableton Suite 8 is a complete package: the tools AND the sounds.

Get more and save money, with the Ableton Live 8 Suite
When you choose the Ableton Live 8 Suite, you're equipping yourself with an army of music-making tools — both for serious studio production and for inspiring stage performances. This huge packages comes with the powerful Live 8 DAW as well as 10 amazing virtual instruments. You can get creative with everything from lush synthesized pads to thick leads, back up your sounds with acoustic and electronic drum beats, then layer in mallets, strings, and more. Because Ableton Live 8 Suite gives you everything you need to make music right in the box, you won't have to go right out and drop cash on other virtual instrument libraries, until you've thoroughly explored this rich collection. In fact, when you consider the affordable added value of Ableton Live 8, you'll have already saved more than $1500 — as that's what it would cost you to separately purchase each of these Ableton Live 8 Suite virtual instrument collections and add them to Ableton Live 8.

Brand-new Collision and Latin Percussion virtual instruments
Ableton packed Ableton Live 8 Suite with a world-class library of virtual instruments. Two of their newest masterpiece instruments include Collision and Latin Percussion. Collision is a unique instrument, giving you authentic mallet sounds for creative percussion. It employs physical modeling technology to reproduce real-world instruments, including xylophones, marimbas, and glockenspiels. But, the depth in Collision is amazing — you'll have plenty of room to create dramatic new instruments and sounds. Next in the all-new Ableton Live 8 Suite lineup is Latin Percussion, a massive collection of acoustic percussion instruments — bongos, claves, timbales, congas, shakers, bells, and tambourines. Plus, not only does Ableton Live 8 Suite's Latin Percussion give you these playable Brazilian, Afro-Cuban, and African virtual instruments — it also comes with a bunch of authentic clips and grooves.

Enhanced Operator synthesizer does it all
Ableton has ramped up their Operator synthesizer for Ableton Live 8 Suite, and seriously hot-rodded it for superb performance. There are new filter types, even more modulation routing options, plus additive wavetable synthesis with drawable partials. In short, you'll love tweaking Ableton Live 8 Suite's Operator.

An audio environment for the creative mind
Included with the Ableton Live 8 Suite is a copy of the Ableton live DAW. it certainly offers all of the tools you need to make music in a traditional "linear" way, though the gurus at Ableton developed it to allow a uniquely creative approach to song creation. Use Ableton Live 8 to piece together song ideas and song structures by dragging around sections and loops in "Session View" (discussed further below). Or, use Live 8's Session View to enhance your live performances by assigning out massive MIDI controls — so you can record loops, overdub, perform in a massive synth part, and develop songs, all on the fly. Offering an inspiring workflow for everyone from DJs to solo musicians to top-level groove producers, Ableton Live 8 Suite is a complete solution for brainstorming, creating, composing, building, growing, and performing your songs.

Session View lets you grow songs in a new way
Use Ableton Live 8 Suite's Session View to develop your songs — either in the creative environment of your studio or out in front of the audience. In this mode, you can quickly lay out all of each instrument's "changes" of a song — from up to down, instead of left to right. Each part is essentially a loop, and you can trigger different scenes to play different combinations of each part, trying out new song structures or parts just by dragging and dropping. Ableton Live 8 Suite appeals to tons of electronic artists for just this feature — you can record audio into Live 8, leave it running as a loop, record in audio to another loop, and creatively mash, solo parts, or play synth parts over the top of everything. For songwriters, Ableton Live 8 Suite's Session View also offers a unique way to restructure songs and try out different verse/chorus/verse/bridge lengths and transitions, without messing up the audio and MIDI you've recorded and sequenced in your "linear" session. And, once you've landed on a structure you like, you can easily record it into your Ableton Live 8 Suite regular timeline, just by triggering the transitions.

Easily MIDI-map nearly everything control in Ableton Live 8 Suite
Nearly every control in Ableton Live 8 Suite is MIDI-mappable, so you can pair it with any MIDI controller for a serious amount of flexibility. Use your MIDI controller's knobs and sliders to adjust volumes, panning, effects, or to trigger scenes and virtual instruments. By assigning out your custom settings in Ableton Live 8 Suite, you can work — or perform — in any way you want.

New intelligent Looper for building massive one-man-band songs
Ableton Live 8 Suite now includes an intelligent sound-on-sound Looper feature, which you can easily control remotely with a regular footswitch. What makes Live 8's Looper so cool is that it will read the tempo from the length of the first loop you record, and it automatically syncs up — that way, it eliminates timing issues and lets you record without the click. Use Live 8's Looper to loop endlessly — Multiple Looper sync lets you run as many Loopers as you want, without synchronization headaches. Plus, you can drag and drop a loop from Live 8's Looper right into a clip slot in Session View to make a clip. When you want it back in Looper, all you have to do is drag it back over.

Loaded with tools for beat and groove creation
If you're into grooving, Ableton Live 8 Suite is even more exciting than the previously groundbreaking versions of Live. In addition to a massive Drum Rack for dragging and dropping samples, slicing them, and laying them out onto your MIDI controller, Live 8 now offers an enhanced groove engine. You can influence the timing and velocity/volume of audio and MIDI to give life and swing to straight patterns. Use the Live 8 groove engine to extract groove patterns from any audio or MIDI source — and you can build your own library of grooves from your favorite tracks, which you can apply to other tracks later. Ableton Live 8 Suite's groove engine also lets you quantize audio and MIDI in real time — or randomize it for a more "human" feel.

Packed with effects, including a new vocoder
Ableton Live 8 Suite comes to you with tons of effects for developing your sound and producing it until it's ready to be published on your website or on CD. Along with creative choruses, delays, phasers, and other must-have effects, Live 8 is now packed with five new powerful effects, developed with a bit of extra "Ableton shine." The included Vocoder lets you get that famous "singing robot" effect, and offers you a ton of control for sound design. Beyond that, a new Multiband Dynamics effect lets you visualize what's going on with your audio, so you can process it more effectively. Other new effects in Ableton Live 8 Suite include a stompbox-modeling Overdrive effect, the brick-wall Limiter, and the sci-fi-sounding Frequency Shifter.

Ableton Live 8 Suite Digital Audio Workstation Features:

• Designed from the ground up for the creative studio or performing musician
• Unique Session View breaks out of "linear" music composition allows for a new, fluid approach to songwriting
• Nearly every control is MIDI-mappable, for a flexible workflow — onstage or in the studio
• Build songs with a huge collection of 10 virtual instruments — everything from synthesizers to a sampler to electric and acoustic drums to mallets and sampled acoustic instruments
• Comes with Sampler, Operator, Electric, Analog, Tension, Drum Machines, Collision, and Latin Percussion
• 1,600 new, expressive sounds: Ableton has worked with top sound designers to create a comprehensive set of truly useful, high-end sounds, each one an instrument in its own right
• Library Info Texts: many resources now have descriptive Info Texts explaining the characteristics and structure of the sound or Rack, so you know what the sound is before you load it.
• Versatile configuration options: all instrument racks feature thoughtfully mapped Macro controls for both subtle and dramatic adjustments without the confusion of too much detail. For detail, just open up the rack and get in close
• New Effect Racks for professional-grade mastering, mixing and creative sound processing.
• Construction kits: flexible song kits containing loops and phrases in a number of styles. A useful resource for getting started or for firing up your imagination
• Sound Objects Lite: to complement and extend the synthesized sounds, Ableton and SonArte have worked together to produce a tool kit of real-world object recordings for advanced sound design
• 440 MB of abstract, experimental loops from renowned music software pioneers Cycling '74
• Over 400 loops and samples from Zero-G in a wide range of styles, including smooth '70s grooves, gritty hip hop and edgy, abstract weirdness.
• Thousands of single-device presets: simple components for making new sounds and exploring synthesis
• Intelligent Looper makes it easy to build and record one-man-band songs
• Tons of tools to develop beats and apply grooves
• Includes a comprehensive selection of built-in audio effects, including a host of creative delays, filters, distortions, studio compressors, and EQs
• Features Elastic Audio, for tweaking the timing of your music as it plays
• Lets you mix, match, and add effects without ever stopping the music
• Powerful creative and performing environment for DJs and mash-up artists
• VST and AU effects and instrument support; automatic plug-in delay compensation
• REX file support and native sliced audio file creation
• Video import and export for scoring to picture or warping picture to music
• Includes built-in step-by-step tutorials