For the past year I have been harping on the team at Ableton to include dj style song nudging in their software. Finally, when Live 7 hits selfs at the end of 2007, you will be able to do just that. This means that you can gently massage tracks together with a midi controller instead of using the mouse to manually adjust warp markers in the middle of a gig.

Another common dj complaint about Live has been the quality of its sound especially when several tracks are pushed to the max. To adress this and other requests they have wisely included a new series of vintage style studio compressors. If these new compressors live up to the hype you should be able to get the loud warm sound out of Live that people expect in the club.

If these new tools are implemented effectively, don’t be surprised to see a large group of djs that are currently straddling the fence jump over to using Ableton Live full time.

Ean Golden