Ableton Forum

hey there all

I have been playing gigs around alot with a good mate of mine who is now looking to step up into the world of Ableton....

He is trying to sort himself a copy of ableton for his lappy for performance and production, now this is where we get abit stuck, we are finding a few of the local retail stores and a few of the places on the net are holding older copies of ableton 8 suite.... Lacking some of the things that i see advertised on the Ableton site. What im wondering is if he gets one of these slightly older versions is there an automatic update that gives him everything that comes with Ableton 8 suite as of now.... or is he stuck with what ever it says on the box and he has to pay to upgrade to the newer stuff??

Hope that makes sence lol

i'm pretty sure if you have a legit version of ableton; you can grab the updates from the site.

If you buy any version of Ableton Live, you can download the latest update for that version from ableton.com at no extra charge. However...

1) You should be aware that it is apt to be a gigabyte-plus download; so you should be sure you have access to Internet facilities with enough capacity.

2) You only get updates for the version you've paid for. So if you didn't get the boxed version, you don't have EIC, and your updates won't include EIC. Similarly, unless you've paid for Suite, you won't get AMP, even if you have paid for other instruments separately.

3) If you have Max for Live, you have to download Max updates from the Cycling'74 website. That's also at no extra charge, but you have to remember to do it.

Same as pretty much all software these days, i.e. if you have Win XP you can download all the updates to it free, if you have MS Office 2007 you can download all the updates to it free, but you can't download Windows 7 or Office 2010 because you have XP or 2007.

So any version of Suite 8 gives you the latest update to everything in Suite 8. Having Suite 7 only lets you have the latest Suite 7 update though.

Note as mentioned by ark you don't get EIC unless you get the boxed version. Session Drums is rather big too if you don't get the boxed. You might not want either though and would rather save your cash. You can buy either Live only or the whole suite, boxed or unboxed, from the Ableton website; if you get the box version they post it to you.

I got 5 first, then have bought the updates direct from Ableton each time. I paid more for getting updates with a box each time since I got the suite, so it seemed worth getting later sample disks and getting a new manual.

Piplodocus wrote:So any version of Suite 8 gives you the latest update to everything in Suite 8.

Except EIC, to which you get updates only if you already have it (which happens only if you got the boxed version).