Ableton Forum

Hi all,

Long time Ableton user, first time posting here. I'm using Ableton Live 9 Standard, been meaning to upgrade to Suite for ages but haven't gotten around to it.

It was my understanding that the 'Sounds' menu in Ableton Live 9 only contained the stock sounds that were included with Ableton. However, just today, a few .adg files that I bought from Puremagnetik started showing in here. Not all of them, but just some. Is this normal? I didn't install them using an .alp file, so I'm a bit confused. Also, a lot of Operator presets started showing in my 'Sounds' menu. I'm on Live Standard, so I can't even open these patches... Also, there are some items in the sound menu that started showing up that I swear I have never seen before, but they seem to be in the 'Core Library'. Items like, 'Soft Horn Brass' and 'The Phatt Dance Stabber', I have never ever seen in my library until today...

I don't know if it's related, but these all started showing after installing a free pack from Ableton website, 'Partner Instruments Compilation'. Reading the Ableton Reference Manual, it says:

After adding a user folder, Live will scan it, which “teaches” the browser about its contents. Following this, it will appear in the Places section of the sidebar.

This seems to be true for only about 10% of the custom live racks and instruments I've downloaded from the internet. What is happening? I'm so confused!

Sounds should show everything as long as any third party or your own presets are organized in folders following Live library folder structure: you need to create folders within your user library that are names the same as Ableton's Sound category names.