Ableton Forum

I recently managed to destroy my macbook computer, and when i restored my computer from Time Machine and opened my live sets, all the external plugin settings (that was stored inside of live) where gone, so close to 30 song sketches sounded like crap..... all soft synths using default sound instead of the sound i had spent ages tweaking. My question is: where do ableton live store those settings? i have some time machine copies of my harddrive, and would like to locate the settings and try to save some of my music..... would be extremely grateful for some good advice!!!

What plugins are you talking about (Lives instruments, VST, AU...)?

All plugin information including the preset, control positions and data should be stored with your project in the Live file. When you load a project there are chunks of data for all the devices which tell live which device to load and the parameters to restore for a sound.

Some VSTs can have some issues sometimes especially if you don't use the same version that you saved the project with (more an issue if you try and use an older plugin version that what you saved with.

Also note that if you are using "non legit" plugins then you can expect these kinds of issues as typical, not that I am guessing you are or care if you do, just you can experience issues that others cannot help with.

If you load a project and everything seems default and not working, may be an idea to contact Ableton and send your project

Thanks for answer!I am talking about AU plugins. I had backed up all my live sets before my old computer broke down so if the settings were saved together with project, they should have been there. But the plugins in 3/4 of my live sets are put back to default mode.

After some hours of searching the internet, i came over some post that said Ableton saved plugin settings in Library/ApplicationSupport/cache, and since Time Machine does not back up cache, i guess this is the reason my projects where broken.

VST/AU, both the same with how the state of amplugin is saved. It can’t be saved in a cache folder as that would then make it impossible to move a project to another machine easily or make a backup. I don’t think that’s the case at all but no further ideas.

Ok, thanks again. I will wait for a reply from ableton then. Thought maybe the preset settings were saved in cache except for if you choose collect and save. Then all settings would be saved together with live set. But lets hope i am wrong

zangpa wrote: ↑

Mon May 04, 2020 2:55 pm

Thought maybe the preset settings were saved in cache except for if you choose collect and save. Then all settings would be saved together with live set. But lets hope i am wrong

You are. I rarely use collect/save unless I need to make a backup and through several complete reinstalls of the OS I am still able to load projects and templates I created in Live 8, 5 years ago without issue. Unless there is something strange with AU plugin versions, I am PC and use VST so wouldn't know with AU but wouldn't believe it would be any different.