Ableton Forum

Hey everyone,

I'm having trouble restoring my original settings after my previous laptop was wiped clean by Apple during a routine hardware repair. I'm currently running Live 12 on a 2021 MacBook Pro M1 Max.

The issue seems to be with Ableton’s handling of tracks within project files. No matter what I try, the final result sounds flat and 2D, whereas my older projects used to sound much more immersive and 3D whilst still retaining its balance.

I'm wondering if this could be related to a Max for Live setting, or maybe something I need to reinstall for Max that could affect how tracks are handled in Ableton. Could it be something in the Options.txt file?

One clue: back when everything sounded immersive and balanced, I noticed that when I bounced all the tracks in a project as stems, the individual tracks would often have incorrect panning — almost like there was some kind of multi-track interleaving going on. Strangely enough, the master file would still sound properly balanced.

Has anyone experienced anything like this or have any insight into what might be causing it? I'd really appreciate any help or suggestions.

Thanks!

Psychoacoustics ?

Perhaps some of the plugins settings are incorrect/have changed to default settings? Something on the master bus?

madlab wrote: ↑

Sat Jul 05, 2025 6:41 am

Psychoacoustics ?

Yes, seems like my psychoacoustics. What do you think it could be?

dougdi wrote: ↑

Sat Jul 05, 2025 12:15 pm

Perhaps some of the plugins settings are incorrect/have changed to default settings? Something on the master bus?

I've been using Voxengo Elephant as my limiter — it has routing channel capabilities, but none of the options I'm selecting are behaving the way they used to. That’s why I suspect something might be wrong with Ableton.

Also, I used to be able to throw almost any limiter on the master, and things would sound great — balanced, with good depth. Now everything just sounds lifeless and flat. I remember A/B-ing my masters against tracks on Spotify and getting pretty close to my references. But now, there's no instrument separation, and panning doesn't seem to behave the way it should. Everything just feels too glued together almost bitcrushed

Let me know if you want to add any specific technical details or system info to help others troubleshoot with you!