Ableton Forum

Hi, I am moving more and more work over to Ableton coming from Cubase, but still have some things where I need more seasoned users advice for workarounds

- in Cubase you can make a track inactive, so it stays in the project but doesnt use any CPU at all (it keeps all its settings and plugins and you can just make it active again if you need it). Is there a way to do something similar in Ableton?

- Track Versions/Alternatives: in Cubase you can make Track Versions which means, you duplicate the track on itself, you can edit it differently etc and if you want go back to the previous version you can just switch versions. Is there somehow a workaround using the track lanes in Ableton?

Thanks in advance!

andihausi wrote: ↑

Tue Dec 02, 2025 8:09 am

- in Cubase you can make a track inactive, so it stays in the project but doesnt use any CPU at all (it keeps all its settings and plugins and you can just make it active again if you need it). Is there a way to do something similar in Ableton?

Nope. You have to do it manually by turning off the track's devices. There's M4L devices that can do it for you I think (if you have M4L, of course).

andihausi wrote: ↑

Tue Dec 02, 2025 8:09 am

- Track Versions/Alternatives: in Cubase you can make Track Versions which means, you duplicate the track on itself, you can edit it differently etc and if you want go back to the previous version you can just switch versions. Is there somehow a workaround using the track lanes in Ableton?

Yep, you can use track's Take Lanes to do this. It's main purpose is to do comping, but it can be used for track versions/alternatives (that's personally the way I used this feature).

thanks for your help! So in general, turning track's devices off completely turns them off and not just only bypasses them?

andihausi wrote: ↑

Tue Dec 02, 2025 12:38 pm

completely turns them off and not just only bypasses them?

What would be the difference?

[jur] wrote: ↑

Tue Dec 02, 2025 9:10 am

andihausi wrote: ↑

Tue Dec 02, 2025 8:09 am

- in Cubase you can make a track inactive, so it stays in the project but doesnt use any CPU at all (it keeps all its settings and plugins and you can just make it active again if you need it). Is there a way to do something similar in Ableton?

Nope. You have to do it manually by turning off the track's devices. There's M4L devices that can do it for you I think (if you have M4L, of course).

doesn't freezing the track essentially do this? you can freeze, then just mute the track, no?

That's an option yes but at the cost of rendering to audio, which might or might not be a concern wrt hard drive space.