There’s a critical new feature in Ableton Live 12.1 if you’ve been frustrated in the past by tracks recorded with unwanted lag.
By default, Ableton Live records tracks with the latency you hear. That makes sense for a lot of in-the-box production because you’re likely already responding to the latency you hear and playing in time.
The problem is that it doesn’t work for other cases. If you’re recording instruments, external equipment, or even in some cases, synced-up software on the same machine with their audio routed virtually, Ableton Live will dutifully add any additional latency you hear to the recording, rendering it out of sync. Uff.
The trick is that Live adds a toggle, which you can access two ways – either right-click (ctrl-click) the Monitor setting on any channel strip with Monitor set to either In or Auto (see below).
Madeleine Bloom does an amazing-as-always job of explaining this in a tutorial video. I’ve also included short instructions below if you prefer to read. (Follow Madeleine’s channel and the incomparable Sonic Bloom site to stay in the know, for sure!)
Or right-click the Mixer View Toggle in the lower right-hand corner of the screen and choose Track Options to bring up options for each channel:
That gives you these toggles for all tracks:
Oh, also “why does your font look weird/cool”:
This concludes your Ableton PSA of the Day.