As various readers have pointed out to CDM, a video entitled “Live 9 Device Master” has leaked online. (One user posted screen grabs while it was up, embedded above.) It seems fairly obvious what this video implies. Ahem.
Oddly, whereas these kind of leaks often come from distributors or other third parties, it appears in this case Ableton accidentally made the video public themselves on their own official channel. (Whoops.) I think you can do the math here. Ableton has said officially for some time that, following an effort to focus on stability in Live 8, they were working on a new version. (Seriously, for anyone who thought they were getting bought by Apple, or giving up music software development to open a line of juice bars or something, uh … no. Come on, Apple, really? You know Apple already bought one German company founded by a guy named Gerhard; Cupertino isn’t big enough for both of them.) [Ed.: Sorry, I confused some people. Yes, people did actually come up with strange rumors that there was no Live 9 or Ableton was being sold, even to Apple. Really. I don’t know why people believe baseless, illogical rumors, but some do.]
While the leak is a surprise, the revelation that there’s a Live 9 shouldn’t be. Those of us who follow the sequence of numerals in the Arabic system know that “9” does indeed follow “8.” Apple is the company that sometimes breaks with those numbers and starts using Roman Numerals. Well, unless Ableton wants to use Babylonian numbers.
The video does show some very promising enhancements to the browser, devices, and specific processors (namely, compression). But, since this isn’t official information, I prefer to wait until we can share complete details, and fact-check those details with Ableton to make sure our information is precise and accurate. And you know we’ll do that.
Of course, a deluge of interest here does reveal that Live’s users remain eager for news of a software update. And I don’t think Ableton can complain about that.
Credit for getting the scoop here appears to belong to Vladimir Bandesnaci’s blog:
Ableton Live 9 Leaked
Mmmm… one Monolatte, one Ableton Juice please.