Live round-up: 12.2 is out, vids, a free Grain Slicer Rack, tuner, and more

Ableton Live 12.2 went from beta to public yesterday. And there’s more for all Live users – Iftah has an accessible tuner device called Pitch Pipe and Side Brain has an awesome free instrument rack for performing granular tricks, among other new add-ons. You don’t have time to wade through hours of videos; let’s put everything in one place and get bouncing tracks/spectral resonating/granulating.

maxess screenshots overlaid on one another, showing help pages: maxess.element, maxess.file, maxess.keyboard, and maxess.speech running in Max with help commentary.

Maxess, free externals for Max and Max for Live accessibility, available now

Iftah Gabbai has delivered his Maxess Max/MSP External Collection, a set of tools that interface patches with the native accessibility features of macOS and Windows. They’re a must if you’re making tools with Max and Max for Live – and worth examining for inspiration even if you focus on other platforms.

Peter Kirn - March 13, 2025

Flufs metering running in real-time in two display modes, one with vertical meters and histogram, one with a spectral view, gold on black background.

Flufs, powerful loudness analysis tool, is designed for accessibility

Flufs is the loudness meter and analysis tool for Ableton Live (Max for Live) you’ve always wanted. But more than that, it’s designed to be accessible to blind, low vision, and sighted users alike. And if that’s interesting to you, there are more developer tools on the way.

Peter Kirn - March 5, 2025

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