There are also 10GB of sound built into the library, containing 1,800 different samples and loops. Get creative with the five built-in software instruments to lay down your own original melodies and beats. Plus there are 34 baked-in audio effects (eight dedicated to MIDI), so those looking for post-production won’t be missing anything. Any DJ worth their salt is most likely using Ableton Live 10. The loaded version also gets you a host of exclusive effect plugins, including the RV-7 Digital Reverb, the PH-90 Phaser, and the BV512 Vocoder. Of course, you’ll also get unlimited audio and MIDI tracks, VST (virtual studio technology) and ReFill support, and anything else you’ll need to produce high quality, professional tracks. Surprisingly, the rest of the numbers aren’t actually that low. The Intro version of the software gives you 1,500 (5 GB) of sounds, four software instruments (only one less than the full version), 21 Audio effects and eight MIDI effects (the same as the full version). So if you can stomach a much smaller feature set and fewer tracks, but love the looping, grid-style interface of Ableton, this might be the software for you. The software holds true on the three main pillars of any good beat-making software: great recording functionality with pitch shifting and time stretching, amazing sequencing capability for MIDI production and a full suite of mixing and mastering plugins to tie it all together for output that sounds great. The intuitive mixer screen is color-coded with easy-to-handle sliders and effects buses, and the piano roll also offers a more intuitive interface than many of the other (more expensive) programs don’t. Plus, there are 80 built-in plugins that range from EQ to reverb, compression and more. Their EQ’s are some of the most trusted in the software world and they’ve even pioneered the concept of a dynamic EQ that changes with whatever the scope of the song is. They also offer a host of vintage compressors, maximizers and tape delay units to emulate those old-school hardware rack units. These units are available in the standard edition but you can only port them to your digital audio workstation as plugins if you shell out for the advanced version. We’re talking 45 different top-notch plugins that constitute more than 13,000 sounds and over 150GB of effects and samples. You’ll get Reaktor 6 for all of your synth needs and a variety of favorites, including Una Corda, India, Replika and Kinetic Metal — all of which give you an amazing bang for your admittedly high buck. This is the one-stop-shop to add synth plugins to your DAW and lay down the perfect melody or chordal bed. Waves is a premium brand of mastering and effects plugins that specializes in bundling their products for the best deal. Our choice here is the Diamond Bundle, which is a solid step up from their Mercury Bundle. You’ll get more than 65 different mixing and mastering options, including dynamic plugins (like compressors and exciters), EQs, reverbs, pitch correction and even spatial imaging. They’ve even modeled some vintage hardware units to emulate some of those classic sounds in your mix.
