Ableton Free 11.1 Update Supports Native Apple Silicon

Updated Shifter and 2 new MAX 4 Live utilities   01-Feb-22

Ableton today announced the release of Live 11.1 which adds native M1 Silicon support - so you should see some performance gains if you are running one of the new M1 computers. The update comes after a period while in Beta (since September 2021) and is now ready for official release.

Ableton themselves don't quote any performance gains but the folks over at Music-prod.com have a a benchmark session and some results posted, which while are based on the beta releases, do show some performance gains. 

 150 tracks MacBook Pro 16" 2021 M1 Pro (Running in Rosetta) version: 11.1b6
compared to:

205 Tracks MacBook Pro 16" 2021 M1 Pro 16GB RAM  version: 11.1b6

An increase of around 25%

Other tweaks include:

This release also comes with a number of small improvements, including an updated Shifter device, which adds a new mode for real-time monophonic pitch shifting, as well as delay, an envelope section, an LFO and glide functionality.

Two new Max for Live utilities, Align Delay and Shaper MIDI are also added. Align Delay allows artists to compensate for lag when sending signals throughout their system. Shaper MIDI generates modulation data that can bring more expression to MIDI performances.

Additional features include improvements to comping, updates to Clip handling, and more.

For a full list of what's new, read the release notes here: