awhile back, i upgraded from lite to standard and am wondering if people think it’s worth it to upgrade to suite and get the free ableton 11 upgrade whenever that’s final. it looked like upgrade pricing was $295. so far, standard has been fine. am i missing out not having operator and max for live? are there compelling reasons people go for suite over standard?
Not just Operator which is great but Wavetable which is also amazing! But, I guess a lot of it depends on what you use Ableton for. Do you feel like you’re missing some tools? Suite puts a lot on the table and I was very happy to have upgraded to it back in version 9.
Personally I think max for live is worth the money but it’d probably depend on how you’re using everything. Check out the max for live library and see if it looks like things you would use, that’d give you an idea of what can be made using it.
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Max for live is essential IMO. Even just for the extra modulation tools.
It’s absolutely worth it as long as you have the spare cash. Suite has very good things going for it, not least the Max For Live stuff like the MDD_Snake sequencer and LFO and the amazing Operator synth and Echo effect. Plus thousands of additional samples to mangle and add to your collection.
so far, standard has been just fine. i do wonder sometimes seeing people speak highly of the max stuff. i honestly don’t know if the extra expense is worth it given the plugins i already have, especially if functionality is roughly the same. i don’t really need a ton of stock samples to wade through. that can already be time consuming with my existing stash of samples. i usually just want to jam or throw a thing together, not endlessly scroll through sounds. if anything, maybe the expense is worth it for the upgrade to 11. it also looked like the cost to add max standalone and other bits to standard would be more than the upgrade cost. either way, i’m not in a hurry — just curious to hear what you good folks recommend. thanks for the feedback!
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I have Suite, but would be fine with Standard since I primarily use it to record hardware. I occasionally experiment with the the synths and effects in Suite (I do love operator), but the main Suite feature I use is the M4L CV Clock (other ways to accomplish this).
I think Suite on its own is a very complete environment and gives many avenues for exploration, but if you have hardware or plugins you primarily use it may not be worth the extra cost.
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Operator is fantastic, as is Wavetable. M4L is an incredibly powerful and fun option to have at your disposal, and even if you have little interest in patching things for yourself, theres a ton of really nice (usually free or inexpensive) M4L stuff that others have built that can really open things up. Id say Suite is worth it
as others have said, your use case will dictate whether suite makes sense for you.
Personally I feel Suite is the version that brings Live into its own. M4L is great for the extra devices & capabilities you gain through eg 3rd party max devices and if you want to learn programming in it yourself, the possibilities are endless (BUT: Max takes some effort to learn & depending on what you want to build with it, it can get time intensive also).
The additional instruments in Live are nice to have also, as I say, I consider them integral to Live, so hard for me to imagine not having them.
Not sure what an upgrade would cost you, but if it gets you Live 11 as well, it would make the deal (whatever it is) sweeter. For comparison, I own Live 10 Suite and to upgrade to Live 11 Suite at the current discount would cost me 159€. so you can subtract that from the cost of the Suite upgrade and see if the price that is left is worth it to you for the additional features and flexibility.
EDIT: here’s just the first link that popped up for me googling the benefits of M4L. Maybe this will help you understand what it can do and whether you need/want any of it 
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…it’s the same as with bitwig…half the package is half the package…
as far as i can remember using live a decsde ago, the suite was not a luxury item…it was essential…
dunno what the actual cut downs are to the standard or even the lite version, but a daw like this always makes final sense when it has no limits of whatsoever…
abletons pricetag is one of the biggest in daw business, but still, the smaller versions all have their limits…while the difference to the suite remains huge in one way or the other…
not having all the internals at hand leads always to a bad bummer moment…
sooner or later…
and live without the max options is almost no real live experience anymore these days…
while the operator for example beats so many synth plugins u can buy out there…
not to mention the next level stuff like mpe, which will finally also come for ableton with suite 11…
if u can, don’t go short on this…
Wavetable, Operator, Analog and MaxForLive are 100% worth the upgrade if you ask me.
You can get around the stock-synths by using other plugins but I like their small footprint, not having a free floating window that gets in the way etc.
MaxForLive opens a whole other world and turns Ableton in a modular sound design environment.
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Although I have suite I would be just as happy with the standard version mainly because I prefer non Ableton VSTs.
I was on Live 7 when I upgraded to the Suite version, I only intended to grab operator but, with the sale that was on at the time, the upgrade was only marginally more expensive.
Always surprised about the lack of Sampler love, especially after the big Simpler update a few versions ago. The Oscillator section where you can have an Operator “operator” AM or FM modulate your sample is such an insane feature for one shot samples and opens up sound sculpting capabilities far beyond any other sampler I’ve ever used. Really makes Sampler more into a fully fledged synth.
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