Ableton releases Live v5.2 Beta (incl. Intel-Mac)

Ableton has released a beta version of the upcoming Live v5.2 update/upgrade. On Windows and Mac OS X (Power-PC) you can unlock this beta with your Live 5 serial number; on OS X (Intel), or if you do not own Live 5, you can unlock this beta version using the beta serial number provided on the beta website.

The current version is Live v5.2b3; it has the following limitations:

• No manual is included.
• The system language cannot be set to Japanese.
• The skin can only be set to the default.
• Only a limited set of presets, samples, Live Sets and lessons is included.
• Expires 1st March, 2006.

Improvements:

• Native Intel-Mac support.
• Full VST 2.4 support on Mac and Windows.
  NOTE: On Intel Mac, Live supports VST 2.4 plug-ins and above only. It is theoretically possible to create plug-ins which follow an older standard, but this is not recommended by Steinberg. On Mac PowerPC and Windows your old plug-ins will continue to work as before.
• Reverted the behavior of running session clips when you stop and restart the song. In 5.0.3 Ableton changed this so that the clips are not re-triggered, but keep their relative offsets, which means that often a clip will start in the middle when you start the song. It turns out that most users disliked this behavior, so they reverted this to the previous behavior, where all session clips are re-triggered when the song is started (With the added bug fix that this also works when the song is started from a position other than 1.1.1.). There's a new Options.txt option called "-DontRetriggerSessionClips" to force the 5.0.3 behavior, for those who actually like it better.
• When choosing a command from a context menu, we first close the menu and then carry out the command. This also fixes certain problems when the command opens a file chooser, for example (like "Export MIDI clip") and the menu is "grayed" afterwards.
• In the Render dialog, the suggested default name of the file to be rendered does now depend on the current document name. So opening a new document or save the current document under a new name resets the default name.
• Receiving large MIDI sysex data (as used from several third party plug-ins for parameter dumps) is handled faster now.
• OS X only: Improved handling of certain Audio Unit plug-ins, especially from Waves 5.x.
• Windows only: Added support for mp3 decoders installed on Windows as part of the Windows Media Player. This solves problems Windows users without QuickTime (or broken QuickTime) having with the default codec, for example decoding into pure silence.

Bug fixes:

• MIDI sync in delay preference: The value for the MIDI sync delay would not be stored within the preferences but reset to 0 at each start of Live.
• Deleting a "soloed" track: Deleting s track with solo on could leave the Live set in solo state.
• "Stucking" MIDI Notes: An armed MIDI track with PDC enabled could result in "stucking" MIDI notes.
• Sample rate change with BeatRepeat: Live could crash when the sample rate would be changed to a lower value after dragging in a BeatRepeat device. Same could happen when rendering a Live set containing a BeatRepeat device with a lower sample rate as the current one.
• [Windows] Jumping waveform in MP3 files: Depending on the amount of MP3 files decoded at the same time, the length of the MP3 files and the computer speed the waveforms of the same MP3 files could be different.
• Switching to device chain: Depending on the structure of Live set switching to a track's device chain via the miniaturized device display in the 'Track View Selector' would not properly work.