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Although it might not look like it, Live 8 is a pretty big update.

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These work on audio, too, though it sometimes takes more tweaking to get perfect results. Nevertheless, the whole thing is a glorious addition and brings Live up to par in an area in which it lagged behind apps like Reason, Cubase and Logic that already offered such functionality.

As for mapping and controlling parameters of third-party VST/AU plug-ins, this is easier now, as you can choose which controls should be shown in the pop-out Live editor window. And at last, Live enables you to access more than just the first 128 parameters of a plug-in, which was a major restriction of previous versions.

MIDI and more

Live's MIDI features have been enhanced, too. First, there's the step-input sequencing mode, which offers hours of fun (though for proper old-school step-sequencing, we'll have to wait until Max For Live ships, complete with a vintage-style step-sequencing patch that works with Akai's APC-40).

This is backed up by nifty new MIDI editing features, like sensible key commands – an essential workflow streamliner for any serious user (although it still highlights the lack of a fully editable and universal key command system).

Next, the long-requested collapsible Group tracks – if you're familiar with Live's Drum Racks, you'll understand how these operate. They're busses for combining the outputs of multiple tracks, onto which you can insert effects.

The remainder of the improvements are mostly workflow-related, such as the ability to zoom in and out, enabling you to get closer to the action, or fit a lot more tracks and other info in the window. This is an awesome feature, let down by one baffling flaw: you can only set the zoom level in the Preferences window.

A far better implemented feature is the waveform preview in the Browser tab, which makes locating audio files much easier. But Ableton has missed another trick by not including a similar feature at the base of every channel in the Session view, for visualising the structure of the tracks that are playing.

More new features include fade in/out and crossfading for clips, and control over multiple parameters with one mouse movement (eg, adjusting several track levels at once).

Sharing

Ableton is also to be congratulated for making the process of online track-sharing a lot less painful with the Share Live Set function. The bad news is that the whole system is still in the beta stage, although you can apply to test it. We've had a go and can report that it's a good start, although clearly still a work in progress at present.

Selecting this option uploads your project to a server, including all associated audio files. Every time you do this, it's supposed to check for any new files and only upload those, though when we tried it, it created a whole new project.

If there are any third-party plug-ins or non-universal content (Operator channels, for example), it will prompt you to freeze them – there's no one-click solution, it seems.

The whole thing operates in the background, while you continue working on your project, but it'll be interesting to see how the servers cope once Live 8 has been out for a while and the whole sharing system goes live, so to speak.