EVERY KNOB, AUDIBLE.

Live 12's headline synth — two oscillators, a flexible filter, and a modulation matrix on one panel. Reach for it when you want a sound fast: leads, basses, plucks, pads. The whole instrument fits on one screen so you can dial things by ear, not by menus.

Two wavetable oscillators morph through tables of single-cycle waves. Built for evolving pads, hollow plucks, modern basses and growls. The MPE-friendly mod matrix lets every parameter breathe under your fingers.

Four-oscillator frequency-modulation synth. Use it for DX7-style electric pianos, metallic bells, glassy keys and acid basses. The fixed-frequency and noise modes make it surprisingly good for percussion too.

Two macro-osc engines, a giant XY morph and per-note expression. Designed for happy-accident sound design — pick a preset, twist macros, follow your ears. Pairs perfectly with Push 3's MPE.

Drag a sample in, get a playable instrument. Simpler is the quick lane: classic, one-shot, or slice modes. Sampler unlocks multi-zone mapping, modulators, filters — useful when you want a recorded piano or your own kit chromatic across the keyboard.

A grid of cells, each a full instrument chain. Drop a sample on a pad, or nest a Simpler/Operator. Choke groups stop hats stepping on each other; macros automate the whole kit at once. The standard way to build a drum kit in Live.

Spray a sample into thousands of tiny grains and reshape it into pads, stutters or shimmering clouds. Great on vocals, field recordings and any sound you want to suspend in time. Live 12 ships it built-in for the first time.

Three different physics simulations. Collision = mallets, bells, marimbas. Tension = plucked & bowed strings. Electric = Rhodes/Wurlitzer electric pianos. Reach for them when a sampled version sounds static — physical models breathe with velocity and pitch.

Bass is a focused mono synth for sub, mid-growl and 808-style lines. Poli emulates classic poly-synth voices — warm pads, brass, strings. Use them when you want a great sound out of the box without 200 knobs.

Layer Drift + Wavetable + a sample for huge stacked sounds. Macros expose 16 knobs that control anything inside. Zones split or velocity-switch chains so you can build expressive multi-sampled instruments without leaving Live.

These insert before an instrument and rewrite the MIDI on the fly. Arpeggiator turns held chords into runs; Chord adds harmony; Scale locks notes; Random/Velocity/Pitch add humanity. Live 12 also adds Note Echo and several expressive devices.

A bridge device: sends MIDI to a hardware synth (or hardware MIDI port) and lets the audio return live into your set, with latency comp. The clean way to use outboard inside a Live project.

Sound is made of low, middle and high frequencies. EQ lets you turn any of them up or down. Too boomy? Lower the lows. Too dull? Raise the highs.

A compressor automatically turns down anything that's too loud. The quiet parts then feel louder by comparison. Vocals stay present, drums punch, mixes glue together.

Saturation adds new harmonics that weren't there. A little = warmth and weight. A lot = dirt and distortion. The TYPE picks the flavour (tape, tube, digital…).

Reverb is what a room does to sound: lots of tiny reflections fading out. Short = real and close. Long = epic and far. It glues elements and adds depth.

A delay repeats the sound after a short gap. Each repeat can be quieter, darker, and trigger another repeat. Set to the song's tempo it becomes rhythmic.

A filter removes frequencies above or below a point called the cutoff. RESONANCE makes the cutoff sing — that's the classic wah and acid sound.

Chorus makes one instrument sound like several playing together. It's the lush, wide '80s synth and clean-guitar sound.

Phaser creates a moving 'whoosh' across the sound. Famous on funk guitars, electric pianos and drums.

A compressor tuned for whole mixes and drum buses. It glues separate parts into one cohesive, 'finished' sound. The secret on most records.

A limiter guarantees the sound never goes above a chosen volume. It's the last thing in a mix, used to make tracks loud without distorting.

EQ Eight gives you eight bands of fully-shapeable EQ. The big brother of EQ Three: same idea (boost or cut) but with eight surgical bands and a visual response curve.

A gate stays closed (silent) until the input crosses a threshold, then snaps open. Use it to remove bleed between drum hits or to shape long sustains into stutters.

Overdrive shapes the loud parts of the signal aggressively, the way a cranked guitar amp does. Crunchy, present, in-your-face.

Erosion modulates a tiny delay with a sine or noise to introduce subtle digital artefacts — a cheap, lo-fi, alien sheen.

Redux destroys digital resolution on purpose. BIT DEPTH crushes the volume steps; DOWNSAMPLE shaves off the high-frequency detail. Lo-fi, retro, broken.

Flanger is like chorus's louder, more dramatic cousin. It mixes the dry signal with a very-short modulated delay, creating a swooshing comb-filter sweep.

Vibrato modulates pitch up and down at a steady rate. Unlike chorus, there's no dry signal mixed in — the whole sound wobbles.

Echo is Live's flagship delay: stereo timing, filtering inside the feedback path, and tonal character built in. Think tape, BBD, digital — all in one.

Grain Delay chops the input into tiny grains, sprays them through a feedback line, and modulates timing — creating glitchy, pitch-wobbly textures.

Filter Delay splits the input into three bands and gives each its own delay time and feedback. Lows can echo at quarter notes while highs ping at sixteenths.

Drum Buss is a one-stop processor for drums: high-pass clean-up, drive for character, compression for glue, and a low-shelf 'boom' boost.

Auto Pan rocks the sound between left and right (or up and down in level) with an LFO. Use it as stereo motion, rhythmic tremolo, or mono volume pulse.

Unlike a pitch shifter (which keeps musical intervals), a frequency shifter slides every frequency by the same amount. Result: inharmonic, metallic, alien.