There are ton of third-party audio effect plug-ins that you can find on the internet, costing anywhere from free to thousands of dollars; but one slightly underappreciated collection is the effects that come with Ableton Live.
In this post, I’ll list them and give a brief description of what each one does and in what situations one should look into using them. Over time, as I learn how to use them more effectively, I’ll likely continue to add notes to this post. For the sake of completeness, I’m going to go through all effects that come with Ableton Live Suite (as opposed to the Intro or Standard editions).
Amp
Replicate the sound of a guitar amp - contains a few parameters (gain, bass, treble, etc.) that you can adjust to get the sound you like.
Audio Effect Rack
Super useful way of organizing effects - allows you to create multiple chains of effects that you can run a track’s output through in parallel, and create macros that control parameters from multiple effects.
Auto Filter
A great way to automate a simple filter for a track (+ LFO)
Auto Pan
Allows you to bounce sound from left to right, adjusting the rate, phase and amount of panning.
Beat Repeat
Repeats the sound of a track, letting you adjust the interval of repetition, offset, and a few other parameters.
Cabinet
Similar to Amp, createes an authentic guitar sound by allowing you to specify how many speakers are in a room and placement of the mic.
Chorus
Allows you to add voices to your track to make it thicker, letting you to adjust modulation and the rate, and feedback.
Compressor
Change the gains of your track, modifying the peaks of your sound. This lets you create a louder, punchier sound. You can select various ratios, attacks and release values and enable side-chaining, which lets you force your sound to duck anytime another track is peaking.
Corpus
Another effect to create an authentic sound - comes with some good presets.
Dynamic Tube
Adds saturation to your track.
EQ Eight
Allows you to isolate, remove or amplify certain frequencies in your track.
EQ Three
Does the same thing as EQ Eight, but fewer parameters.
Erosion
A way of degrading your sound by adding a noise to your sound, by picking a noise sound (ex. sine wave) at a certain frequency with a certain width.
External Audio Effect
Allows you to route your audio to a hardware unit.
Filter Delay
Add a small delay with a certain width to your track on a certain frequency range (up to 3) to left or right or stereo, with the ability to control the feedback length.
Flanger
It adds flanging to your sound, modulating frequencies and rasising the pitch. You can set the delay time, feedback and frequencies on which it operates.
Frequency Shifter
Change the frequency of your sound. Gives you a LFO tool as well. It separates the frequency control into coarse and fine.
Gate
Filter sounds that pass a certain loudness threshold letting you filter out loud or quite sounds. Really useful for taking out noise.
Glue Compressor
Lets you glue multiple tracks together by fitting them to a certain frequency curve.
Grain Delay
Chops up audio into small grains, and randomly delays certain bits. You can control the delay time, spray and frequency characteristics and pitch, random pitch and feedback.
Limiter
Cap off the sound at a certain volume, good for preventing unwanted peaks.
Looper
Recognizes the BPM of a sound, and loops the sound over your track.
Multiband Dynamics
Alter the dynamic ranges of certain frequencies, similar to EQ Three/Eight. One useful feature is solo-ing the high/mid/low and working on it by itself.
Overdrive
Allows you to distort your sound and add drive to it for a certain frequency range.
Phaser
Adds a phase shift to your sound at a certain frequency, adding multiple layers to your sound.
Ping Pong Delay
Delays a sound at a certain frequency range.
Redux
Adds an 8-bit layer to your sound.
Resonators
Adds a certain tone/note to your track at certain frequencies.
Reverb
A super common audio effect, adding an echo to the track for certain frequency ranges, allowing you to also add a chorus layer. There are a lot of good presets.
Saturator
Adds a bit of warmth and color to the track.
Simple Delay
Another delay effect, allowing you to adjust the delay for each channel separately.
Spectrum
Shows you a visual representation of your sound, for example showing you what frequencies hit the hardest.
Tuner
Shows you the note that is currently being played, showing what note and how de-tuned that sound is (scale of -50 to 50 cents). You can use a frequency shifter to correct what doesn’t sound quite on key.
Utility
Mute, pan and adjust the width of a track.
Vinyl Distortion
Replicates what a vinyl would sound like, adjusting the crackling sound.
Vocoder
A way to modulate sound based on a few parameters and bucketing frequencies, useful for creating robotic sounds.