LiveSet · live-performance instrument
LiveSet, a live-performance instrument
Most live-electronic setups play finished material and let you mix it. LiveSet keeps the whole set editable while it plays: you build it from synth and sample tracks, wire scenes that launch on the bar, and then change any part of it on stage. It costs $149, paid once, covers five of your own devices, and runs on the MacBook you already carry to gigs. By the second track you have stopped thinking about the laptop. That is the only review of it we care about.
$149 perpetual · 12 months of updates · up to 5 devices · macOS-first
The core idea
What it does
Most live-electronic setups play finished material: a file, a stem, a pre-rendered clip. LiveSet keeps the whole set editable in real time, so a performance is a thing you shape.
What that means on stage
- A macro knob sweeps a filter cutoff for the next forty minutes. Two hands and a thumb take the room from warm to peak.
- You mute the kick on bar 31 and bring it back on bar 33: the room holds its breath.
- A new chord, written into the piano roll two days ago in twenty seconds, drops into the breakdown.
- You crossfade to a second deck on bar 32, a different project, the same crossfader, and the kick changes character.
Hear what it means
Try it on a loop in this page
Sound on. Start the loop, then change it while it runs: drop the kick for a bar, sweep the filter from warm to peak. The music keeps going while you edit it, and that is the whole idea, demonstrated here on a two-bar toy.
What runs above is a fixed two-bar loop, synthesised in this page. It demonstrates one idea, and the instrument is a great deal bigger than it. LiveSet does the same thing to a whole set with your own tracks, decks, plugins and scenes. See it in motion at liveset.app.
Three modes
Compose, prepare and perform in one project
The same project moves through three ways of working. There is no export step between them. The set you compose is the set you perform.
Compose
Build the material of the set. Drop samples on tracks, write parts in a piano roll with a chord generator and arpeggiator, and design sounds with the built-in synth and its 534 factory presets. Everything you make here stays open to change later.
Prepare
Arrange how the set will run. Wire scenes that launch on the bar, chain them so a transition can fire itself, and promote the knobs you touch to tiles under your hands. Build one layout for a small club and another for a peak-time room, switchable in a click.
Perform
Play it live while it stays editable. Sweep a filter, drop the kick for two bars, throw a delay, crossfade to a second deck. Because nothing was rendered in advance, the set you prepared is still something you shape in front of the room.
What is inside
The features
Six areas, and all of them live one knob or one pad away. Where a feature runs deep there is a page that goes all the way down.
Up to four editable decks
Four prepared projects run in parallel through a DJ-style mixer with a crossfader, three-band EQ kills, and a cue bus so your headphones hear the next one before the room does. Hot cues, loop rolls and warp let you play a 124 BPM loop at 132 without pre-rendering.
A built-in synth and a plugin host
The internal synth has ten engines under one voice, analog, wavetable, FM, noise, physical, additive, modal, transient, sample, granular, and ships with 534 factory presets. When you want your own tools, LiveSet hosts your VST3 and CLAP instruments and effects on macOS, so your own synths run inside the set.
A drum sequencer with per-sample FX
A step sequencer with per-sample effects and euclidean generators per track, so the groove has its own character before anything hits the master. Beat-repeat divisions from 1/4 to 1/32 sit on hardware pads.
MIDI mapping without the wizard
LiveSet knows around 69 controllers on sight. Maschine, MPC, Push, APC, Launchpad, Elektron and more. Plug one in and its pads, faders and knobs already do something. On several of them the pad LEDs light up to show scene state. No Learn step. Anything unlisted falls back to MIDI Learn on every knob, pad and fader.
An always-on 30-minute tape
A tape you never have to arm: the last 30 minutes of the master are always in memory, saved to disk with one click. It captures post-limiter, through soft panics and audio underruns. No clipping and no gain decisions, drag the WAV into your DAW the next morning and the set you played becomes material.
Built not to drop the set
A Rust audio path built for the deadline: once it starts it does not allocate and makes no system call, and a bad value inside the engine is caught and muted rather than blasted at the room. On an M-series Mac a busy set, four decks, effects, dozens of modulation routes, uses under 3% of the audio time budget, which leaves room for the plugins you will add. Ableton Link, stem-aware playback and offline activation are built in.
Platform & requirements
What it runs on
A Rust engine built to be lean. A stock M-series MacBook handles a full set with plugin chains on every track.
- Platform
- macOS-first, Apple Silicon native (M1/M2/M3/M4); Intel under Rosetta works for studio use.
- Engine
- A Rust audio engine with a Svelte and Tauri interface. The audio path never allocates once it starts; buffers from 64 samples (32 if your interface allows). Round-trip latency depends on your audio interface.
- Plugins
- Hosts VST3 and CLAP instruments and effects on macOS. It does not host Audio Units.
- Controllers
- Around 69 controllers recognised on sight; MIDI Learn for anything else. Works fine from keyboard and trackpad alone.
- Sync
- MIDI clock in and out, plus Ableton Link over the network for phones, tablets and other rigs.
- Project files
- Plain text, readable today, readable in twenty years, and diffable in git.
Go deeper
The rest, one page at a time
This is a big instrument, so the tour below goes room by room. Each room says what ships today and where the work is still going.
The instrument
Samples, step sequencer, piano-roll, scenes and the edit-while-it-plays model.
The synth
Ten engines under one component voice, a morphing filter and character of its own.
Sounds
534 factory presets, your own FX-chain presets, and example sets to take apart.
Effects & master
Thirty effects and a master bus that leaves the room already loud and safe.
Modulation
Wire any source to almost any parameter, so nothing has to stay still.
DJ controls
Four editable decks, a full mixer, cues, loops, warp and performance FX.
Mapping
Around 69 controllers known on sight, honest about how well each is supported.
iPad / OSC
Turn a tablet into an extra surface over a ready-made TouchOSC layout.
AI authoring
Describe a change in plain language and watch the set redraw itself.
Under the hood
The real-time Rust engine, the numbers, and the human-readable file format.
Own it
$149 once, five devices, offline. macOS-first, with the roadmap stated plainly.
Stability
How it holds up across a long set when there is no undo.
Coming from another tool? Compare LiveSet →
Pricing
Pay once and the app is yours. The first twelve months bring updates with new features and fixes, and after that your build keeps running for as long as your Mac does. A renewal buys newer builds. It does not buy back the right to use the ones you already have.
- Pay once. No subscription.
- Twelve months of updates from purchase.
- Up to five of your devices on one licence.
- Activates once online, then plays offline at every venue.
- macOS-first, Apple Silicon native.
FAQ
Questions about LiveSet
What is LiveSet?
A studio DAW will let you play live, and it shows. LiveSet is built the other way round. You build a set from synth and sample tracks, wire scenes that launch on the bar, and then play it while every part of it stays open to change. It moves through three modes, compose, prepare and perform, with no export step between them, so the set you composed on Tuesday is the set you play on Friday.
What does "edit the track while it plays" mean?
Most live-electronic setups play finished material: a file, a stem, a pre-rendered clip. LiveSet keeps the whole set editable while it runs. You can sweep a filter cutoff for the next forty minutes, mute the kick on bar 31 and bring it back on bar 33, drop in a chord you wrote two days ago, or crossfade to a second deck. The set is played from its parts, so an edit during a gig costs you nothing to undo.
What platform does it run on, and what does it cost?
It is macOS-first and Apple Silicon native (M1 to M4); Intel Macs work under Rosetta for studio use. It is $149 for a perpetual licence, pay once and the app is yours, with twelve months of updates from purchase and up to five of your own devices on one licence. It activates once online, then plays offline at every venue.
Which controllers work with it?
LiveSet knows around 69 controllers on sight. Maschine, MPC, Push, APC, Launchpad, Elektron and more. Plug one in and its pads, faders and knobs already do something, with no Learn step; on several of them the pad LEDs light up to show scene state. Anything unlisted falls back to MIDI Learn on every knob, pad and fader, and it works fine from keyboard and trackpad alone.
Can I use my own plugins?
Yes. LiveSet hosts your VST3 and CLAP instruments and effects on macOS, so your own synths and effects run inside the set. VST3 or CLAP is the way in, it does not host Audio Units. It also has a built-in synth with ten engines under one voice and 534 factory presets if you want to travel light.
Will it hold up across a long set?
The engine is built for that, and it is worth knowing the shape of it: macOS on Apple Silicon, hosting VST3 and CLAP, with no Audio Units. The audio path is Rust: once it starts it does not allocate and makes no system call, and a bad value inside the engine is caught and muted rather than blasted at the room. On an M-series Mac a busy set, four decks, effects, dozens of modulation routes, uses under 3% of the audio time budget, so there is headroom to spare.
From the Atelier
Where to get it
LiveSet lives at liveset.app, where you can read the full spec and get in touch. If you have a harder problem on the enterprise side, the rest of Flexiana is for that.