How to use RePitch in Ableton Live

RePitch works in Ableton Live as a normal plug-in, but not through ARA, because Live does not host ARA plug-ins natively. So in Live, RePitch has to capture your vocal in real time before you can edit it. The alternative is a companion tool that hosts RePitch with ARA next to Live and opens the clip in it directly. This guide walks through both and what each one costs.

The short version

	Plug-in + realtime capture	Clip-based (null.audio EDIT)
Getting audio into RePitch	Play the part through in real time	Instant
Hearing edits in the Live mix	Yes, through the plug-in	Yes, through the EDIT Bridge
Effects after RePitch	Live, if RePitch is first on the track	Live, if the Bridge is first on the track
What changes the clip	Render or freeze the track, or leave RePitch running	Commit writes a new file; Revert restores
Cost	Your RePitch licence	Your RePitch licence + EDIT

Option 1: the RePitch plug-in with a realtime capture

This is how Synchro Arts describes RePitch in DAWs without ARA.

1. Put RePitch on the vocal track as an insert, first in the chain, ahead of EQ, compression and other effects.
2. Work in Arrangement View.
3. Press Capture in RePitch and play the section. RePitch records the audio while Live plays. Where you start and stop the capture decides how many regions you get in RePitch.
4. Edit pitch and timing in RePitch. You can start from one of its Macros, or make every change yourself. Live plays the track through RePitch, so you hear the edit in the mix.
5. When you're done, render or freeze the track to print the result, or leave RePitch running until the mixdown.

What it costs: the capture runs in real time. A three-minute vocal takes three minutes to get into RePitch, and you capture again whenever you swap or recut the take. In DAWs with ARA, RePitch reads the clip straight away; Live can only do the realtime capture.

Option 2: open the clip in RePitch from Live (null.audio EDIT)

null.audio EDIT runs the ARA host that Live doesn't have, next to Live, and connects it to your Arrangement clips. Your RePitch licence stays the editor.

1. Put the null.audio EDIT Bridge first on the vocal track, ahead of your vocal chain.
2. Choose RePitch in the EDITOR menu on the EDIT panel.
3. Select the clip in Arrangement View and press EDIT. The clip opens in RePitch with no capture.
4. Press play in Live. The Bridge plays your edit with the rest of the mix, in real time, and through every effect after it.
5. Press Commit. Only the edited audio goes back to Arrangement View as a new file; your vocal chain stays live on the track. Revert puts the original clip back.

What it costs: EDIT is a separate purchase, and you still need your own RePitch licence. It works in Arrangement View, on one clip at a time, with Ableton Live 12.3 or later on macOS or Windows. We test it with RePitch 2. The EDIT guide shows each step with screenshots.

Which one should you use?

• One vocal, tuned once: the plug-in with a capture is fine if the realtime pass doesn't bother you.
• Many takes, many sessions, and you want to hear every edit in the mix without capturing: that's the case EDIT was built for.

If you also align doubles with VocAlign, ALIGN does the same for VocAlign: set the Guide and up to eight Dubs in Live, and VocAlign opens with all of them.

Why Live works this way

RePitch's instant, clip-aware mode in other DAWs comes from ARA (Audio Random Access): the host hands the plug-in the audio and the timeline directly. Live does not implement ARA, and users have been asking for it on the Ableton forum for years. The background is in Does Ableton Live support ARA?, and there's a sourced list of which DAWs support ARA.