The audio bridge between your creative tools. VOID Ableton Link Audio is a multi-host integration layer for Ableton Link Audio, the network audio extension shipped in Ableton Live 12.4. It lets you stream audio between Ableton Live, Max/MSP, TouchDesigner, VCV Rack and openFrameworks over the same local network — no virtual audio cable, no loopback, no specialized hardware. Beat-synced, sample-accurate, in stereo.

1. The Concept: Link extended to audio

Ableton Link has existed since 2016 and synchronizes tempo, beat and phase between hundreds of music applications on a local network. Link Audio is the major evolution of Link arriving with Ableton Live 12.4 (public release on May 5, 2026): the ability to stream not only the clock, but the audio itself between peers on the network.

Each peer can publish one or more named audio channels, and each peer can subscribe to channels from others. Audio buffers are timestamped against the shared beat position — receivers can therefore realign audio onto the common rhythmic grid, even when there is slight clock drift between machines.

VOID Ableton Link Audio brings this functionality to creative tools that don’t yet support it natively, and ensures they can all interoperate with each other and with Live.

2. Multi-Host Architecture: Five Environments

A single shared C++ layer (core/), deployed across the major creative environments. Every host benefits from the same architecture: LinkAudioManager as a ref-counted singleton, lock-free SPSC ring buffer for the audio chain, Link callback on a high-priority thread.

• Ableton Live 12.4+ — Native support. No plugin required. Select the source in a track’s “Audio From” menu, that’s it.
• Max/MSP — Two MSP externals, void.linkaudio.send~ (publishing) and void.linkaudio.receive~ (subscribing), shipped in a complete Max package (helpers, refpages, vignette).
• TouchDesigner — Two CHOPs, LinkAudioSend and LinkAudioReceive, with full state output via Info CHOP and Info DAT (traffic counters, peer list, Link timeline values).
• VCV Rack 2 — Two modules Void Link Audio Send and Void Link Audio Receive, multi-architecture (mac arm64, mac x64, win x64).
• openFrameworks — Addon ofxAbletonLinkAudio, distributed in its own repository with examples (sender, receiver, ping-pong).

3. Latency, Format, Timing

The Link Audio protocol transmits PCM audio as signed 16-bit integers, mono or stereo, with beat-position timestamps on the shared Link timeline. Performance measured on gigabit LAN with a standard switch:

• Sub-frame latency at 48 kHz — audio remains musically aligned even across different machines.
• Automatic peer discovery on the network via UDP multicast.
• Resilient reconnection: if a peer drops out, the channel is automatically re-established when it returns.
• Multiple simultaneous streams between several peers on the same network, with no configuration.

Each channel is limited to 1 or 2 voices (mono or stereo) per stream, in line with the current Ableton Link Audio API. Multichannel beyond stereo will require an upstream evolution at Ableton.

4. Typical use cases

• Multi-machine live performance — your Ableton Live sends its master to a TouchDesigner running on another laptop, which reacts visually to the audio in real time, with no audio interface between them.
• Interactive installation — a Raspberry Pi running openFrameworks publishes an audio stream captured from a sensor, a Max patch on another machine processes it, and the result returns to Live which plays it back.
• Hybrid studio setup — Live sends its drum bus to Max, which applies modular processing, and the return goes to VCV Rack for FM synthesis, all on the same machine or across two networked machines.
• Smartphone as wireless mic (coming, v0.3.0) — an Android phone publishes its mic input as Link Audio, your Ableton Live picks it up directly as a source.

Supported hosts in v0.1.0

Technical Specifications:

• Wire format: signed 16-bit PCM audio, mono or stereo
• Tested sample rate: 48 kHz
• Network: LAN UDP multicast (auto-discovery)
• OS: macOS 11+ (Apple Silicon + Intel) — Windows 10+ x64
• Compatibility: Ableton Live 12.4 and above
• License: GPL-2.0-or-later (open source) — see section below

Installation:

1. Download the ZIP for your host from the v0.1.0 release page.
2. Unzip and follow the README included in each ZIP (host-specific instructions).
3. For Ableton Live, no installation is required: Live 12.4+ supports Link Audio natively. Enable Link and Link Audio in Preferences.

Open Source — GPL-2.0-or-later

VOID Ableton Link Audio is fully open source, distributed under the GPL-2.0-or-later license. The complete source code is available on GitHub, including submodules and build tooling.

The project is built on Ableton Link, Ableton AG’s open source library, itself licensed under GPL-2.0-or-later. The GPL viral clause means that any binary statically linking Link must also be GPL — which is why VOID Ableton Link Audio is GPL too. An alternative commercial license for Link is available directly from Ableton (link-devs@ableton.com).

This implementation is independent and is not endorsed, certified or supported by Ableton. The “Ableton”, “Live” and “Link” trademarks belong to Ableton AG.