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 across hundreds of music applications on a local network. Link Audio is the major evolution of Link that arrived with Ableton Live 12.4 (public release on May 5, 2026): the ability to transmit 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 according to the shared beat position — receivers can therefore realign audio on the common rhythmic grid even with 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: Six Environments

A single shared C++ layer (core/), deployed across the main creative environments. Each 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 needed. Select the source in the “Audio From” menu of a track, that’s it.
• Max/MSP — Two MSP externals, void.linkaudio.send~ (publish) and void.linkaudio.receive~ (subscribe), shipped in a complete Max package (helpers, refpages, vignette).
• Pure Data (vanilla 0.56-2+) — Two externals, void.linkaudio.send~ and void.linkaudio.receive~, with help patches. To our knowledge, the first public Link Audio implementation on Pd vanilla. Multi-architecture (mac universal, win x64, linux x64, linux arm64).
• TouchDesigner — Two CHOPs, LinkAudioSend and LinkAudioReceive, with full state output on 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, linux x64, linux arm64).
• openFrameworks — Addon ofxAbletonLinkAudio, distributed in its own repository with examples (sender, receiver, ping-pong).

Since v0.3.0 (May 15, 2026), VCV Rack 2 and Pure Data are also available on Linux x86_64 and ARM64. Max/MSP and TouchDesigner remain Mac + Windows only because Cycling ’74 and Derivative don’t ship their editors for Linux.

3. VST3 / AU plugins for DAWs

For DAW users (Reaper, Bitwig, Logic Pro, Cubase, Studio One, FL Studio, Ableton Live, etc.), two companion plugins VoidLinkAudioSend and VoidLinkAudioReceive are available in VST3 (Mac + Win) and AU (Mac) formats. They bring the same inter-app and network audio routing functionality, integrated directly into the DAW workflow.

Distributed separately as pay-what-you-want on Gumroad. CLAP support planned for a future release.

4. Latency, Format, Timing

The Link Audio protocol transmits PCM audio as 16-bit signed integers, mono or stereo, with timestamps in beats 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 over the network via UDP multicast.
• Resilient reconnection: if a peer drops, the channel re-establishes automatically when it returns.
• Multiple simultaneous streams between multiple peers on the same network, no configuration required.

Channels are 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 from Ableton.

5. 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 the two.
• Network jam — a musician joins your session from their own laptop on the same Wi-Fi, you hear each other in tempo, each playing in their preferred tool (Live, Pure Data, Max, VCV Rack…).
• Inter-application audio routing — replaces BlackHole, Loopback, or VB-Cable for routing audio between applications on the same machine, with no virtual driver to install.
• Cross-platform sessions including Linux peers — a Linux machine running VCV Rack or Pure Data joins the same Link Audio session as Mac and Windows peers, sample-accurate, same tempo, same transport.
• Interactive installation — a Raspberry Pi running openFrameworks publishes an audio stream captured from a sensor, a Max patch on another machine processes it, the result returns to Live which broadcasts it.
• 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, v0.4.0) — an Android phone publishes its microphone over Link Audio, your Ableton Live hears it directly as a source.

Hosts supported in v0.3.0

Technical Specifications:

• Wire format: 16-bit signed 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 — Linux x86_64 / ARM64 (VCV Rack and Pure Data, tested on Ubuntu 22.04+ and Ubuntu 24.04+)
• Compatibility: Ableton Live 12.4 and above
• License: GPL-2.0-or-later (open source) — see section below

Download and install:

Two options to get VOID Ableton Link Audio:

• Pre-built bundle on Gumroad (pay-what-you-want, free OK) — easy install, all-in-one:
  • Connectors (Max, Pure Data, TouchDesigner, VCV Rack, openFrameworks): structurevoid.gumroad.com/l/voidlinkaudio-connectors
  • VST3 / AU plugins for DAWs: structurevoid.gumroad.com/l/voidlinkaudio-vst
• Individual per-host binaries on GitHub Releases — for advanced users: v0.3.0 release page.

1. Download the bundle or the ZIP for your host of choice.
2. Unzip and follow the included README (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, with submodules and build tooling included.

The project is built on top of Ableton Link, the open-source library by Ableton AG, itself under GPL-2.0-or-later. The viral GPL clause means any binary that statically links Link must also be GPL — which is why VOID Ableton Link Audio is GPL as well. 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 trademarks “Ableton”, “Live”, and “Link” belong to Ableton AG.