What about complex time signatures like 7/8 or 5/4?

All time signatures are supported. Unableton reads the full time signature data from the .als file — including irregular meters like 7/8, 5/4, and 11/16 — and encodes them correctly in the output MIDI file.

Guide

How to Convert Ableton Markers and Time Signatures to MIDI

Q: Are marker names preserved when converting?

Yes. Unableton extracts both the position and the name of every marker in your Ableton session. When you import the MIDI file into Pro Tools or Logic, your markers arrive with their original names intact — verse, chorus, cue 12, whatever you called them.

Updated May 2026 · 4 min read · Works with Live 8 through Live 12

What gets lost when you leave Ableton

Ableton is where a lot of music starts — writing, sketching, building arrangements. But when the session moves downstream to a mixer, a film editor, or a post-production suite running Pro Tools, two things get left behind every single time: markers and time signatures.

Markers in Ableton are session navigation points — intro, verse, pre-chorus, chorus, bridge, scene A, cue 12, whatever your labeling system is. In a film score or a complex arrangement, a session might have 100+ markers. They're how you tell the mixer "the big moment is here" or "this is where the edit lands." When you export stems or hand off the project, every single one of them is gone. Pro Tools doesn't read Ableton markers. There's no export. There's no bridge. They simply vanish.

Time signature changes are equally invisible on the other side of a DAW handoff. An Ableton session that moves between 4/4, 7/8, and 5/4 carries all that information inside the .als file — but there's no native way to get it out. The receiving engineer opens Pro Tools to a blank tempo track and has to reconstruct the entire grid from scratch, bar by bar.

The real cost: A 100-marker session can take 3–5 hours to recreate manually in Pro Tools. For sessions with complex meter changes, add another hour. None of this is creative work — it's pure transcription of data that already exists and is simply trapped in the wrong file format.

This isn't a niche problem. It affects every film composer handing off to a music editor. Every producer moving a session from demo to mix. Every engineer receiving an Ableton project and needing to build out the session in a different DAW. The workaround is always the same: do it by hand.

The manual workaround

When engineers need to move Ableton markers and time signatures to Pro Tools, here's what they actually do:

manual process — markers + time signatures

Open the Ableton session. Go through every marker — note its name, bar position, and beat offset. For a 100-marker session, this is a spreadsheet job.
Open Pro Tools. In the Markers ruler, manually create each marker one at a time: name it, position it, confirm. Repeat 100 times.
Back in Ableton, open the time signature section of the arrangement. Write down every time signature change — the meter and the bar it lands on.
In Pro Tools, open the Time Signature Change dialog. Enter each change individually. 7/8 at bar 17, 4/4 at bar 25, 5/4 at bar 43. Every one, manually.
Spot-check the grid against a bounce or visual reference. Fix anything that's off by a beat.
Redo this for every revision to the Ableton session.

There's no copy-paste. No export. No shortcut. And if the Ableton session gets revised — new markers added, a time signature tweaked — you do it again from scratch.

The fix: Unableton

Unableton reads your .als file and outputs a MIDI file with all markers, time signature changes, and tempo changes preserved — formatted for import into any major DAW.

Pro Tools Logic Pro Reaper Studio One Cubase Nuendo

Upload your .als file — drag it onto the converter. No account, no signup.

Get the MIDI file — Unableton extracts every marker (with its name), every time signature change, and every tempo event into a single MIDI file.

Import into your DAW — drop the MIDI file into Pro Tools, Logic, or Reaper. Markers, time signatures, and tempo map all land in the right places.

What used to take 3–5 hours of transcription work takes 30 seconds. And when the Ableton session gets revised, you run it again instead of starting over.

Convert your .als file now

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Frequently asked questions

Are marker names preserved?

Yes. Unableton reads both the position and the name of every marker in your Ableton session. When you import the MIDI file into Pro Tools or Logic, your markers arrive with their original names intact — verse, chorus, cue 12, whatever you called them.

What about complex time signatures like 7/8?

All time signatures are supported, including irregular meters. Unableton reads the full time signature data from the .als file — 7/8, 5/4, 11/16, and anything else Ableton supports — and encodes them correctly in the MIDI output.

Does it handle multiple time signature changes in one session?

Yes. Every time signature change in your session is preserved, in order. If your session moves from 4/4 to 6/8 at bar 17, then to 5/4 at bar 43, all three sections are encoded in the MIDI output at the correct positions.

Which DAWs can import the MIDI file?

Any DAW that reads standard MIDI files with tempo and time signature events: Pro Tools, Logic Pro, Reaper, Studio One, Cubase, Nuendo, and Bitwig. The MIDI file uses the standard format that all major DAWs have supported for decades.