Ableton Live is not designed for interchange. It stores tempo automation, time signature changes, and locators inside a proprietary .als binary — and it has no native export for any of it. If you've ever tried to hand a session to a mixer in Pro Tools, you know what happens next.
Pro Tools, Logic Pro, Reaper, Studio One, and Cubase all read tempo maps through MIDI. The standard approach is to drop a MIDI file on track 1 with tempo events embedded, then import it into the new session. Ableton doesn't generate this file. It never has.
The result: every DAW transfer that involves tempo automation requires you to rebuild the tempo map by hand. For a straight 120 BPM track that's five seconds of work. For a film score with 80 tempo changes, it's half a day — if you're lucky enough to have written down every BPM value and bar position.
The real cost: Film composers and mixing engineers report spending 2–4 hours per session manually recreating tempo maps when handing off Ableton projects. Markers are lost entirely — there's no export path for those at all.
This is a known, longstanding limitation. Threads from 2014 on Gearslutz, VI-Control, and the Ableton forum are still getting replies in 2024. The advice hasn't changed: "do it manually." That advice is wrong, but it's been the only option.
Here's what people actually do when they need to move an Ableton session to Pro Tools:
This process is tedious at best. At worst — if your session has dense automation or if you didn't document tempo values as you wrote — you're guessing. The manual approach also doesn't scale: a 90-minute film score with 400 tempo changes isn't a half-day job, it's a week.
Unableton reads your .als file directly and outputs a MIDI file containing your complete tempo map — all tempo changes, time signature changes, and locators — formatted for import into any major DAW.
Upload your .als file — drag it onto the converter. No account, no signup. It works locally from your browser.
Get the MIDI file — Unableton parses the session and builds a MIDI file with all tempo events embedded.
Import into your DAW — drop the MIDI file into Pro Tools, Logic, or Reaper. The tempo map is applied automatically.
What used to take 2–4 hours takes 30 seconds. And unlike the manual approach, you don't lose markers.
Free during beta. Runs locally in your browser — files never leave your device.
Drop your .als file here
or click to browse · runs locally in your browser
Parsing tempo map...
Need the full converter with DAW import instructions?
Open Full Converter →.als files from Ableton Live 8 through Live 12. The format has been stable for over a decade — older projects work just fine..als file is processed server-side and not stored after conversion. Only tempo and time signature metadata is read — your audio clips, MIDI notes, plugin settings, and samples are never touched.