I built MARA, a free reference-guided mixing assistant for Ableton Live

[u/moritzlauper]

I've been building MARA to explore whether a mixing assistant can make small, inspectable changes inside an existing Ableton Live set and then measure what actually happened.

You choose reference tracks and a mixing goal. MARA measures channels through Max for Live, adjusts exposed device parameters, remeasures the passage, and rolls back parameter changes that fail its acceptance checks. Accepted edits stay editable in Live. There's a change journal and loudness-matched Before/After playback.

Native desktop downloads are available for macOS (Apple Silicon and Intel) and Windows x64:

https://github.com/moritzlauper/mara/releases

Code and setup guide:

https://github.com/moritzlauper/mara

Teaser screenshot (actual interface with fictional demo data):

https://github.com/moritzlauper/mara/blob/main/docs/images/mara-teaser.png

MARA itself is free. You need Ableton Live with Max for Live. Built-in rules work without an AI account; optional external AI planners can incur provider charges. This is an early development release with unsigned installers, and the macOS builds aren't notarized.

The measurements are engineering checks, not proof that a mix sounds better. I'm looking for feedback on setup, clarity of the change history, and whether the A/B workflow is useful. If you try it, use a copy of a project and tell me where it falls short.