Ableton Forum

Im looking for some feedback on the new device Beatseeker. I am curious if it requires a lot of cpu power? I have a pretty large setup that is pushing the limits of my computer currently.

Also can it monitor through the audio track while the track is not active/muted? I would be monitoring various drum machines as the source of tempo and those output on their own track already. Thanks!

- Your CPU shouldn't notice this device, it's very efficient. On my 2ghz i7 it uses something like 2 percent (Live's cpu monitor).
- As soon as Beatseeker receives the source audio, you can do what ever you want with your source track output.

Cool just what I was hoping to hear

Hi

Has anybody gathered some experience with this Beatseeker device?
I am very interested but apart from the promotional youtube-video, where the drummer never changes the tempo, I can't find any reviews or video demos of it. Does it really work? Is there a free demo available for trying out by myself?

It just seems a bit "twilight" that in the promo video it isn't shown if this device actually works... I mean, they claim a lot, but show off nothing. Kind of suspicious...

I was a little hesitant about it but it really does work very well. I'm syncing Live to my Octatrack this way. It actually provides better sync than slaving Live to external midi clock from the Octatrack. Keep in mind, if you are using Push with a footpedal to record, it breaks this functionality since Beatseeker uses the footpedal to tell Live to start playing. Beat seeker may be the best plugin I've ever bought because it does exactly what it says it does.

Ok, so I bought it and tried it out.
CPU usage went from 20% (witouth the Beatseeker) up to 60% while it was in "tempo recognize mode". Yay!
Of course, when it's not in "tempo recognize mode" CPU usage drops down to around 20%, according to as it's advertised. But then again, the device doesn't do anything in this mode... so yeah, I will save any further words but I hope this post can prevent someone else from stepping into this advertisement-trap.

It sounds like somethings not right, I have it in a very full high CPU set and it only adds a couple percentage points. I have noticed in that same set a little weirdness with the tempo changes when you write a BPM in the scene name. I'm not completely finished testing it because I've been getting ready for a performance but in the other sets I've tried it in it didn't seem to have a lot of CPU load.

Zyko1 wrote:Ok, so I bought it and tried it out.
CPU usage went from 20% (witouth the Beatseeker) up to 60% while it was in "tempo recognize mode". Yay!
Of course, when it's not in "tempo recognize mode" CPU usage drops down to around 20%, according to as it's advertised. But then again, the device doesn't do anything in this mode... so yeah, I will save any further words but I hope this post can prevent someone else from stepping into this advertisement-trap.

hi Zyko1,
It does sound like something isn't right. CPU load is generally low, a couple of percent. As well as overseeing the development and doing extensive tests, we had it runnning in a rehearsal room the other day with a dynamic mic and it worked perfectly.

do you want to get in touch to sort it out? In the first instance, right-click the device, choose 'open max window' and see if there's any messages there.

Andrew

Hi Andrew

Thank you for your reply. I will look into it if there are any messages and will give the BeatSeeker another try and provide feedback. Could take some time until I find time to do that.

Greetings

will it be possible to sync ableton properly to traktor with this device on windows?

Timbeaux wrote:will it be possible to sync ableton properly to traktor with this device on windows?

I don;t think I know enough about Traktor to say. What's the intended use ?

It can sync to an external pulse (provided this pulse is roughly steady) - think eg a four to the floor slowly varying drum machine. So if Traktor is playing mixes, you could feed this signal in (maybe via soundflower or routing the audio in manually), and sync Ableton to the source. This works well for mixes - Live can sync to iTunes, quicktime, or an external iPod if you route the audio in. In development, I've tested a lot this way.