Ableton Forum

JPacker555 wrote:I think fishmonkey is highlighting the most important things for me here, which are - the response is inconsistent and therefore it is not reliable as an instrument; it seems to be dependent on technique, and those playing in a staccato/percussive manner won't experience it; what stands out the most is, Push 1 does not have this issue! As somebody who enjoys livelooping, having to frequently rerecord passages can really mess up the flow of your song, so this is why its most disappointing.

ObtuseMoose wrote:

fishmonkey wrote:basically the amount of pressure applied should map to the same velocity if your finger is already resting on the pad, compared to if you strike the pad from a distance.

Maybe, maybe not. It depends on exactly how they're doing that mapping.

A moving finger striking a pad has kinetic energy and inertia and will exert a greater force for a brief time than a finger just resting on the pad and increasing the pressure with muscles.

Think of the different reactions you'd have if I dropped a 10 pound weight on your foot from a height of 3 feet versus gently laying the same weight on your foot. The ultimate pressure is the same, but there's an initial impulse of much greater pressure in the dropped case because of the kinetic energy and inertia of the moving weight and your non-moving foot.

The way the pressure changes over time will also be different in each case. In the case of a finger strike, the pressure will increase much more quickly than in the case of a stationary finger increasing pressure. In other words, the strike case has a much shorter attack time.

Finally, the pads on the Push are made of some sort of elastic (springy) material, so there is likely to be some bouncing or oscillation of the sensed pressure until it settles down to a more or less stable value. This oscillation will likely be greater in the case of the rapid rise of pressure due to the finger strike than the slower rise of pressure of the stationary finger.

My guess is that it's this elasticity of the pads that is causing the problem. The timing of when they sample the pressure may be very critical, and variations in finger size and playing style could be difficult to account for, resulting in some people having no trouble at all while others find the device virtually unusable.

As to why Push 1 didn't seem to have this problem, I can only speculate that perhaps the pad material had slightly different properties, or maybe the firmware had more time to sense and process the pad signals.

All just guesses on my part, but I can see how this could be a difficult problem to solve.

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Moose

Langley Bremer wrote:There still seems to be no reaction from the developers. So it really becomes less likely to be fixed in Firmware right?

Langley Bremer wrote:The thing is, if there is no one answering who is involved, how can we know. At the Moment, while still a great piece of gear it´s not usable for me as midi keyboard replacement because of the strange response. For 700 bucks it would be quite nice, if at least someone would tell if this could and will be fixed soon. Don´t understand the good reviews about the pads either. Why do the pads need so much inital force to react? They even loose hold and retrigger sometimes if i reduce a little bit of pressure.