Sitting on the Fence - Push or Maschine

[panten]

To be honest I have a feeling that it's less cynical than that and more intrinsic to Ableton's audio and midi architecture. How do you route audio to a midi track and vice versa. Apparently you can use a side-chain trick but it seems a bit of a hack.
I think it would require a lot of work and rewriting for them to make it work properly.

Look at the way the M4L Granulator or FXPansion Geist's external sampling works. For the MIDI track you need a companion Audio track to feed the audio through. Which works well, I've even created my own M4L device which feeds the audio buffer to a MIDI track with a sample chopping device. It feels really inelegant tho.

I think I would be happy enough if Ableton enabled; transient threshold, adding/deleting warp markers, slicing to new midi track & start/end marker control from Push. This would be enough to be able to get some rudimentary real-time sound design. Especially if you create some personal slicing presents to how you like to work.

How hard can that be? *cue laughter*

[delicioso]

To be honest I have a feeling that it's less cynical than that and more intrinsic to Ableton's audio and midi architecture. How do you route audio to a midi track and vice versa. Apparently you can use a side-chain trick but it seems a bit of a hack.
I think it would require a lot of work and rewriting for them to make it work properly.

But Live 9 IS a rewrite, which was necessary to accomodate features like realtime clip automation. I'm not sure I would buy the theory that those things were just too hard to accomplish during the four years they had to rewrite the software and design Push. Maybe Ableton did underestimate "how powerful and creative a process sampling straight to pads or slicing using a controller can be".

[yur2die4]

Interesting idea. It is too bad they already used the name 'Sampler'.

I think the easier way to head into that realm would be to make Simpler II and Sampler II. these would have Audio in, and sampling either one into a chromatic instrument, or sampling on individual keys. And then all the current features. Maybe 'time stretch' since that seems to be requested a lot.

For the moment however, this is not real.
(Also, is it possible to make a device that only records a sample, then you hit One button to have the sample sent to either a drum rack or instance of Simpler in a new track?

[delicioso]

Watch Novation drop a bomb right after the Push is released with an inexpensive samplist-centric Live controller with a smaller form factor.

[yur2die4]

I'd shit my pants if they made a Seth McMillen style qwerty/midi.

I'd be shitting all the way to the music store.

[delicioso]

The more I think about it, I doubt Ableton has a separate controller up their sleeve with a focus on hands-on sampling around Drum Racks. They would have included those features in the Push if they realized how useful that can be, and it would have caused a big disruption in the market. They missed out on an opportunity here.

[Evengy]

i think there will be many remote control scripts or ableton will bring more functions with updates.

[delicioso]

Perhaps. But hoping for third party hacks and workarounds or software updates that will add features that the hardware was not designed for is less than ideal.

[jlgrimes]

I was almost completely sold on the forthcoming Push controller until I saw this video
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lnP1RM78 ... ata_player

It seems pretty comprehensive and is what I've been trying to do with my MPD32 since I got it.

The Maschine is really enticing, not only for the amazingly sensitive jelly pads but for that mouseless workflow that humbnumb/emptysea keeps banging on about. (unfortunately the more someone seems to go on about something the more I resent their viewpoint. Pigheadedness on my part)

The answer to my questions related to the Maschine Plugin for Live might just tip me in it's favour.

• Can the Plugin instance of Maschine within Live still record from any Audio source and assign to Pads in realtime while the audio is playing back?

• How many instances of Maschine are people able to run before things start to turn sluggish? is there a need to run multiple instances?

My comp specs:
i7-2600 @3.40GHz, Win7 64-Bit, 16Gig RAM

cheers

U sound like u got the computer.

Maschine is nice but maybe not 100% neccasary.

It does come with really good electronic drum sounds that also could be used in your Live Samplers.

Decent interface with good hardware control.

Really great pads.

Mpc 60 SP1200 emulator for adding extra grit to sounds.

Comes alive once you add Komplete. All or most of Komplete factory sounds are integrated into browser and it makes a great controller for the synths as well.

Has a decent LIVE controller mode.

Gripes:

1. A whole new piece of gear, u will need space for
2. While it integrates pretty good in Live, it isn't perfect and takes a bit to set up.
3. A lot of Maschine could be done with Drum Racks and a decent pad controller (albeit you would lose the vintage machine emulations but both Konatkt and Battery does this).
4. Doesn't 100% work like an mpc, but some of it is for the better but some of it is for the worse.


I think PUSH would be a better controller for controlling Live but it is only for Live while Maschine would work in any environment + standalone.

If you want a good standalone drum programmer plus sample slicer Maschine would be better but then again Live does a good deal of it. Just a different interface.

[cmreal04]

The more I think about it, I doubt Ableton has a separate controller up their sleeve with a focus on hands-on sampling around Drum Racks. They would have included those features in the Push if they realized how useful that can be, and it would have caused a big disruption in the market. They missed out on an opportunity here.

I would have broke out the credit card in a big way for that.

[panten]

(Also, is it possible to make a device that only records a sample, then you hit One button to have the sample sent to either a drum rack or instance of Simpler in a new track?

I started building 2 devices to try and understand what is possible to do with Max For Live.


They are properly ugly at the moment as they're very WIP and I'd never used Max for Live before attempting this.

the mo_Record device is on the Audio Track and the mo_sampleChopper is placed on each drumRack pad.

The X on mo_Record is midimappable so you can just do everything from the MIDI track. I felt like I was getting somewhere before I stumbled on a bug which prevented me from progressing any further. I'm waiting on a fix then I'll continue with it.
This method will work well for sampling straight to a drumRack pad but the chopping is destructive. Truncates the buffer when you hit crop.

Things I haven't figured out yet (as the whole Live Object Model is still a big mystery to me):
- How to recognise which DrumPad is currently selected.
- How to have, for instance a drum loop bar, chopped and spread across multiple drumRack pads.

Everything I have working with these 2 simple M4L devices can be done from my MPD32 at the moment. The part I was proud of was getting knobs to dial in the start/end points of the sample based on the length of the sample.

What is encouraging is that someone like me (who isn't very technically minded) can figure out something like this. If I keep plugging away at this I might get something useful out of it. If I do eventually have something that works well and is rock solid I might even release it but I don't have much faith in my M4L skillz.

[yur2die4]

That is pretty interesting! I can't wait to get my grubby fingers on m4l haha

This actually has me thinking about doing the same except in reverse now.

What if you have a module that simply 'listens' to audio as a sort of anchor like the first device.

But have the second device listen to that first device. And that second device has the record button.

Then you could have several instances all listening to the first.

I am sure there are better ideas out there. But this is exciting stuff! Especially considering Racks, and Push's ability to load them

[panten]

What if you have a module that simply 'listens' to audio as a sort of anchor like the first device.

I know this is possible because it's how Granulator works currently, I've just no idea exactly what's going on in that patch at the moment. I've opened it up a couple of times and it scares me.

This was my thought process when looking into this. There is a river between the two sides Audio & MIDI. How can I build a bridge between the two? I want my drumRacks but I also want to listen to Audio from any source. The way the 1st device works is by recording to a buffer~ (RAM). I couldn't figure out how to simply feed the Audio through to the MIDI channel and record it there so I do my recording on the audio track.
The MIDI patch (mo_sampleChopper) can then read that buffer~ but only once it's been recorded (I think, I need to look into continuously feeding the audio through) Now that the Audio is on the MIDI track which is in a patch on a drumRack pad you can do what you want with it. Truncate it etc then write it to a file on the hdd which can be played when you hit the pads.

My idea was that during the recording process and editing, the audio remains in the temporary record buffer. Then you can write to a more permanent file based on which pad is currently selected. I haven't worked out the best location for those permanent files yet (Current Project?)

Here's my late night scrappy notes.


In retrospect I think a more non-destructive workflow would be better. I'll probably look into that next and take this over to cycling74.com

*edit* Just read this thread. http://cycling74.com/forums/topic.php?id=45432 good stuff (apart from the bitter users of course)

[lo.key]

"But hoping for third party hacks and workarounds or software updates that will add features that the hardware was not designed for is less than ideal."

i disagree entirely. The ability to add custom hardware hacks is ENTIRELY the ideal.

[J0n35y]

And I still can't decide whether to stick with Maschine or make the jump! I have the cash to spend on Push (or something else) and I certainly know what kind of a difference this sort of thing can make (Maschine really is fantastic) but as I primarily use Live now I'm trying to decide whether I should offload Maschine and get myself Push. Sound on Sounds review certainly made it seem like a great choice.

I prefer the sounds of Native Instruments (Im not a Komplete owner - I guess that would be one of the big alternatives to Push) but as I work in Live these days then Push's integration would probably benefit me more. No rush to decide mind you, plenty of time to try things out.