APC Mini is a piece of shit. New Spam free thread.

Discuss music production with Ableton Live.
Machinesworking
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Re: APC Mini is a piece of shit. New Spam free thread.

Post by Machinesworking » Thu Feb 19, 2015 7:46 am

I remember looking at the new MPK2 49-61key manual and seeing nothing about any way to control it beyond it's Live mappings. This was a big deal breaker for me. Novation have some issues, but I decided to go with the last Remote SL MKII instead and honestly so far I'm happy, it solves a lot of the Remote SL problems, and works as a generic MID controller just fine. I like the build quality of the AKAI knobs and sliders etc. but I still think Novation have a better product, especially after hearing your horror stories Tom! :x

Pretty much between the SL MKII, the coming Launchpad Pro, and Beatstep Pro, I think that will be it for me controller wise for a while. 8)

^^^ Basically a Launchpad and Beatstep Pro combo has the same flexibility MIDI making etc. wise that the SL MKII has in that I don't have to use generic DAW mappings.

Buleriachk
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Re: APC Mini is a piece of shit. New Spam free thread.

Post by Buleriachk » Thu Feb 19, 2015 5:42 pm

ivory_13 wrote::twisted:
I have owned one for 2 hours and have embarrassingly assumed the controller would have a 'note player' scene or function that would enable you to play instrumentation. Very disappointing.
That, too, of course. I just wanted to play clips in banks, myself, but they could have included this functionality as well. Easily.

electrofux2007
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Re: APC Mini is a piece of shit. New Spam free thread.

Post by electrofux2007 » Fri Feb 20, 2015 3:33 pm

To get a response on the Akai whether a button is on or off you need some form of bidirectional connection between Live and the Akai. Live needs to send the correct Note Off messages to the Akai. An editor wouldnt really help because this doesnt make Live send anything. Having the buttons behave like toggles wouldnt help either as the buttons wouldnt know the state of your current session on their own. You need an individual Midi Remote Script that does what you want. That is pretty much the same as with the Launchpad or any other unit that has lights. (only that the Launchpads specificatione seems to be more open).

I don't know anything about the initialization issue but i assume the Akai is receiving something from somewhere that triggers this. But without a full Midi Implementations one could only connect a Midi Monitor and check what is causing an initialization process. How does it behave if you connect it to a different DAW?

TomViolenz
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Re: APC Mini is a piece of shit. New Spam free thread.

Post by TomViolenz » Fri Feb 20, 2015 3:43 pm

electrofux2007 wrote:To get a response on the Akai whether a button is on or off you need some form of bidirectional connection between Live and the Akai. Live needs to send the correct Note Off messages to the Akai. An editor wouldnt really help because this doesnt make Live send anything. Having the buttons behave like toggles wouldnt help either as the buttons wouldnt know the state of your current session on their own. You need an individual Midi Remote Script that does what you want. That is pretty much the same as with the Launchpad or any other unit that has lights. (only that the Launchpads specificatione seems to be more open).
Bomes can do it too.
And no it's not the same as with the Launchpad, since Automap takes care of the light feedback and toggle/gate/trigger selection on the Launchpad.

Also be warned! if you use the midi out channel of the APC Mini, for instance to route it to Bomes in order to implement light update and have a sufficiently complex set, Live goes haywire. Constantly trying to initialize the Midi ports. Which in effect makes Live unusable.

In principle it's not so difficult to implement light feedback (if you own Bomes MT, like I do) but the Midi interface in that thing seems to be fucked up.
And that is from factory, so probably in all of them, since I have tried two different ones with the same result.

The thread title is certainly chosen aptly!

electrofux2007
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Re: APC Mini is a piece of shit. New Spam free thread.

Post by electrofux2007 » Fri Feb 20, 2015 3:51 pm

TomViolenz wrote:
electrofux2007 wrote:To get a response on the Akai whether a button is on or off you need some form of bidirectional connection between Live and the Akai. Live needs to send the correct Note Off messages to the Akai. An editor wouldnt really help because this doesnt make Live send anything. Having the buttons behave like toggles wouldnt help either as the buttons wouldnt know the state of your current session on their own. You need an individual Midi Remote Script that does what you want. That is pretty much the same as with the Launchpad or any other unit that has lights. (only that the Launchpads specificatione seems to be more open).
Bomes can do it too.
And no it's not the same as with the Launchpad, since Automap takes care of the light feedback and toggle/gate/trigger selection on the Launchpad.

Also be warned! if you use the midi out channel of the APC Mini, for instance to route it to Bomes in order to implement light update and have a sufficiently complex set, Live goes haywire. Constantly trying to initialize the Midi ports. Which in effect makes Live unusable.

In principle it's not so difficult to implement light feedback (if you own Bomes MT, like I do) but the Midi interface in that thing seems to be fucked up.
And that is from factory, so probably in all of them, since I have tried two different ones with the same result.

The thread title is certainly chosen aptly!
Yes, bomes can light up your buttons, in fact any Midi Software can do that because whenever the right Midi command is sent to the Akai it reacts on it. But in order to have it work consistenly, meaning you plug in the Akai (everything is not lit up), start up your last Live Set and everything lights up as you left it last time, you need a Midi Remote Script. Bome doesnt help in that case as it doesnt receive any information from live via the standard Midi Maping.
Last edited by electrofux2007 on Fri Feb 20, 2015 4:03 pm, edited 1 time in total.

TomViolenz
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Re: APC Mini is a piece of shit. New Spam free thread.

Post by TomViolenz » Fri Feb 20, 2015 4:01 pm

electrofux2007 wrote:
TomViolenz wrote:
electrofux2007 wrote:To get a response on the Akai whether a button is on or off you need some form of bidirectional connection between Live and the Akai. Live needs to send the correct Note Off messages to the Akai. An editor wouldnt really help because this doesnt make Live send anything. Having the buttons behave like toggles wouldnt help either as the buttons wouldnt know the state of your current session on their own. You need an individual Midi Remote Script that does what you want. That is pretty much the same as with the Launchpad or any other unit that has lights. (only that the Launchpads specificatione seems to be more open).
Bomes can do it too.
And no it's not the same as with the Launchpad, since Automap takes care of the light feedback and toggle/gate/trigger selection on the Launchpad.

Also be warned! if you use the midi out channel of the APC Mini, for instance to route it to Bomes in order to implement light update and have a sufficiently complex set, Live goes haywire. Constantly trying to initialize the Midi ports. Which in effect makes Live unusable.

In principle it's not so difficult to implement light feedback (if you own Bomes MT, like I do) but the Midi interface in that thing seems to be fucked up.
And that is from factory, so probably in all of them, since I have tried two different ones with the same result.

The thread title is certainly chosen aptly!
Yes, bomes can do can light up your buttons, in fact any Midi Software can do that because whenever the right Midi command is sent to the Akai it reacts on it. But in order to have it work consistenly, meaning you plug in the Akai (everything is not lit up), start up your last Live Set and everything lights up as you left it last time, you need a Midi Remote Script. Bome doesnt help in that case as it doesnt receive any information from live via the standard Midi Maping.
That is true, but really since the thing has a messed up Midi interface anyways the point is mute.
(BTW the same thing with constatly initializing the ports happened when I used it with the supplied script.
So it's nothing confined to Bomes or anything.)
And I have programmed quite a few Midi controllers in my time, so I kinda know what I'm doing, in case you assumed it was my incompetence leading to this result. ;-)

The thing is, the set must be complex, with lots of Midi assignements on every track before the problem shows up. That's why I assume most people, who own it don't encounter it, since this device is mostly marketed at the beginners. At least that's how I explain to myself, why I don't hear more complaints about this specfic (pretty crippling) flaw of the APC Mini.

BTW I also narrowed it down to the Midi port coming from Live, since I use the APC Mini sucessfully with Bomes as long as I just receive Midi from the APC Mini in Bomes and then send the Midi from there to Live. As soon as I try to read the output from Live back into Bomes it goes crazy.

While doing the same with my K2 or Maschine leads to no such issues.

electrofux2007
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Re: APC Mini is a piece of shit. New Spam free thread.

Post by electrofux2007 » Fri Feb 20, 2015 4:11 pm

It sounds either like the Midi Interface is in fact fubarred or some Midi Loop is still lurking around somewhere. What makes me wonder is that it shouldnt make any difference how many mappings you have made because they are all inbound (meaning going into live) and the akai only acts as a sender when you press anything (leaving out any bomes setup here), so a potential overflow shouldn't happen. I would plug a Midi Monitor between the Akais Midi ports and observe what is happening here. Are you on a PC? Then check out Midi OX which helped me alot on similar issues. Monitor what is coming from Live through the Out ports that makes the system go haywire (there shouldnt actually come anything out if i am right).

TomViolenz
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Re: APC Mini is a piece of shit. New Spam free thread.

Post by TomViolenz » Fri Feb 20, 2015 4:28 pm

electrofux2007 wrote:It sounds either like the Midi Interface is in fact fubarred or some Midi Loop is still lurking around somewhere. What makes me wonder is that it shouldnt make any difference how many mappings you have made because they are all inbound (meaning going into live) and the akai only acts as a sender when you press anything (leaving out any bomes setup here), so a potential overflow shouldn't happen. I would plug a Midi Monitor between the Akais Midi ports and observe what is happening here. Are you on a PC? Then check out Midi OX which helped me alot on similar issues. Monitor what is coming from Live through the Out ports that makes the system go haywire (there shouldnt actually come anything out if i am right).
I always just used the Midi monitor capability from Bomes, but that is obviously not sufficient to see these kinda issues. I'm on OSX, any suggestions for a (free) Midi monitor on Mac?!

S4racen
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Re: APC Mini is a piece of shit. New Spam free thread.

Post by S4racen » Fri Feb 20, 2015 4:45 pm

http://www.snoize.com/MIDIMonitor/

Is what i use, simple and effective...

Cheers
D

TomViolenz
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Re: APC Mini is a piece of shit. New Spam free thread.

Post by TomViolenz » Fri Feb 20, 2015 5:04 pm

S4racen wrote:http://www.snoize.com/MIDIMonitor/

Is what i use, simple and effective...

Cheers
D
8)
Thanks appreciated!

I'll report back what I found out about the APC Mini later. Gonna be busy over the we though

TomViolenz
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Re: APC Mini is a piece of shit. New Spam free thread.

Post by TomViolenz » Fri Feb 20, 2015 5:18 pm

Hm, the program says I have an old Midi driver, so it can't listen to programs. (only devices)

I'm still on Mavericks so that may be it. But I'm a little hesitant to exchange that driver only for that. Who knows what that might break 8O

I'm pretty happy with my set-up, even if the lights only update on the APC Mini because I let Bomes update them when I press a button (so no updates as the Midi is playing back), breaking this set up for something like that would REALLY suck.

What'd you guys think, is just updating the OSX Midi driver without risk?!

electrofux2007
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Re: APC Mini is a piece of shit. New Spam free thread.

Post by electrofux2007 » Fri Feb 20, 2015 6:18 pm

TomViolenz wrote:Hm, the program says I have an old Midi driver, so it can't listen to programs. (only devices)

I'm still on Mavericks so that may be it. But I'm a little hesitant to exchange that driver only for that. Who knows what that might break 8O

I'm pretty happy with my set-up, even if the lights only update on the APC Mini because I let Bomes update them when I press a button (so no updates as the Midi is playing back), breaking this set up for something like that would REALLY suck.

What'd you guys think, is just updating the OSX Midi driver without risk?!
I would take the Akai to someone with the latest OS and check if it works better there before changing anything.

TomViolenz
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Re: APC Mini is a piece of shit. New Spam free thread.

Post by TomViolenz » Sat Feb 21, 2015 2:44 pm

yeah, I'm hesitant too. Unfortunately I don't know anyone with Yosemity AND Live.

I will just try to find out what I can with the program as it works now and then just leave it at that.

Light updating while playing back the Midi would be nice I guess, but it is really not required for my purposes.

So I'm gonna play it safe on this one 8)

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Re: APC Mini is a piece of shit. New Spam free thread.

Post by Buleriachk » Tue Feb 24, 2015 5:05 pm

APC Mini and APC Key 25 still don't have Session Overview so users can use sets they've organized into banks.

WTF? These devices could be so good, but right now they suck big time....

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Re: APC Mini is a piece of shit. New Spam free thread.

Post by Buleriachk » Wed Feb 25, 2015 5:15 pm

Bumpity bump!

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