The APC 40 experience, and bugs..

[sdmiddleton]

Hi y'all,

Just bagged the elephant at last and yes its very cool...They are missing a beat though...the main one that the endless roataries don't double as buttons, you can do more with a Behringer BCF2000 than with these ones, sad... All that aside...

I have noticed a couple of bugs, sometimes the track control LEDs stop working although they still send the command to Live. Also if you stop a clip in one bank of clips then before the track has stopped in that channel, once you've moved to the other bank the light is still flashing on the new bank even after the clip has stopped...

So, is this an Ableton issue that will be fixed with Live updates or does anyone know if AKAI has its own firmware updater, cos it doesn't look like it from their website????

Cheers all.!!

[stapum]

the main one that the endless roataries don't double as buttons

You have 64 encoders not just 8! If you press shift and press the red numbers on device control you gain access to the other encoders.
Hope that helps

Take care.

[sdmiddleton]

Hello,

Thanks for getting back on that one...

However its not the Device Control Section that has 64 banks i was talking about, its the Track control section above, that was temperamental it simply wasn't corresponding to the pan commands, and i definitely had it on the correct bank and not looking at the Send Pots...

But also another thing i've noticed is that the device on/off button doesn't do its job properly...Its supposed to turn on or off whichever device is currently highlighted once you've scrolled through to it using the left right buttons (3 and 4), but it always turns On/off the first device in the chain, not the one highlighted?? This surely isn't correct??

So again, lets say it isn't something i'm doing wrong, and if so please someone shed the light, otherwise who should be fixing this, Abes or Akai??

Thanks again in advance!!!

[Tone Deft]

the device on/off follows the blue hand. you can have a device highlighted but not have the blue hand on it. just tried it.

haven't seen the other symptoms.

[stapum]

i've tryed it and it follows the blue hand...

[sdmiddleton]

Hmmm, thats strange, my blue hand moves with the left right selector, but still only switches the first device in any chain on or off...weird...

I'll keep searching? Would be good if there was some way in preferences you could change the way certain functions worked, but i guess you could say that about any controller...

Don't get me wrong i'm loving this Unit, in fact the session overview is probably IMO one of the most powerful features, its already seriously stepped up the workflow, but then also opened eyes to so many other possibilities,,Like a midi assignable, Command Z, for those takes you regretted on the fly... without having to do some kind of midi stroke/ bomes translator rejig...

[sdmiddleton]

Another bug or 2 have emerged...Wondered if anyone else had this trouble...?

Firstly, occasionally if i'm on an audio track lets say, and i'm trying to toggle between the clip view and track view, whilst the track view will show the effects on the audio track, the clip view shows a random midi clip on a midi track a few tracks away...?? Weird...

Another one, and i'll be adding a short video of this today, is where the clips do not correspond to clips of the red box... The track selection data does, i.e. record/arm, solo, activate etc etc, but the clips themselves are a few tracks behind...I've tried turning APC on and off, but still there. It seems to be once you get to the 3rd bank of tracks (17-24) but lets say you only actually have a total of 20 tracks on that project, i was wondering if this might perhaps confuse the APC? Its extremely annoying though, you arm a track to record but you can only launch a clip from a totally different track which really messes up the workflow...

Anyway...That's all for now, i will add to the support centre... They don't seem to acknowledge my bug reports though sadly...

[sdmiddleton]

I thought maybe this was bug isolated to a single project that may have corrupted but its started to rear its ugly head again, so i will post that video from a few weeks ago..

Please excuse its crapness, first time I've ever attempted a video like this, hopefully the last...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2l0hIXGEvSE

Cheers!!!

[outershpongolia]

Are you reporting these to Abes? or just posting everything here.. Not sure I can tell you where to directly report these things to Ableton but if you haven't already you should..

[McQ714]

sounds like an issue with Live not sending the data back to the APC in sdmiddleton's case. the apc seems to be doing it's job as he was able to scroll over to the other tracks but Live isn't sending the clip matrix data back, right? in my mind, that's clearly Ableton's responsibility to fix. it's not the hardware that's malfunctioning. not saying that the firmware shouldn't be updated too, but if Ableton is going to endorse this product and incorporate it's user manual into the Live manual, then they're kind of on the hook for the problems that arise. which is probably all the better for us, seeing how people are still having issues with the mpd controllers from what i understand.

[sdmiddleton]

Are you reporting these to Abes? or just posting everything here.. Not sure I can tell you where to directly report these things to Ableton but if you haven't already you should..

I have just posted this on the support corner, i'm assuming thats the place to go for this stuff...?!

[sylvain]

have same problem here ...
nothing matches between apc and live session.

first 8 rows are ok... then i press bank select to scroll left i see both session and APC going left but then i see only the live rectangle move to left.. apc leds stuck in same position corresponding to wrong tracks.

if i do easy sessions it's ok.. but when it starts to be 30 tracks with groups ... it's a big problem.
can't belive a dedicated hardware where it's writen "protessional" on it can be so useless !
now audio industry goes like video game industry bugs patch bugs patch.
this way, we pay for them to develop the product.

[Slightlydelic]

Hmmm, thats strange, my blue hand moves with the left right selector, but still only switches the first device in any chain on or off...weird...

I'll keep searching? Would be good if there was some way in preferences you could change the way certain functions worked, but i guess you could say that about any controller...

Don't get me wrong i'm loving this Unit, in fact the session overview is probably IMO one of the most powerful features, its already seriously stepped up the workflow, but then also opened eyes to so many other possibilities,,Like a midi assignable, Command Z, for those takes you regretted on the fly... without having to do some kind of midi stroke/ bomes translator rejig...

are you working with a pre existing live set? the only problems ive had have been with using old sets that have key/midi ontrols set prior to having the APC. deleting the control info as always got the sets back to working how they should. (so far)

[sylvain]

yes the set was done befaore apc but still on live 8.0.4
i'll try to remove all maps and see how it works right now !

---

no it's exactly the same. i removed ALL maps (midi/key) and ALL plugins
only keep the clips.
saved, close, reopened... nothing works. dam can't belive it ! i really thought i could go on stage next week with this stuff
ableton support auto reply says i should try live 8 beta

[AceLuby]

Here are some suggestions to help w/ setup:

1) Do you have a screenshot of the MIDI sync? It may not be syncing correctly because it isn't set up correctly.

2) Remove all old MIDI assignments. I thought my APC was broken too, but it turned out that it was sending the same messages as my foot controller, so as soon as I switched the channel to 10+ and re-mapped my MIDI mappings my APC was fine.

Hope this helps somewhat.