Trying to figure out a good work flow with the APC 40

[zacharia360bpm]

Hello all,

I just got the APC 40 and have been trying to figure out a good, not so complicated, work flow.
I find one of the biggest downfalls of the APC is that you have to select the track using the 'Track Selection' buttons to then be able to use the effect parameters in the "Device Control" section.
I'm finding it confusing and counter intuitive to have to select different tracks prior to adjusting any of their effects.
I guess this is just a downside of not having enough encoders on the unit.
A real bummer is that the only way to have eq control over the separate tracks is to add them to the Device Control making you then have to press the 'Track Select' button, before you can adjust the eq making it impossible to, say, adjust the frequency of a filter on a different channel at the same time.

You really need an external sound card to then run the separate channels in Live to separate channels on your mixer.

Does anyone have any tips or tricks regarding how they set up their APC?

Thanks!

[hwelsh]

I find I've got some of the same problems as you, but if you look up Moldover on youtube, or on his website, he's got some really cool plugins that do "smart mixing" as he calls it. I'd reccomend looking at his controllerism video on youtube first to see it in action. It basically automatically kills your lows when you bring in a new track, and does some of the basics automatically, so that you don't have to constantly be killing frequencies when you throw in a new song. pretty useful and can be tweaked.


I have a question though,
what kind of soundcards let you run ableton's sounds out as different channels? I'm in need of a soundcard so that I can play my apc live hooked up to a club mixer, but haven't really wrapped my brain around how this works yet.

I appreciate it
Harrison

[zacharia360bpm]

Thanks for the tip:)
I will check it out.

As for an external sound card.. I would suggest getting something with at least 4 outputs, even more depending on how many channels you use.
From there, you would select the sound card as your audio device in LIVE and turn on all the output channels.
You would then want to change the 'Audio To' option on your channel strips in LIVE to 'EXT' which stands for 'External Out'.
Once you have EXT selected you will be able to choose the multiple outputs of your sound card.
From there you would run the outputs of your sound card into the different inputs on your mixer.
That would be it.
Definitely a must with this controller.

[Alextronica]

What tracks do you run to the Mixer

What I tring to ask is I've been messing with different options and I like some feedback

Do you run Apc 1&2 to Mixer 1 - 3&4 to 2 ?

Or is it better to run APC 1 to Mixer 1 - 2 to 2 - 3 to 3 - and the other 5 APC tracks to Mixer 4?

Whats your style and why?

I have a Motu Ultralite, Live 7 and an APC 40. Im also on a Mac incase you need this info

Thanks Y'all

[chelemasty]

Hello all,

I just got the APC 40 and have been trying to figure out a good, not so complicated, work flow.
I find one of the biggest downfalls of the APC is that you have to select the track using the 'Track Selection' buttons to then be able to use the effect parameters in the "Device Control" section.
I'm finding it confusing and counter intuitive to have to select different tracks prior to adjusting any of their effects.
I guess this is just a downside of not having enough encoders on the unit.
A real bummer is that the only way to have eq control over the separate tracks is to add them to the Device Control making you then have to press the 'Track Select' button, before you can adjust the eq making it impossible to, say, adjust the frequency of a filter on a different channel at the same time.

You really need an external sound card to then run the separate channels in Live to separate channels on your mixer.

Does anyone have any tips or tricks regarding how they set up their APC?

Thanks!

I can achieve this by mapping it manually. Like, mapping all the filter's frequency of each channel to all the knobs on the Track Control banks, say all filter to the pan bank, all delays to the Send A bank and so on, since I don't use those. You can do that too on the Device Control knobs, there's 8 banks for those knobs, but you'll need to use the shift button. And when Max 4 Live will come out, this would open a lot of possibilities for the APC40.

[zacharia360bpm]

Thanks Chelemasty,

Ya.. I suppose mapping filters to the pan knobs is a good idea since you don't really need the panning option when playing live.
I will do that:)

After messing around with everything I think the best way to control effects is to put them all inside different racks, map the controls to the racks, and use the <- -> to toggle to the different racks to mess with the different effects.

Still trying to get the easiest work flow but I'm getting closer.

[zacharia360bpm]

Alextronica,

I personally set my LIVE up like a four channel mixer.
Running each channel out of separate outputs of my sound card and into separate inputs on my mixer.

Since you have a sound card with 6 inputs and 8 outs I would run ch. 1 of the APC into ch.1 on your sound card and then out of
ch. 1 of the card and into ch. 1 on your mixer.

If your wanting to use more than four channels then I would map an EQ Three to the APC for those other channels so you can have control over the eq if need be. This is obviously not ideal and one of my main gripes with the APC but can still do the trick.

[chelemasty]

Thanks Chelemasty,

Ya.. I suppose mapping filters to the pan knobs is a good idea since you don't really need the panning option when playing live.
I will do that:)

After messing around with everything I think the best way to control effects is to put them all inside different racks, map the controls to the racks, and use the <- -> to toggle to the different racks to mess with the different effects.

Still trying to get the easiest work flow but I'm getting closer.

Hey, why not just Macro all of your effects and map all the properties of those certain effects that you want to control to the macro knobs, so that you won't have to use the arrow. Also, the DEVICE CONTROL KNOBS has 8 banks, you could access them by clicking SHIFT then their respective buttons to map other effects if the bank of knobs on the Track Control above are not enough.

[zacharia360bpm]

What I'm doing is creating different effect racks, say two on each channel, filling them up with effects and then using the <-- and --> to toggle between the different racks.
It works a lot better than scrolling through all the different effects.
I suppose I can try just adding all the effects I want to use for a particular channel to one group of 8 macro controls so I won't need to toggle to the second effect rack.

Thanks again:)