Ableton Forum

Hardware wins. No one want to watch artist browing internet on the stage.

Hey guys, this is a really interesting thread, thanks for sharing your experience.
I just can say one thing: we are going to include a new feature which will help users to mix touchAble and hardware controllers...no ETA though ...but stay tuned

Grooverb
I hope you enjoy your new keyboard!
Yeah the ipad isnt a necessity to start off with. Essentially apps like TouchAble just do what you can do already in Ableton and it's a controller.

Rabouille,
You TouchAble guys rock! TouchAble mixed with Hardware Controllers! I nearly soiled myself!

Knobs + glue!

Rabalder wrote:Knobs + glue!

sounds awesome!! I just hope its not super glue. Can cause all sorts of problems if things get stuck to the wrong things

23kon wrote:Grooverb
I hope you enjoy your new keyboard!

Cheers I'm quite looking forward to it, and it mean I'll have to keep my desk a bit tidier as well. Shocking! Domestication by computer music hardware. Noooooooooooo

Thought I would offer my experience.

I have an iPad and touchable, touchosc and Griid. I would have to say touchable and touchOSC are my favourite apps.

Now I also run a launchpad, Mackie MCU, MPD32, Alphatrack, MIDI keyboard etc...

This is my opinion but I do like the iPad for clip launching because you can see what the clips are easily and you get access to a lot of controls in front of you. On a stage situation it would be great. I am a studio based guy so that's not so much what I have it for. It's mainly a portable control pad that moves around with me to give access to Abletons functions when away from the monitoring position.

This said, I do prefer the Macki and Launchpad for real hands on stuff because I can "feel" the controls without needing to look at the controller all the time. My way of getting someone to understand would be try and type a letter on the iPad keyboard without looking. You cant. It is a great tool but just cannot replace the tactile feel of real controls. Having both worlds is just peaches and cream tho.

An iPad and any class compliant USB/MIDI device are two great tastes that go great together—

—and Genome is the best twelve dollar MIDI sequencer/host on the market.

grooverb wrote:Also helped me figure out the keyboard is probably the sooner upgrade, and the iPad can wait a couple of months while I save up, sort out some more material and have a bit more thinking time on the whole live thing. So hopefully Friday, I'll be picking up an impulse 61 ROCK ON!!

that'll give the devs time to finish that new feature.

meantime you can take your time and prep. stay wise.

H20nly wrote: that'll give the devs time to finish that new feature.

meantime you can take your time and prep. stay wise.

Yeah definitely I love it when a plan comes together, a bit better than you originally thought of doing it, in a round about way kind of thing. Hannibal put it much better

jestermgee wrote:Having both worlds is just peaches and cream tho.

It does look it, and should male for a nice portable set up as well

So what memory size iPads have people got? I'm thinking of hedging my bets a bit and going for the 32Gb

grooverb wrote:

H20nly wrote: that'll give the devs time to finish that new feature.

meantime you can take your time and prep. stay wise.

Yeah definitely I love it when a plan comes together, a bit better than you originally thought of doing it, in a round about way kind of thing. Hannibal put it much better

jestermgee wrote:Having both worlds is just peaches and cream tho.

It does look it, and should male for a nice portable set up as well

So what memory size iPads have people got? I'm thinking of hedging my bets a bit and going for the 32Gb

4x16 gig

Slightlydelic wrote:
4x16 gig

so what do you use each one for?

I've got a 32 gig. Probably won't go any bigger on my next one (still on the 1, waiting on 3 to upgrade), I've never felt as if I needed more space. I could make due with a 16 if I were only using it for music.

Get yourself a camera connector kit, or a knock off on eBay if you want to save cash, or an iRig MIDI if you've got extra to spend (I recommend that one specifically because it has MIDI in/out/thru and a mini/micro USB port for power).

Look into class compliant USB devices (controllers, mics, etc). They're the ones you can plug directly into an iPad and either use directly with iOS apps, or with the right app you can use the iPad as a MIDI host and route the aggregate MIDI data (either wired or wirelessly) to your computer and other synths/drum machines.

Ryanmf wrote: Look into class compliant USB devices (controllers, mics, etc).

I think we're spoilt for choice on that

http://iosmidi.com/devices/

So you can use the iPad for extra connectivity of hardware controllers then?

If you're sitting a few feet away from your computer, it still makes sense to plug those devices into your computer (there are definitely benefits to an external MIDI host in that context, but a proper one that's not running in software and prone to crash is probably preferable).

But—if you're not completely anti-wireless, plugging one device directly into your iPad, or plugging two or three of them into a powered hub and plugging the iPad into that, then sending all the MIDI they generate, plus anything generated by any of your apps, wirelessly to the Network MIDI Session (Mac) or DSMIDIWiFiServer/Loopbe (PC) is an interesting new trick.