Buying A Controller

[delicioso]

I'm actually starting to wonder if Maschine is worth it. It does seem to have largest array of drumkits, and does seem to have a good sequencer. But, the controller is only 4x4 and not velocity sensitive (neither is the APC40 btw).

I don't know who told you that but Maschine IS velocity sensitive and by far the most responsive pads out there even next to padkontrol.

And you're not limited to just 16 steps with Maschine's step sequencer. You can switch to different resolutions as you're working on a pattern and the lit up pads will expand to reflect those changes and the display on the controller shows you where you are and the buttons above that screen lets you navigate through all the steps

[Syncretia]

I thought I'd resurrect this thread because I can now shed some light on my original questions. Although I haven't investigated the Akai MPDs, I now have both the APC40, and Maschine. They both serve totally different purposes even though they are very close in terms of the physical collection of knobs and buttons.

When I opened this thread I was quite naive about the state of software/hardware integration. My assumption is that there was some kind of separation between software/hardware that would be magically unlocked when I bought a controller with lots of buttons and knobs. I was wrong.

Ableton as it stands interacts with midi controllers in basically two ways: like a standard midi keybaord host, and a remote controller. Everyone is familiar with how midi keyboards work. Remote controlling is basically the same thing but it allows extra things like being able to start and stop the transport from the controller, being able to hit record from the controller and so on. The APC40, although very similar to the Maschine controller in physical design, is not programmed to be anything other than a big remote control Ableton. It is designed to short cut repetitive tasks in Ableton that would otherwise require a mouse or keyboard. It does this task well, but it's not designed to be an instrument.

Maschine however, is a totally different beast. While the APC40, or the MPD24 could theoretically do a lot of what the Maschine controller does, essentially, no programming has been done in Ableton to make them work in the same way that Maschine works. The Maschine software/hardware integration makes Maschine pretty much the best Groove Box on the market (or at least from what I have seen). There are two hardware features which are an important difference from the APC40 1) It is velocity sensitive 2) there is an LCD display. Everyone raves about the LCD feature but personally it's not that useful for me because if I'm using Ableton, I'm going to be looking at my monitor anyway. So, there's not a hell of a lot of benefit in squinting at a tiny little screen with no real-estate.

MaxForLive to a certain extent takes the APC40, and probably other controler further toward acting as instruments. There are several step sequencers that can be used with the APC40. There are also several free scripts that will allow you to use the APC40 as a step sequencer. The APC 60/40 script is a good example. All these bits and pieces are great but they quite frankly a little rough and don't go anywhere near as far as Maschine does in terms of being top notch groove creation utilities.

So, the answer to the original question is this. If you want a great groove box (for creating beats), go for Maschine. If you want a remote control that will give you shortcuts for live performance (mixing, cross-fading, launching clips, etc.), go for for the APC40. They are designed for different purposes.