Ableton Forum

pinky wrote:

I'm sure money is tight after buying an A100 and a Voyager. But do those pieces of gear justice and upgrade that mixer That gear is begging to shine, and that behringer is clouding it's potential.

No disrespect, just some advice. Great choice for sound generation!

Rogue Scrunt wrote:electrosmith,

Do you use the spd for sampling, or do you trigger a soft-sampler?

nice set up.

Thanks Rogue. I like showing off some musicianship in addition to pressing buttons, hence the drums and flutes.

I only use the SPD-S for triggering, since I've got Live and plugins for sampling. To be honest, I don't recommend the SPD-S as a pure trigger though - the pads are not nearly as sensitive as the SPD-20. The only perk is that the SPD-S has 9 pads as opposed to the 8 pads of the 20 and its predecessors. the S is cheaper though.

I'm eyeing the new Alesis Control Pad, which is 1) USB, and 2) can assign each pad to different midi channels, which none of the SPDs can do.

I can talk about drum triggering (& playing flutes over synths) all day....

glu wrote:

Gordon-

It's so weird to see something I sold to someone in a picture... for some reason.

I mean, it shouldn't be weird, but it is. But it isn't. I don't know.

Carry on...

Ha! I think it's weird! You should be freaked..



This reminds me, I moved into a new place last July, need to update the pic.

I'm eyeing the new Alesis Control Pad, which is 1) USB, and 2) can assign each pad to different midi channels, which none of the SPDs can do.

I just pre-ordered one. (No clue when they will actually start shipping, but alledgedly end of March.) That's cool re: the MIDI channels, I wasn't aware of that.

There was another discussion re: these units and McCaunaghy (sp?) indicated that build-quality and responsiveness were poor. But the design and price are great. The only disappointment from my perspective is that the high-hat pedal is on/off (open/closed) versus a continuous control you could map to more sophisticated drum VSTs that provide more positions, such as BFD.

mbenigni,

yes, for the price of the Alesis i'm also wary of the responsiveness. the pads look kind of soft in the pictures, which might not be so good. the SPD-20s have rather hard pads which make them very responsive to soft & ghost hits. the hh trigger input is a bummer too...wonder if that can be converted to a preset change control for the pad? and it's not clear whether those additional 2 inputs allow kick triggers, i suppose as a simple trigger input it doesn't make a difference.

if i had the cash, i would just get a drumKAT and not have to search for a better pad. there are video demos on their website where the guy can play an entire piano solo piece just on pads. from what i see he's triggering different notes (and even phrases) by different velocities. of course, being the demo guy, i bet that's what he does all day, practising playing the right velocity and hitting the right notes.

if i had the cash, i would just get a drumKAT and not have to search for a better pad.

No doubt a (new) drumKAT would be more responsive, but there's a lot to dislike about the drumKAT stuff, too.

I actually have a TrapKat sitting in my basement, and a friend of mine would be happy to lend me one of the two drumKat's collecting dust in his, but I just find them to be a huge a PITA. The last drummer I worked with had a drumKat and would sometimes use my TrapKat, and between the two he could never keep the pads properly mapped. Rarely (if ever) would all the pads function simultaneously. (The whole paradigm of configurable kits in the controller is just redundant and confusing when you're working with softs.) It seemed like everytime he powered the things up they would behave differently, and the manuals and UI are so 1980's arcane (which I often complain about at great length.) "Hold pads 4 and 7 while powering up and the unit will beep 46 times..." Step 2, smash with sledgehammer.

Plus, of course, it's not USB, it's not bus powered, etc. The Alesis is a great all-in-one solution. If they drop the ball on execution, maybe Roland will pick it up and run with it. (Although they'll probably run with the price too LOL.)

detroitechno wrote:

pinky wrote:

I'm sure money is tight after buying an A100 and a Voyager. But do those pieces of gear justice and upgrade that mixer That gear is begging to shine, and that behringer is clouding it's potential.

No disrespect, just some advice. Great choice for sound generation!

I know what you mean.Channel 2 has just died on it.Unfortunately money IS extremely tight and I just can't afford a new mixer at the mo.While I know fair bit about synths I'm not too well up on mixers, what would you recommend ?

I recommend mackies, always.
While some other brand seem to compare in term of quality (soundcraft) I personally find the sound of mackie warmer than the other.

Have a look around, chances are you can find a second hand little1202- 1402-1602-1604 VLZ.
Thanks to rikhyray of this forum I got a second hand 1202 VLZ, I'm very happy with it.
When shopping for second hand mackie try to get the older models made in USA, the made in china serie is not as good as the old one (more noise)
BTW behringer copied the desing of the mackies for the mixers, so all the stuff will be in the same place (eq ,sends) only you get twice as much routing possibilities on a mackie.

You guys have got some bad boy set ups...

I don't have any outboard gear other than control surface and midi trigger keyboard.

What do you guys really like best about your outboard stuff? Does it really deliver what software can't?

Seyser Koze wrote:

You guys have got some bad boy set ups...

I don't have any outboard gear other than control surface and midi trigger keyboard.

What do you guys really like best about your outboard stuff? Does it really deliver what software can't?

now i start software

if i cant get it fat enough or lively enough i turn to outboard

Seyser Koze wrote:Does it really deliver what software can't?

a part some sonic differences (eg my arp odissey doesn't sound good immediately after turning it on, you have to wait some time til the internal parts get hot and start sounding good, with a soft synth yo don't have this factor) for me is the phiysical approach.
I mean you can easily connect a masterkeyboard and a midi controller to a computer and play a softsynth without touching the mouse, but the masterkeyboard is always the same, the midicontroller too, on the other hand every synth has its keyboard, some have faders some have knobs, every hardware synth *feels* different when played... I know I have to be careful with the odissey sliders while I can go more wild with the juno 60s faders, when I play softsynth all this is just not there.

Then again with old analogue gear you have to deal with:
parts getting broken, difficult to find replace parts
noise, old gear tend to be noisy
space the need
live portability

so not all that glitters is gold

well i had to do it sometime...

oh moody

Seyser Koze wrote:

You guys have got some bad boy set ups...

I don't have any outboard gear other than control surface and midi trigger keyboard.

What do you guys really like best about your outboard stuff? Does it really deliver what software can't?

I work at a University, Brain Sciences dept and from time to time some of the labs just throw away these really great old tube based racks. They've been using some of them since the 1960s and they used them for completely different applications than an audio person might, but with a little modification, I've managed to get hold of some really esoteric sound shaping boxes that were probably never meant to used in the way that I am. But in the final analysis, I'd say I use outboard as more of a soundshaping or mastering tool to add some depth,grit,noise,compression, type things to the work being done "in the box"

corygilbert wrote:

Seyser Koze wrote:

You guys have got some bad boy set ups...

I don't have any outboard gear other than control surface and midi trigger keyboard.

What do you guys really like best about your outboard stuff? Does it really deliver what software can't?

I work at a University, Brain Sciences dept and from time to time some of the labs just throw away these really great old tube based racks. They've been using some of them since the 1960s and they used them for completely different applications than an audio person might, but with a little modification, I've managed to get hold of some really esoteric sound shaping boxes that were probably never meant to used in the way that I am. But in the final analysis, I'd say I use outboard as more of a soundshaping or mastering tool to add some depth,grit,noise,compression, type things to the work being done "in the box"

so cory- what are the rack units in your pic?
and i'll gladly take anything tube-based that might go in the trash!