APC 40 for DJ'ing

[TomDJ]

Hey,

I am considering to switch from dj'ing w/ CDJ to Ableton Live. I'm not a big fan of mixing w/ just a laptop so the apc 40 seemed like a perfect console to me.

But my question is: is the APC 40 suitable for dj'ing or only for live sets?

I'd also like to know the pro / con's of dj'ing with ableton

thanks in advance!

[Tone Deft]

IMO the main weakness of the APC is controlling more than 1 effect at a time. BUT there are already some insane hacks from users so I'm hesitant to definitively define the limits of this box. I have one, I really enjoy it as a global controller. for more detailed control I put that stuff on the BCR. BCR + APC and you could rule the world.

[Superchibisan]

with racks you can do anything.

and yes, the apc 40 is great for djing. its the reason i got it.

[Tone Deft]

Superchibisan - can you lay out your flow with the APC for DJing? racks is teh bomb, what's the voodoo you do with them?

[chaircrusher]

Hey,
I am considering to switch from dj'ing w/ CDJ to Ableton Live. I'm not a big fan of mixing w/ just a laptop so the apc 40 seemed like a perfect console to me.

But my question is: is the APC 40 suitable for dj'ing or only for live sets?
I'd also like to know the pro / con's of dj'ing with ableton

thanks in advance!

The APC40 is OK for DJing. My old setup was with a M-Audio XSession Pro, and the good thing with that unit was having knobs for EQ & FX available for both channels at once. I set up an effect rack on each channel with the EQ bands and 3 effect sends on the macro knobs.

With the APC40, stock out of the box, you only have the controls for one channel at a time available. You could do something like map unused channel faders to control fx and EQ, but that's not as intuitive as the X-Session Pro. 15 years using a DJ mixer, I really like having a controller that looks like a DJ mixer

[Superchibisan]

well i rock everything through my zero4. thats the important part

i've got my tracks set up in a 4x5 grid. all on the left side. all set to the 4 channels on my mixer. the 4 tracks to the right, i use for dropping loops and follow action madness. the apc 40 is a launcher and effect control for ableton, while my mixer does the... mixing.

the racks thing i've just started messing with, but just assigning cool parameters to the eight knobs and making different banks of noise making machines. then you have multiple racks on a channel, you can just randomly switch devices and have eight new knobs of effects... very fun

most of my voodoo comes from my zero4 though... thing is a piece of living magic i think...

[funky shit]

Remember to get an audio device though if your going to be playing out.

[TomDJ]

oh and another question, do you need an external sound card or is it already in the apc 40?

[funky shit]

oh and another question, do you need an external sound card or is it already in the apc 40?

Youll need an external one.

[Zeddy]

IMO the main weakness of the APC is controlling more than 1 effect at a time. BUT there are already some insane hacks from users so I'm hesitant to definitively define the limits of this box. I have one, I really enjoy it as a global controller. for more detailed control I put that stuff on the BCR. BCR + APC and you could rule the world.

I have to definitely agree that the BCR and APC combo would be really killer. I've been thinking about this a bit though over the last few days.... I would want to use the BCR to control the High/Low/Mid of an EQ3 for each channel. If you used midi mapping however, the BCR would only be able to be mapped to the first 8 channels as those would be global settings. This got me thinking about MaxForLive. It would be amazing if it would be possible to have MaxForLive see where the red square is over your Live set from the APC and then have those be the channels on the BCR. So then you could use the APC to move through your live set, and have the BCR controls move with it. I'm thinking it's probably possible, but only time will tell I guess.

[Tarekith]

I used the APC for DJing this past weekend for the first time, two gigs with little prep work and it worked great. My set up is uses a Xone62 to do the actual mixing and EQing, so perhaps I'm not the best example.

Anyway, in Live 8.04 (rock solid here btw), I have tracks 1 and 2 set up as my "Decks" feeding seperate tracks on the mixer. Tracks 3-8 in Live were basically my "Crate", so I could preview and choose the next tune I wanted to play. Normally I have 4 of my DJ EFX racks assigned to each of my deck tracks in Live, but the APC wants to use a lot of button presses to navigate between them so I assigned all 4 on each track to a new rack. So basically this let me assign all 4 of my EFX racks to a single rack per track, using the first 4 macro knobs to control the seperate efx. I then hard mapped these to the pan knobs on the APC. The top 4 pans knobs were assigned to deck 1's efx, the bottom 4 to deck 2's efx. Worked great, and I still had the lower 8 knobs on the APC ready if I wanted to tweak the efx racks more on the fly, in more depth.

The cue volume knob on the APC I assigned to tempo, since my sets cover a lot of tempo ranges, and the "->" and "<-" buttons on the APC were assignt o let me toggle back and forth between the playing clips on deck one and deck two.

I still need to manually drag my tracks from my crate tracks to my deck tracks, but that's no biggy to me.

[funky shit]

I used the APC for DJing this past weekend for the first time, two gigs with little prep work and it worked great. My set up is uses a Xone62 to do the actual mixing and EQing, so perhaps I'm not the best example.

Anyway, in Live 8.04 (rock solid here btw), I have tracks 1 and 2 set up as my "Decks" feeding seperate tracks on the mixer. Tracks 3-8 in Live were basically my "Crate", so I could preview and choose the next tune I wanted to play. Normally I have 4 of my DJ EFX racks assigned to each of my deck tracks in Live, but the APC wants to use a lot of button presses to navigate between them so I assigned all 4 on each track to a new rack. So basically this let me assign all 4 of my EFX racks to a single rack per track, using the first 4 macro knobs to control the seperate efx. I then hard mapped these to the pan knobs on the APC. The top 4 pans knobs were assigned to deck 1's efx, the bottom 4 to deck 2's efx. Worked great, and I still had the lower 8 knobs on the APC ready if I wanted to tweak the efx racks more on the fly, in more depth.

The cue volume knob on the APC I assigned to tempo, since my sets cover a lot of tempo ranges, and the "->" and "<-" buttons on the APC were assignt o let me toggle back and forth between the playing clips on deck one and deck two.

I still need to manually drag my tracks from my crate tracks to my deck tracks, but that's no biggy to me.

You could setup an endless rotary knob to scroll through clips on selected tracks so you dont have to keep going back to the mouse.

[$4mU3l]

I don't like the APC40 and returned it after two weeks!

Reasons:

• This huge device don't fits my gigbag and isn't equipped with an audio interface either.
  No velocity sensitive pads.
  Running the APC40 as a step sequenzer is only possible with max for live.
  No midi without usb.
  Bad experience with the AKAI support.
  Design Well, that's purely a matter of taste.

Maybe the second edition will be better

[funky shit]

I don't like the APC40 and returned it after two weeks!

Reasons:

• This huge device don't fits my gigbag and isn't equipped with an audio interface either.
  No velocity sensitive pads.
  Running the APC40 as a step sequenzer is only possible with max for live.
  No midi without usb.
  Bad experience with the AKAI support.
  Design Well, that's purely a matter of taste.

dude, i think you should have known most of that stuff before you even bought it.

[$4mU3l]

dude, i think you should have known most of that stuff before you even bought it.

Yes, I was curious although.