Ableton Forum

Well, I just re-inherited an ancient landyacht (95 Lincoln Towncar) which is my daily driver. Great car, runs better than my previous with better gas mileage. But it has the stock radio/tape deck which doesn't even work (power problems, the ampllitude of the radio tuner goes up and down, mainly down and out). So I want to replace it.

However in my typical way of thinking, I was going to not only get a new unit put in, but also dig out my old infinity 6x9's and bass bin for the trunk which have been hidden under a couple years of junk in my parents' frightening garage. Ended up I can't get to them without a seriously unreasonable amount of work (and this is another, separate issue... no more to say about that).

So I was thinking "well I'll just buy new speakers" and then I was thinking "If I'm spending money on stuff not really practical anyway, I'd much rather get something that will allow me to create a bit more stuff rather than purely consume" ... So I'm probably still going to replace the deck with a good one, but leave in the likely incredibly bad ~15 year old door cones for now and pick up an APC40. Some of the videos are just radically impressive, and it looks like it REALLY BEATS trying to "beat the next increment" (e.g., 1 bar) to click on and off a bunch of clips that may be far apart and not conveniently put in a scene.

I had looked a bit at the launchpad, and whereas it too is really impressive especially for the price, out of the box the APC40 just beats it hands down with the knobs/sliders. To really get immediately to something "interesting" I'd need to also have m4l which I can't afford to get also with either controller just yet. APC40+ M4L seems to be the holy grail, launchpad + m4l seems to be the next best thing.... APC40+m4l is starting off hot and not preventing the use of a launchpad later.

I doubt anybody is seriously going to talk me out of the APC40. Thinking about using it brings up some new questions on making stems and tracks that I'll toss out later. However if someone wants to talk me out of it, I won't be going to grab for another 5 hrs or so.

Question: this may be in the FAQ but I'm rushing out the door literally as I write this to play a church service. Can the APC40 operate through a USB hub? I'm going to be plugging into a macbook pro with only two inputs, and I've got at least an external USB controller (oxygen8v2 on the lap!) and a mouse for more precision editing. One of the two need to work through a hub

mine works through a hub to my pc

yes. mine works with a powered usb hub to a mbp

mine works fine through a cheapo powered USB along with a HDD and the padkotrol.

what other controlers have you got?

I would recommend a powered USB hub. It didn't work through my crappy old powered USB hub, but I recently got a Belkin 7 port hub and it works great. Do a search, I did a thread about this and people offered up suggested hubs.

Thanks for the replies, guys. I've got an unpowered (because I lost/never needed the PS) hub around here somewhere that I'll try with first (Belkin 1 to 4) but if it doesn't, I'll pick up another. As far as other controllers, the only three things that will be plugged in are the APC40, a mouse and some kind of keyboard controller. In this case, the most likely will be the tiny little Oxygen8 v2 because it is so incredibly useful.

I will replace the little oxygen8 though with another, longer, controller one of these days. I still have a virus indigo2 and a nord g2 modular - both of which are 3 octave - but as my descent into complete virtualization happens, they see very little airtime.

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Just got home with the APC40. Can't really bust it out now, have to do the last piece of homework of the semester, but very excited to give it a shot. The build seems excellent. The clip trigger buttons are smaller than I expected, but overall the unit is bigger than I'd planned. Will have to do a little desktop re-arrangement.

The knobs are smooth (!) and the crossfader seems so as well, though I might like to tighten it up a bit. Otherwise from a pure build perspective, I'm really impressed. They had the launchpad up there too. I may end up grabbing one of those eventually but not until after I have m4l ...

So now to, um, actually make some clips to be triggered. That leads back to my thoughts about music making in Live in general, and I'll make it another thread perhaps tonight or tomorrow.

Y'all have a good one.

You made a mistake, the holy Grail is APC + LP + M4L

1ino1eum wrote:You made a mistake, the holy Grail is APC + LP + M4L

Well, yes I suppose that would be even better relatively, but I think the order is important. For me it would be APC then M4L then LP.

I guess really LP is interesting in a totally different way than the APC. the APC is really a replacement for having to click the screen for triggering and mixing console functions (comprehensively enough to be more than I'll ever need)... the LP is more interesting from the direction of driving some neat custom apps with its interface. We'll see.

proteron wrote:

1ino1eum wrote:You made a mistake, the holy Grail is APC + LP + M4L

Well, yes I suppose that would be even better relatively, but I think the order is important. For me it would be APC then M4L then LP.

I guess really LP is interesting in a totally different way than the APC. the APC is really a replacement for having to click the screen for triggering and mixing console functions (comprehensively enough to be more than I'll ever need)... the LP is more interesting from the direction of driving some neat custom apps with its interface. We'll see.

I definitly agree with that.