Ableton Forum

Hello,

Any suggestion which one to buy for use with Ableton Live? Price is the same. I am not sure about Directlink of the 2nd gen and Hyper Control of the Pro. Which technology integrates better with Live?

Pro: http://www.m-audio.com/products/en_us/AxiomPro49.html
2nd gen: http://www.m-audio.com/products/en_us/Axiom49New.html

Also, any other considerations to take into account?

Thanks.

-Slartibart

"HyperControl and DirectLink are 2 very different systems. Both feature automatic mapping of sliders, knobs and transport buttons to DAW parameters, but HyperControl communicates bi-directionally with DAWs and offers extensive parameter mapping and plug-in control. DirectLink does not have bi-directional feedback capabilities and is designed to work alongside the easy “click and learn” MIDI mapping within most popular DAWs. Only the most important DAW parameters are automatically mapped through DirectLink keeping everything simple – simple, but effective!"

I take from this that DirectLink is more like having a bunch of midi controller functions that you map yourself and Hypercontrol automaps itself more specifically to each application that it has supported mapping for. Either way a pre-mapped setup would probably need adjustments to suit your playing/production style so the technology behind it might not matter that much in the end.

The 2nd Gen is said to have a better playing action so I assume they have adjusted the key weighting and velocity setup a bit, it also comes with after touch (which I didn't see mentioned on the Pro).

The Pro has the ASCII support so you could control things like shortcut keys or saving your sets, possibly even alt+tabbing to a browser to open Live forums in the background . Midi would struggle to do that without something translating the signal between the keyboard and the DAW.

I personally would go for the Pro since it has been tried and tested and I don't care about a realistic feel to the keys. However, you should read this for a detailed description of the features of both and go with the one that seems to lean towards your needs more.

-J

go over the the m audio forums and look to see what folks say. If you are just using ableton it works well, it also works well on tools 8.05. It does not work on reason 4/record 1.01 on win 7 64 bit (but it does on vista 64). There were lots of issues with cubase when they first came out. Just be sure to do your research in the axiom pro section of their forum to see what issues people are having with similar setups to yours.

Honestly I would think that we're close to having ipad apps that will do what hyperconrol does and then you can just plug it up to a board like the akai they put out.

Either way the axiom pro is not a bad board, when it works well it's great

Thanks. I ordered Axiom Pro 49 (+ Omnisphere and Steinberg ci1). Let's see...

-Slartibart