Ableton Forum

I'm in the market for a small USB controller, that would preferably have a cross fader, and knobs for eq'ing and track volume.

Had an Evolution X-Session like this one:



And it died on me recently and I was thinking of replacing it, with the Nocturn:



But I was told you can ONLY automap it. Is that correct? Would I not be able to just pick something in Ableton and map the knobs? I know I would be losing a few knobs, but I have some other controllers that I could map to as well. And even so, I could still use the X-Session, but the crossfader is screwed up.

If anyone could fill me in with their experience on the Nocturn I would really appreciate it. Or maybe even suggest something else that could maybe fit the bill?

Thanks!

You can map without using Automap. Pages upon pages of mapping.

Works well for me!

No, you're correct. Sure you can map it to plenty of CC's which I think is what scrondle is getting at. But you are still obliged to go through the Automap MIDI port, which is a software port, pops automap up on the screen (which I suspect can cause some ableton crashes depending on what you want to do, because automap is like a shameless actor or photobomber trying to move to the foreground even of Live when it's loading up.) and therefore requires one of your precious 6 native mode controller slots.

But that's not the real reason you should avoid this devise. The encoders start to slip after awhile, even if you hardly touch them ever. I checked out for myself, thinking it must simply be some assignment conflict that I created, an absolute vs relative paramater change behavior, or the wrong choice in pick-up. Nope. Midi values were just sliding around all over the place unresponsive like. Trust me, I've enjoyed my noturn and was happy while it lasted; I've no grudge. The sensible decision however is to get something else.

i have a nocturn and rarely use it, mainly because it seems non existent within live without automap, which is i think a great app with potential, but saving, loading and moving automap presets around between machines for me was a headache.

i have never tried using the nocturn in ableton without automap, but there are no official scripts for it, although there are open source ones that work great.

personally, even though i think its great controller for the money, i would avoid it.

the new behringer controller modules coming out this year look good.

I have a nocturn since it hit the market and once in a while i take it out of the closet and give it a try and i am fascinated for one evening and sick of it after two days because automap sucks BIG times.

If you are in berlin you can have mine for small money.