Ableton Forum

Dear Ableton.

Following my two previous rants on your official Facebook page (still un-answered), I'm taking the liberty to port the discussion right here.
(Original link: https://www.facebook.com/ableton/posts/ ... 1064287168)

Thing is I'm a lucky Push + Live9-Suite owner.
Lucky, but unhappy.

Unhappy because I am (an at least two dozen persons who replied to me in PM since I posted my rant yesterday) having issues with Push quality control.
First notable issue, the LED brightness is inconsistent (REALLY inconsistent), while attempting to display WHITE color.
Second, the PADs, THE feature I wanted Push for, have a more than uneven and silly response curve.

But most of all, the lack of some VITAL FUNCTIONALITIES not YET mapped into Push are really making my teeth grind.

While I understand the enthusiasm and (biased ?) reviews of Push, I can only deplore that no one seemed to notice / complain about the (few) unacceptable issues many of us are experiencing with Push.

I will not bluntly copy/paste my rant(s), but rather try to summarize the problems and emphasis on the possible solutions you could deploy:

1) LEDs, please add individual WHITE color calibration of LEDs
You know it, admit it, LEDs on Push display an uneven white color.
Most pics ands videos available show your units only suffering one or two LED discoloration, but our public devices suffer at least 10-20 bad LED calibration.
This is not acceptable.
Since you are obviously not going to recall our Push units, one possible solution for you to add a per unit-calibration mode allowing users to manually adjust each LED (by 3 rotary encoders, guessing R/G/B encoders) until they get true uniform "white" across all LEDs ? User would push each pad to correct it's chroma, until he gets an even grid.

2) PADs
One thing is for sure, all PADs don't have the same sensitivity.
You do provide a global setting to edit the (global) PAD sensitivity threshold, as well as a velocity curve adjustment setting, but even with these, some PADs don't (REALLY DON'T) react the same.
As the per-LED suggested calibration mode, could we get per-pad calibration thresholds ?
A simple mode where a user could set a per-pad threshold for each pad, ensuring uniform response ?
(Note, there's also this annoying bug, where one would need to switch to another track, than back to current one, to get ALL pad responsive again.. Happens when you abuse REPEAT button..)

3) UI integration
After a few days playing with Push, I have to admit some VITAL functionalities are missing.here are the things I couldn't achieve:
- Color assignation to a clip: SELECT(hold) + click the clip, have a "color" button in one of the bank selectors, while this button is triggered, display a "colored view" of all the pads (exactly like these chroma grids your forum show on the right, next to the textarea where you input your message), each would than pad becomes a color from the chroma grid, the user would simply picks a color by clicking one of the pads, once done, the grid would reverts back to the session view grid...
- Offset the REPEAT function of a pad, i.e.; i would love to be able to launch a repeating counter-beat hi-hat, but right now, hitting REPEAT only triggers the repeat starting on the first bar ..
- In note view, the ability to hold a note, and get a "step-seq/piano-roll-like-view" so we can pick any of the note instances and re-place them in time when/if needed (we can nudge drum notes, note notes!)
- Transpose a whole note pattern up/down octaves
- Crop loops while in CLIP view (add a simple CROP button on the bank selectors)
- Set a fixed velocity on drum pads (right now I must a Velocity plugin before my drum tracks .. lame.)
- We should be able to fire clips in ableton ! (right now push blocks clip firing, or so appears to be doing so from time to time ! - fixed in 9.0.3b+ ?)
- One functionality not mapped yet from the Arpegiator midi plugin .. the HOLD button(!)

# Edit, originally, I couldn't accomplish the following tasks, but @Because789 kindly pointed the relevant shortcuts (in the post bellow this one)
- Delete a clip while in session view
- Clip copy pasting in session view
- Delete a device (audio or midi effect
- Delete a track


4) Assumptions & wishes
- I think it won't be possible for some drum-oriented VSTs to use the "drum view" (because they aren't enclosed in drum racks? - sad - but understandable)
- In session + note views, if only we could get a visual feedback of where the transport resides in the current measure/bar.. Drum view has this explicitly (using the right side next to the drum pads, you can figure where you stand in the pattern's transport), but not in note view..
- More infos on User mode.. Right now the infos are sparse.. Altho I'm guessing devoted followers will soon reverse-engineer the Midi script to figure how to use it. Nevertheless, a little bit of Docs, or API helpers would be great.
- Consider using an anti-glare coating on the LCD, I mean, have you tried using Push on stage ? The LCD bloody reflects any light source rendering it almost unusable (I fixed it by using an anti-glare non adhesive screen-protector from a famous smartphone device.. it really helps!)


5) Conclusions
I love Push.
Since I was lucky to see the first mock-ups of the device, I knew I wanted one.
I knew it was meant for "people like me".
But being a DIY fan, having been lucky to build many controllers in the past, so am I ... displeased by the current Push firmware.
I received numerous replies to my FB thread, all reporting the same issues I faced..
I can only hope you, Ableton, will figure how to address these issues, or at least, publish a statement acknowledging them..
It's not fair to send good looking devices to the Press, and sending us, your faithful LEGIT customers, poorly quality-checked devices.

Best regards, and much respect to you Ableton,
Please don't ignore us.

r.

Hmm lots of rants on the Pad sensitivity (seems most people aren't aware of the User+hold shortcut)
Nevertheless, individual PAD sensitivity and possibly after-touch calibration (as I saw suggested in these forums) would definitely address most issues.
(+LED "white" calibration!)

Just for the record, some stuff you ask for in section 3 is already possible (9.0.2):

>- Delete a clip while in session view: SELECT(hold) + click clip pad, SELECT(hold) + DELETE)

Possible: DELETE (hold) + press clip

>- Clip copy pasting in session view: SELECT(hold) + click clip pad for source, SELECT(hold) + DUPLICATE, click clip pad for destination

You cannot choose the destination, but you can copy a clip by pressing DUPLICATE (I'm sure you are aware of that). But it is odd that the clip needs to be playing for this to work. When in session view you can select a clip by SELECT (hold) + press clip. If you then press DUPLICATE the clip which is playing gets duplicated. If there is none playing you end up with an empty clip slot. Not the behaviour I would expect. (Edit: tested in Clip Workflow, at least there I would expect you can duplicate a clip which is selected but not playing.)

>- Delete a device (audio or midi effect): in DEVICE view, SELECT(hold) + click on track column selector, SELECT(hold) + DELETE

Possible: DELETE (hold) + press device selection button ("Selection Control" row)

>- Delete a track while in TRACK view

Possible: DELETE (hold) + press track selection button

>- Ability to duplicate a track! (SELECT(hold) + push a bank selector button corresponding to the track, push Duplicate)

Possible: DUPLICATE (hold) + press track selection button

(DUPLICATE (hold) + press device selection button doesn't work in device view, which seems a bit odd)

nice!
thanks!

Just got my push. Major issues with the LED calibration. Here is a picture of my Push in session mode filled with white clips. The picture looks a bit more washed out than it does in real life (it's very easy to see the color differences)


And just so it's really obvious, here's with the saturation cranked in photoshop.


I find this really aggravating when working in note mode. It doesn't affect the devices usability.. but $600 for a controller with poorly calibrated RGB LEDs is really aggravating. I will be telling any of my friends who are looking at buying one that they should wait until the CQ issues are ironed out. As far as offering color correction, it seems like the ones that appear "off" are either shifted towards green or red (causing them to look aqua/purple). It would seem like the easiest method of offering pad color correction would be to allow each pad to be shifted either further toward green/red, or to go in to a color correction mode that shows all pads as red, then green, then blue, and allows you to tweak the brightness of each to get them all uniform. The second method might be a bit more difficult for users though since detecting hue variation is much easier than brightness.

Also, there's some inconsistency with the backlighting on the side buttons. Here's a picture of some where the left side of the buttons is visibly dimmer than the right side. Again, this is more obvious when actually looking at it.


Another issue (which I may just not know the answer to) is that when in note mode, whatever track is selected is automatically partially armed (session armed?) so that all empty clip slots start recording rather than stopping already playing clips. This really breaks the Push + APC40 workflow since I tend to leave Push in note mode and then play with session stuff on my APC40. I effectively can't stop clips on whatever track is selected without hitting the dedicated clip stop button (which is difficult to do when activating/deactivating multiple clips at a time because of the position of that button). So far this has been the major workflow killer for me. Is there a way to disable this behavior? It is not intuitively obvious to the casual observer

Pad sensitivity has been a bit of an issue as well, but this seems like something that could be fixed quite easily. I've tried using the user-mode hold pad-sensitivity adjustment to some success, but the real problem is that the high-end of the expected input-velocity is just too high for me. The log modes don't really work for me since they have the effect of cutting out the middle section of the velocity curve. My suggestion would be that you offer a "Velocity Ceiling" control that allows people to scale back the max velocity so that you can hit 127 without hitting the pads as hard. If the user hits a pad harder than the max velocity just send 127. This, along with the existing sensitivity controls would give a more complete level of adjustment than any other controller I'm aware of.

Just to illustrate a bit, here is mine while editing a clip in note view..
This is supposed to be white and blue..


Basically, it's just like buying a new phone/tablet, only to discover dead pixels on the screen:
It sucks.

I also have similar issues with the color of the LED pads, pretty disappointing. Hopefully there will be some way to fix it.

would any of you regard these issues as deal-breakers? as in, do you think I should reconsider trying to purchase push now (as i didn't preorder), and wait until the next batch is available?

Just a suggestion...file a ticket. They are usually pretty quick to respond. Complaints on a forum tend not to get responses from those working to fix bugs.

dewaldo wrote:would any of you regard these issues as deal-breakers? as in, do you think I should reconsider trying to purchase push now (as i didn't preorder), and wait until the next batch is available?

None of the hardware issues will prevent you from using it (besides pad-related issues you may or may not have depending on your preference), and the software issues will most likely be ironed out over time. If you buy it now and they eventually resolve their QC issues, you may never get your hands on one that doesn't have the hardware issues. On the other hand, it already works quite well, you may not have a single problem with it. So really, it's up to you. You are informed, all you have to do is decide

(note, ticket sent, awaiting response..)

as said, the difference in led calibrations is really ridiculous.....

You are lucky guys, complaining about QC issues because of some different shades of grey

I am the happy owner of a unusable circuit-bent PUSH controller.





The very first thing I have done after the unboxing has been taking a picture and sending it to Ableton. That is a QC issue!


I hope that getting a replacement does not involve spending any more time or money.

All of these are QC issues. Minor issues shouldn't be discounted.. this is a $600 controller we're talking about. I agree with rud that it's quite analogous to buying a TV only to find a number of stuck pixels. No, it won't stop you from using the device.. but it's annoying as hell and it just shouldn't be that way.

Our issues don't necessarily cross the line in to "replace this for free" territory though. Yours most certainly does. I'm sorry you got unlucky

On mine there are a few shades that show the distortion a bit, yellow especially. But nothing overtly glaring enough to make me feel ripped off. I'll take pics of the initial color switch to show it.