Ableton Forum

a friend saw this at a thing, he said it was cool

This thing is ugly thankfully it runs mpc not ableton

I'm all for this kind of stuff, pretty sure this will be the future, powerful computers in hardware controllers. Choosing the right laptop nowadays is worse than ever. We have these powerful CPU's all getting hijacked by security chips and video cards and sometimes it isn't possible to turn off either.

Yeah. There is a weird snobbery against computers in music these days. The "DAWless Jam" trend. I can understand the need for reliability but I know that many people with hardware only setups still encounter performance issues, they are just different issues. The benefit I see from this box is - quick to set up. Especially at festival gigs.
This APC will make the performer happier because they can set up in 30 seconds, and travel with hand luggage only - I'm not really sure the performances will be any better than those coming from a laptop and a couple of controllers.

Though I still think the main issue with laptop/computer-based music is the way it looks .... so damn boring! Most often a person staring down while frantically tapping and twisting things. And when I see a "hardware only" set it's the same deal - staring down at some mystery boxes with LEDs on.

The main reason the crowd find a hardware-only set better is because their mate "who knows about this stuff" tells them that one of the boxes is made by some Swedish Teenagers or something. Meanwhile, laptops have the stench of the familiar about them, they are proletarian devices, they are not "elite" The trainspotters and stamp collectors love to see a rare analog sequencer made in Uzbekistan out of valves and string synced to a breadboard of components, but the performance benefits? Marginal.

I think one reason people love DJs is crowd interaction. They are not staring anxiously down fretting over their black boxes for the whole gig - they have lots of spare time to look at the crowd and gauge the mood, they can do the stupid hand movements, do some nodding and smiling, a bit of pointing. That stuff builds audience rapport.

Tl;Dr Ableton need to bring out a keytar.

Angstrom wrote:Yeah. There is a weird snobbery against computers in music these days. The "DAWless Jam" trend. I can understand the need for reliability but I know that many people with hardware only setups still encounter performance issues, they are just different issues. The benefit I see from this box is - quick to set up. Especially at festival gigs.
This APC will make the performer happier because they can set up in 30 seconds, and travel with hand luggage only - I'm not really sure the performances will be any better than those coming from a laptop and a couple of controllers.

Though I still think the main issue with laptop/computer-based music is the way it looks .... so damn boring! Most often a person staring down while frantically tapping and twisting things. And when I see a "hardware only" set it's the same deal - staring down at some mystery boxes with LEDs on.

The main reason the crowd find a hardware-only set better is because their mate "who knows about this stuff" tells them that one of the boxes is made by some Swedish Teenagers or something. Meanwhile, laptops have the stench of the familiar about them, they are proletarian devices, they are not "elite" The trainspotters and stamp collectors love to see a rare analog sequencer made in Uzbekistan out of valves and string synced to a breadboard of components, but the performance benefits? Marginal.

I think one reason people love DJs is crowd interaction. They are not staring anxiously down fretting over their black boxes for the whole gig - they have lots of spare time to look at the crowd and gauge the mood, they can do the stupid hand movements, do some nodding and smiling, a bit of pointing. That stuff builds audience rapport.

Tl;Dr Ableton need to bring out a keytar.

I'm of the opinion that the anti laptop crowd has one lame point and one good one.
The lame one is most people these days deal with laptops at work, it's not seen as 'fun'.


The good one is that it's pretty easy to be spending all your time fine tuning your laptop, audio card, controllers, VSTs, DAW, etc. etc.
and tempting to update, upgrade these things, you can end up with issues that aren't really conducive to making music. I'm guilty of this, there's a killer free Java based software someone made for Push 2 and Reaper, you get pretty much the same level of functionality with Push 2 and Reaper as you do with Ableton, cool stuff. It requires you jumping through hoops to get running, using the command line, etc. Yesterday I spent most fo the day on this because I hadn't updated the software in a while and it wasn't working with the LED screen on Push 2, in order to give the developer a decent report I had to implement every version I hadn't updated to so he could see which version introduced the problem. NI stopped updating their drivers for the Rig Kontrol 3, the hardware is starting to fail on Windows 10 and OSX Mojave setups, they stopped adding it to their MIDI Controller Editor software which automatically updates itself if you own Maschine. So Rig Kontrol 3 is barely usable as a MIDI device, and not usable anymore for the most part as an audio card. I could go on, there are hundreds of examples as to why the non permanence of computer based music setups can be time consuming and creativity sucking. (of course the opposite is also true in terms of sheer power and flexibility)

This can't ever happen to hardware. A hardware synth will only die because you choose to stop repairing it. Even with the MPC, for the most part firmware and software updates don't break some rare case setup you have. You don't get the flexibility and total power of computer based setups but you also don't get the built in drive to upgrade and improve, eventually destroying older software issue.

All that said, I'm on the side for the most part of computer based setups, the downsides do not negate the sheer power. I'm tempted to hook the MPC directly up to the hardware synths here and write that way at times though, just to negate all distractions, limit the setup etc.

Will the lines between computers and hardware get blurred? The Mod Duo, the MPC Live and now this new APC thing (I'm sure there's more)?

Another point probably forgotten here is that this thing replaces Push 2, an audio card, and a laptop for live performance.
3 into one, that definitely has a market. It looks like a Soviet synth, (I thought Polivoks when I saw it), but that's a solid move by AKAI if you take into account someone wanting to just use a controller and Push 2 etc.

3pm....

Cheers
D

"this thing replaces Push 2, an audio card, and a laptop for live performance.
3 into one, that definitely has a market"


...not really i reckon...afaik the mpc live doesn't have the ability to load synth or fx vst/au plugins when used stand alone...

scheffkoch wrote:"this thing replaces Push 2, an audio card, and a laptop for live performance.
3 into one, that definitely has a market"


...not really i reckon...afaik the mpc live doesn't have the ability to load synth or fx vst/au plugins when used stand alone...

3PM....

Cheers
D

https://djworx.com/akai-force/

Cheers
D

https://force.akaipro.com

RRP US $1499

When will it support VSTs though? in the mean time I'll have 5.

Can we finally have control over Warp Markers now via push or is ableton going to let akai beat them to it?

starving student wrote:Can we finally have control over Warp Markers now via push or is ableton going to let akai beat them to it?

Who do you think writes the control surface scripts for all of the controllers??

C heers
D