Ableton Forum

Hello all, I'm seriously contemplating upgrading to the Push 3 Standalone and I was hoping to get some honest feedback from anyone who owns the standalone (whether upgrading or already installed hardware)

Is it worth it?

How well does it perform with complex heavy projects? (I have quite a complicated hybrid dj/performance template that I use with loads of routing/utility channels and heavy use of max4live devices e.g. performer.

How well does it perform with max4live devices?

How well does it perform using external MIDI controllers? e.g. I have an APC40 MKII & MIDI Fighter Twister.

Battery life is probably rubbish but I'll probably sit with it powered up anyway.


It's quite a lot of money to be upgrading into the unknown so I'm gathering advice and opinions before I decide.

- cheers

My personal experience is that complex sets with a lot of max for live do not work well on standalone. My sets are similar, and I hoped to be able to work standalone.

Performance is not totally reliable, and you can only use m4l devices that don't use external libraries. They also have to be set up to have parameters accessible on push, but if you're already using push you know which ones those are.

For the complex, let's see what happens work I went back to tethered laptop and I'm totally happy with that arrangement. It would make me nuts to try to do some stuff without a screen and mouse.

My take so far is that standalone is immediate and awesome for straight-ahead work like you see in Ableton demo videos, but once you start getting adventurous with routing and control, desktop live is needed.

Thanks for the response, appreciate your honest take.
That's a bit disappointing to hear that standalone doesn't perform so well with more complex setups.
£879 to upgrade just so that I can do some drum programming and simple clip recording doesn't seem worth the price if I'm honest. Probably better off investing in a laptop like you suggest.

It’s got limits, like any device. A high spec laptop outperforms a low spec one just the same way. There are workarounds. Some people maintain two versions of their templates. One for standalone, one for desktop.

It’s workable but whether you want to do that work is your rightful preference.

I think the bigger concern for you would be, does it run the M4L devices you need it to? Support is patchy, though they’re slowly bridging the gap.

Is the upgrade on a 30 day trial? I’m sure it was at one time. Buy it and find out if it works for you. If not, send it back.