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One of the biggest frustrations I have (and imagine I share) as a live electronic musician, is the limitations on the hardware available to me. When I perform, I know how my loops sound, how my tune should progress and the parameters I need to control in order to achieve a crowd (and self) pleasing set. As a musician, I want two things 1) a machine that allows me to chunk processes down when necessary, and 2) allowing in depth real time manipulation when needed, something which is very difficult to do on a machine that is mass produced as the line between the two is different for everybody.
My current live set up consists of:
- A Novation X-Station - for using the knobs and sliders to manipulate various parameters on effects that I know work well with my music
- A Behringer Eurolight - a lighting desk with many faders that outputs MIDI, perfect for the levels of the 24 tracks + 6 return tracks I use when performing
- A Korg PadKontrol - mainly used for turning effects on and off, and sending audio tracks off to Sends on the fly
I found within 5 minutes of plugging in my APC40, it catered to nearly all of the functions I require and control with those three pieces of gear.
The Look
The Apc40 is 420mm Wide, 335mm Depth and 65mm Height, with a weight of 2.64kg. I find it's large enough to give it a solid, quality, "This is my main piece of gear" look, but it's small and light enough to fit in my carry backpack without any distress. My recent setup nearly uses up 20kg, which is the limit for most domestic flights over here, so no longer will I need to turn up to strange city with only one change of clothes and a book!
While plastic, it doesn't feel cheap. I feel I could drop it and it would keep powering on (it will be interesting to see a report from the first person who drops one!). Drink spillage is a big issue for me, I have had a few pieces of gear die due to some drunk fuckers knocking beer all over my setup (not you John, you were trying to give me a hug, still no hard feelings) and I can see the layout of this unit being a little bit vulnerable to this, as it has lots of buttons and a tilted front panel, again something we will have to wait to get a report back about.
The LED's brightness isn't super bright, it's bright enough to always know what is going on, but they could be a little brighter in my opinion. The colors are nice and easy to distinguish.
The text on the unit is white, and red for the "shift functions". It can be a little bit difficult to read the red text, but the shift functions are so scarce it won't take you long to memorize them off by heart.
The knobs have 16 small rectangle green LED lights, which update themselves (if you are in "control surface" mode in Ableton) to whatever parameters you have selected. For example, let's say you select an Auto Filter in Ableton, the LEDs around the control surface knobs will update themselves to whatever the parameters are set at on the Auto Filter. If your cutoff is at 100hz, the LEDs will update to show a low value on the cuttoff knob, very handy so you always know where your parameters are. The only knob that doesn't have these LEDs is the cue level.
The Feel
The grid buttons have a nice feeling to them, and are easy to push, bang, hammer at will. The are not velocity sensitive however, so they only pick up a single push (as apposed to say a PadKontrol, which knows how hard you are hitting the buttons and sends different values). This could be a problem if you were considering using the Apc40 like an MPC or something to hammer out drum beats. The buttons have a slight click feeling, so you know when you trigger them... resting your finger lightly over the buttons will not trigger them, this is handy if you put your fingers on some buttons ready to trigger, but need to wait while looking at something else.
The knobs are endless (they have no start or finish, they just keep turning each way indefinitely) and are very smooth and feel quite sturdy. Moving them quickly is easy, and fine tuning with them is also nice. The are quite close together, but this isn't an issue to me as I have small hands (we come from a family of cow impregnators (just kidding ) ), I imagine if you have fat fingers you might find this slightly annoying.
The faders are smooth and have just the right amount of resistance. There is no clicks moving the faders up or down, and you can "flick" a fader up or down and it will shoot to the top or bottom, without any bouncing back once it hits the casing.
The plastic buttons on the unit feel clicky and kinda cheap. This is one of the negative things about this unit. It is a shame they chose to make the navigation buttons, the buttons that I and most people will use most often, out of plastic. I can see these being the first thing to break or malfunction (prove me wrong).
The crossfader is very light and great if you want to do quick fades, or even some crab type scratching stuff (depending on the latency!). It is quite small, smaller than I usually see cross faders, about the width of a matchbox.
The Layout
The main grid matrix is 8 x 5 buttons... that means you can have 5 scenes in focus, and 8 tracks at once (remember you can scroll around easily to bring new scenes/tracks into view - more further down in this review) . I think the layout of this grid is perfect!
Under each set of 8 buttons, running vertically, each track has a
- Stop all clips button - for stopping any clips that are currently playing in that specific track
- Track selection button - for telling Ableton to quickly jump and highlight that particular track
- Activator button - this is basically a mute. You can turn your track off and on with this button. Muting on multiple tracks is also possible
- Solo button - for soloing the track (muting all other tracks bar the one you solo). You can also solo multiple tracks
- Track arm button- arm the track ready for audio or MIDI recording (when this is enabled, if you push one of the grid buttons which is over a blank clip slot, it will start recording whatever is being fed into the channel)
Below each set of track grid/function buttons is a volume fader (which goes up to +6db by default).
To the right of the 8x5 grid, there are 5 scene trigger buttons. These will trigger the entire scene, or all the clips in the horizontal row to the left of the button (say you want to play 8 clips all at once on the same row, this button will trigger them all).
Below the 5 scene trigger buttons is a Stop All Clips button, which will stop everything playing in your set.
Below the stop all clips button (and next to the 8 track selection buttons) there is a master track selection. Pushing this will tell Ableton to highlight the master track.
Up the top left we have a set of 8 knobs that are used for panning and sending audio tracks off to your send return track. The 8 knobs will manipulate parameters depending on whatever one of the 4 buttons below the knob is selected (Pan, Send A, Send B and Send C).
The navigation buttons are in a funny place, I would have much preferred them to be at the bottom next to the crossfader.
The tap tempo button is quite large and good for mashing out the bpm, with the accompanying nudge buttons below.
The 8 device control knobs are laid out the same as the track control knobs, holding down the shift key and pushing any of the 8 buttons below will move you to the next bank of 8, so you have 64 device control knobs.
The play, stop and record buttons are quick close to the crossfader. I don't use crossfaders much, but imagine having the stop button so close to something that could potentially get a lot of work could be a bit daunting.
The Functionality
Latency
I had no problem with the amount latency this unit had (on a Macbook and a Presonus Firebox soundcard). Cranking that cuttoff knob gives a real time effect, no annoying delay at all! I did try to use the grid buttons for hammering out a drum pattern, and the latency was too much for me to do this accurately.
Navigating / Grid
When using the APC40 with Ableton, a red box appears in your session view. This red box is 8 x 5 and corresponds to what is currently displayed on the grid layout. Using the up, down, left and right navigation buttons on the unit moves the red box around your session view and updates the grid on the Apc40 accordingly.
- The grid LEDs will light up orange if there is a clip in that current slot.
- When you press a button to trigger a clip, it will flash green while it is waiting for the next bar (or whatever you have your quantization set at).
- When a clip is playing, it will remain solid green.
- When a clip playing has a follow action to play another clip, the other clip will flash green while in cue.
- When a clip playing has a follow action to stop, the stop button of that track will flash red while in cue.
Holding down the shift key will turn the grid layout into an overview of your set, and by pushing buttons in the grid with the shift key down, you will do large jumps to various parts of your live set, handy for getting from one part to another without having to push the navigation buttons hundreds of times!
Holding the shift key and pushing the bank select (navigation) buttons, will jump the red box either up or down 5 scenes, or left and right 8 tracks.
All the buttons and faders are relative to the red box. Let's say you had track 1 - 8, and your red box had these selected... all the buttons and faders would manipulate these tracks. If you pushed the right nav button once, now the buttons and faders are controlling track 2 - 9.
Using the track selection button is a good way of quickly jumping to a track. Say you wanted to change an effect on track 4, just hit the track selection 4 button, and that track will come into view in Ableton.
Track Control
The 8 track control knobs are used for panning the audio of your track, and for sending the audio of your track to send A, B and C.
The knobs are also relative to where the red box is on your set. If you have track 2 - 9 selected, and you push the pan button below the track control knobs, the 8 knobs will control the pan of tracks 2 - 9. This is the same with the send buttons, you can send whatever tracks selected to send A, B, or C.
I would have preferred more sends, as I use up to 8 in my live performance, so I am restricted to A, B and C.
Device Control
This is where the magic happens. The 8 Device control knobs will automatically sync up with the top 8 parameters of whatever effect you are using in Ableton. This could take a bit of getting used to, but I treat the APC40 as an Instrument... something you could spend a bit of time with and get to know, which will ultimately increase your productivity.
The 8 knobs will update every time you switch an effect. If you select a Simple Delay in Ableton, it will tell the ACP40 that you have selected a Simple Delay, and update the LEDs around the 8 knobs with the exact values of what the Simple Delay's top 8 parameters are currently set at. This is great because you never have to worry about turning a knob and the parameter suddenly jumping... the knobs are always set at the last value you set them at.
There isn't just 8 parameters however, but holding down the shift key you can move between 8 banks. For example, a Filter Delay has many parameters, not just 8. Bank 1 will assign the 8 knobs to the parameters of the first delay, bank 2 will assign parameters of the second delay, and bank 3 to the third.
You can use the left and right arrows to quickly navigate between effects/synthesizers... if you have an Auto Filter followed by a Redux, and have the Auto Filter selected, the 8 knobs will change the Auto Filter, until you push the right arrow, which will make the knobs change the Redux.
The Device control section also has the following buttons :
- Clip / Track - for switching the bottom area between Clip and Track view. Handy if you want to look at the Waveform/Launch settings of your clip quickly, before hitting it again to go back to the effects.
- Device On/Off - turning the effect on and off
- Detail View - pushing this will hide the bottom area, making your session view larger and easier to read.
- Rec Quantization - Turns on the function that automatically snaps your MIDI input to the grid.
- MIDI Overdub - Lets you overdub on a MIDI clip
- Metronome - Turns the anoying metronome on and off
Track Control
I don't use these buttons at all, I just hit play and I am away.... but in the studio the Play, Stop and Record buttons would no doubt come in handy.
The tap tempo button allows you to hit the button at a bpm, and the set will match accordingly.
The nudge forwards,backwards buttons are good for DJs mixing with traditional vinyl or CDjs, it emulates nudging a record or CD slightly forward or backward to get the beat synced up.
Price
I am not going to tell you the price here, as it is different all around the world... I will however say that you get MASSIVE bang for your buck. This is a perfect first controller for the noobs, or a hefty multi function controller for you pros. It combines so many features of so many controllers into one, and is pretty damn cheap for what you get.
Competition
I own a Vestax VCM600 , a lot of people ask me how I compare the VCM600 to the APC4, but I don't have an answer. They are both very powerful controllers and I use them both equally. I like the layout of the Vestax and the APC40 the same, they compliment each other for how I perform. I use the Vestax VCM600 to control all my send/return channels and the parameters in them (it has a row of knobs above the fader, perfect for assigning to fun parameters on that channel) and I use the APC40 to navigate around my set and mess with parameters which I haven't otherwise used.
The VCM600 is a lot heavier, but that is because it is made to be a very durable and quality piece of gear. The case is metal, and the knobs and faders are very strong, I don't think it will ever die!
Conclusion
I love this machine. It has lived up to 99% of my expectations, and has combined all the things which a live act/producer REALLY needs... buttons, knobs, faders... I can see this unit not just increasing the productivity of my production massively, but also the fluency of my live set, ultimately meaning I can adapt my set based on crowd feedback, something which all live acts strive to achieve.
If you are getting into production/performance, or you are already a polished act, getting yourself one of these units will be one of the best things you can do.
Finally, here is a 20 minute video of me opening the box and plugging it in for the first time, you can see that after 20 minutes I am already doing lots of great things.
{vimeo}4843284{/vimeo}
Thanks for reading!
-Tom
Has this article helped you in your decision on whether to get one of these untis? If so, please help me out by using the following link to purchase one through Amazon who will deliver it straight to your door. By using this link, you pay no extra, but Amazon gives me a cut for referring you. This will help me continute to do this kind of thing full time, and ultimately produce more content, tutorials, reviews and music!If you are in Australia, please get one from StoreDJ - these guys have helped me out a lot and are a very friendly bunch with the best prices. Tell them Tom sent ya! :)
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Comments
Yes, Im having the same problem
(and I realise all the local arguments about middle men, importers etc..)
I have both, and sometimes find that the 'follow' action on the APC causes the system to hic-up - especially when I try to navigate around the project with the computer keyboard.. anything similar your end?
Our if I want mostly do Dj stuff the Vestax would be better?
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