Musikmesse 2014: Akai Professional just released their official intro video for the new APC40 mkII, their new ‘flagship’ controller for Ableton Live.
The APC40 mkII features a 5×8 RGB LED clip-launching matrix, assignable A/B crossfader, 8 rotary knobs, 8 channel faders, and a send button for quick access to send busses. The APC40 mkII is USB-powered and supports plug-and-play.
Included with the APC40 mkII is a suite of software, samples, and loops for out-of-the-box electronic music production:
- Toolroom artist launch packs
- Prime Loops sample packs
- Hybrid 3 by AIR Music Technology, and
- SONiVOX Twist
The APC40 mkII is expected to be available in summer 2014, priced at US $399.99.
See the Akai site for more info.
seems quite strange after Push
This looks killer to me. It looks like Novation is staking out the low end on Live controllers and Akai is covering the high end.
what ableton needs is a controller that focus’ on the arrangement side of live, may be ableton and akai can get together and make a controller called PULL!
livid instruments is coming out with one soon, it’s called the DS1. Check it out!
Sure, it is true. A “Pull” ad-on would be great, with 8 automated faders, three screens one above the other (like the push one) with knobs upon and beside (little bit like the Mackie C4), to enjoy more controls on parameters, a jog/wheel with smpte/time display … and same shape and build as the push… This would be really awesome.
And yes, quite strange after Push : the price is rather high, approaching Push’s one.
The price may be a bit high compared to push for what you get, but in all fairness they are incredibly different controllers. push, to me, seems like more a studio tool. You can do everything and its amazing but there is menu diving and its more of an interface. The APC to me has always seemed preferable for playing live as an “instrument”. its no nonsense, has a crossfader, lots of real knobs that auto map, built like a tank, real sliders and its laid out how you would want it to play live with, this seems like a very good natural evolution of it. Its bus powered, the biggest annoyance of the apc for me was the walls wart. its smaller, the apc was very ergonomic but it was pretty huge, and I never got why they used square pads, just seemed to waste space. The push makes sense because you use it for drums and keys but id never do that on an apc. This seems like a well executed MKII I don’t know if I will get one having been more enamored with the iPad and doing more in studio stuff but I do genuinely think its great!
If anyone is familiar with the iPad apps I think of push vs apc like touchable vs conductr. Both very good but built for different purposes.
I’m noticing this 8bar, 4bar, none business going on above the channel active buttons. Could it be… some kind of quantize select shortcut? that’s pretty major right there!
1.2.3.