Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Ableton Push 3

ableton.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

21–30 of 307 posts

Re: Ableton Push 3

#21

Post by vemv »

I own a Push 1 and 2, although at hobbyist level.

The standalone Push 3 seems a great step forward. macOS has increasingly become user-hostile when it comes to audio (and other pro) users.

For instance I have an expensive sound card that became useless with after a minor OS upgrade. I never got to troubleshoot it or find an official solution.

That was incredibly discouraging - enough to move on to other hobbies. And I'm a programmer - don't want to imagine the pains that musicians have to go through.

Re: Ableton Push 3

#22

Post by junon »

grafzhl wrote: post #2

Been making electronic music for well over a decade, but always in the classic DAW arrangement view, at most using MIDI keyboards in terms of haptic input devices but relying on mouse and keyboard 95% of the time. I look at devices like Push or Maschine and my immediate thought is how tedious it seems to get anything done with them. I find the different approaches to manifesting musical ideas endlessly fascinating.

Agreed. I have a few similar boards here at home and rarely use them. They're a pain to set up, you spend more time configuring channels and whatnot, and half the time, the DAW has problems even seeing them given the abysmal state of MIDI driver management on e.g. Windows.

Re: Ableton Push 3

#24

Post by dkdbejwi383 »

I understand why it's expensive, but as a hobbyist who'd want this for some fun at home, I do wish there were a cheaper standalone device without some of the fancy things like MPE and a battery.

Re: Ableton Push 3

#25

Post by capableweb »

neom wrote: post #19

Related, saw this...synth(?) thinger yesterday and I really really want one: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ivuy9QYLFVY So cool! Not sure where they are in producing it, but it's neat!

That's a sequencer. It doesn't produce sound by itself, but produces notes to be used for other devices to produce sound.

You might be better off getting a Circuit Tracks or something (any groovebox) before diving deeper into the hobby, it will be more gratifying than buying individual hardware like that.

Re: Ableton Push 3

#27

Post by sublinear »

grafzhl wrote: post #2

Been making electronic music for well over a decade, but always in the classic DAW arrangement view, at most using MIDI keyboards in terms of haptic input devices but relying on mouse and keyboard 95% of the time. I look at devices like Push or Maschine and my immediate thought is how tedious it seems to get anything done with them. I find the different approaches to manifesting musical ideas endlessly fascinating.

I'm just an amateur of a similar amount of time, but I think it comes down to what inspires someone to create whether it's a physical interface or a graphical one. A little inspiration can overcome a lot of inefficiency. I prefer a tracker, but still want something like a DAW.

Sunvox is pretty great for quickly roughing out an idea. I use my MIDI keyboard for building patterns. I'll record the notes for a pattern and then play it back in a loop to adjust the rest of the parameters. I use the other mapped controls live until I have what I want. I prefer having tons of physical controls ready to go for this part. I have a few project files I always start from and their corresponding templates are saved into the keyboard. Then I go into audacity and record my guitar, voice, or whatever else to a click and import them into the timeline. I think it's more important to have your workflow down than be distracted by new shiny toys.

Re: Ableton Push 3

#28

Post by capableweb »

dkdbejwi383 wrote: post #24

I understand why it's expensive, but as a hobbyist who'd want this for some fun at home, I do wish there were a cheaper standalone device without some of the fancy things like MPE and a battery.

There is a lot of groove boxes on the market and seems they're getting more and more siblings, which is nice to see!

As a entry-device, Circuit Tracks is nice, immediate and not hard to learn to get your feet wet. It's also way cheaper than Push 3 but obviously a bit more limited.

Otherwise, there is a bunch of different devices at different price points, here is a one list sorted by "popularity": https://www.thomann.de/intl/groove_boxes.html

Re: Ableton Push 3

#29

Post by wheels »

capableweb wrote: post #11
nologic01 wrote: post #4

I wonder what kind of software it is running on standalone mode

Was wondering this too. Considering Ableton itself doesn't support Linux out-of-the-box, wonder if the device runs some sort of Windows on it, or if Ableton for Linux might be coming in the future. Maschine+ by Native Instruments (basically the same device but by another company) runs Linux although Maschine desktop software does not support Linux, so maybe I shouldn't get my hopes up.

I used to work for NI, and at that time (15 years ago) almost everything worked on Linux. But it wasn't shipped because of packaging and support.

Now that I'm back to the audio software business, our current product has shipped on Linux so far, but we're dropping support in the next version because of the disproportionate support costs. To a first approximation, Linux support a bit more expensive than supporting macOS or Windows, with about 1/50th the return.

Again, that calculus would change for embedded usage.

Re: Ableton Push 3

#30

Post by sideshowb »

Very cool but surely it can't be long before AI can generate top quality music?

Of course people will still keep creating, and I'm sure there will be an 'organic' no-AI movement, but the exciting music tech of the next 10 years is going to be in that space in between the two...

(Ableton user since version 4)

Post reply on HN