FInally finished the paint job, now has grey faders and knob caps. I’m not going to add any lettering etc as i like the minimal look, and it enables me to reassign some of the buttons and knobs without them then being labeled wrongly.
Today I changed the mode of the APC40 in Live’s midi/synch preferences from ‘pickup’ mode to ‘value scaling’.
For anyone using an APC40 with a dislike for how the faders work in pickup mode, you should give it a try. While not perfect, it certainly makes a big difference, and helps avoid the potential volume spikes when it snatches the level in pickup mode when you change fader banks.
hard to explain how it works, but essentially it means that when you change banks of faders, say from 1-8 to 9-16, it scales the existing position of the fader for the new channel. So for example, if I was controlling track 1, set the fader to half way up, then changed banks so the fader controlled track 9 which was at the top of the fader on the screen, it would scale the fader on the APC40 so that when I slid it down it would act like the fader level was at the top and bring it down…..
Like I said, it’s difficult to explain, but by trying it out you will instantly understand how much more useful it is.
It’s far from perfect, and there are instances where it can get a bit confusing, but it’s a much better option than pickup mode in my opinion.
Well, it arrived today….after playing around with it for a while, here are my initial thoughts.
The clip matrix can be a bit confusing if you haven’t got your clips arranged in tracks by type such as drums, bass etc.
A few times I have hit the track select button instead of the clip stop button, but that is just down to getting used to the layout.
The device control section is probably the best part after the clip matrix, it gives immediate access to the macro controls for the effects on each track, and clicking the left or right button moves through the effects on each track. Although I won’t be clicking through them much as I have set up an effects rack on each track, with 8 macro knobs controlling all the effects for that track. I’ll post a video soon to show how i have set this up.
I used to use 8 knobs on my Virus Ti Polar to control the macro knobs on the effects for each track, and these were not endless encoders, so moving to endless encoders for the same purpose on the APC is a bit strange at first, kind of threw me off a little, as i was used to hitting the 0 position of the knob on the virus and knowing that the effect was off, whereas I now have to look at the knob LEDs to get visual feedback on the effect being off/all the way down to zero, I’m sure I’ll be able to compensate by pulling it down a little more than is required to make sure it’s off.
I reassigned the cue volume knob to the tempo as the tap tempo isn’t very accurate and jumps pretty quickly, but using the cue volume is much better, and allows me to set the sensitivity of it by setting the lower and upper limit that the knob ranges. Now i need to find a function to assign to the spare tap tempo button that’s no longer being used.
I’ll probably reassign the pan control too, as I rarely use it, and reassign it to an extra effect send to give me 4 send levels per track.
Everything feels pretty good, all the faders are quite stiff with just the right amount of resistance, the knobs (encoders) have just the right resistance too, and the buttons feel buttony without being too hard or soft to press, so no accidental clip triggering or clips not firing. They have quite a bit more resistance than the monome buttons, but aren’t too firm.
What I don’t like at all about the unit is the way the faders work when you cange banks of tracks. If I’m using tracks 1-8, set the volume faders to a certain point, and then hit the bank button (shift/right) to control tracks 9-16, the faders use pickup mode, so I have to move the fader slowly until it picks up the level of the new track, which is a real pain in the arse as when playing live you don’t want to be moving it slowly to make sure you don’t get any volume bumps/peaks if you pull it up too far to catch the pickup mode. I appreciate flying faders would have bumped the price up, but I would have been glad to pay it in exchange. Failing that some rotary encoders like the device controls would have been a better option as they receive position info from Live, so there’s no pick up mode needed.
I’m currently looking into how difficult it would be to modify the unit to retro fit some rotary encoders to replace the faders. There isn’t a lot of room in the thing, so it might be difficult.
Someone on the monome forum is going to write a patch in PD (Pure Data) that will let me capture the midi and data passed from Live to the unit and vice versa so we can extract the functions from the firmware to see if we can emulate the handshake that the APC40 has with Live to enable certain control features, so then we can see if we can improve the Live controller patches written for the monome even more.
I’m not very keen on the colour scheme either, metallic black with mainly green LEDs looks a bit 80’s to me, so I’m going to strip it down and spray the casing, I’m thinking white with red legend, but we’ll see what goes when I have a play in photoshop to see what might look good. I’ll post pics when it has its new paint job 
I’ll post video soon too.
totally geeking out working on a live set – live break mashing with MLR on the monome, plus on the fly midi sequencing, combined with 8 discrete channels of live glitch using 8 instances of artillery with Live….it’s gonna be off the hook, I just need to hold it all together….
Sugar Bytes Artillery 2 is the shit! http://www.sugar-bytes.de/content/products/Artillery2/index.php?lang=en
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