By Dj Bo
Sun Feb 25, 2018 11:25 am
sinik wrote:as the software seems to evolve, im thinking of ditching my LIVE for the X. i just miss that hands-on control that i had on my 2500..
as a former 2500 user, i wonder if the X is still give me that compact feel where every knob sits in its perfect place and is reachable whitin no time.
also, how much can u do from the controller, without using the touchscreen? is there a dedicated button for grid edit or quantize?
and is the screen so bloody big that it's distracting or is it just fine?
thanks for some clarification
Hi. I think you should take the advice of Ill Green and try it out first if you have a store near you. I too was thinking about going from the live to the X because I also wanted more hands on control without using the touchscreen and looking less at the screen, but after 2 hours in the store I decided to not go for it yet.
To answer your questions: You can do a lot from the controller but for certain tasks you still need to use the touchscreen. Don't get me wrong. It's definitely better than the Live and the dedicated buttons that are there feel much better to work with (also the f-keys are handy), but for that amount of money I want more hands on control without using or looking at the touchscreen.
- the screen size is not distracting in my opinion. When using only the dedicated buttons, q-links and transport buttons I noticed that I was mostly looking only at the controller and not the touchscreen. The screen is less in your face than with the Live.
- there's no dedicated button for grid edit, you have to use the touchscreen or use the menu button and use the cursors and enter to go to grid edit.
- On the main screen you can't move to every tab. Not the left grid/track/stepseq/xy tabs. Not the warp/assign/edit samples tabs and not to the TC of Metro tabs. Only the ones which are red squared when you select it on your Live, like track, program of transpose. Those ones you can reach with the cursors.
- In grid edit you can't use the cursors to go to pencil, erase, lasso or zoom. You can use the shortcut Shift and cursor buttons to zoom horizontally and vertically though, so you don't have to use touchscreen to zoom.
- There's no dedicate TC button. Of course you can use the Q-links for limited tc settings when in screen control, just as in the Live with the fourth row of Q-links.
- In grid edit you can't select single events without using the touchsreen. As in the live you have the option to select all events for 1 pad, but not a single event. You can use the shortcut Locate + </> (Event |</>| to move the audio pointer to the next event but you can't use the controller to select that event to edit (nudge, transpose etc) it. You still have to use the touchscreen.
Quess what, while I was trying it out in the store in Amsterdam last week Andy Mac, the Macster, Rihanna hit maker, was checking out gear. So I asked him about the possibility to select single events with the controller. He called one of the developers. The developer said it ' was on his list'. So maybe in a future update we can use the cursors to move from selected event to next event on the X or on the Live use shift plus rotary knob or something.
Go try it out first.
Also check out the forums on c.getsatisfaction. com: some posts about soundcard troubles with the X, before you spend 2000+ euros or dollars. It could be that there's only a small percentage faulty units. The guys here seem to have no problems with the X though.
After trying the X I'm now trying to learn the Q-link rows by heart and for moving through bars and locations am using an external midi controller controlling Ableton controlling the MPC Live in slave. Trying to find work arounds for using the touchsreen and looking at the screen.
Greets
Bo