EnochLight wrote:Cool - let us know how you get on with it. I'm definitely taking a "wait and see" approach - I'll give it 12 months. I want to see if Ableton actually delivers on the Arranger in standalone,** and follow actions in Session view are an absolute must for me. That and, I want to see how this early hardware shakes out as far as reliability - I refuse to be an early adopter “beta tester” for Push 3.
That said, a lot can change in 12 months - if Akai keeps churning out solid updates for Force over the next 6-12 months to keep pace with Ableton, then I’m perfectly fine keeping my Force. I’ve got an MPC Live II for the portability stuff (and the battery lasts twice as long!), so I’m good.
Who knows... maybe I'll do with the Push 3 what I did with the 404 mk2, and just write a free book and do a year or two of videos on it. I feel like I'm running out of things to say about the mk2 that I *care* to say about it. the mk2 stuff was mostly done as a personal experiment, but I wasn't super passionate about it. I've been (not currently am) a hard core Ableton Live user... so... I'm not sure about the Push 3... but I think it'll fill a gap for me to mess around with that the MPC (plenty of amazing content already) and the OP-1 (lots of content, but super niche) already have filled, which is why I haven't gone super deep into videos for either.
To me, Akai and Roland have shown that they can do a bit of an about face. The value used to always be in "the next big thing", and software has really revolutionized parts of the music industry. "Platform" is no longer a moment in time, but both companies in their own way, are showing that a platform is something that can actually be supported. Akai has taken the hardware path, and it is giving validity to the Live/One/X product line, actually inviting customers to stay around a while... and heck this even applies to the Force. Roland has gone more the cloud based approach, which is kind of backwards (in my mind), but if it helps draw firmware updates and a steady stream of patches and other content... well cool by me.
I speculate that Ableton is entering this market due to a few things. Close ties to hardware vendor(s), and for example, if Ableton is still partnered with Akai on this, honestly it's a win/win for both as they can both learn from each other and have healthy coopetition, and still move both hardware and software. Where I suspect Ableton has the advantage is in the marketplace department. They've got *far* more libraries, Max4Live opens up a ridiculous amount of content from fx, to synths, to all kinds of external automation craziness. That said... it's tied to an Ableton Live Suite bundle... which... makes the Standalone kit feel even more pricey.
The Force was pretty close to hitting the mark for what I'm looking for, and honestly it's still possible for Akai to get there either with software updates or with a mk2 hardware release. Akai is clearly nailing some amount of hardware/software integration... but I find the software to be a bit lacking. Ableton from what I can see has the software nailed down, and with the push/push 2 has made great strides towards hardware integration. Yeah I know Push 3 is going to be Beta until it is not, but I am pretty confident that Ableton will get there with much (if not all) of the hardware integration.
I'd seriously like to see Roland step in with a new MV... make it a 3 way clip/arranger showdown... would be awesome.