AKAI Force Redundant Playback Setup ??

I am using the Force for playback, master clock, & MIDI control of external devices for in live setting. Since Force crashes aren’t terribly uncommon, I’ve decided I need to implement redundancy. People do this all the time with laptops running Ableton, but does anyone have experience doing this with two AKAI Forces?

Here’s what I’m thinking at the moment —

Connect two AKAI Forces with an ethernet cable & use the Ableton Link feature to sync tempo between them.

Force #1 acts as the MIDI controller for Force #2’s launch sequences (is this possible? I need them to mirror each other).

Force #1 & Force #2 send audio & MIDI signals via USB to an iConnectivity PlayAUDIO12 device. This is the automatic switcher that can handle both audio & MIDI at the same time. If Force #1 fails, it will automatically switch to Force #2 without any perceivable dropouts.

Audio outputs from the PlayAUDIO12 are sent to FOH. MIDI outs are sent to my peripheral MIDI devices (looper, harmonizer, hardware synth, etc).

This involves a lot of routing and I’m not sure that it's 100% possible in the way I'm describing. Anybody got any input that could help me out??

Thanks y’all!!!

Is there a particular problem with crashes on the Force then? I've only just got one, but my MPC Live has had two or three crashes in 6 or so years.

Still, I suppose sod's law dictates it'll happen at the worst possible moment, so as you say planning around it is fair enough. (Like having a spare guitar for string breakages)

I think it's not possible to remote-control scene launches, except maybe with the "ssh hack" where you get an under-the-counter unofficial backdoor access into the device and change its internal controlling logic. I hope I'm wrong.

Are the scene launches genuinely improvised, or could you bake the whole thing in a pre-recorded arrangement?

To get some level of non-interruption, you could have a second device like a delay or Kaosspad or a drum machine with its own sequencer or something as an external effect or instrument running and playing along the Force as a part of the show, and should the Force crash, there would be something playing all the time. Like if the guitarist gets too drunk and passes out, you'd still have the drummer keeping the beat and the show going. This would give you some non-silent time to launch a scene on the backup Force.

Zack Zerox wrote:Is there a particular problem with crashes on the Force then?

I'm not sure my machine is as optimized as it could be, but yes... I've had it freeze on me ~4 times in the last week!

HouseWithoutMouse wrote:I think it's not possible to remote-control scene launches ..... Are the scene launches genuinely improvised, or could you bake the whole thing in a pre-recorded arrangement?

ah... this confirms my suspicion. That's a great question. Scene changes are mostly baked-in, but I do like giving myself flexibility in certain sections to improvise. Sometimes I decide to keep a scene looping for an unspecified amount of times to allow for audience engagement before moving onto the next part of a song. I would definitely consider choreographing these changes though if doing so made redundancy possible.

External dummy effect/instrument is a good hack. I'll think about the smoothest variation of that for my needs. The other option of course is to just accept that it's going to fail at some point and be ready to smooth talk the audience. A true classic!

I'm really interested in this thread since I am also using my Force as the "brain" of a live setup. I have 8 audio tracks playing on the Force that I live-mix, I use the MIDI out to drive a bunch of DMX gear for lights, and I use Bluetooth MIDI to drive video software on an iPad for videos that are projected/sync'd to the music.

I have a MP3 player with a stereo render of the music/backing tracks with me, so if the Force crashes, I can just play those from the MP3 player, but it would be very ugly (no lights, no video projections, re-starting a song from scratch). So that's a last-resort option for me.

I've had several crashes happen over the course of a few months, but luckily all of them happened between songs (i.e. when loading a new song), and the Force recovered itself within a few seconds, and I would just reload the song and everything is fine.

The one issue I still have is that the Bluetooth MIDI connection is flaky, and will lose connection at random times, which means I will lose video triggers/sync then. The only way to recover is to try to re-establish the Bluetooth connection from the client (the iPad), but that's not possible when playing live (because the iPad screen would show on the video projections). I haven't found a solution to this yet aside from praying to the Bluetooth gods to keep my connection alive for long enough to get through the set. As a matter of fact, I just played a show on Friday where the Force/iPad lost their Bluetooth connectivity during soundcheck, but the actual set worked flawlessly without those connection drops. I got very lucky with that

Timo wrote: As a matter of fact, I just played a show on Friday where the Force/iPad lost their Bluetooth connectivity during soundcheck, but the actual set worked flawlessly without those connection drops. I got very lucky with that

You really like living on the edge. I would find another way until the BT is more consistent before doing another live show. Luck will only get you but so far.

Ha, right I'm OK with it since I can manually trigger those videos on my iPad. I lose the frame-accurate sync, but I can still get the videos going, which is why I'm OK with this for now.

But I'd love to have a more reliable solution to this! My issue is that the Lightning port on my iPad is occupied by a HDMI adapter for the video-out, so I don't have any other option to connect to that iPad except wirelessly (Bluetooth MIDI). Anybody have any suggestions on a more reliable solution for this? I really just need to send a couple of MIDI trigger notes to my iPad, but do so 100% reliably.

Timo wrote:I'm really interested in this thread since I am also using my Force as the "brain" of a live setup.

I'm glad you're here then, maybe we can tackle this together. It seems like our needs are similar -- creating a redundant playback system with the Force that will handle BOTH audio & MIDI dropouts.

Have you checked out the iConnectivity stuff? Their Ethernet-equipped MIDI interfaces use RTP-MIDI (Real Time Protocol MIDI), which allows you to run MIDI over standard networks, like Ethernet or Wi-fi. Could be something to look into to address your Bluetooth MIDI conundrum.

As far as a redundant system for the Force goes, there's a few big IF's going on here... but, to me, it's looking like the only way to do it is to hack the Force (SSH, Mockba mod, etc) and add functionality that's not already there (i.e. add the ability to control scene launching via MIDI).

You could then link two AKAI Forces via Ethernet Ableton sync & a MIDI connection, and (maybe) set up Force #1 to act as a MIDI controller for Force #2. If it works, it could give you two identical Forces working in tandem.

For the switching, the iConnectivity PlayAUDIO12 can handle both audio & MIDI, so you wouldn't have any audio or MIDI dropouts in the case of a Force crash. I'm not sure this device is compatible with the Force though. I am going to call the company and ask my questions.

This is all hypothetical, of course. In practice, this could get kinda ridiculous, but I guess the only way to know is to try. VERY open to ideas!!

The force is the only unit in my collection that crashes, but I sort of just accept that it comes with the territory… That a go-to solution is to just get a 2nd force shows what a great machine it is.

How exactly does the iConnectivity thing decide that a USB host has "crashed"? The host i.e. Force stops sending USB data? What if the Force crashes in a way that doesn't stop USB traffic, the audio content just goes wrong, silent or noise? I think the Force crashes that I've had, have been something like a device reboot, which should be easily detected.

I don't do professional electronic shows, but my idea for this would be to "just" use something that's already proven to work with the iConnectivity device, i.e. two Ableton laptops. Or use multiple devices playing together as an ensemble, so that if one device crashes, it's only like a single-track mute.

James Bishop wrote:

Timo wrote:I'm really interested in this thread since I am also using my Force as the "brain" of a live setup.

I'm glad you're here then, maybe we can tackle this together.

Yes - let's compare notes for sure!

I've got some iConnectivity gear gathering dust in my studio closet - I had originally bought it because it seemed the most capable gear to integrate an iPad into my studio, but then my needs shifted and I never ended up using that gear.

But you're right - maybe that's the solution to me integrating my iPad into my live setup without needing to use Bluetooth MIDI, so thank you very much for that pointer!

I'm going to dig into this in the coming days, and will report back what I find!

Why not alternate projects between units and rock a mixer? link the two units with ableton link over ethernet.

I keep seeing people try to integrate these into their set ups, what about the classic battle set up?

Having two units and the option to just smack the fader to the left or the right when one fails would be the ultimate redundancy imho but i dont enjoy complexity from a performance rig.

Well if each song contains a very specific show you'll want to run from start to finish. And it's not an option to switch to a different song. What has been started, must be finished, even if a device crashes.