Ableton Move (now available)

[BoogerSnot]

Interesting to hear - there's also this paragraph in that review too though:

What Move does, it does very well, but it’s also worth considering what it isn’t. As mentioned previously, Move is very much a sketchpad tool, and while a coming update will let users load custom drum and instrument patches created in Live, it’s really a one-directional tool. Move will allow you to develop ideas up to a point, but it’s definitely not an end-to-end device that will let you create a finished track. Given its limited analogue connectivity – just a single output for headphones or main out, USB MIDI but no conventional MIDI I/O – it’s not really suited for live performance either. Although the inclusion of Ableton Link does help here.

4 tracks, 8 scenes… And their videos say to stop a clip you have to press an empty clip, meaning you need to leave one empty if you want to have a stop clip button. So really just 7 clips per track? Limitations can actually help in creation, but that is putting a bit of a squeeze on things.

Device does have resampling though, and the sampler slots in the Drum device hold up to 4 minutes I think it was. Less than ideal workaround, having to resample if you want expand a song. Maybe they can introduce pages in an update to at least expand the number of scenes to 16. Or maybe they can update it so you can chain together Sets (manual says when you currently press play on the Set page it will only preview the Set).

[Michael L]

In-depth user review:
https://cdm.link/ableton-move-hands-on/

[HOTF]

https://www.ableton.com/fr/move/

[Michael L]

This is easily the best demo, Nick at sonicstate with the Ableton product and marketing managers:

[ChiTown24]

If it's Note in a box, you would be out of your mind not to simply buy an iPad for $350 + $9 for the Note app (plus a wealth of other absolutely stellar iPad audio apps with the $140 or so left over, or a launchpad mini etc).

The lowest price from official web site :
For an Ipad is 439€
For a Launchpad X (Polyphonic Aftertouch pad) is 199€
The grand total is 638€
There is some great software for the Ipad but the price to run it is more expensive than Ableton Move at 449€

It reveals a lot about your motivations when you completely disregard the currency and market I referenced, and don't even acknowledge the fact - as if no one would notice ? ok kool.

anyway. to reiterate:


https://www.apple.com/shop/buy-ipad/ipa ... ilver-wifi


https://www.walmart.com/ip/Novation-Lau ... /713519717

= $446.75 ... $2.25 cheaper than Ableton Move ($449). So you can buy yourself some bubblegum with the savings.

oh, but muh europe, but muh €uro, but muh EU, but muh wealth of tax subsidised social services:


https://www.amazon.de/-/en/MPQ03FD-A/dp/B0BJMVB4ND


https://www.amazon.de/-/en/AMS-LAUNCHPA ... B07WNSHR3V

(Note: in EU, no disadvantage in buying Apple products from Amazon - arguably you have better protection with Amazon Germany's robust 2 year after sales service, but I digress)

= €470.35 ... €21.35 more expensive than the 4 track Ableton Move (€449), but a hell of a lot more music making bang for buck - and battery life. Not to mention all the other benefits of owning/using an iPad. You can even save yourself another €5 on the launchpad if you're a member of Amazon Prime, but I am too classy and intellectually honest to reference that price in my calculations.

Bonus round:
You may already own an iPad. Great. Save yourself $/€ 440 and just buy the cute little Note app for $/€ 9. f**k around with some loops whilst you're taking a particularly stubborn shit, which is what Note (in a box or otherwise) is ideal for.

As for polyphonic aftertouch ... don't make me laugh. putting that on a 4 track preset machine is like putting lipstick on a PIG.

[Double Tap]

Device does have resampling though, and the sampler slots in the Drum device hold up to 4 minutes I think it was. Less than ideal workaround, having to resample if you want expand a song. Maybe they can introduce pages in an update to at least expand the number of scenes to 16. Or maybe they can update it so you can chain together Sets (manual says when you currently press play on the Set page it will only preview the Set).

Yeah I can see the resampling being a decent workflow limitation, forcing you to bounce down and commit to something like in the old days of four-track tape.

[ChiTown24]

So how long will it last until this dud is discontinued? A year maybe?

you think they'll sell their existing stock that quickly ?

[Gamma-UT]

To me the coolest part of move is for people who are new to finger drumming. The fact that they have built in lessons integrated with move to practice and improve your finger drumming skills I think could be one of the better selling parts of this. It’s not the fact that it has that alone it’s that it’s all 4 track recorder stuff plus that integrated which makes it cool.

It's a reasonable selling point. But I've found the Melodics courses to be not all that useful because of the way they tried to "gamify" the whole process. It's like learning piano using just Hanon. You get great at drumming the patterns you have to emulate. But then you find you're still shite at anything else in the same difficulty range.

I've found it better just to map a regular drumming course onto finger drumming as that encourages you to mix up the practice regime in a way that Melodics doesn't.

The size of this is more attractive to me than a full Push, so I'm interested.

[carrieres]

= €470.35 ... €21.35 more expensive than the 4 track Ableton Move (€449), but a hell of a lot more music making bang for buck

Yes, we agree, an Ipad is a wonderful device to create loop with Ableton Note, Novation or Korg app...

As for polyphonic aftertouch ... don't make me laugh. putting that on a 4 track preset machine is like putting lipstick on a PIG.

I am addicted to aftertouch for 15 years, I will never by something like a Launchpad Mini for example, so it is the reason I provided the price of Launchpad X (199€)
I think, you completely misunderstood my motivation

[ChiTown24]

”A coming update – which we’ve tested – will let users create compatible Drum and Instrument Racks in Live and upload them to Move, albeit only making use of the compatible device list.”

Why have you truncated that quote ? The full quote is:

While there’s no way to transfer clips or projects to Move from Live, users can upload their own samples to the device. A coming update – which we’ve tested – will let users create compatible Drum and Instrument Racks in Live and upload them to Move, albeit only making use of the compatible device list.

Samples. Upload ... Samples. Drum and Instrument rack may refer to one hit vs multi sample. Also, what are the specifics of the 'compatible device list'.

^This was the biggest thing lacking to me, the vanilla sounds on board, which as it says there an update will help solve for the most part. Still no in depth synth editing on board though, but if you can set the Move macros yourself (which I assume you can, when creating the Rack in Live), that’s a lot more control than being stuck with the stock sounds. That’s a big deal, especially if you like fine tuning like me. Also means potential instrument sharing and commercial preset packs, which could quickly expand the number of sounds available.

That reads like a huge leap, based on a willfully truncated quote, if you're supposing synth racks and not sample racks.

Uploading sample instruments from Live isn't nothing, but it's not the same as creating your own synth presets and editing the actual synth parameters of your choice on the Move, as opposed to a sample rendering. I'm not saying that won't happen, I'm just saying your quote was only explicit about samples and you shouldn't cut that part out.

With samples, they can easily predict the processing overhead in all use cases as it relates to the Move hardware. If the Move hardware has the processing overhead to handle any Drift/Wavetable preset a user might create, then why not allow the user to tweak those devices - completely - right on the hardware itself ? Processing limitations in certain scenarios ? or a means of selling Wavetable licenses by forcing the end user to create their presets on their computer, where Wavetable is only available in Suite or as an additional purchase of 129 bucks ? Drift is included in Live Intro as far as I'm aware.

Note: Move uses an 8 year old processor found in older Raspberry Pi's - the 4 core 1.5ghz ARM Cortex-A72, with 2gb RAM. Adjust hopes & dreams accordingly, and don't buy today what you're daydreaming might come tomorrow.

For 449 bucks, this is not good value for money. We'll see how things to develop. But as far as I'm concerned, at this price, this device is for early adopting GAS heads and unless there's some really significant function enhancements over the next few months, I don't see it standing the test of time.

BUT WHAT DO I KNOW.

[pc999]

It is quite interesting, but at 450€ only 4 tracks is a let-down IMO, also it could have some audio tracks for simple recording a vocal, an acoustic guitar or something like it.This CPU has much more firepower than MPC/Force, but seems more limited in these things.
Bluetooth or SD cards could be useful too.

I wonder if they plan to update it with more instruments and fx.

It don't seems to share the upgradability/repairability they professed for Push 3?

[ChiTown24]

For funsie wunsies, I've looked up compared processing benchmarks of the chips used in the $349 iPad (current, 10th generation) vs the $449 Ableton (Bowel) Move(ment).

Note: Ableton have possibly overclocked the processor to hit 1.5ghz, how much gains that would net compared to 1.416ghz I will leave up to you to decide.


https://www.cpubenchmark.net/compare/40 ... e-1416-MHz

"What processor does Move come with?
Move’s processor is a quad-core ARM Cortex-A72 at 1.5 GHz with 2 GB of RAM and a custom OS optimized for music creation and performance. "
https://help.ableton.com/hc/en-us/artic ... hnical-FAQ

[jens]

only 4 tracks is a let-down IMO, also it could have some audio tracks for simple recording a vocal, an acoustic guitar or something like it.

Yes, four tracks is basically a severe showstopper unfortunately - if it had at least six or better eight, it would be a wonderful machine. It could even have the same number of pads and you'd just switch between two different sets of tracks.

It can record vocals, guitar, etc. by the way - just that there's not enough tracks to make good use of this feature.

[apoclypse]

”A coming update – which we’ve tested – will let users create compatible Drum and Instrument Racks in Live and upload them to Move, albeit only making use of the compatible device list.”

Why have you truncated that quote ? The full quote is:

While there’s no way to transfer clips or projects to Move from Live, users can upload their own samples to the device. A coming update – which we’ve tested – will let users create compatible Drum and Instrument Racks in Live and upload them to Move, albeit only making use of the compatible device list.

Samples. Upload ... Samples. Drum and Instrument rack may refer to one hit vs multi sample. Also, what are the specifics of the 'compatible device list'.

^This was the biggest thing lacking to me, the vanilla sounds on board, which as it says there an update will help solve for the most part. Still no in depth synth editing on board though, but if you can set the Move macros yourself (which I assume you can, when creating the Rack in Live), that’s a lot more control than being stuck with the stock sounds. That’s a big deal, especially if you like fine tuning like me. Also means potential instrument sharing and commercial preset packs, which could quickly expand the number of sounds available.

That reads like a huge leap, based on a willfully truncated quote, if you're supposing synth racks and not sample racks.

Uploading sample instruments from Live isn't nothing, but it's not the same as creating your own synth presets and editing the actual synth parameters of your choice on the Move, as opposed to a sample rendering. I'm not saying that won't happen, I'm just saying your quote was only explicit about samples and you shouldn't cut that part out.

With samples, they can easily predict the processing overhead in all use cases as it relates to the Move hardware. If the Move hardware has the processing overhead to handle any Drift/Wavetable preset a user might create, then why not allow the user to tweak those devices - completely - right on the hardware itself ? Processing limitations in certain scenarios ? or a means of selling Wavetable licenses by forcing the end user to create their presets on their computer, where Wavetable is only available in Suite or as an additional purchase of 129 bucks ? Drift is included in Live Intro as far as I'm aware.

Note: Move uses an 8 year old processor found in older Raspberry Pi's - the 4 core 1.5ghz ARM Cortex-A72, with 2gb RAM. Adjust hopes & dreams accordingly, and don't buy today what you're daydreaming might come tomorrow.

For 449 bucks, this is not good value for money. We'll see how things to develop. But as far as I'm concerned, at this price, this device is for early adopting GAS heads and unless there's some really significant function enhancements over the next few months, I don't see it standing the test of time.

BUT WHAT DO I KNOW.

For this type of device the price seems about right. The MC101 is more expensive and the Novation Circuit only undercuts it by $50 bucks. So to me the price is inline with other groove boxes in this category while having things these other groove boxes don't have. The MC101 is a PITA to work with for one and has very limited capabilities to work with sounds, doesn't have a mic to sample from etc. Very limited sample time. The Circuit is a bit more limited in-terms of instruments and what you can do.

So while a device like this isn't for everyone I think in the category it's in, it looks compelling for those who like portable groove boxes with a lot of sounds. The ability to wirelessly add your own sounds and samples to the device and open the project in Ableton Note and Live is already a huge improvement over the competition in that space imo.

[carrieres]

For 449 bucks, this is not good value for money. We'll see how things to develop. But as far as I'm concerned, at this price, this device is for early adopting GAS heads and unless there's some really significant function enhancements over the next few months, I don't see it standing the test of time.

At least 5 years, the 4 parts of the Roland MC-101 are grooving since 2019 and cost 479€
Yes, 4 tracks is disappointing