Sonic LAB: Akai APC Mini Live Control

US Budget clip launcher with faders 02/01/15

MP4	12:41 mins

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The APC MINI is an Ableton Live controller, designed to get you clip and scene launching together with basic mixing and device control functions.

With 64 clip launch buttons and Tri-colour LED backlights they give you basic status (green: blue: red:) sadly not to the colour of the clip, but hey this is a budget device. Having said that, Session navigation is nice and clear with clip boundaries reinforced with the LEDs and also the navigation buttons.

As Gaz says - it just works, plug and play folks - something we've come to take for granted, but worth mentioning.

The APC Mini comes with Live Lite, plus a whole bunch of producer packs from some of Toolroom records top producers - five of them each with 2GB of loops, hits and samples available as a free download.

But the real biggie is that it comes with a full version of AIR Instruments Hybrid 3 - a fully featured software synth which if you were to buy it alone would cost more than the price of the APC Mini!

Faders are small, but recessed making it easy to chuck in a bag without worrying about breaking anything off. The addition of the 9th fader is also very much appreciated - master volume as standard. It is possible to break out of the standard mapping by going into MIDI remote mode in Live and hitting the fader or button you want to customize - nice and simple.

Okay it doesn't have the drum pad functionality of some controllers, but at the price it really does at an extra dimension to working with Live if you don't already have a controller available. Or in conjunction with other controllers it can perform the clip launching and basic mixing functions to give you a full hands on setup.

Price £79/$99

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