评论：Ableton公司推2

Hi Noah,

Great review and write-up overall. If I may, I'd like to point out three glaring omissions that I hope will be added into your already excellent review, as they're the kind of things a consumer should be made aware of ahead of time:

1. No Dedicated Hot Swap Button. More than anything, this is a bit of annoyance considering that such a simple (but effective) function has yet to be programmed in. I primarily utilize the hot swap function when testing out different hits with my drum rack, so having to constantly reach for the mouse button to engage hot swap functionality is quite cumbersome.

2. HUGE Velocity Spike Bug. When playing chords using the brilliant Push 2 pads, there is currently a bug (acknowledged by Ableton) that causes the velocity value to spike to 127, despite the user applying a light touch. The current Beta provides some relief to the bug, but it is still quite present when playing chord progressions. Ableton is currently working on a permanent fix, but no timetable has been given. This, for me personally, verged on being a deal breaker. The best work around is to currently engage a fixed velocity value to prevent spikes, but this prevents expressive play of synths the make use of velocity and aftertouch functionality. The result is very static sounding progressions.

3. Lack of BPM Input Dialog Box for Simpler. This has proven to be a huge pain. In past, dropping an audio file onto an audio track would reveal an additional Warp box with an area where the user could input the audio file's BPM, helpful when Live's auto analysis is incorrect. With Push 2, the emphasis is placed on a near all MIDI workflow, so said audio files are dropped into a MIDI track loaded into instance of Simpler. The problem is that once the file has been loaded into Simpler, the user cannot define the BPM. For example, let's say I want to use a 128 BPM vocal sample in a Drum n Bass tempo'd project (174 BPM). If the project is set to 174 BPM, if the audio sample loaded via Push 2 into a instance of Simpler is analyzed with the incorrect BPM, there is no way for the user to correct it. There is no rhyme or reason to why Live can accurately analyze some audio files and not other when loaded into Simpler, which makes it all the more frustrating.

Push 2 is a great controller, the OLED screen and ingenius function mapping is worth the price of admission. However, the Velocity Spike-Bug is something that the team really should have had fixed prior to release as it directly affects one of the core fundamentals of creating music: playing chords with expression. I can't wait to see what the future holds for Push 2, but I (and many other Push 2 owners) hope a fix is coming sooner than later.

Cheers.

Hi there - thanks for the feedback.

With regards to the lack of a dedicated Hot Swap button, while the improved Push 2 browser does provide similar functionality, I can see how this would be problematic for certain users. As someone who's never made much use of Live's Hot Swap functionality, it wasn't something I was looking for, which should explain the oversight. My apologies.

As for the serious velocity spike bug you've mentioned - though I've yet to personally experience it and this is the first I've heard of it - I'm astonished it wasn't caught during the extensive beta-testing process. That said, I believe Ableton is working to address this issue with a firmware update that should be available soon.

The BPM dialog box for Simpler is a great idea that I hope they will implement with a future update as well.

Happy Pushing!