Novation Launchpad or Akai APC Mini?

[aaricwon]

Do any of you have any experience with either? I have not played with either but I have researched and looked up videos on each. I can't decide which I should get. They both seem to be in the same price range. I don't know much about either so I dont know the major differences other than the APC Mini has faders on it.

I would love to hear advice and feedback!

[mks]

I just purchased an APC Mini. I've been playing around with it for a couple days and I'm really liking it so far. It feels pretty hefty despite its small size and its a lot more portable than the previous apc's. I have an APC 20 and while it is a lot smaller than an apc 40, it is still pretty big. I never found myself traveling with it, but it did find a welcomed place in my studio. The apc mini is something that I could see myself packing with me when I'm on the go. I do wish that they would have put the USB plug on the side rather than the back so I could wrap the cables behind my other controllers. I also have a minor gripe about the fader controls. They don't seem to pick up where they were last set, so if you switched to a send and turned it down, when you switch back to volume control, the fader is now turned down too. Hopefully this will get resolved in a firmware update.

All in all, I like this little controller. Akai makes some solid pieces of gear.

[NoKare]

Stop me if I'm wrong but I heard that Akai APC mini can't send Midi note as launchpad do.

[mks]

I just got around to testing this, and yes, the buttons can be mapped to where ever you want them mapped. Just follow the standard procedure for midi mapping in Live.

I wasn't really concerned about this as I really wanted to use this device strictly for clips and scenes in Ableton. I dislike having to use a mouse for that.

[Pentaguatti]

Wait for a bit, the launchpad pro is coming out in the spring, looks like a leaner and meaner Push for 400 bucks, RGB velocity sensitive, controls basically everything you would want to control when creating and then some.