Ableton Move : User Thread

It wasn’t. They sound so bad to my ears. I had an MPC live ii for a while, and I think it set the bar too high for me on what speakers on a groovebox could sound like.

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Yeah but the speaker is way bigger, but then again my Samsung phone with an even smaller speaker sounds 1000* times better than the Move.

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Yes, if it sounded as good as a phone speaker, that would have been fine.

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You may already know this, and I’m not going to pretend it’s a good speaker regardless, but there is a lot of unused headroom when you start a new set. Once you start playing with the Dynamics and Saturator devices on the main track (accessible from the clip launcher), the speaker can actually handle a low-stakes jam on the couch if you forgot your headphones in another room.

Not in the same league as the MPC Live, but more useful than it first appears.

Edit: I said “forgot your headphones” because I don’t know if you have kids, but I primarily value the speaker because I can play Move in front of my daughter and she can hear what I’m doing. It’s much nicer than a) using headphones and feeling like we’re not actually spending time together, or b) not making music at all.

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But at least it’s instant shit and not delayed by half a second :stuck_out_tongue:

FWIW: With all the gear I have owned with internal speakers (couple of Volcas, og Circuit) I tend to try it once because of the novelty and then never use it again. I suspect it will be the same when I eventually get a Move. I don’t really have a strong opinion on its inclusion or exclusion.

Exactly this. A device that is at least 3-4X as bulky as my phone shouldn’t sound vastly inferior to my phone. I don’t know what they did to make it sound this tinny.

I’m not really complaining because I don’t really need the speaker. My point was more a counter to the argument that they should never allow Bluetooth audio because of latency. That would still be infinitely more useful than the speakers to me.

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We’re in the same boat! I have an 8 year old daughter (who is very intrerested in music, taking piano lessons, trying to write songs)
I honestly wish the speaker was better for this reason. Playing around on the move with her is the only reason I ever use the speakers at all. We ofter plug it into the aux input on our living room bluetooth speaker to be able to hear the kick and bassline :grinning:

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It sounds way better (not good or great, just better!) when Move is placed on a flat, hard surface like desk or table.

And - just like with the Bluetooth - in a situation when I don’t have my headphones on me but inspiration / boredom strikes, being able to use those speakers vs. not use the Move at all is a huge advantage.

I wish Tracker Mini had a tiny speaker for such occasions, like M8 does :frowning:

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:100:

The problem with a lot of discussions on forums like this one is people don’t have adult jobs, families, kids, etc. and live in a blissful bubble :smiley:

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I wouldn’t go so far as to call this absurd thing in the M8 a speaker :wink:

I only know of one device that has a very small speaker that sounds pretty good for its size: the OP-XY. Same for the mic.

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Hope it‘s not too OT now but while we are at it: i was looking arround for quite some time for new BT speaker (for move) that has low latency via AUX input (which is very rare unfortunately). And the anker soundcore motion+ was a perfect find. ZERO latency via aux, 9 band EQ, dirt cheap, small and sounds great (but using the eq is a must to get most out of it).

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Yes it’s perfect for this imo. Load up a drum machine sound, play a beat on the pads, hit capture and there’s your drum loop for you ready to go. No setting a loop length ahead of time, no need for tap tempo, it just works. Clips can be 16 bars long so while you can’t chain anything yet and create a whole song, at least 16 bars is long enough to work on a verse or chorus and get one section of a song going vs other boxes that trap you into a tiny 4 bar loop. I use it this way alongside guitar/bass/vox for adding drums/synth sounds/sounds that I sampled myself like organ, mellotron, etc.

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I believe in the live q&a somebody from ableton said something to the effect that they had discussed the possibility of audio tracks or that they hadn’t ruled out audio tracks. something like that. It frankly would be dumb of them not to add them considering that long recording into a pad on a drum rack is already 90% of the way there and they would only need to make minor changes to make proper audio tracks (minus warping of course) or an audio looper.

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Anker soundcore is a great speaker, cheap and I think same one in mpc live hahaha

Yeah, and I should have been clearer that I do appreciate having the speaker, even though it sounds tinny. Just that if there was a choice between a speaker like this and Bluetooth audio, I wouldn’t hesitate a second to pick bt audio. :blush:

At least the Ableton devs don’t have the same ideological opposition to loopers that the Bitwig guys do, so it could be possible. Just seems like a lot to squeeze in interface wise, not really obvious how and where it would fit, especially for consistency with the overarching Ableton way. One big limitation on what they can do is the need to also slot in with Live.

On audio tracks, idk - probably the same reservations that I don’t really see an obvious fit with the interface for more than 4 tracks. Or if it’s a track type I’m not really convinced of the added value over just using a drum pad if it’s not gonna get warping.

But like that, everyone has their different priorities, the main thing for me is that whatever way they go it’s implemented in a streamlined way and doesn’t introduce bloat for people who don’t end up using them. But pretty confident the Move team know what they’re doing on that front.

Personally, the only thing I really care about is getting 16 slices mode per pad, the one thing that feels to me like it’s missing. Can even see where it would slot into the interface. Well, that and more control over which presets it pulls from when creating a project, but that’s more nice to have.

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It would be useful for people who want to record some scratch vocal ideas or a guitar part or something and just hit record and let it run for 16 bars or whatever without messing around with drum racks, hold lengths, etc.

But yeah I guess warping is a big issue especially since Move probably appeals to a lot of beginners without much gear or daw experience. What happens if you record your vocal take and then decide to change tempo? I guess they can’t just say “it doesn’t warp” they have to include some kind of rudimentary warping. But if it sounds bad then the whole device gets a reputation for “sounding bad”. So I can see how that could be a whole pandora’s box.

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Agreed. The current slicing implementation is nice enough, and I can understand the appeal of slicing a loop and being able to play each slice chromatically, but I’d personally get more use out of the feature as an alternative to 16 pitches mode.

I think they could keep the workflow almost the same as it is now — the only difference is that slices would display on the right instead of overriding the main rack. Maybe they could make it a workflow setting so that we could choose our preferred behaviour?

I dunno, I’m neither a developer nor a UI/UX designer so there might be an obvious downside I’m not seeing. But the current implementation kind of exacerbates the four-track limitation because you need to dedicate a whole drum rack, and if you’re only using three or four slices anyways, I don’t find it THAT much more convenient than just copying a pad and adjusting the start point.

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another cool parent alert!!

so many cool parents on this forum

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Just to clear this up once and for all…

Q: Will the Move speakers replace my studio monitors?
A: No, they are not designed for this purpose. To enjoy a wider frequency range you need to connect an external speaker or headphones. To ensure maximum portability, the compact size of the Move doesn’t allow for professional grade speakers.

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