Awesome response, thank you
1 Like
So a few updates to my previous comments:
RE: Life audio import; you can just import audio into the plugin from your computer directly, it also has a nice live recording function that can listen to your DAW/desktop and record in from different tracks. Haven’t tried this out yet but read about it on the XLN site.
RE: Loopmix: I had another go at using this today as felt I may have been a little unfair, and I found that it can come up with some good ideas but this tends to be 20% of the time, at best.
Life is 90% + success rate for me, which I guess is down to the algo’s it uses to sequence the beat structures and sound shaping configs. I may be wrong here, but I would say Loopmix is more random as opposed to Life being AI - the result is much more musical and instantly usable/inspiring results.
Just my views. Others may feel different 
3 Likes
Interestingly, I found similar results with playbeat (another randomising app from the loopmix people)
1 Like
I’ve had the same issue with Playbeat, which is touted to use AI… perhaps it’s Gen 1 AI vs Gen 2 AI 
- I have no idea if this is true haha.
Point worth noting with Playbeat 3, if you didn’t already know that is, you have to hit the like button ‘
’ on whatever drum midi pattern you want to add to your favourites list within the the plugin. When you do this, it saves the liked patterns so that when you use the random dice function button or the remix (two interlaced arrows) function button, it uses the learnt liked patterns to interchange the midi info based on your style. This becomes a little better to use when you lock certain midi lanes to avoid reworking your entire pattern in development.
I guess this is early type AI learning that isn’t very musically intuitive - I have no idea how Life employs AI and whether it has more advanced algo’s.
I do find that the Audiomodern UI’s are really flat and uninspiring, which may be part of the issue. Chordjam has to be the worst of their offerings. It’s really interesting how a boring UI can put you off using certain apps that may actually be capable of getting good results.
1 Like
I think when you delve into Playbeat it’s really good, so is Loopmix.
But I think the general vibe of the results are quite different to Life.
They’re all great tools that will give you back what you put in.
One of the gripes I have with Life- I wish it would save your full session (like all 6 beats that you save when messing with 1 audio file)… saving the beats individually seems clunky to me.
3 Likes
I spent some time with Life yesterday trying to sort out how to map Midi CC’s to the controls in Ableton. It’s a little different than most plugins in that it really wants to have a CC sent to it, which it then auto-maps. My goal is to have modulation plugins doing fun stuff with the parameters, so I didn’t want to involve outside controllers.
The solution I came upon was a very simple plugin called “ControlChange8” created by Robert Henke some time ago which is available here.
The plugin lives in front of Life and, once Life is “listening,” moving the knobs on ControlChange8 sends the currently configured Midi CC#. I used two of them to map most of the available controls in Life, the most interesting being on the far left side of the screen - sound variation and pattern variation. The labelling of the Midi CC’s that are shown in Life as a little misleading as it’s a XY grid so having one labelled “amount” when in fact it controls the up and down movement within the grid was a little confusing at first. Once I just ignored that and config’d accordingly, things went very well.
The purple parameter’s you’ll see when in the Midi configuration/mapping mode are just used to either solo or mute sound groupings 1-4. I didn’t find this too useful ATM, but maybe I’ll have some Aha! moment later on.
After setting up ControlChange8 I then created a group for all of the elements and mapped ControlChange8’s knobs to the group Macros, which could then be modulated by your average m4l device.
For now, having some sync’d modulation shuffling the controls around yields very cool and evolving material with the right source material. I was admittedly modulating everything, so I’m sure there’s a more moderate way to use it that’ll be nice and subtle, but I was interested in seeing how far it could be pushed and how it felt. I’m very pleased. The results continued to feel very musical and rhythmically worked just fine. I was concerned there might be some lag, but I didn’t sense anything that bothered me.
4 Likes
It occurred to me this morning that using the DAW recorder in Life you can get very similar results to the Octatrack sliced resampling using random locks. It only took 12 years… 
7 Likes
Yep, it’s great for dropping in loops and varying them fast… I’m surprised XLN haven’t pushed this more and kept the focus mainly on field recording through the app.
1 Like
FYI this plugin is on sale along with some other XLN stuff. I’m curious but I’m not keen on the cloud sync part of it.
Can anyone tell me - if I import a sample straight from my DAW/browser via drag+drop does it get saved into the cloud account? What if I don’t need the cloud part of this system, just the loop-mangling part? If I’m just playing around with various different loops with it do they all automatically get saved into a giant list in the cloud? Can I then clear it out again once I’m done?
I really don’t need that functionality, but I feel this might be a good inspiration machine in the same way that XO can be. XO isn’t super sophisticated with sound design etc but so quick to get something up and running and then bounces ideas into audio in the DAW.
I didn’t buy it in the end but it’s still on my shortlist to come back to.
I really enjoyed the trial though. I’ve said it before but I’m n to one for field recordings. I set out with good intentions but never actually do it in the end. But the app and seamless integration made Life a breeze and the results were often pretty cool. I was recording my dog, football crowds, train noises, etc all easy peasy via the iPhone app and quite liked the uniqueness of the beats it was creating out of some Falkirk fan shouting “that was fucking onside ref” or whatever.
Memory is too bad to help much with your question though - sorry. Def worth trialing it though.
I think it only goes to through the cloud when using the iOS app. I don’t believe it does this when importing direct from the desktop. I’m sure there’s a Q&A on this somewhere - can’t remember where though.
1 Like
I’ve played around with Audiomodern’s Loopmix, but found it quite hard to get usable results. it’s very easy to get glitchy stuff, but ie. Drum Loops are hard to mangle with just a randomizer. And when you’re resorting to manual chopping it’s faster in Ableton itself for me.
XLN LIFE is on sale now so keen to hear someone who has experience with loopmix as well; is XLN better as an idea generator?
i know both, also FACTORSYNTH / FACTOID
they all lead to different results
if i had to chose only one, then it would be LIFE. It can create insane and highly useful variations in no time. I would have some additional feature ideas, but even as is, it is really a great plugin. (despite the cloud thing;( )
but the other ones are great too
2 Likes
I’ve got both and Life is better. I had the same problems as you with Loopmix + I don’t like Audiomoderns GUI’s, as they aren’t very clear to me.
Best to download the demo of life to see for yourself, as the results are far more musical and the interface is simply more joyful to use.
Yeah on the Demo as we speak!
Already having fun. I thought it would be catered towards housey loops, the glitchy stuff. But it fits hiphop as well and the kick pattern variations are a great addition to test that.
2 Likes
I’ve got both, I like the Audiomodern plugins, I prefer Playbeat to Loopmix, but they’re both completely different to Life… they’re all tools that can spark different ideas.
I think Life is the most complimentary/easy to use within a track without having to be the dedicated drum track… harder to do that with Loopmix (but not impossible)… I think Loopmix is what it says, it lets you turn multiple beats/loops into a new beat/loop.
Life is more about chopping one recording and turning it into different loops.
this one also is cool, “a rounder Robin” :
5 Likes
I’ve very recently become a fan of Dillon Bastan’s stuff. Divisions (the one where you draw shapes and create generators with velocity/gravity/frequency/angle etc) is such a brilliant drum sequencer with the right settings.
does it work in live 12
Couldn’t buy it yet, just saw the video. But you could ask him or Isotonik.
1 Like