Apropos of (almost) nothing, I listened to this PO-33 only album not long ago and thought it was pretty great:
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Yeah I see what you mean, and youāre not alone! Iāve flip-flopped between 2 different approaches with Ableton of late. On the one hand, I love it for all the reasons you say - flexible, modular and lots of choice. I have begun slimming down my VST list dramatically, though not to the point of abandoning them entirely. Certainly for effects Iām gravitating mostly to stock outside the sort of things it doesnāt do quickly or something unique (eg: Infiltrator.) That āstomp boxā along the bottom does work wonders for making affects chains.
But I do agree about the built in instruments. I think Wavetable has a place as (to my ears it sortof sounds like a pretty version of Serum), and can do a lot. Drift can be fun, as can Operator, and of course Simpler is powerful but I do absolutely use 3rd party instruments in the setup. This is not least because I think interfacing with a device bottom left of the screen about 150px can be tricky for anything other than chucking a couple devices into a rack. But then again with Push, you can maybe grab a sample, chop it and sequence/play it directly in the sequencer (which I believe is native to Push alone vs other Ableton controllers.) Iām sure itās not Maschine, but having tactile control of those with visual feedback might change my view on them. (Possibly not, but not out of the question.)
And to be fair, if I landed on your conclusion that the instruments absolutely werenāt going to be part of the workflow, then Push possibly makes more sense as a controller mode centerpiece with the ability to control VSTs and all. In that scenario my āsimplificationā would be more in the mind, by putting Ableton in a box further down the chain in my setup, after various sound sources.
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This works seamlessly - I donāt tend to use standalone much at home but I went on a weekend away recently and came back with 4 or 5 basic track ideas, a couple of which I ended up liking quite a lot. This is just using stock devices pretty much, was experimenting with just using a pretty vanilla approach just to see how I got on.
Although, the direction Iām mainly trying to go in with Push is to have template sets and racks with max sequencers / synths and FX pre-mapped, I think of it as building custom instruments - this part of things has to be done on the computer and I donāt think thereās a reasonable prospect of it changing no matter what happens.
Where stuff hits the skids a bit is if youāre going to insist on trying to do everything away from the computer all the time or try to do a full track from start to finish in standalone. But if youāre happy with doing a bit of prep and/or arranging/finalising in the box, for my money there isnāt much that can touch it.
I love playing the pads and Iāve started really enjoying using simpler for sample chopping - fwiw I think most of the stock instruments sound excellent, especially Drift but even more so the Fors max devices, which really helps.
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Itās not how I use it. I record on DAW a long backing track with the same BPM as the main tempo session and trigger via external sequencer, in my case Play+. You can record loops and phrases inside 404 and adjust it to the tempo I guess, if Iām not mistaken, it has timestretch.
But the ability to trigger one shot samples via Midi notes for me is the best.
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Yeah, thatās where Iām at. At the moment I have 2 devices that are part of the creation process. They basically create sounds that I feed back into Ableton to chop up, mix and augment with VSTs. Nothing wrong with that in some ways.
I would never look to finish a tune standalone. At the moment, what I do away from Ableton is make an initial sketch of an A & B section, and then the stems go into Ableton to augment, build on etc. In this case, Iād just move that intiial noodling all onto Push. I think once it gets beyond that, Iād put it into controller mode to play a bit more and add stuff into the Session View with the added power of the computer, using VSTs etc. Then Iād probably be using the mouse a bit to do anything that bit more complex, or that you canāt do (eg: follow actions) etc. And then once it gets put into Arrangement, Iād likely be all mouse and keyboard at that point.
For me this would be just moving to a different room hah! But itās essentially the same concept really. Getting out of the headspace and into a different mode by going somewhere else where people are in the house would be ideal.
My story so far has been
Tried to use Ableton and just totally failed.
Got a Circuit Tracks and found it was brilliant, but 2 synth tracks wasnāt enough so I tried to get some additional synths and hook up your multiple box DAWless synthfluencer rig and found it terrible and annoying and all your time is cables and sync issues and nothing is music.
I tried a Syntakt, Cycles and MC-707 and found I just made a 4 bar loop and never finished anything.
The Polyend Tracker was a revelation. I pretty much make a song every time I pick the thing up and I can make everything start to finish. The limitations are just a challenge that encourages creativity, I usually do minor tweaks in the DAW like limiting before publishing.
I have a Tracker MIni now and love that even more because itās tiny and portable.
In the mean time Iāve learned enough that I can actually make things happen on a DAW and I think Bitwig is amazing and have made loads of things with it, but I often donāt get motivated to start things.
Similarly iPad with Drambo and Logic is brilliant and the power available for the cost if just staggering.
Finally I am coming back to making a 2 box setup with a Donner B1 and a Drumbrute Impact, but I fully expect this to be just for hands on jamming and not something I will ever make a recorded track with.
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I think this is a great point. Any DAW is super intimidating, so full of options, that unless you have a lot of experience making music, it can be hard to even know where to begin.
Templates can help here too.
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What works for me is the combination of the a4mk2 the dt2. Important to understand song mode. It is amazing but there is a learning curve
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can we hear it now?
Once, on a forum for admitted students, there was a discussion of rap, and some students thought I would have good āflowā, based on my prose, I guess, and encouraged me to try. My response, then and now: I know my limits.
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Sounds like that could be a cool line for the refrain of a rap song 
Youāve got it in you. Stop resisting. Go with the flow!
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Iāve stripped down from constantly having OT and the three digis plus a few pedals on my desk to less. Basically just ST + a poly/knobby synth and faderfoxes for FX. Realistically, ST would be enough for me. But I like the opportunity of having something more powerful and hands on available if I feel like that. Thatās the Nina right now. But stripping everything down to ST as the workhorse where I generate my ideas and host sequences has really helped me. Also: incorporating my laptop more to use FX there and just record and arrange stuff.
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Reading this thread makes me appreciate the choices I have more.
Like @monquixote, I really appreciate the portability of the Polyend Tracker Mini and should force myself to pick it up more. I have yet to explore the depths of those synth engines.
I still really love the Syntakt. Itās so versatile. Will publish a new jam tomorrow which pushes it into film score territories. Whoād think that a drum computer could do that. 
The MPC, well Iāve already said how much I love using it. Itās turning into my favorite music making device.
Iām trying to figure out why I never really pick up the Push 3. I agree with @m0ld that the effects are better than on the MPC, and I personally really like the synths too. I honestly think the main reason why I donāt use the Push is at the surface level: itās incredibly heavy and large. It just doesnāt fit anywhere, certainly not on my lap. And the buttons are downright awful - so stiff. My fingers ache after sitting with it for an hour. I think I could have lived with its lack of a fast sampling and resampling workflow and its lack of some form of song mode if the buttons werenāt constantly putting up a fight when I tried to push them. Itās unfortunate that Ableton designed it that way.
But thereās other things too. I donāt feel I understand the vision the product designers had with the Push 3 SA. Itās either a noodling/sketching device with presets or previously prepared templates, or itās a live performance type of device for previously prepared live sets. The Ableton Live DAW is always somewhere in between. That sets it apart from the MPC, which takes you from zero to a 90% finished song if you want - or even 100% if youāre not too picky with your mixing process.
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The physicality of an object is so important.
I hated the Syntakt and I think a significant part of that is that it gets unpleasantly hot and it was in the middle of a heatwave so it was not nice to hold.
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Must admit Iāve not properly considered an AKAI device before today. One thing that looks interesting about the MPC One+ (aside from the fact that the current sale prices are ridiculous, how is it THAT cheap?!) is that it could potentially serve more or less the purpose Iām describing here as a pre-DAW sketching device that could become a do-it-all box in conjunction with the DAW. Like you say, maybe something to take a song quite a long way before exporting. The main interesting point is the Ableton integration in the sales blurb.
I see on Loopopās video that you can control Live via Bluetooth on an MPC One+ specifically (unsure if this is in any other device) plus you can use it as a wireless MIDI controller in general. It also looks couchable in the way I mentioned before (with an adaptor) which could potentially be easier in the lap than a Push. I also hear it exports .als files which means as far as Ableton integration goes, you can turn an MPC project into an Ableton project and even use the MIDI from it to swap the on board stuff for Ableton/3rd party instruments and effects.
Obviously thatās not a Push, but itās definitley an interesting curveball to have a think about, since it could contain an entire workflow in one box rather than the 2-3 I use at present.
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This is very true! Even the looks of an instrument will influence how you engage with it.
Interesting. I personally really like the look of the Syntakt. Itās dramatic, yet playful. I donāt think itās very portable though. Somehow, it feels like it would totally shatter if I accidentally dropped it, even though itās built like a tank. And the edges are really slippery too, making me feel a bit nervous when waking around with it.
In contrast, the Polyend Tracker Mini feels more like a Nintendo controller that would survive a drop with some minor scratches and still carry on working. 
The Push 3 Standalone somehow feels like a super advanced piece of medical equipment. Itās so dense that itās like youāre holding a piece of pure metal. I mostly keep it on my desk because of this, which is ironic given that itās battery-powered. Itās the only piece of gear that makes my MPC Live 2 look small. 
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Yeah, the MPC is great at that. It can theoretically make finished songs but you can also decide exactly when youād rather pick things up in Ableton Live.
It gets even better: you also have the VST which runs perfectly inside of Ableton. So you can take the song you just sketched out, drop an MPC plugin into your Ableton project (better yet set this up in a template) and continue to tweak things inside the MPC project using the physical MPC as the controller, while layering whatever else you want on top of it from Ableton. You have 32 channels you can route into separate Ableton tracks for mixing in real time.
This means you donāt need to commit to audio stems unless you actually want to. The plugins, effects etc continue to work fine in plugin mode. And if you want to swap out an effect with an Ableton one, itās as simple as disabling the MPC insert and sticking whatever you want on the Ableton track instead.
This is almost as integrated and seamless as Push is in the sense of going from hardware to working in Ableton. The Push of course is Ableton, so itās hard to even compete there - but the MPC with the plugin workflow gets pretty darn close.
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I think the key thing with Push 3 is that even though in a technical sense itās literally Ableton in a Box, itās not actually Ableton in a Box. Itās called Push standalone, not Ableton Live standalone. Itās far more an instrument than a DAW.
Of course to use this instrument, it really, really helps to be fluent in Ableton, but itās ultimately not the same thing at all and probably needs to feed into a DAW to be used optimally. And another hot take, maybe ā¦ Iām not necessarily convinced that Ableton is the best DAW for it to feed into.
Which leads to my other favourite option right now - Logic on the iPad is now really, really good and integrates seamlessly with the desktop software. But itās definitely a DAW and not an instrument, even though it can do a lot of the same stuff that Push does. Iāve mainly been using the SP404mkii as an adjunct to the iPad so far, and itās great - gives audio and midi i/o, mass storage on SD cards - only thing it doesnāt do is charge the iPad when connected, which is slightly annoying but you canāt have everything.
Iām really interested in the next couple of weeks to try out Push in a similar place with Logic as the DAW to record midi and audio over usb, pretty confident that itāll be fun and add the missing linear recording / arrangement element that Push doesnāt do.
Last point, think I said above, but personally I donāt think the optimal way of using Push in standalone is to start with an empty project and try to use it like the DAW. It really, really helps to have built out racks and templates, again I kinda think of this as building custom groove boxes and instruments to my own spec that I can swap in and out - Max is really the killer feature here, it provides pretty much infinite possibilities.
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For me the issue isnāt so much about the number of devices, but about the number of different directions those devices force me think in order to achieve a musical outcome. Different ways of sequencing, creating and managing patches and modulating parameters adds cognitive load that gets in the way of productive musical outcomes.
To solve this I simplified my workflow byā¦ simplifying my workflow. I ended up settling on a Dark Trinity rig so that everything I learn on one Elektron device more or less applies to the others. Yes the OT, AR and A4 can be quite deep, but often I donāt need to go very deep to achieve the musical outcome Iām looking for. They complement each other really well to balance flexibility with hands on control.
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I found that having one central/hub Elektron box with auxiliary synths and effect boxes works better than 2 and more E boxes.
For me two and more Elektron sequencers at the same time is too much. Too many parameters and variables. Yes, we can sync a lot via midi, but still, for me it did not work (only for one-off experiments that are usually not reproducible).
Ideally Iād love to have one universal device to fully focus on, but it does not exist. Octatrack is close though, I love just play and explore on it without a plan
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