Upgrading Ableton Push 3 to Standalone

The Lounge Other Gear
#12

That must have been interesting for the designers and test team, to make sure that the Push platform is prepared for some unknown upgrade eight years or so from now. We can imagine what that might be like applying a Moore’s law kind of prediction. I imagine they tested some options already and have some specs set for their first upgrade.

Ableton no doubt spent a lot of time consulting with Intel to get the interface perfect.

Even battery technology will work to everyones advantage. If i was buying right now i probable would choose to live with the controller for the time being, and be ready to get an upgrade later.

And Intel might even add cores along the way, years out.

2 Likes
#13

It seems that’s what a lot of people are doing, as the Standalone is out of stock with no estimate for availability on the Ableton shop (or perhaps they misjudged demand for standalone vs controller?).

#14

How would you build and stock for this ?

I’d two step it as that would allow the greatest flexibility, and faster restock. So you stock unpacked controllers, with some upgrades, and you do a final assembly and packaging before ship. You could also stock both units packaged as well, but still have some other units for flexibilty in stocking.

There will no doubt be people ordering the conversion kits very soon, so you need to stock those as well anyway.

#15

As long as Intel intends to keep supporting the U-Series Compute Elements, we should have upgrades every new (or every other) Intel generation. They skipped 9th gen and it’s possible they’ll skip 13th. We’ll have to wait and see.

Chips will keep shrinking thanks to smaller node production, meaning no technical limitations in the design of the U Series card. Intel have NUC Board Elements, which serve as a demonstration of how to route NVMe, LAN, USB, HDMI, etc. which Ableton referenced to build the Push 3 PCB

2 Likes
#16

(post withdrawn by author, will be automatically deleted in 24 hours unless flagged)

#17

Hi, thanks for your reply, but it’s better served in the main thread here: New PUSH 3 MPE, Standalone option...out now!

1 Like
#18

Done :white_check_mark:

#19

If i understand Nick Batt correctly, in SonicTalk 757, there is a special bios, on the NUC boards for the Push 3 expansion. That totally makes sense, plus helps Ableton make upgrades more predictable. Will be interesting if Ableton distributes the bios. ( You’d think not, though they may have to for rev changes, though encryption would be easy enough on that. I’d expect bios rev changes will be rare, and may never be needed. )

#20

I dont see why Ableton would spend resources on building a custom bios as all the hardware is a standard nuc compute element.

If anyone wanted to make a diy upgrade kit, they would need the bootloader and “Live os” which is on the included nvme drive.

Its more likely they do a simple hardware check on boot via the bootloader to see if the battery is attached (as this is a custom built part). That is like one line of code.

#21

They likely didn’t themselves. FAE experts at Intel would have done it, very likely at no charge as a part of the deal. The reason you’d do this is because you need it for the interface.

Part of it is Push 3 will dual boot, and you need a communication layer between processors that is likely best done at the bios layer. Diagnostics is also another reason.

Also as i posted above Ableton is thinking very long term. The bios piece helps them keep the interface long term.

#22

My thought as well. I’d also guess that it is likely Intel was involved to some degree in the design process, and this is part of some deal with Ableton. That’s usually how it goes.

#23

Once you decided that you are using this line of products, why wouldn’t you use the expertise of Intel in the design ?

It will be interesting to see the timeline Ableton chooses for the introduction of upgrades. They control that to a large part.

#24

Configuring and running a usb device with a custom bios doesnt make any sense. Using that logic, the controller version would need a custom bios + nuc to run on my mac.

I dont think Push 3 dual boots as you describe. The controller version runs just fine connected via usb to a computer. If it needed the nuc with custom bios to run, then every single controller version would also need a nuc inside, which they obviously dont have.

The controller version has a microcontroller communicating the usb protocols to the computer and the nuc is connected via usb to the controller version but since its all on the same device, its suddenly fancier than a computer with usb cable. Battery and nvme would use the additional connectors.

#25

Well then upgrade it.

And i shall stop listening to Nick.

#26

Hi Guys,

So …i have somes compute element in my pocket …celeron to I7 …11th, 12th and more …(normal its my job :wink: …and some Ssd …

So if i understand we have a batterie …a guys with standalone version can open it and take picture of battery please ? ( so probably not proprietary batterie …why ? The pricing for units sold over the world …totaly ridicul and better to buying battery to chiness Odm …

The real probleme to upgrade without ableton upgrade kit is for me : special Bios ? (Easy to made this …so its better that only Ableton can sold Compute element …, Operating system ??? When Ableton sold upgrade kit its will easy to put inside the operation system …so no difficulty to clone the os partition (but we must made a clone partition with a upgrade kit …and after no difficulty to distribue on the net …but no legally i think. And the BIG difficulty i think that the Thermal Plate …so impossible to find …only Ableton have it ! So peharps that Obleton sold separately spart parts (compute element, battery, thermal plate). So inam curious to see a very good picture inside the push 3 (standalone version) soecially for Battery design !

1 Like
#27

this guy did a teardown.
Looks like the battery is custom, but the element looks pretty standard as well as the SSD:

1 Like
#28

I pre-ordered the controller version. I imagine I am part of a large segment of the intended audience for the Push. I am new to Live (been using Logic for many years and testing Bitwig recently). I am not ready to make a $2,000 investment in hardware that, for now, and maybe just for practical purposes, requires Live, when I was not sure I want to be wedded to Live, but am willing to invest $1,000. I may also decide I don’t need standalone.

I have already purchased Live Suite though, so I’m pretty much “all in” on Live. My main reason at this point for not ordering the Standalone is that I am hopeful a faster processor will come along fairly shortly. Maybe they will do what Apple does and continue to offer a standalone upgrade based on the current offering (dropped to $800) and “Push 3 Pro” upgrade ($1,200), with a faster more efficient NUC, same storage, and longer battery life (say, 4-5 hours).

2 Likes
#29

https://www.reddit.com/r/ableton/comments/14ppose/i_was_able_to_upgrade_to_1tb_nvme_ssd_on_push_3/

This reddit user cloned the SSD to a larger 1TB SSD and was successful.

They also tried a faster i7 variant of the 11th gen element, but it failed to boot.

2 Likes
#30

Terrible news from Intel today. They are completely killing off their NUC division, which also builds these Compute Elements.

Not sure how Ableton is going to be able to address this without making a Push 4.

2 Likes
#31

Not so bad. As the article says Intel has decided to stop competing with their OEM customers. They are not investing more in the finished computer market. But as the article says :

Instead, it is going to rely on industry partners to continue innovating in the NUC ecosystem. Companies like ASRock are already making their own NUC-size motherboards.

The Compute Element can still be built by Intel and perhaps others.

Plus Ableton could decide to make internal changes and still make a Push 3 ( Version B ). They just need to be able to get enough parts to sell upgrades for any Version A products too.

I expect Ableton to make an announcement and reassure everyone.

3 Likes