AudioClassifieds.com Midi Controller Akai APC20

Akai APC20 MIDI controller
The biggest change in the world of Ableton Live is probably the arrival of dedicated grid‑based hardware controllers. Live has been able to use MIDI control surfaces for a while, but since so many musicians spend much of their time in Live’s grid‑oriented session view, a controller which presents that grid as a physical interface has an obvious appeal, especially for live performance.

Akai were first to the line with their APC40 (reviewed in SOS September 2009), a table‑top device offering a grid of illuminated buttons along with a fader‑equipped mixer section and a dedicated panel of rotary encoders for controlling device parameters: all in all, a one‑stop shop for controlling practically everything you need to in a Live set. Novation followed with their Launchpad (SOS December 2009), a much smaller and more minimal button grid offering a bigger matrix area — eight rows rather than five — but no physical faders, knobs or encoders of any kind. The Launchpad is a lot smaller, and appreciably cheaper, than the APC40, so now Akai are back with the APC20, which they describe as a “Compact Professional Ableton Controller”.

The APC20 is certainly smaller than the APC40, and now qualifies as backpack‑sized. (People making such claims about the APC40 must have unusually large backpacks.) It’s still thicker than the rather svelte Launchpad, and deeper, front to back, due to the fader area, but is now in the same ballpark in terms of table space. Perhaps more importantly, the APC20 comes in at a much lower price than the APC40, bringing it close to the Launchpad in cost as well as size. Accordingly, as well as comparing the APC20 to its big brother, we’re going to do a few comparisons with the Launchpad, since potential buyers will probably be looking at both devices. We’ll assume some familiarity with the APC40 and Launchpad in this review, and concentrate mainly on the features unique to the APC20.