Akai’s APC64 is much more than just a successor to the APC40 — in fact, it’s much more than just an Ableton controller...
Akai’s APC40s were physical manifestations of Ableton Live’s Session view, with a clip‑launching grid, faders and encoders, and even the crossfader cueing system. As such they were uniquely suited to live performance or DJ‑style sets. The APC64 is more like Novation’s Launchpad Pro or Ableton’s Push, with the focus shifted to instrument playing and sequencing, which probably reflects the way most people actually use Live. Vestigial faders in the form of touch sliders, and a bank of onboard CV outputs, mean the new APC still has some differentiating features.
First Touch
The APC64’s pad grid features eight rows of square, velocity sensitive pads that generate polyphonic aftertouch. The grid is surrounded by mode buttons along the top, functions to the left, Scene launchers to the right and track controls along the bottom. The touch strips are split out to the sides. A single tiny display and push‑encoder combo to the bottom right provides limited but useful visual feedback when navigating settings or using the sliders.
The unit is, unsurprisingly, bigger than a Launchpad but is very light and portable compared to a Push, and needs only a USB‑C cable for connection and/or power. The lights are bright and colourful on the pads and indicator strips next to the touch controls. Along the back you have eight multi‑purpose CV ports, a MIDI input and two MIDI outputs, which mirror the same port. MIDI is via mini‑jack, and three DIN adaptors are included in the box. All in all it’s a solid, well‑built device, as you’d expect from Akai.
The APC64 measures 272 x 371 x 34.5mm and weighs 1.6kg.
Ableton Mode
The APC64 is primarily an Ableton controller (the ‘A’ doesn’t stand for Akai) but can toggle between two modes: Ableton and Standalone. In Ableton mode the two primary grid views (Session and Note) control and mirror what’s happening in Live. Session view provides clip management and launching, using the familiar convention of displaying an 8x8 section of Live’s grid, with pads lighting up to indicate the presence of clips, showing their colours and their play/record statuses.
Along the bottom are track selectors (turning the encoder also moves track focus) and another row of buttons that can be set to Record Arm, Mute, Solo or Clip Stop. This is consistent with the Push and Launchpad, but is less immediate than the dedicated buttons on the APC40. The cursor cluster nudges the focus area of the grid around in sessions that grow to over eight scenes or tracks. By default it moves in single rows/columns while Shift moves in banks of eight. I missed the APC40’s ability to lock this option. One thing I did really like is that in smaller sessions the return and master tracks get justified to the right of the grid.
Note mode transforms the grid into a MIDI instrument controller, and is clever enough to alter its layout appropriately for tracks hosting Drum Rack devices or other regular instruments. In the melodic mode you can choose from multiple layout schemes, choose a scale and whether to display notes outside of your scale. You can, for example, have notes displayed diatonically one octave per row or laid out like your stringed instrument of choice. The pads are sensitive and responsive enough for expressive playing with instruments or drums.
Chord mode provides a selection of automatic chord shapes that can be triggered from the note view. This has the smarts to keep chords in key rather than blindly play preset intervals. Like most chord modes the limitation is that you’re always playing the chord type you’ve selected. More useful would be chord sets as implemented nicely on the MPC, or the really clever chord mode on the Launchpad Pro.
Device & Mix Control
Other than Mute and Solo, all control of Live’s mixer is via the eight touch sliders. These have multiple modes selected from the left‑hand button strip. Volume takes control of the main faders, with tracks 1‑4 mapped to the strips on the left, and 5‑8 to the right. Colour‑coding of the level indicator strips provides a visual cue as to which tracks are in focus. Pan and Send modes do what they say, with multiple taps of the Send button stepping through all active aux busses. Channel Strip mode switches to a focused map that combines Level, Pan, Mute and Send for any selected track.
Device control on the APC40s was via a dedicated bank of encoders, but is now relegated to one of the strip modes on the APC64. The functionality is the same though, providing automatically mapped (or user‑specified) parameter control of Live devices and plug‑ins, with the ability to bank through sets of eight parameters, and jump between devices in a track’s chain. Again this navigation has been moved from dedicated buttons to a modified use of the cursors (requiring two hands). We’ve also lost the Device Lock button that let you park the controls on a device while switching tracks. One significant improvement though: the screen displays the parameter name of the most recently touched strip.
The layout of the sliders is unconventional, split into two groups of four out to the sides rather than following a mixer‑style arrangement as on the 40 or NI’s Maschine Jam . This decision makes sense: it keeps the sliders out of the way of the main grid, which is where most of the action happens, and gives the unit a footprint that can fit front and centre on your desk. The compromise with the layout is that if you’re playing an instrument with the pads you have to cross your arms over to get to half of the device controls. And although the strips have been kept out of the way of the grid I did still accidentally brush them from time to time, occasionally resulting in tracks getting turned right down without me realising. It’s presumably for this reason that there’s an Off mode on the strips.
Custom Duties
While the preset dynamic controller mappings will likely handle much of what you need to do in Live, there are always times when you want to customise and add your own assignments. This is particularly true of a live performance situation where you may need a fixed bank of controls that spans multiple devices or mixer controls. This was catered for on the APC40 with a User mode for the eight top encoders, alongside Pan and Send modes.
The APC64 moves user controls to a dedicated Custom mode, which takes over the whole panel. Having the pads available for customisation increases the scope of what you can do, and requires management from a utility app on your computer. From the app you can set the channels, CC values and colours of the sliders, section off zones on the pads as a virtual keyboard or drum grid, or set the message and on/off colours for individual pads. I set the APC64 up similarly to how I would on the Push, using custom pads to trigger specific buttons on the Live UI that aren’t available otherwise, such as Back To Arrangement or Automation Enable.
Custom maps are stored as part of Projects on the APC64, which are snapshots of all settings, sequences, I/O configurations, etc. This means it’s possible to recall different custom maps. There’s a certain awkwardness with the fact that sequences are also recalled by changing Project. As we’ll see, Projects are the primary way to launch different sequences, so it would be better if custom maps were kept as a separate recall. My main request though is that there be a way to lock or recall the custom touch strip assignments when in other views. Although the APC40’s user assignment was limited to eight things, it had the advantage of displaying them as a mode like Pan or Send, without losing the rest of the panel’s regular functionality.
The back panel features a USB‑C port, eight multi‑purpose CV ports, and a MIDI in and two MIDI outs.
Sequencing
While the APC64 and Launchpad Pro emulate many of the workflows from the Push, there are certain limits to what third‑party controllers can do. One of these is direct MIDI editing, in the sense that Push can display notes within clips as step sequences on its pads. Akai have tried to work around this limitation in the same way as Novation, by building their own standalone step sequencer into the hardware. This allows you to approximate the workflow by step sequencing tracks in Live from the controller, then sending the sequence across to the Session view grid where it becomes a clip. This is cool for working with Live, but also means that the controller is a standalone hardware sequencer that you can use outside of Live too.
The internal sequencer has eight tracks, each with 16‑note polyphony. When in Step Sequence view (whether running in Ableton or Standalone modes) the bottom rows of buttons switch their focus to these tracks. The same modes (Mute, Solo, Record Arm) apply, and you can have a different mode selected (and different track states) between the Session (Live) view and Step Sequencer modes.
Like Ableton tracks, each internal track can be set to Note or Drum mode. Either way the bottom left‑hand quadrant of the grid is used for note playing and selection, the top half becomes a 32‑step sequence grid and the bottom right is used to set note properties: velocity, probability and mutation. Sequences are built by selecting notes and tapping steps to place them. Single steps obey the track’s gate length setting, or you can tie steps to hold longer notes. As well as gate length, other per‑track properties determine swing amount, and sequence speed and length.
It’s also possible to record sequences in real time from the pads, although this will be quantised to the grid. Record‑armed tracks are always in merge record mode and capture anything you play on the note quadrant. You can also switch to the main 64‑pad Notes view and record from there. Unfortunately, you can’t record into sequences from the MIDI inputs, and note lengths are not captured, only the triggers. This could really do with being addressed in an update.
Velocity can be set by how hard you tap steps on entry, or can be applied to individual notes using the 16‑level velocity edit mode. As well as velocity, the bottom‑right pad quadrant has pages for applying varying levels of probability and mutation to note triggers. Probability is the chance that a note will play, and Mutate introduces pitch variations.
These useful features follow Novation’s Circuit/Launchpad sequencing conventions, but there are some notable differences. The APC64 has a couple of wins on the sequencing spec sheet: eight tracks vs four and the onboard connectivity. However it lacks some niceties such as variable playback direction and nudgeable start points. The biggest advantage the Launchpad Pro has is eight chainable sub‑patterns per track, and scenes that store and launch combinations of these. The APC64 has a single sequence per track stored within the Project container layer along with your custom assignments (a very MPC way of thinking, funnily enough). Projects can be loaded from the 24 slots on the Projects page; Project launching during playback is queued until current sequences finish. Tempo is stored with Projects, mutes are not.
Full Standalone
Given that the step sequencer is fully functional in Ableton mode, the differences in Standalone mode are fairly subtle. Session mode goes offline, and transport becomes directed to the internal sequencer. Sync and tempo can be internal or clocked from MIDI or USB inputs. To try the full standalone experience I detached the USB cable from the computer and switched to a regular USB charger. I then hooked up a MIDI synth and a Eurorack‑compatible desktop synth, connecting the first three CV outputs to Volt/octave pitch, gate and modulation inputs on the modular. MIDI channels are set in the config of each track, and the CV sources and MIDI channel chosen in the main settings. The CVs are derived from MIDI sources, including Pitch, Gate, Legato, Velocity and eight reserved CC channels, which means you can generate CV from any of the internal tracks (or more than one), external MIDI hardware or even from your DAW over USB. One thing not available is analogue clock. If you need to generate a clock you’d need to approximate one with a clip of gates.
Everything went smoothly and it was pretty powerful having the strips as modulation sources on the modular. While there’s a workflow on the controller for automating the strips in Live, Standalone is unable to record motion or parameter locks. In fact the strip assignments are not tied to the tracks: you get one global set of eight assignments within each Project (which can be CV, MIDI or both) and that’s that.
Working standalone, you’re probably going to make more use of Projects to organise sequences into different variations, song sections, etc. A nice aid here is Project Chaining. Selecting a range of adjacent Project tiles will join up their sequences into a longer loop.
The 40 is an excellent secondary peripheral for running an Ableton‑centric live set, or creating dub‑mix style arrangements; but the APC64 does a whole ton more in a single device, combining hands‑on control, expressive instrument playing and sequencing.
Conclusion
I spent quite a bit of time hung up on differences between the APC64 and the earlier APC40 devices, and if you were hoping for a MkIII iteration of that line you might be disappointed. The 40 is an excellent secondary peripheral for running an Ableton‑centric live set, or creating dub‑mix style arrangements; but the APC64 does a whole ton more in a single device, combining hands‑on control, expressive instrument playing and sequencing.
The more meaningful comparisons are with the Launchpad Pro, with which it shares many features and workflows. As a Live controller both are similar. The APC64’s touch strips give it a clear advantage for device and mix control (and that little screen really does help), while the Launchpad has a more sophisticated sequencer, albeit with four tracks not eight.
Importantly, the APC64 passes the workflow test: life is better with it than without, which is surprisingly rare for a controller. I had lots of fun with the extras: CV connectivity and sequencing. And the APC64 is also a good all‑round pad‑based MIDI controller, something I’ve been looking for for a while to use with other DAWs as well as Live.
Touchy Subject
Let’s talk touch strips for a moment. On the whole I’m a fan. They can be a good solution compared to non‑motorised faders, as they stay in sync when you bank around or when there’s automation. Although they lack the full tactility of a fader, they are much better than faders on a touchscreen as they sit in physical tracks so you can find them and know roughly where you are without having to look. As a replacement for rotary encoders it’s a mixed story. Encoders have a certain feel and precision, and it’s hard to pick up a control from a touch strip without imparting an initial jump. Akai have solved this though: with Shift held, the strips pick up parameters from their current position and provide fine relative adjustment. The other side of that coin is that touch strips allow you to set parameters to a specific place instantly without dialling. It’s also possible to control more than two things at a time, which is tricky with encoders.
Use It Or Lose It
For me, a composition‑focused controller, which the APC has become, lives and dies by its recording workflow. Does the device help you capture ideas, or get in your way and ultimately end up on the shelf? The first win for the APC64 is that selecting a track also arms it, which more often than not doesn’t happen with Live controllers. The Scene launch buttons maintain their primary function in most other modes too, unlike in Ableton’s own Push. Also good is that you can initiate recording from the main transport and the currently selected clip on the armed track will punch in, and if there’s already a clip there it will use the next available. All these details avoid having to flip between Note and Session views.
There’s no equivalent of the Push Scene Workflow, where you can just hit Duplicate to immediately duplicate the current scene and arm it for recording (Live’s Capture and Insert Scene function). You can however Duplicate a Scene then launch it, again without having to leave Notes view. Quantise is a modifier that requires you to tap a specific clip, so that does demand a mode change. Kudos, however, to Akai for implementing the ‘peek’ workflow, where pressing and holding a view mode makes it a temporary change until you release the button. This is particularly useful if you drop user commands along the top row of the Custom page for fast access. It would be cool if you could add key commands (as some of the Launchpads can, but bizarrely not the Pro), which would allow you to trigger Capture and Insert Scene, or other things that I miss like toggling Device/Clip view.
Project Manager
Using the Project Editor app you can assemble your own custom control panel.
The APC’s enhanced customisation scope is facilitated by a Project Editor desktop app. This provides a drag‑and‑drop interface for assigning keyboard and drum clusters, and menus for setting up the messages, port routing and colours of individual pads and sliders. Pads are limited to MIDI note assignments, CCs are reserved for the sliders and there’s no Program Change support. Note and drum groups can be set as CV sources as well as MIDI, and can be enabled for poly aftertouch.
In the current implementation you can only save and load projects one at a time, and there’s no way at all to backup or load sequence data. This is possibly not a deal‑breaker if you’re mainly using Live as you’ll probably print sequences into your Set, but for anyone working standalone or using the APC64 to orchestrate live laptop+synths performances this will be high on the wish list for future updates.
Pros
- Comprehensive Live Session control.
- Adds instrument playing, with velocity sensitive pads and poly aftertouch.
- Eight‑track standalone sequencer.
- Onboard CV and MIDI connectivity.
- USB power.
Cons
- Global user controls confined to a special mode.
- Fewer dedicated controls for live performance.
- Sequencing currently quite basic.
- No automation in standalone.
Summary
The APC64 goes in a new direction from the earlier generation of live performance mixer‑style controller, combining playing and composing features with hands‑on control and sequencing. Touch strips FTW!
