I don’t find this to be true. The Push is simply a remote control for the software and it controls features that already exist in the DAW. I don’t believe Ableton is hindering other manufacturer’s MIDI or SysEx integration. It’s strength is in it’s specificity and the fact that it is custom-tailored to Ableton Live alone and does not need to be some middle-of-the-road hardware device that also has to make sense with every other DAW.

I owned a Push 2 for 2 years before I sold it, and in my experience there is very little (if anything) it does that cannot be done with a 1:1 analogue in the software.

I haven't yet seen a third party device that allows you to create a clip of a given length, record into it, and have it loop. You can do this in software if you want to sit on your laptop in front of your audience. You can do the BinkLooper workaround if you want a simple external hardware device to interact with things but it's really complicated. I would truly love to find out a way to do what the Push 2 does for launching clips without having to spend $800 for it on top of the Live license. Granted, a Push 2 can be bought for slightly less on sale but it's still a lot.

This is not at all a hard thing to do in Max (and thus Max4Live), and it's also very easy to hook up midi controllers to let you steer it without ever looking at your laptop.

That's what I've been wondering and wanting to explore. Thanks for nudging me n that direction. Maybe I can do it all with Max and Live. Then I'd be up for it all. Have you or do you know of someone who has done something like this?

Hi Joe, you will probably find more resources on the Max side. Lots of people build things like this and talk about them on the Max forums, and then they can be run either in Live (as M4L devices) or aside live (syncing and piping audio in over soundflower or similar) or both. The Cycling 74 forum and the Max/MSP facebook group have a lot of traffic and helpful posts. For whatever reason it seems like those are more active for what you're talking about than the actual max4live pages/forums, which are generally more about using devices than building them. There are some differences when you run something in max 4 live, but they are pretty small and not hard to figure out (i.e. Live owns the tempo, you have access to live DOM, etc). I would highly recommend the Cipriani and Giri books on Max, which will give you everything you need to get your loop controller working just as you want it! It's definitely doable. When I was doing shows with Live, I basically never used the Ableton UI after setting up my device chains and midi maps, all realtime interaction was through my own scripts and objects. Good luck! maybe see you on the forums. :-)

That's what I've been wondering and wanting to explore. Thanks for nudging me n that direction. Maybe I can do it all with Max and Live. Then I'd be up for it all.

C'mon, anyone can easily find dozens of videos that prove otherwise. Also, the Push API is open, anyone can program python remote scripts to access it, that's how apps like Touchable work, completely false you have to buy a Push, don't need hardware nor M4L. Even if you don't know Python you can use ClyphX. And I talk about Live 10.

I'm sorry but this is not correct at all. I know people who were doing just this with Max 4 Live devices sans Push.

If you are at all code-savvy it is very easy to make your own custom rig that does everything everything you need for live performing in Ableton. You can write your own control surface scripts in Python (unofficially, but google is your friend and Ableton said "we know they're out there and we aren't going to try to shut it down") and you can make anything you want be your own customized equivalent of push with Max for Live. You can do anything you want with your clips and loops from either control surface scripts or M4L devices. Ableton itself was originally just a Max patch!

Sure they've made it easier, but it's definitely not true that you can't do this without Push.

The push certainly has a deeper integration. I own a gen 1 (they're on 2 now), but rarely use it. In fact I wish your comment were true: I'd like to get some value out of the push, but... meh. In fairness, I've never been a hardware guy, so it's me, not the push, that's a bad fit.

What did they do to cripple the features of non-push interfaces? As far as I know the monomes, apc40s, etc of the world continue to work as they always did?

Pad controllers are dime a dozen. I've never gotten the impression that Ableton was willfully sabotaging the market there.

They aren't sabotaging the market... just trying to get me to buy a Push, I think. Basically, it's easy to do something important with the Push and you can't do it without the Push. I feel you on the value of the Push... it doesn't have any for me other than to be able to create and record a live loop of a specific length on the fly and have it start playing.

They haven't done anything to cripple other controllers. In fact, they keep adding new classes of controllers all the time -Live 11 now supports MPE.

Push is absolutely optional. A great device, but still very much optional.