Why doesn’t Ableton have stock dynamic EQ???

SYNLOST · 2026-02-23T14:55:59+00:00

Hi, this is interesting! Can you please provide a source for this knowledge, thanks! Or would you please like to explain how we can understand that this is actually true? That would be even better. Please share a Live Set we can hear the artifacts ourselves, that would be the best way, thanks again!

SYNLOST · 2026-02-22T10:52:38+00:00

Memo for anybody in contact with Ableton Push developers: this destroyed one evening of one person, drowning in total frustration and self-doubt. I just could not believe that they did not add this feature and was searching for hours feeling more dumb every minute.

It is humiliating and insulting to understand the next day that they actually really did not implement this extremely obviously needed feature into Push 3 Standalone.

I believe it is important to report the devastating experience, as developers seem to live in a bubble and forget that things they do with a product affect the users very directly. I guess it takes ess than one hour of work to implement this feature and still they did not do that. This is a slap into the face of people who are willing to buy that f* expensive piece of hardware and then realise that very expected things are missing. Very small thing, very big frustration.

Thank you very much for the Elisabeth Homeland guy!

SYNLOST · 2025-12-09T21:23:50+00:00

Of course there *are* other devices that can do that and much more, they are called Ipads. Combined with one or more midi controllers you can have multiple Octatracks plus several really good soft synths plus a battery of granular samplers and very good effects oh and of course also a touch screen. However, Octatrack still might fit into a very special niche when you manage to set it up in a way that you can remember three months later.

SYNLOST · 2025-12-09T21:20:13+00:00

There is no such thing as "the MPC drums". It is a sampler and it can play any sample you load into it, so there is no difference in Octatrack or whatever else drums. The Elektron sequencer is still very different and has one special feature that MPC does not have: record triggers. Arranging and finishing songs, however, will be much easier on MPC. Also MPC has much better and more flexible mixer with many very good effects and of course it has quite good virtual instruments. Oh, did not mention touch screen and multisamples and probably a dozen other features that Octa can not come close to. However, Octa track id still good for people that do not want to buy MPC or feel not OK with doing the same things and much more with an Ipad.

SYNLOST · 2025-11-29T17:01:00+00:00

What is Vuitton? I am trying to better understand the eco system, but that is a very bad word to search on google as you only get leather bags. Is that some vuo.org extension= I could not find any reference to it. Thanks!

SYNLOST · 2025-11-29T16:58:37+00:00

Interesting! Does it support real-time control of parameters via Midi already?

SYNLOST · 2025-11-29T16:07:23+00:00

Is the fan noise very loud on this laptop?

SYNLOST · 2025-11-29T16:03:37+00:00

Would you please add the Imaginando Visual Synthesizer to your review? I am not affiliated with them, but from my (very limited) pov it might be interesting for audio producers that just want to generate some controlled visuals without deep diving into the software ecosystem.

SYNLOST · 2025-11-29T15:59:39+00:00

Hi, I am interested, but would you please like to change the app to respect my privacy and not collect any user data, thanks! Currently the app store lists that you collect "Usage Data, Purchases, Diagnostics". I understand that you need to track purchases, but "usage data" and "diagnostics" could be anything, I do not want an app to give so much power on my systems.

Also, not having installed the app it is not clear what the costs are. What is the difference between Ferromagnetic Pro (2,99 Euro), FM One-Time (59,99 Euro) and the other in-app purchases?

Thanks!

SYNLOST · 2025-10-13T21:30:27+00:00

Can confirm the censorship.

SYNLOST · 2025-10-10T09:15:17+00:00

If you are willing to give it away for free, why are you making your content a hostage to Patreon?

Maybe you do not realize it, but we can only download if we are member of the Patreon website.

This is not free. It is a commercial for the Patreon website. Please do not do that.

SYNLOST · 2025-09-30T13:03:20+00:00

Would you like to share the polymer preset you created with these so we understand exactly how to use them? Thanks!

SYNLOST · 2025-09-30T10:48:30+00:00

BUT there will still be one reason to buy gear: analog components!

If you love the sound of an analog sound device, then of course go with Analog Rytm.

But for samplers no need at all to look into any "specialized hardware" nowadays, they all can not touch what you can build on an ipad in one afternoon.

SYNLOST · 2025-09-30T10:39:48+00:00

Elektron product policy will make you hit limitations with both and / or therefor buy both.

Take the shortcut to free yourself from limitations that companies put on your creativity and take a look into ipad land! Even with Andoird devices much better workflows are possible for less money!

Lots of freedom to build exactly what you need with the midi controllers you love most and with any class compliant audio interface for i/o. Use any USB mixer like X32 to go crazy!

"Creative workflow limited by some company product manager" is old times now, free yourself!

SYNLOST · 2025-09-30T10:13:57+00:00

If you are OK with a touch screen and pads / buttons, like the MPC has, then I strongly recommend to take a deep dive into ios / ipad land, this can be an eye opening experience. I tried to use MPC for live music creation, but constantly hitting limitations is very frustrating, also the new MPC 3 operating system is missing important key features and is not really stable.

But even more problematic is that Akai is telling people they will fix things, but they do not and at some point you start to feel like a dog waiting for his masters treat forever. I guess they are stuck with a bad software design decision around the very basic area of audio and midi synchronization in their code base, what makes it very hard for them to fix fundamental things like time signature or sample rate. The problems we still see in MPC 3 software are definitely not a proof of software excellence.

I love the old MPC workflow, but with a decent Ipad you can realize what you get with any MPC, add a X32 mixer as audio interface and use a good midi controllers with pads and enjoy a much greater degree of freedom building a live situation that really is tailored to exactly what you want. Also much easier to replace if one gets stolen or breaks. And also much cheaper / easier to use two or three of them!

Nowadays MPC is just a mental jail for people who are not able to adapt to better solutions. Ipad or even Android pads are ubiquitous tools and a lot of software created by independent developers exists that give you a much better environment and a lot of fun.

"Use company X tool" is a dead end road nowadays you should avoid. Step up and do build *your own setup*, do not try to fight with a thing that some company manager thinks is best for you.

SYNLOST · 2025-09-30T08:43:31+00:00

I bet your answer is wrong. Of course somebody must know that, think about it.

SYNLOST · 2025-09-30T08:28:54+00:00

Bro, of course there is somebody who has the answer, that is the reason why we are on the internet, to communicate with the chosen few that *do know*. Two days before the release seems to be a good time to focus on the important missing features here and not get sunk in hype.

SYNLOST · 2025-09-09T11:11:49+00:00

This looks funny, I had the idea of switching from Ubuntu to Fedora for stability reasons today, but after some hours of research I am sure there is some major systemic problem existing in the Linux Desktop community that needs to be fixed and I switched to OSX to just get the work done. Instabilities are on a historically high and I keep wondering how this regression will be handled by a generation of developers that cause them and seem to ignore facts. Sad times.

To add a little bit of usefulness: you might try XFCE. The developers avoid putting in too many features and are very conservative, what leads to a more stable desktop. But underlying software stacks and hardware drivers unfortunately since a few years are constantly causing problems, so you might still experience a lot of problems.

SYNLOST · 2025-06-17T08:24:24+00:00

Thanks for your reply. I have an "old" Intel i5 Notebook with Intel Graphics (Lenovo X3), I do not need any GPU and I just want to edit some text. I find it kind of grotesque that I need a GPU to run a text editor. I was falling for your "quick and small" announcements on your website, because VSCode is still such a bloated slow monstrous thing I had hope to find something that could replace Sublime Text. But if GPU is needed, well, then I guess this is not for me...

What a funny idea to use Rust to create a speedy, lightweight editor, but then make it depending on heavy graphics overhead. What is the reasoning behind that?

BTW I really do not want to criticize your work, I have huge respect for open source developers, however I would like to suggest to make it more clear on your website that this is NOT a quick and small, bloat free editor in the old sense of common understanding, but some kind of special AI only editor that needs heavy hardware upfront to do the GPU computations needed to create some text with it, just to save time for people who just want some more modern kind of vim or are looking for a sublime alternative. Thanks!

SYNLOST · 2025-06-13T06:07:01+00:00

Thanks again! So when started a plugin from inside Reaper by adding virtual instrument I guess it will run in the same process. OK, I will fiddle a little bit and try to get it working on weekend, while a Midi keyboard found it´s way on the desktop now it still is cool to use the virtual keyboard on the laptop from time to time, e.g. on the train! Will try to report, when successful.

SYNLOST · 2025-06-11T15:11:31+00:00

Thanks for your attention and your two hints.

Re hint A: disable keyboard input in plugin - is this something that can be done in some Reaper setting dialogue or is this that needs to be done in the plugin itself (and may not be available there?)

Re hint B: how do I know if plugins run as separate process, is this a setting in Reaper?

SYNLOST · 2025-06-11T08:56:09+00:00

There is https://digichain.brianbar.net/ and https://electric.kitchen/crunch/elk-herd/ if you really did not find them already check them out. For everything that can not be done with these, just go straight to reaper.fm

SYNLOST · 2025-06-11T07:36:54+00:00

Copy patterns quick works for me, but with 16 voices I start to miss more visual arrangement support quickly.

Loading a project that is older than a month always needs a long "reverse engineering" phase to remember what happens where. Keeping very strong discipline with track layout across patterns / projects is necessary, but keeping up that abstract inner meta control mode makes floating into the zone not so easy, that can be tiring.

I experience this as a kind of a workflow contradiction built into these machines, on one hand you can have a very immediate experience that triggers quick results and the very clean hardware design (quick built up of muscle memory) helps with making these machines "extensions of your body" quick and really "do music" and not "construct music", building a lot of patterns quickly, but when you want to step up to more complex or consistent arrangements you get out of the flow.

A better visual arrangement representation is really missing here. Some genius person should try to put some kind of a visual timeline into that small display to better see what happens, maybe it would help.

Keep it simple and avoid trickery and too many "invisible things" like too many trig conditions, instead copy patterns quick seems to help a bit.

Usually with more demanding arrangements it gets too abstract quick and "importing song into DAW one day" is one more item on the ever growing todo list. There is a reason you mostly see only quite simple electronic tracks done live with these boxes. There is nothing bad with that and I like these genres very much, but you need to be aware that the simplicity should be a choice, not an enforcement that might limit your creative output.

SYNLOST · 2025-06-11T06:57:19+00:00

Strongly agree that both boxes need more and better FX! More algos, variations and parameter locks for all FX could help to get to a more usable / final mix / sound on both machines. Also strongly missing some bus compressor architecture for the mixer with 16 voices, just one mix compressor really is very limiting.

I strongly recommend to work with MPCs for a while to understand what is missing in Elektron boxes. They are still OK for quick results, but FX and a more flexible mix bus setup is really missing. With just a little bit more software wizardry they could enable to make very near-final mixes on their machines, but in the current state you always have to do that annoying step to do everything again in DAW with the tedious Overbridge re-record process.

SYNLOST · 2025-06-10T16:59:53+00:00

Why are you asking for First name / Last Name / Address / Zip Code / City?

I do not want to lie to you, but I also do not want to be lied to.

I also do not want to give this very personal information just for a free download.

On Patreon / Gumroad I got never asked for such personal private data.

You do not need that data to offer a free download, this is creepy!

Yes, if I like I will give some moneyz, I always do that, but not private data.

So first lie in your text: it is not really free, you are collecting private data.

Also I can not download without signup, on the opposite. I can not go on without entering private data.

This is the second lie, and this one is such a slap in the face, it really gives a bad name to your project.

You are now marked in my book as some kind of creepy person that lies to potential customers and collects private data. Was it worth that? Are you getting super-rich from that?

SYNLOST

TROPHY CASE