Sasha's new Ableton controller

IS there a bigger version of your article picture? Dammit, I want to see what those doodads are supposed to do!!!
 

Click on the pic and you get the original pic (or on the headline for a another pic). Looks like there are buttons to trigger loops alongside each fader channel.
 

You know, that's all rather nice but I think the home-brew controllers Doepfer have on their site have a much more pleasing Heath-Robinson charm. I mean if you're going to build some sort of controller then frankly you need to be putting a pair of joysticks and a cannibalised computer keyboard on it.
 

I was lucky enough to stand behind Sasha during his set at Avalon this past Sat in LA. I had a perfect view of “his” Maven midi controller and watched him mix with Ableton. The Maven is pretty hefty and looks like it’s built solid, big silver knobs, a cross fader, and many rows other buttons that I only assume call up preset templates of knob settings and signal routing within Ableton Live. The Maven sat about a couple inches footprint bigger than the Zone 92 (which he never touched by the way), had many colored lights that looked like it was stolen off dash of the Millennium Falcon. Sasha seemed pretty at ease with the Maven even after several cocktails, he only worked with one or two columns of tracks at best in Ableton; maybe had five loops loaded that were triggered by the green lights on the Maven. One trick that I noticed he used was the cross fader on the Maven quite a lot, but with a twist, he or a Maven programmer set the cross fader so when it was on program B it would reverse the loop playing in Ableton. This drove the crowd wild, essentially a reverse switch like on the new Technics CD players. During a large build ups Sasha would tweek the knobs on the Maven which were programmed to control the effect sends on Ableton that were linked to some kind of delay filter plug in, all the highs were squished and delayed just smaked the crowd over the head. Sasha used more finesse with the reverses and the filter effects as his set came to a close. You never really heard the typical transition that most Dj’s that spin house, but with Sasha’s setup, just a lot of loops, then usually a big slam into a different loop, it was like watching someone create a song on the fly, something that the Maven made possible in conjunction with Ableton.

Peace

Spacey
 

There's a piece in this month's Remix (Reznor's on the cover) about the controller. Not a whole lot but tells what some of the knobs do--basically allows him to do Ableton remixes of his own loops, tracks, etc. without resorting to keyboard and mouse.
 

there' s no company called Maven, that' s just the name of the controller. it's basically a variation of the MIDIbox designs that many DIY'ers have built to provide MIDI CC control of applications like Live, Logic, Cubase, etc. etc.

the only difference in the case of the Maven is that there's a built in Firewire audio interface, and an internal power supply. the front panel and sides (milled aluminum) are obviously professionally done but the guts aren't anything super exotic. the knobs and switches are fairly expensive, you need high quality heavy duty parts if your controller is going to be thrashed in the way that most DJ mixers are...
 

This a question someone please answer. What the nudge feature like on there?
 

Check out my explanation of Sasha's Maven controller and a super large upclose photo.
 

This controller Sacha uses dosent differ from any other controller on the market. Its just a circuit board with a bunch of pots and resistors. If you get sold a $3000 midi controller just because sacha uses it, you'd be frikkin insane.