If you are just producing / DJing / play using loops and drums, the APC40 is GODLIKE.. it really is an amazing controller and feels great.
If you are creating synth lines a keyboard really is a must IMHO, something small like an oxygen would do the trick fine though for home use, I wouldn't use one playing live (i'd rec everything as clips because i'm crap on the keyboard LOL).
Using Ableton to DJ with is quite unlike using any dedicated "DJ software" .. it has its strengths for example:
Slicing and effecting multiple instances of clips is amazing
You can fill your entire board with drum loops on particular channels all ready to go, kinda like an unlimited sampler.
You can effectively edit and create new tracks as you go and chop stuff to fcuk on the fly pretty easily just copying the same clip a few times and fucking around with the settings e.g. beats / quantize / reverse etc .. and thats just grazing the iceberg.
BUT it has major weaknesses for DJing.
Loading "on the fly" takes a lot of time, you really should at least pre-analyze all your tracks.
No real tempo variation on the individual tracks, if warping automatically doesn't work you'll need to manually set things up manually which can take time you may not have at a gig.
Browser functions are pretty
yick and not midi mappable - mouse is most defiantly a requirement.
Some things you come to expect on a DJ application just are not there as standard e.g. centered 3 band eq on all decks (hope like 9 sorts this!) but some very nice people like Tarekith have created some for you as well as tons of effects
If you can workaround the limitations and discover whats possible you'll really enjoy using it.
The first few occasions I went fully live I was on eggshells, and it took a few gigs before I'd worked out exactly what functions I really needed on hand....for a live situation, things that preparing at home just did not bring to my attention for example:
The play / stop / rec are in a stupid place, WAYYYY to easy to hit first thing that needed to be re-mapped, stop clip is colored the same as track selection on the APC (WTF!) removed that and set them as FX banks on/off and changed my rec/arm to stop clip ... silly things like that.
As regards ur laptop, I'm running a 2009 MBP with 4gigs ram, its never failed me on anything EXCEPT a disk read error in Ableton once or twice if I was running a ton of tracks and analyzing something not previously played. No biggie it stuttered for 3 or 4 seconds.
I'm getting an Optibay so I can keep my music on a completely separate internal drive which should sort that issue for good
Given the choice of macs now I'd probably go with a MBA 13' i5 + 128 SSD +4GB, I know it would piss all over my current rig and then some.
However the MBP is the more upgradable machine, either will run things plenty smoothly.
Oh and for the record I'm considering getting 2xA&H K2's instead of my APC40 "possibly"
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