Kontrol S4 + Ableton?
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  1. #1

    Default Kontrol S4 + Ableton?

    Anyone have any advice/resources on using the S4 with Ableton? It's looking like that might be the route I need to go for a live album recording I'm doing with a band.

    Searched, haven't found anything, curious if anyone else has messed with it yet.
    ------------------
    DJ Twisted Panda
    http://twistedpanda.com @jeremysexton
    Gear: Kontrol S4, Kontrol F1, MidiFighter, iPad running Lemur

  2. #2
    Tech Guru basspenetrator's Avatar
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    put the S4 in midi mode and map it to your liking..
    Setup: TP 3, Kontrol S5, MF Twister, MF3D, MF Classic, DIY-Midifighter, Aiaiai Tma-1
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  3. #3
    DJTT Scribe Mod smiTTTen's Avatar
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    I might start playing with this idea too.
    Beats By Dre is like audio flu for your balls.

  4. #4
    Tech Student Xe7en's Avatar
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    It's a bit more complicated than just putting it in midi mode. There's not much on the internet about setting it up but I got it up and running (may put up a post about it if I get the time).

    If you scroll down on this link there's some pretty good numbered instructions: http://www.gearslutz.com/board/music...ontroller.html

    Fyi, you don't really need to edit the user config file. In ableton, under midi/sync make sure to set the control surf., I/O to Kontrol S4 and turn on remote under the midi ports for I/O.

    After that you can go into midi mapping mode in ableton and assign any knob/fader/pad to anything in ableton.

    Hope that helped!

  5. #5

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    Hey guys, this is my first post on this forum haha xD

    I've got an NI S4 and to put it in MIDI mode you hold down Shift and hit "Browse" in the central section....

    The real difficulty is getting Live to function like a pair of decks and a mixer. If you push your S4 volume fader to maximum, it'll distort the audio as it's above 0dB - so I'm guessing you should put a utility module in your audio FX chain and turn the gain down a notch.
    Also with the EQ, I'd recommend the EQ Eight instead of the three-band as it's more faithful to a conventional equaliser setup, meaning 0dB is in the center.... I'd map the low-end channel x fader to 2x bands set to around 50Hz and 200Hz and have the Q set to be quite wide. This'll prevent the low-end knob turning up the mid-range too... Obviously the same thing should apply to the other 2 bands too on the S4 per-channel.

    At the end of the FX chain put a Limiter module on (just as Traktor does on it's master bus) to prevent any clipping/distortion...

    I use the big "browse" knob to scroll through scenes and the 4x sample-deck play buttons on the LH side section of the S4 to trigger the 4 Channels... The first two would be full-on tracks and the other two are acapellas and loops....

    The problem with Live is the fact you've got to (sometimes) manually tempo-sync tracks and add warp markers to make sure the songs stay in sync with each other which can be laborious - but if everything works.... you've got a pretty powerful tool...

    Hope that kinda helps!

  6. #6
    Tech Wizard
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    I got a question that I hope someone will be able to answer! I also do a lot of recording and stuff, mainly guitars and vocals. Recently, my audio-interface broke down, so I thought "Hey! I should be able to use my instrument input on the s4 to record with!". Everything worked fine in Ableton, using it as a normal soundcard and I could even choose the input on my channel. The only problem was that my signal was peaking, even with the gainknob turned all the way down. It might just be my new set of pickups on my guitar that's a bit to loud, but shouldnt I be able to turn the gain below 0db?

    Also, does anyone know of the quality of the instrument input preamp? Is it suitable for recording?

  7. #7
    Tech Wizard
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    To continue VillaNaranjos post about the faders ...

    after you map the fader to a volume fader , in the midi mode you should see something like -inf 6.0db or something like that .. All you have to do is bring the 6.0 to 0 and then your fader wont go higher then that even if it's fully up

  8. #8
    DJTT Administrator del Ritmo padi_04's Avatar
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    ^This

    No need for a utility plugin to avoid the clipping issue. The main issue would be that the center position on the S4's knobs wouldn't correspond to the EQ 0db. Tarekith had a shot at this, check his site.

  9. #9
    Tech Convert
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    I want to know how you set it up.. i want to use my S4 as an audio interface for plugging in a keyboard to ableton....how do i do it?

  10. #10
    Tech Wizard
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    About the eq's center position ... You could use an eq eight on ableton , and only activate 3 eq's and place them where you want . Then map the eq's to your s4 .

    I too had the idea of using the s4 for ableton . Doesn't work well i must say , when you press a button , it reacts on ableton , but sometimes you have to press it 3-4 times before it reactivates something on ableton . Does anyone has a work around for that ?

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