Any plans on incorporating ableton Link

eLement9

eLement9

New Member
Hi guys,

Wow was a long time since i was here, so long so i had to create a new account. :P

Anyhow.. im just wondering if there is any plans on incorporating or if you heard about "Ableton-link"

Nowadays many artists and also DJ,s use Ableton to perform and some, as me/us use midi in Ableton to send signal to Pangolin Beyond to start cues or shows.

We used this for this huge show we did in Stockholm a couple of months ago.
The Laser show was built in Beyond Timeline for each track and saved as "Shows" and then triggered to start and stop by "midi over Ethernet"

From the start we wanted to trigger also separate cues for different effects or sounds from Ableton but with the delay with Midi over Ethernet that was not possible, also there where quite a lot of midi/ethernet pango script related bugs so we just made it work by simple start and stop-show for each track.

We used 8 KVANT Clubmax 6Watt RGB and one 24Watt RGYB Rti lasers and Latest Beyond on a PC connected to our own router with highspeed GB ports and a MacBook with Ableton to send the music and Midi in the tracklist.

It worked but it was a real hustle to program and make everyting work with correct timesync. For example i was forced to have a smal gap in the start of each show in Beyond becouse of the delay and i think we went through atleast 5 different routers before we found one with the minimum latency. (Our hardware store thought we where crazy) :)

Anyhow.
With Ableton Link
Developer: https://ableton.github.io/link/
Information: https://www.ableton.com/en/link/

I think this might work a lot smother as we use this for other applications and as long as you are on the same network the latency is 0.

here is some photage from the show, the entire video will be released soon.

360 View: (if you turn the video we placed a "front of house view" in the video)
https://www.facebook.com/elementnine/videos/1045868408821575/

Another view where you can see alot of the equipment
https://www.facebook.com/elementnine/videos/1040822215992861/

Another view programming the show.
https://www.facebook.com/elementnine/videos/1032299383511811/
 
Hi,

It should be possible to take a look at "Ableton-link". The development plan is pretty tight, however there might be something interesting and useful for industry.

You said that there are a lot of PangoScript bugs. if so, I think it should be not a problem for describe some of them. And related question - why existing BEYOND tools does not work for your situation? What kind of task you need to solve? start/stop, sync, or what?

Regards,
Alexey.
 
I would just like to second the motion of incorporating Ableton-Link in to Beyond. It's quickly becoming the industry standard for DAWS and DJ software to sync to one another across LAN. It's very useful.
 
A technique I used a few years ago for Dj'ing, so that Beyond laser shows could chase Dj'ing in realtime:

For each track, create show in Beyond as usual (import audio, add cues, FX etc).

Create new show, and copy/put each track's show at 10 minute intervals: Track 1 at 00:00:00:00, Track 2 at 00:10:00:00, etc.
Mute audio track (helpful to keep, so you can check each track).

Create timecode audio tracks for the same 10 minute intervals.

In Ableton add all music audio tracks to a column; each track in a row. Add time code to second column; each time code in a row.
Group the two columns. This group is called "A"

Do the same again, but the second group is called "B"

Setup Abelton for Dj'ing music audio tracks; warp audio, crossfade , DJ controller so that you can mix between any two tracks by cross-fading between "A" -> "B" or vica - versa.

Have a audio interface that has multiple outputs.

Set the timecode to go into MOTU micro express, or similar timecode reader.

Feed the resulting Midi timecode into Beyond, and set the timeline to chase midi timecode.

You now can Dj any music track to any music track, with pitch shift/variable speed etc, and Beyond will chase the music audio playback (via the timecode), very quickly and accurately.

Its wonderful to Dj tracks and have lasers (and by extension DMX lighting show) be in perfect lock step with your performance.

Glen/Chromatic
 
Hey guys. Just spotted this thread. I’ve been using BEYOND since the beginning and my shows (pre COVID!) currently consist of 7 Kvant Projectors (360 degree configuration) and onstage DMX rig being controlled by 2 Lenovo gaming laptops/APC40s both running BEYOND (Essential & Ultimate). On top of this I’m also playing DJ/VJ sets from FOH (usually at the same time) on a MacBook Pro using Rekordbox Creative (or Traktor Pro 3) and Ableton Live, with Resolume taking on video duties - these are all synced via Ableton Link. At the moment I seem to spend half my time manically hitting the space bar on the BEYOND machines to keep them (approximately) in sync with each other and the MacBook. Having Ableton Link incorporated into BEYOND would be an absolute god send - not necessarily Start/Stop (which would be useless for the type of shows I do), but just basic Link Network Sync, which would be a killa feature for electronica sets. Conversely, being able to to route BEYONDs space bar function to Ableton Link’s Tap feature would also be really useful as well, as it would give manual BPM control over other apps on the Link Network (as well as BEYOND) when trying to sync with live acts etc. Fingers crossed eh!
 
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It is rediculous that Ableton link is not incorporated yet. What about using timecode is that possible?
 
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