At DanceFair 2015, Novation’s Chris Calcutt demoed the new Launchpad Pro‘s hardware MIDI In/Out connectivity and the company’s open firmware plans for the device.
For the Launchpad Pro, Novation has given the classic Launchpad an overhaul – adding velocity and pressure sensitive pads, RGB LED feedback and improved control.
Novation’s Launchpad Pro will be available for purchase Spring 2015, with a US MAP of $299.99. For more information, go to the Novation website.
via sonicstate
MINE!!!
64 buttons + MIDI I/O + Open SDK, now that’s what I’m talking bout!
“Promises … Open Firmware”
There have been many promises by various music companies over the years along these lines.
Promises aren’t worth a whole lot.
I’ve used the original Launchpad for years now: this is what I’ve always wished it would be!
Very exciting news! If you look at what Zaq creator of the Zaquencer managed to do with the BCR2000, which is nothing short of astounding, I can only imagine what could be achieved with such a device. Just like the Zaquencer made me buy a BCR, if an able programmer turned their attention to creating a stepsequencer for this I would be forced to instantly aquire a LaunchPad Pro too! ;D
Fingers crossed…;D
Why aren’t Novation building a sequencer into this , and their other gear ?
Don’t understand why they’ve ignored this market , when they were building programmable step sequencers/arps into the Super/Nova range 20 years ago ,
All these years making controllers for other companies soft or hardware sequencers ,
Why not add internal sequencing ?
Once this has a launchpad98 remake over, mainly proper scales and a sequencer, then I think it will be a winner. I don’t know of any controller that maps the ‘double’ feature, other than the Push. Which is really useful, for punching out a quick beat, then extending it and expanding upon that – very useful. It seems to me that something is going on between Ableton and Novation, at a guess I feel Ableton is trying to limit the features on the Pro, like the ‘scales’, ‘auto arming’ and ‘sequencer’ and Novation have agreed, as why wouldn’t they include these easy free software features? But Novation have now responded with this late ‘open source’ call – thus not needing to address the concerns of Ableton as they negate those concerns by sponsoring open dev.
I would buy it today if it had 16 track sequencer.(well…I would buy it today, and pay more as well, even if it had 8 tracks)
Yeah, I’d be down to code some stuff on this. I’d like to see a teardown to get an idea of how much the MCU is capable of… but even pad output and some MIDI volume/CC macros would be useful already. Stay tuned I guess? I find the description on the sonicstate site a bit of a mind-bender though: “MIDI i/o is available on dedicated minijack MIDI connectors, making it more stand alone.”
There is a philosophical dissertation in there on whether one can be ‘more alone’ whilst in a state of standing.
I have an old launchpad and I use it with launchpad95 midi configuration over Avleton Live, I can use it 4 different modes simusimultaneously, I use the regular session and mixer mode, and I use user 1 and 2 modes as sequencers, user 1 as a regular step sequencer for drums and user 2 as a melodic sequencer, its all based on the launchpad95 midi patch.