Although it functions perfectly with all other DAWs, the Launchpad Pro MKIII is best suited to those producing in the box with Ableton Live 10. There’s dedicated controls for clip and scene launching, as well as Capture MIDI, Chord Mode to build chords straight off the grid, tap tempo, quantising and more. These new features are pretty similar to those added to the two new Launchpads from last year, and definitely help to create a more intuitive user experience.
However, the big draw card with the Launchpad Pro MKIII is the inbuilt MIDI sequencer, which you can use to arrange and drive your hardware setup and plugins with ease. There’s connections via MIDI In, Out 1 and Out 2/Thru, and you can use up to four tracks and 32 steps with the polyphonic sequencer, with the controller even offering the ability to chain patterns to create full tracks and mutate them on demand. This can all be configured via Novation’s Components software, which provides eight custom modes to work off.
Elsewhere, the Launchpad Pro MKIII can be either bus-powered or powered standalone via USB C, and features larger and more velocity sensitive pads than its predecessor. It’s also more compact and portable to boot – does this company ever disappoint? Good one Novation!
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