right now i'm running live with reason (slaved) on an ibook. i have an m-audio o2 midi keyboard controller and i plan to add an akai mpd16 midi drum pad controller. my question is this: in either live and/or reason, would it be possible to have one controller, say the m-audio, set to one channel, while another controller (the akai in this case) set to a separate channel so i can use both controllers similtaneously but having both producing different sounds (ie: the akai for drum sounds and the m-audio for synths)? any help on this matter would be appreciated.

Have you tried Ableton's tips & tricks forum? I have an Ableton "power" book, which I have read quite a bit, but I have never seen any mention of using multiple controllers for Live or its rewire slaves (I just looked). One suggestion, if it doesn't work, is possibly trying to midi chain the Akai thru the Ozone ( akai midi out to the Ozone's midi in & interfaced thru the USB as usual). I have no idea if it would actually work the way you would want it to but, what the heck...give it a go. Live & Reason work together quite well, don't they? Reason is really easy on the CPU (unlike Reaktor & Pluggo- which sound incredible but, can bring my lil' G4 to its knees pretty quick). I had put Reason to the side for a while but am starting to use it ALOT. If nothing else, you may want to spring for one of Korg's or Novation's controllers that have the drum touch pads as well as a gajillion knobs & sliders & keep it simple.

This post has been edited by mortalengines: Thu 22 Jun 2006, 04:17

thanks for the info. now that i think about it, i may want to go with the korg or m-audio drum controllers instead because, based on descriptions, a) trigger finger (m-audio) is setup for reason and live already, and b) the korg has the ability to assign pads to separate midi channels (which i'm not sure if any of the others can do). the akai only costs $100 but is very basic compared to the m-audio or korg. and yes, the m-audio and korg has more assignable knobs and buttons as well.