loopkitchen's Cheap 4 deck setup.

Here's my cheapy but effective setup...Mixtrack with two LPD8's, Launchpad and Nanokontrol 2.

Over the course of setting it up I've had one or two issues which I've been able to sort out by either trawling through the threads on this website or experimenting myself. I started off with the Mixtrack and kept editing the mapping as I added the other bits and bobs.

The laptop is a Toshiba Satellite P100-429 (old!) running Vista 32 sp2 with 4Gb RAM via a Focusrite Saffire 6 USB (44.1khz and 13ms latency...good enough for how I use it). I'm at the last TP2 update before it went to Windows 7 and later.

Problems arose firstly with the nanokontrol 2...the same as almost everybody else with the driver and editor...I got around this by disabling all other midi devices in 'device manager' before updating the Korg driver and installing the editor.

Next was the lack of controllers on the Mixtrack which is why I got the two Akai units...the knobs are too wide and shallow so I ordered a load of new ones (Davies 1900 types) and colour coordinated them in order to be able to use them to control the four FX units in group mode with the left (white) knob being used for the filter on the corresponding deck and the pads being used to activate each function (momentary mode). I used a blob of epoxy on each pot to build up the D shaft and hold the new knobs securely.

I've remapped the top eight buttons on the Mixtrack to EQ kills (4 bands on each deck) the master volume is loop recorder wet/dry mix and the load A/B and cue buttons now control loop size/delete and record/play which works well for me.
The encoders control loop size on decks A and B and the endless rotaries control FX dry/wet mix on all 4 decks.

The launchpad has 4 decks worth of 8 cue points, play/pause, effect selector for each of the available 12 FX slots, sync on/off, monitor on/ off, load ABCD and loop size select for decks C and D.

I've had it running for 8 hours straight with the macro FX and no issues so I'm well happy with it and I've not had to try and justify any expense to the missus because she can't tell when I've added a new bit.