The Oracle of Apollo Snippets from the life of Apollo Lee

Oxygen 8

This afternoon after work, I went down to Guitar Center in San José to get a small MIDI controller with assignable knobs that I can take with me tomorrow to Idaho — something that will let me write some beats on the plane or at Grandma’s house.

I was considering the Korg microKONTOL, which was significantly too wide to fit in my carryon satchel, the E-MU Xboard 25, which comes with Ableton Live Lite 4 (but only for Windows), and the M-Audio Oxygen 8, which I ultimately bought.

The fact that the sales clerk at Guitar Center slashed the price on the unit down to $109 convinced me that it was a good buy. The unit works spectacularly with Reason 3.0. Soon, I shall learn how to use Ableton Live well (this Lite version has an upgrade path to the newest full version for pretty cheap).

Yay, new toys!

[…] I am now the proud owner of Ableton Live 5 and Ableton Operator, which I purchased this morning. When I bought my Oxygen 8 in December, I got a Lite version of Live, which is almost useless as a tool for anything significant (it’s limited to three audio and three MIDI tracks). Ableton Live 5 will allow me to upgrade to 6 for free. […]