AKAI Professional APC Mini MK2 - good for use with Cantabile?

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#1

I’m looking for a simple controller for selecting patches, songs and song states etc via binding rules.
I see that the AKAI Professional APC Mini MK2 is pretty straight-forward and cheap.
But most of the reviews just say its designed mainly for Ableton.

Can anyone tell me if its suitable to program simply for this purpose and is anyone here using one with Cantabile?
Are the button selections just momentary or can you actually group buttons together to make one in the group light at a time and turn the others off?

Song Select Message Not Seen By Input Port
#2

I looked at various controllers and wasn’t convinced any of them would be flexible to do what I wanted, so I have created my own, using a spare refurbished iPad and the fantatic MIDI Designer Pro app.

Here’s a screenshot below of what I’ve got so far. The buttons and their status lights are bidirectional with Cantabile. If anyone wants more details of how this works, I’m very happy to provide details and a copy of my layout.

Screenshot1
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#3

I’m using one with Cantabile to select various plugins whereby I can use the controllers to change parameters which logically are going to be different for each plugin. I’ve done this by assigning a separate MIDI channel to each pad so that when it’s pressed it displays the plugin and I can twiddle the knobs for it. Press it again the plugin disappears. Press another pad, different plugin etc… It’s actually a bit more involved than that and takes a lot of head scratching. Not ideal but it does what I want it to do without lashing out megabucks for apple hardware

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#4

Interesting, thanks.
Actually I didn’t spend megabucks. I’ve found a good and reliable source of refurbished iPads here in the UK and if you got for an older model like and Air2 without 4G, you can pick one up for about the same price as the Akai.