Published 2025-03-07. Last modified 2025-03-12.
Time to read: 3 minutes.

This page is part of the av_studio collection.

Unfortunately, I generally work alone. Such is my fate at this time in my life. Perhaps that will change. Until that day arrives, I want to use a tablet to remotely control Ableton Live on my desktop. This would allow me to get a lot more done in the studio.

The features that I want are:

• Transport control
• Mute, solo and monitor tracks.
• Adjust track levels.
• Record clips.
• Punch in/out.
• Multiple takes.
• Support for some of the functionality of the Ableton Arrangement view would be nice, but is not essential.
• Must run on Android tablets and Apple iPads. I would very much prefer to be able to use a cheaper Android tablet whenever possible instead of expensive iPads.
• Split-screen control is desirable, but not essential.
• For extra credit: the same remote control user interface would be able to control Pro Tools as well as Ableton Live.

I previously reviewed Avid Control, a remote control surface for Pro Tools.

Split Screen

Split screen mode, available for iOS and Android tablets, displays 2 apps on a tablet.

On Android, split-screen is automatically enabled for all apps; however, iOS requires the developer to explicitly support split-screen.

Remote Control Options for Live

Ableton Live can be remotely controlled by a Push, MIDI devices, Ableton Link, Max for Live Connection Kit and the MCU protocol. Ableton Live does not support the old and somewhat limited HUI protocol used by Pro Tools. Control Surface "MaxForLive" ? provides interesting background.

Ableton does not provide an Android or iOS app for controlling Live; however, ableton.com shows several products from third parties for this purpose. Unfortunately, the list provided by Ableton is quite stale and includes abandoned products. Ableton should update this web page.

This article discusses what I found while investigating the options presented by Ableton.

• Imaginando LK and UBRIDGE for iOS and Android. I investigated this option first; see Remote Control of Ableton Live With Imaginando LK/UBRIDGE.
• V-Control Pro for iOS and Android. This is the only currently viable off-the-shelf option that can provide a consistent user interface capable of remotely controlling Pro Tools and Ableton Live. V-Control Pro is a lot more expensive than LK.
• TouchOSC was not mentioned by Ableton, but it is a popular option that supports iOS, Android, Windows, Mac and more.
• 7III Tap: I did not look into this option because it is only available for iOS.
• Knobbler $8.99 in the Apple App Store. I did not look into this option because it is only available for iOS.
  
  
• TouchDAW 4 Euros for Android and Chromebooks. This is very inexpensive; I have an old version that was essentially useless, and there is no iPad version, so I did not investigate this option.
• touchAble Pro (abandoned)
• DAW Control (abandoned: last update was Dec 8, 2017)
• Touch Portal has been reported to work with Ableton Live. It also works with OBS Studio, Music Bee and

Bonjour

Bonjour is used by Avid Control, Imaginando LK/UBRIDGE, and TouchOSC/TouchBridge.

Bonjour is a zero-configuration dynamic DNS service. From a user’s point of view, it should just work. However, programmers who implement Bonjour need to pay a lot of attention to the state of the TCP/IP connections that Bonjour sets up. UBRIDGE is not as robust as it should be in this regard. As a result, the connections that LK/UBRIDGE sets up often frustrate the user.

In case this might be helpful to know, I found two installations of Bonjour in my Windows 10 DAW:

1. A 64-bit version in C:\Program Files\Bonjour\mDNSResponder.exe (this is the active version)
2. A 32-bit version in C:\Program Files (32)\Bonjour\mDNSResponder.exe (this version is not used)

Apple’s FAQ for Bonjour mentions that the Bonjour dynamic DNS records can time out.

Bonjour caches DNS resource records for network efficiency reasons, but if a device abruptly vanishes from the network without sending a "Goodbye" packet, then other machines won't know that it's gone, so the data will remain in everyone's cache. The "Goodbye" packet is described in Section 13.2 of the Multicast DNS protocol specification. While Bonjour implements techniques to gradually purge these stale records, there may be times when you'll want to manually clear the cache.

If you try to resolve a service name and get no answer, then in about fifteen seconds, mDNSResponder will remove that stale record from its cache.

 – Clearing mDNSResponder’s cached records

One way of manually flushing the Windows DNS cache is to type ipconfig /flushdns into a cmd window that was started with administrator privilege.

Administrator CMD

PS C:\Users\Mike Slinn> ipconfig /flushdns

Windows IP Configuration

Successfully flushed the DNS Resolver Cache. 

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