LIVID MINIM REVIEW MANUAL

LIVID MINIM REVIEW MANUAL

The Code arrived in a box with a Livid Instruments sticker and a T‑shirt, but with no printed manual or bundled CD. The Code is exclusively powered by USB and so features just a USB socket and MIDI I/O ports.

In many ways, though, the Code and the Ohm64 are similar: they're built from the same materials, with the same styling, and have many features in common. Clearly, this device is aimed at users who wish to concentrate on shaping and mixing sound or video, rather than triggering and slicing. The Code is something a little different: the matrix of buttons is gone, replaced by a regimented layout of rotary encoders with integrated LED rings (rather like those you'd find on some digital mixers, or on keyboards like the Nord Modular G2 or the Novation Remote MkII). A more recent product called the Block was essentially a portable, cut‑down Ohm64 with a more minimal appearance. The Ohm64, and its predecessor, the Ohm, had their roots in popular DJ and VJ culture, with a design based around a central grid of numbered trigger buttons accompanied by faders, knobs and a DJ‑style crossfader.

We've seen grid‑oriented controllers from Monome, Novation and Akai, and now Livid Instruments have followed up on their Ohm64 controller (reviewed in the April 2010 edition of SOS) with a new and rather flashy box called the Code. While the first years of the 21st century may be looked back on as the decade which gave birth to the fashion for innovative USB controllers, things don't seem to be slowing down as we slip into the twenty‑teens.

Livid Instruments' new control surface boasts not only an unusual flexibility - courtesy of its custom editing software - but also some fine handmade wooden end‑cheeks.

Livid minim review