alkman: Eight Devices Built Around Space, Motion and Timing
Eight devices, 77,995 downloads between them, and a single idea running under most of them: where a sound sits in space, and how it moves while it gets there. ml.Distance alone accounts for 58,532 of those downloads — the rest of the catalogue is smaller, more specialised, and in two cases aimed at a completely different problem. But the spatial work is the centre of gravity, and it is unusually coherent for a catalogue this size.
The other thing these devices have in common is that they are reworkings rather than inventions from nothing. alkman's descriptions name their sources: Robert Henke's ml.Distance, Ville Pulkki's VBAP algorithm, Mix Matcher by Funkatronics, Oscilloscope 2.0 by Jerobeam Fenderson, brownian delay for Essentials for Live. The contribution is in what gets fixed — clicks removed, CPU reduced, interfaces redrawn, doppler added — which is a useful kind of work and tends to produce devices you keep in a rack rather than try once.
The ml.Distance pair: distance simulation without the clicks
ml.Distance is an alternative graphical interface for Robert Henke's device of the same name. The twist is interpolation: distance and panning values are smoothed so that moving them doesn't produce clicks, with a dedicated smooth parameter controlling how long that interpolation takes. That one change turns a static placement tool into something you can automate and perform with.
It is rated 5/5, has 21 comments, and was last updated on 30 June 2025 — version 1.2, which stopped the GUI elements rendering blurry on non-retina screens. Version 1.1 made panning work when distance is at its extreme. A device from January 2019 that was still getting fixes in mid-2025 is a device that someone is actually using.
The companion, ml.Distance doppler, arrived in January 2022 and adds a doppler simulation on top of the same interpolated panning. A pitch parameter sets how much doppler shift you get. It is also rated 5/5, with 3,649 downloads.
The practical difference: use the plain version when you want a source to sit convincingly at a fixed depth, or to drift slowly without artefacts. Use the doppler version when the movement itself is the event — a pass-by, a sound thrown across the stereo field, a riser that needs to feel like it's travelling rather than just getting louder. Set smooth long and automate distance over a whole phrase; the pitch behaviour follows the movement, so the speed of your automation becomes a musical parameter.
VBAP: surround panning with custom speaker layouts
The Vbap Doppler Panner is a 2D surround panner built on Ville Pulkki's vector base amplitude panning. alkman positions it against two existing options — Ableton's own Surround Panner and Essentials for Live's ambisonic Source Panner — on three counts: lower CPU, custom speaker arrangements, and doppler shift simulation. If you have ever tried to work in a room where the speakers are not in a textbook layout, the second point is the one that matters.
It sits at 5,487 downloads with a 3/5 rating and 11 comments, last updated November 2021 at version 1.1.5. The rating is lower than the rest of the catalogue, which is worth saying plainly: multichannel routing in Live is fiddly, and a device that depends on your output configuration will always have a harder time than a stereo effect. Read the comments before you commit a show to it.
The Vbap Doppler Pong Delay takes the same algorithm somewhere more musical. It spatialises up to eight point sources with doppler shift, a random delay and a frequency shifter, inspired by the brownian delay from Essentials for Live. Rated 5/5 with 3,309 downloads. This is the one to reach for if you have access to a multichannel rig and want delay repeats that scatter around the room rather than bounce between two speakers. Feed it something short and transient — a rim, a click, a vocal syllable — so you can hear individual repeats arrive from different directions.
The euclidean sequencers
The two MIDI devices are the outlier in this catalogue, and also where most of the conversation is happening. Euclidean sequencer has 86 comments; Euclidean sequencer Pro has 101. Both are commercial, so the download counters read zero — that number tells you nothing about how widely they are used.
The original is a four-voice euclidean sequencer: it distributes a number of beat subdivisions as evenly as possible across a time interval, which is what gives euclidean patterns their lopsided, self-rotating feel. It creates polymeters and melodic arpeggios, and it lets you fix a note per voice or build your own melodic content. Version 1.1, last updated 30 June 2025.
Pro, added September 2021 and updated 29 November 2025 at version 2.1, is the one under active development. It is also four voices, with more customisation, aimed at polyrhythms and polymeters. The significant addition is a second bundled MIDI device, euclidean out, which routes any of the four voices to any MIDI track in Live. That solves the standard annoyance with multi-voice MIDI generators — you get four independent parts feeding four different instruments instead of four parts stacked on one.
Rated 5/5, with 101 comments and a version history stretching to late 2025, Pro is the obvious choice of the two if you are buying. If you want to compare it against other generative MIDI tools, the current MIDI effects roundup covers the field.
Two utilities worth knowing about
visualiser collects four reference tools into one device: an XY scope, a frequency spectrum, a sonogram and an oscilloscope. It builds on Mix Matcher by Funkatronics and Oscilloscope 2.0 by Jerobeam Fenderson. 6,478 downloads, no rating yet, four comments, version 1.0 from January 2019 and never updated. For anyone doing spatial work, the XY scope is the one that earns its place — it shows you what your panning and your VBAP processing are actually doing to the stereo relationship, which is hard to judge by ear in an untreated room.
open file is the smallest thing here: 540 downloads, a device that searches for paths and opens files or programs from your hard drive. With auto open enabled it launches the corresponding file every time Live starts. Version 1.1 from March 2020 added Windows Explorer support. It is a session-management tool — stick it in a template to pull up a cue sheet, a patch document or a companion application whenever the set opens.
Where to start
If you are coming to this catalogue cold, the order is not complicated.
- Start with ml.Distance. 58k downloads, 5/5, still being updated six years after release. It needs nothing beyond a stereo output and it changes how you think about depth in a mix. Put it on a send and automate distance.
- Add ml.Distance dopplerated when you want movement to register as movement. Same workflow, one extra parameter.
- Load visualiser alongside both so you can see what the spatial processing is doing.
- Only go to the VBAP devices if you have the speakers. Vbap Doppler Pong Delay is the more rewarding of the two musically; Vbap Doppler Panner is the workhorse for placement and custom rigs.
- The sequencers are a separate decision entirely. If polyrhythmic MIDI generation is what you need, Euclidean sequencer Pro and its per-voice routing is the version with the longest active history.
What ties it together is a preference for fixing specific, identifiable problems: clicks when you move a panner, CPU cost in surround, speaker layouts that don't match the standard, four voices trapped on one MIDI track. None of these are glamorous. All of them are the kind of thing that stops a session dead until someone solves it.