[PD] [LAU] 'Modular' midi controller for keyboard

[Simon Wise]

On 30/03/13 05:35, rosea.grammostola wrote:

>
> The bcr2000 has rotary encoders with LEDS.
>
> The bitstream 3X does have potentiometers and it's possible to set the 3X in
> such a way that the know has to pass the value of an control in a certain
> software, before it gets 'on'.

I find the need to move the knob (or a fader) to pick-up the value as above
very clumsy in many circumstances ... especially when fine tuning something it 
is difficult to make the first small adjustment, and requires finding the target
value first from the computer screen etc. Its OK if you have enough knobs so 
that you can control most things you want to without switching.

> Potentiometers seems to have the advantage of being more accurate and have a
> more analogue feel.

I'm not so sure about the more accurate .. it is possible to scale the encoders 
so they need many rotations for the full sweep of values if you want very fine 
tuning, and the BFC2000 has 14 bit modes using 2 midi channels to make full use 
of this accuracy. You can do something like set the push-down position of the 
encoder to switch to the fine scaling if you want. And certainly compared to old 
rotary faders from analogue radio days the encoders are lacking some feel, but 
not compared to most of the smaller knobs on analogue mixers and such.

>
> The question is whether the X3 is good for controlling softsynths like AMS /
> Ingen and stuff like SuperCollider. Or are rotary encoders better for this.

Certainly you can see smaller differences looking at the position of a (big) 
knob compared to the discrete values you can see from the ring of leds, but on 
the other hand leds can be very easily visible at a glance and the BCF2000 has 
several display modes to help keep track of its current purpose, again very 
handy if you are say switching between frequency, Q and gain or something like 
that. And of course looking at a knob that isn't an encoder you need to remember 
if you have picked-up its real value yet, or if it is still in the position left 
from its last purpose.

IMO if you have enough knobs so you don't need to switch them between controls 
very often then they would be fine, but if you want to control more values than 
you have physical controllers the encoders, motor drive faders and the paging 
facilities on the BCF, BCR and similar is better. I've found the layout, leds 
and positioning of buttons n the BCF very useful for a very wide range of live 
control tasks, and its still going strong and many years old.

The main thing that I have found missing on the BCF2000 is touch sensing on the 
faders, so that when a fader is touched that info is sent to the software. That 
feature is very useful in recording automations.


Simon

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