Universal Synth Remote - VSTi midi Control

[acYm]

wow, totally missed out on this post. interesting project.

Will it send 14 bit midi cc? Do many soft synths support 14 bit midi cc?

14bit cc is basically the mod wheel. usually that's programmed in the patch via the mod matrix and not mapped by the user. most vst's (that I know of) only recognize standard cc on the onboard midi mapping. it's not impossible though, in reaktor for example, you can go in and edit the cc assigns to make them 14-bit.


as for my thoughts on the USR, this control surface looks good, nice logical design, looks like an upgraded version of the panel on my old x-station. my excitement is mitigated though. that's because my Kore2 with its 8 knobs, 8 buttons and 8 sections is 8 times more powerful, 8 times more versatile and 8 times more useful than any midi controller can be.

USR will be a cool experience with ANA2, no doubt about that, but it will fall short for every other vst, be it a synth, sampler or effect. the panel sections do not have enough faders, knobs, and buttons. there won't be a way to use those 4 knobs as quick user macros while using a vst, or to map the buttons as toggles or triggers or gates or steps, or to adjust knob rotation so that it's actually usable with the control and feels tight. that's the thing with midi cc, ultimately it will feel kinda shoddy in use no matter what you try... they couldn't help it with the imposcar2 controller and you won't either.

the USR 2 needs to look like this but with lighted touchstrips instead of faders, lighted endless encoders instead of... these old things, moar buttons (lighted and multi-mode), moar displays (instead of labels), and it needs to be a vst host so that it can actually control high-res values through automation. and make it look generic, just like a giant Kore, not like a synth or something specific. make this control surface and we will setup the best templates the world has ever seen with it, for every good vst from the last 15 years.

just the advice of a guy running 100+ different vst sessions with no more than 5% mouse usage

[Lets dance]

@phil
What's the price going to be?

[spoutnik]

Interesting idea, though as others I wonder about the feasibility of such auto-mapping.
As for specifications I'd be all for high resolution midi and above all endless rotary knobs!

[spoutnik]

The best would be to add community uploads that would allow to get user implementations of vsts.

[topaz]

Many have tried and failed and it all comes down to one MAJOR issue.

Software and future development.

[noiseboyuk]

I hadn't seen this thread until someone linked it. I'd had an idea of a universal synth controller that is very different to this one - viewtopic.php?f=1&t=498883 . Kudos for getting this far, but even though I'm very much in the market for such a controller, this wouldn't work for me for two big reasons. 1 - As its just too restrictive, designed to work with relatively simple synths by the looks of things. I think that every synth has its idiosyncrasies, so no fixed hardware controller will be a good fit - you'd end up flipping back and forth, rather defeating the point. 2 - unless I missed a very clever trick and all your controls are motorized, you'll end up with the ugly position where the soft and hardware are out of sync. Recall a patch and every hardware control will be in the wrong position.

I think any successful hardware controller will have to be dynamic enough to cope with new synths and a huge variety of them, without needing to flip back and forth, so my concept was based around a large touchscreen with physical controls overlaid (see above link for more details).

[Phil Sonic Academy]

Almost all hardware synths with presets have some way of managing the contols being out of sync... usually soft pick up, scaling or jump.

I’ve had this in front of me for while now and it works great for most of the synths I use.

Of course it has its limitations but for the most used and automated controls a producer would be manipulating and for most of the synths I use it works great.

[VariKusBrainZ]

My Nord Lead 3 works well as a controller as its has continuous controllers with led surrounds so any synth its mapped to updates the interface perfectly

[noiseboyuk]

My Nord Lead 3 works well as a controller as its has continuous controllers with led surrounds so any synth its mapped to updates the interface perfectly

Yes, personally I think some variant of this has to be the way to go.

[dcupmusic]

Jeezus - just found this.
Would buy in a heartbeat $$

[kerfmas4]

Love all the progression in your project.
Really next controller I buy must have that led strip around knobs and faders.

[zzz00m]

This is a fascinating idea!

I really like the idea of having a tactile physical controller fully mapped to my virtual instruments!

But I do see the challenge due to the diversity of design for individual synths, making full logical auto-mapping difficult to achieve with hardware controls.

Maybe an iPad version would be the way to go for total auto-mapping? Otherwise, I could see a hardware interface being a possible compromise, but without full compatibility, unless it was dedicated to one particular synth.

[Omniphonix]

Phil, I saw a few posts back you said you will build an editor to map plugins yourself that Sonic Academy hasn't mapped. That will be fantastic, and critical to the success of this unit. Even better if you can host a mapping file exchange on your site so users can share their mapping files. I had really hoped Nektar would bring something like this to the table for the Panorama series, but I am starting to lose faith that this will ever happen. Their deep mapping works great once they've done it, but I'm not seeing a steady flow of new maps from them.

This leads me to a couple of other questions. Will this integrate into the VST automation system to allow finer resolution control than MIDI CC? Also, can this be done without a wrapper plugin (the reason I ditched my Novation Remote SL and will not buy an NI Komplete Kontrol or Akai Advance)? That would be really nice, but it seems to require special code per DAW (I think that is why Nektar only supports certain DAWs with Panorama). I'd be looking for Cubase, Ableton Live, and Reason integration, but as always, the more the merrier.

If you can meet these two design objectives and come to the table with a user-accessible mapping system, I will buy one of these in a heartbeat and sell my Panorama P6. If there is a wrapper plugin (like KK or VIP), it will be a hard pass.

[mi-os]

Hi,

sorry, didn't read the whole thread yet, but i'm into designing/building diy synth controllers myself over the last couple of years.

The biggest issue is (imo) incomplete or faulty MIDI implementation in most plugins. Next would be no (or no easy) bidiretional communication. MIDI resolution maybe another problem.

I contacted some developers, but received close to zero interest in all these issues. It's very frustrating.

How will you overcome all this?

[Phil Sonic Academy]

Hi,

sorry, didn't read the whole thread yet, but i'm into designing/building diy synth controllers myself over the last couple of years.

The biggest issue is (imo) incomplete or faulty MIDI implementation in most plugins. Next would be no (or no easy) bidiretional communication. MIDI resolution maybe another problem.

I contacted some developers, but received close to zero interest in all these issues. It's very frustrating.

How will you overcome all this?

We have been working with each DAWs midi remote protocols to access the plugin parameters. this depends a lot on what the DAW makes available but so far with logic and Ableton we have been able to get automatic per plugin control mapping, preset changing etc. all working... We have looked at the Cubase Remote SDK and it seems to have what we need to make our system work too but we havnt really dug too far in to it yet. Its a lot of work but the only real way to do it without using a wrapper which is probably the easiest solution but not very elegant.