Rowan

You would be suprised how cheap it is to make your own boards and there really isn't much to it. 1/ Get you self some copper clad board. 2/ Get a pack of A4 adhesive labels that are designed to run thru printers or photocopiers 3/ Peel of the lable from the above and throw away the label, but keep the glossy backing paper. 4/ Photocopy your board layout on to the glossy side of the backing paper. 5/ Get a household clothes iron, place the photocopy of your board on to the copper clad board (glossy side facing the copper............and practice your ironing skills..............If you have a woman in your life she will be amazed at your ironing prowess. 6/ after some time the photocopier toner on the label backing will melt and stick to the copper. 7/ carfuly peel the label backing away and presto you will be left with a board read to etch. 8/ soke in WARM etching chemical for about 20-30 min (this varies depending on the board size and how much copper is to be etched. 9/ once all the copper is gone remove from the chemicals and wash with water. 10/ get some steel wool and scrub off the toner that has to the board. And now you have a PCB ready to cut and drill. In all it sould take an afternoon to do start to finish. Rowan

proper funny in-ut, bruv ;)

dengel, you're right about getting a glimpse in to peoples way of working (mixing). It's a box designed for my needs when using LIVE for mixing. I've made a few MB's so far, an MB64, MBSID, MBLC and a little handheld MB for use in a studio but this is the first MB I've worked on where there is no commercial alternative available. This has made the design process then most challanging project I have approched so far......i.e. there is no product to rip-off. I guess I should let you in on my plan, I want to add a firewire audio interface into the MB.......hence MIDIfire. I have a presonus firebox which I'm not using. Because of my plan to add this in to the box I had no choice to ditch one channel just to fit the extra controls in (these controls aren't in the panel desing yet). Rowan

Thanks Smash ;D ;D ;D The buttons, caps and encoders arrived this morning as I was walking out the door to work. I rushed back inside to open the package and in my excitement I left my house keys at home when I left, DOOH :P Now it is time for another review of the PCB layout and Panel to ensure everything will fit, which it won't. Measure twice, cut once my father once told me. After some experimentation with custom Key commands that OSX allows I have decided to drop one of the channels of my controller. This will give me the space to add a "Master" section. I am planning on adding a few buttons that will let me control some paraments that LIVE doesn't allow the assignment of MIDI data such as moving to full screen mode, search in brower (I creamed my pants when I worked out I could do this), changing between Clip and Track view. I am yet to decide what to do with the rest of the buttons and encoders and buttons in the master section. I have removed the cross fader assignment switchs as I won't use them and added a track select button. I have also removed the hole for the LED's that were beside the EQ gain controls, thanks to the knobs I have chosen I will put an LED under the knob to indicate the status. I think that I my add a LCD for future development. What I really want my MB to do is not possible with any current MIOS apps, so i'd like to future proof it for when I dust off C skills and write a new MIOS app. Here is the next concept; (don't worry Smash, i'll be using those Cap you sent) 10 point for the first person who spots the "cameo" Rowan

I used Caig Cailube MCL to smoothen the ring. It's not really ideal for the job as it is designed for faders, but it was what I had at hand and in worked well. I strongly suggest that all MIDIboxers invest in a can of this stuff, it will make faders and pots slide like a dream. Rowan

Check this thread on how to get the MIDINoteFeedback working: http://www.midibox.org/forum/index.php?topic=6532.15 Rowan

I've lubed up my ring, It slides much better now! Nice Avatar ;D

Here you go: http://www.albs.de/albs_e.htm# Go to the stock list and look for this: Drehknopf DK16-190V3 A.6/4,5 AT=14,5 schwarz soft-transparent blau 55457. Rowan

Yup, it's for the 3 Axis trackball. Make sure you use a mouse with a ball, not an optical one. It was very easy to do. I just had to work out which on the mouse encoders were the outputs and powersupply pins, then work out which way to connect up the yellow and orange wire. With little bit of trial and error I had it working in an hour. Rowan

The knobs I ordered have arrived and I can confirm that they are transperent. I'll post some photos of them being backlite when I get a chance. Very nice indeed ;)

I wired up the encoder ring to the scroll wheel, It works really well. I'm using it as I type this. Rowan

I've got the trackball working now. I got a £6 USB mouse with a scrollwheel and wired it all up and it works a treat! I Had to mess around with the mouse tracking/scrolling speeds to get good results but it it's working very nicely. The wires are as follows: Red +5V Black Ground Yellow Digital Out 1 Orange Digital out 2 It will happly work off USB buss power. Have fun ;D Rowan

I got my one yesterday.........very nice! Do you guy's still want me to help you out? Or are you sorted? Rowan

I'll bid on them for you if you want. I'm still waiting on mine to arrive. Postage will be about £20. As soon as mine gets here I'll let you know. Rowan

I'm new to glasgow. I've only been in Scotland for 2 months. ;)

It's a tiny computer motherboard, some have embeded CPU's, others can take Pentium M CPU's. I only came across them today. Most of them are 17cm x 17cm with a full selection of I/O and can take PCI cards, HHD, Optical drives. Basicly a standard computer on a little board. Most of them are designed for embeded application, such as media centers and other interesting things. With some of them you can boot off compact flash cards so you don't need a HHD. It seems like a really do-able thing to make a compleat Ableton Live solution in a box, including the computer, control surface, audio interfacing and storage (Maybe even a LCD monitor in the case lid) . I'de love to post on the forum with a Midibox ;) Rowan

Now my head is buzzing about putting a mini-itx or nano-itx motherboard in this this. Some if these motherboard are avalibe with jumpers for all the I/O and some even have LVDS connectors which will connect directly to certain LCD panels without the need for VGA or DVI. These mother boards are only 12cm x 12cm, I could fit on of these in to my case for this comtrollers. I love the idea of a truly all in one solution ;D Anyone much about these matters? I wounder if I could get away with this, It won't really cost that much. Rowan

Good ideas, I'm on a mac though so I can't use bohm's midi translator. I'm sure there will be a mac equivalent. The Clip launch and stop buttons I'm using have a built in filament lamp. The play one is green and I'm going to order some red caps for the stop button from here: http://www.canford.co.uk/commerce/category_2000281_2000020.aspx Using the MIDINoteFeedback hack what I'm thinking of doing is have the Launch button flash after is is pressed but before the clip is launched, While the clip is playing the lamp stays on, when the stop button is presses the Launch button will flash until the clip stops, when the clip stops the Launch button goes out and the stop button lamp goes on. Rowan

I've just realized that the faders I got have a built in switching track. When the fader is at - inf the track switch is open, as soon as you raise the fader it closes the track switch..........very cool. I trying to come up with something to use this for....faders start, like some CDJ's have. Any other ideas what I could use it for? Rowan

Here is the first draft Shaffer panel: about 65 euro's.......seems reasonable. With engraving the price shoots you to about 150 euro's It's layed out on a 2.54mm grid so that standard strip board can be used for mounting the buttons, LED's and encoders. Rowan

I'll try to get a few pages scanned. 1 problem with the Quad Buss compressor it that it Uses dbx VCA's which are no longer made. THAT corperation was formed by dbx management when dbx was brought out by Harman. THAT corperation brought all the semiconductor intellectual property and manufacture VCA's but I don't think they have produced drop in replacement chips. Gyraf Audio have made a Quad buss clone that uses THAT VCA. All the schems are on their website. Rowan

Unfortunately, I don't have a scanner. Besides, it's about 200 pages. I don't know if it can be downloaded anywhere. I got it from a studio I use to work at, they had a service manual which I photocopied.

I have the schems for the G4000, printed though.

Right, here is a small design update. I've changer the panel to reflect the buttons that Smash so kindly offerd me. I have also got the fader slot and mounting holes size right. I also did so more tests in live to find out what CC values were need of the faders in Live to hit target values such as 0dB... Gain (dB) CC Value +6 127 0.02 108 -3.13 98 -5.97 89 -10.1 76 -19.9 46 -30 30 -39.9 20 -49.5 12 -60.6 4 - Inf 0 As you can see, all but one dB figure isn't right on the money but it close enough. Based on these numbers I could work out where to put the markings on the panel for values that should match you with live. Rowan

I've got kiwi accent ;) It will be easier for me to ship from work, as we use UPS evey day to send out products. I'll find out how much it will cost. PM me your address. Have a look around ebay uk to see if there is anything else you or others in OZ want. Rowan