havensole999

hey all. i am building a dedicated controller for a vsti and was wondering what code and wiring changes i would need to make a multifunctio row of knobs/buttons like the midiboxsid has for the adsr's and whatnot. sorry if i missed this in any of the info i read, or it was covered elsewhere, but that's for your help. -haven

any idea if it's possible to use this kind of design for a fader/pot, or is that just not possible. another idea is to take the legth of the fader and making 127 little pads and somehow getting mios to recognise it as 1 fader/pot.

forgive me thorsten. i thought i got the idea from the the "mbsid idea" post from cheater. i must of misunderstood. I in no way think that your interface is lacking. it's just a personal thing. i have never ever liked menu editing and multiple button pushing. iti s why i will never own a triton (well, among other reasons) or any real "workstation." I will take another reall hard look at your interface and see if i'm just being to knob happy about things. please forgive any insult that you might have felt due to my last post.

hey thorsten, i know it's been brought up in other posts, about the lack or knobs and whatnot on the control panel, and i know your resaons for that. the simple way around this, as you've said, is to connect it to a dedicated mb64. i imagine as long as you have a decent cc list, it shouldn't be all to hard, and wont take up too much, if any program editing. am i wrong? one could just bury the guts of the mbfm inside the mb64 casing and not use the lcd from the mb64, but put on the mbfm's. i don't know if this would cause any real issues with using the software editor for either system, but if so, i'm sure one could simply have dedicated midi ports on the rear of the panel to solve it. please tell me if i'm way off here. thanks p.s. thanks for keeping all us synth geeks from sleeping. you rock.

i think it all depends on what you're using it for. for me at least, if i am using cpu intensive vst'is or just have a crapload of files playing, i get lag, but that's all due to cpu. i use mine for studio, and extreme live use. now a midi port on your soundcard is optimal. my creamware card's midi port is alot faster than the 2x2, but that could be due to the dsp chips. the only real midi interface hardware i've ever refused to work with, after initail testing of course, are steinberg devices. their lag was in the inopporable range.

my setup is costing me roughly 300-400. i did save alot of money by going to the microchips site and ordering some samples of the pic18's and the 4 bankstick chips. as long as you're prepared to deal with burning the os onto the pic's, go for this method. as thorston (if i remember right) said in another forum, i don't sudjest everyone and their brother going and ordering samples from microchip as this is a disservice to them. i only ordered samples as i am still pretty novice at this all, and this is my first mios project, but not my last. i was also lucky enough to have pack rat friends who had a few c64's lying around in their garages, so that was some money off the go. though in my design, i am using 2 c64 chips and 2 c128 chips (sorry, but i've been working all night and can't remember their model numbers). The 2 from the c128 i am buying from cestible.com for roughly 15 bucks a pop. you can get the c64 chips their too if you don't feel like rumaging around swap meets and whatnot for roughly 25 if memory serves. as far as lcd's go, check around some electronic suplus sites. you can usually find them for really really cheap. just make sure you can find a data sheet. i bought my 2x24 for 6 bucks. if you do a search on yahoo shops, you can find leds at a site (sorry, i don't have the link on this system) in bulk of 100 3mm or 5mm for 2 bucks. i can almost gaurentee they aren't the brightest things in the world, but if they work... they work. all the pcb's and rotary encoders (my frontpanel uses 20 encoderes) will be bought from smashtv's site i'm buying all my buttons from the same electronic surplus shop i bought my lcd from as they usually have good deals of 4 for a dollar. the power supply i will be using is from one of the c64's my friend game me, so there is some more money saved my unit is going to be a 3space rack which i am buying at as small electronic shop down the road. all in all, most of the money i'm spending is for the pcb's, casing, and high quality connectors EDIT: Correction. After looking at my price estimates, the synth is actually only costing my about 275 US.

the digisesign stuff is great. i don't care for protools, but their hardware is solid. if you are using xp, the motu should run ok. most of the problems we ran into was with irq issues, so if need be, just play musical chairs with the slots. hope that helps. if you do get the motu and have issues, let me know. i do have alot of motu fantatical friends that might be able to help as well.

thanks everyone for your help. now i will have my enough chips for my mb sid and mb fm when it's released.

as a former guitar center employee, and dealing with ALOT of midi and audio hardware, and midiman 1 on 1, i have to agree with everyone with the midiman 2x2. i've had mine for 4 years now and after heavy stage and studio use, it still runs solid. could be it's made like a tank. all my customers never complained about their 4x4's and 8x8's (my next big buy unless midibox comes out with one).steinberg midi stuff..... sucks. motu's drivers are pretty much only written for mac, and their pc support is horrible. as far as soundcards, i use to have a m-audio 10x10 rack module that crapped out on me after only 6 months and the one ther replaced me with died a year after that. alot of my friends have used the omni and had really good results. not so much with their audio useb stuff though. I now use a seasound solo EX and a creamware pulsar2. both have midi, but i still use the midiman.

hey all. probably a stupid question, but when i was ordering some sample PIC's from microchip, i accidently ordered PIC18LF452 I/P's instead of PIC18F452 I/P's. by any chance, can i still use them? i ordered another batch of PIC18F452 I/P's anyway, was just hoping i could still use them for other midibox projects. thanks.

hi all. as a somewhat newbie myself, i understand to a small extent as to what he is going through, but as everyone else has said, its all there if you're willing to look and put the pieces together. i can't count how many hours and full days i've spent going through all the different forums and spec pages trying to gather the information myself, but that, in my opinion, did alot more good that just reading a detailed descripion. in looking through all the hundreds of forums and spec pages, my once very uniformed idea became a much larger scope on all the different possibilities there are. i am planning on writing a document on building my sid keyboard (yes.... keyboard) when i finish collecting the money for it as well as my midibox64 controlled PC synth, my midi studio mixer, midi live mixer, and the midiboxFM synth when it is done. Just for poeple like you who want more information, and people like me who just needed a little clearing up of some basic elements and easy and cheap ways of getting it all in a box. also planned is a detailed decription of my cool illumination panel designs. anyway, all this soon.

glad to hear thaty there are some other people working on this thing. i don't have a sid yet, but i have the vst working on a midi-able fx unit and a filter, so i'm sure it'll work on the sidbox. its really open ended right now, just tell it what cc you want the knob to send, and it does, design whaever you want as far as an interface, and there you have it. what would be nice would be to make it a stand alone so that a host app wouldn't be needed, but thats way out of my field of knowledge. i really can't wait to make one for the fmbox when it comes out. already have tons of ideas about that with graphical wave shapers like in fm7. like i said before, if anybody wants the synthedit file, email me and i'll send it to you. have a good one.

hi, to start, i don't know much about midi byte stuff, but i do have a working midi controller made in synth edit. i was actually designing it for the same exact purpose. it took a bit to figure out how to route it so that the midi was being sent properly, but i got it working. the only down side i've found is that it wont work in omni mode, only 1-16. for some reason, the guy that programed the main modules didn't prgram for omni. anyway, i can send you the synth edit file and you can go from there. i too haven't made my sid yet. i have been lucky in have alot of friends that are pack rats and still have their old c64's. now just to wait for the money to get the rest of the hardware. anyway, hope this helps. you can email me at havensole@charter.net