Mixer for conrolling Traktor

[september28]

Hi there,

What a great community, I discovered ucapps last week and havent been able to stop reading about things on the site since!

However, having looked through the site extensively, I am still left a bit bewildered and daunted by the challenge facing me... I have done some basic breadboard/stripboard projects before but never anything like this.

I am using Traktor Pro and really want to build a unit to control that. I have seen both the traktorizer and the other user blog traktor controller which both look good, but a little too complex for a beginner like me.

Also i would like to make my controller on top of a new Core32 module. So my questions are the following.

- I am in the UK... Is there any way of getting hold of the Core32 kit in Europe or do i have to get it from smash in the States? (http://www.avishowtech.com/mbhp/buy.html)

- What are better for pot-esque control in Traktor - encoders or pots?!

- How do cross faders work and are they different from normal faders in terms of electronics? I assume that they have to know "which side they are on? as in if the crossfader is pushed to the right it must send data that the right is on full and the left is on none???

Does anyone else want to make a basic traktor controller (I was thinking along the lines of what the Aurora project offers but without the insane project costs)

A note to the community... I will document this fully and in detail to give a good starting point for beginners to ucapps and hopefully my project could become like a standard project that first-timers can learn with. I realise there are other simple projects up here but not really for what i want to do (midi control of an app)

Also I'm a bit worried about the level of programming required once i have madethe board? Could anyone help me out with this or point me in the right direction at least? is computer (mac os x) to board connection and communication hard??

Thanks in advance for helping me out guys!

Cheers,

Dan

[seppoman]

Hi and welcome :)

I'm not the right person to advise on Traktor controllers, but I'll answer a few questions anyway:

SmashTV's shop is the only place where you can get a Core32 kit.

But the Core32 is still very new and the only (beta) application that is ready to use is the MB SEQ, so far there's no firmware to use the Core32 as a Midi controller. This is a matter of time, I guess a year from now most applications will be ported to the new platform. (I guess it would be a good idea to point this out on the Core32 page more explicitly and in bold letters because this question comes up all the time in the last few weeks since the release). Anyway, a lot of people have built Traktor controllers so far based on the good old Core8 and with great results, so I guess there's not much use in waiting for a 32 bit version.

Regarding faders - crossfaders don't make sense in a Midi controller, you need a regular (linear 10k) fader for this. This fader will control the actual crossfading that is done inside Traktor.

Good luck,

S

[m00dawg]

You might find inspiration, also, on ucapps.de or the Wiki. Ucapps, for instance has a nice walkthrough for building a combination Traktor / MIDI controller. The forums also have plenty of information about Traktor style controllers. Simply searching for "Traktor" yields quite a few results and may give you enough information to get started.

Have fun and good luck with your build!

[philetaylor]

With the pots or encoders question, the answer is 'it depends'!

For a mixer controller, most of the time pots (or faders) are generally better as they provide an absolute position whereas encoders are 'endless' the FAQ has a good description of the differences. You may find that a combination of the two is actually what you want!

http://www.midibox.org/dokuwiki/doku.php?id=questions_and_answers

Phil

[lylehaze]

regarding encoders or pots for a "mixer" type application:

This depends largely on the number of possible control sources.

If you will be controlling from one and only one control point, then pots are great as they can remember where they were physically.

But if you may be controlling from more than one point:

Control Surface, recorded presets, sequencer, remote of some sort,

then encoders may be the preferred option.

Have Fun,

LyleHaze