SEQ newbee question

[Asap]

Hello!

First I have to say that I appreciate your work and that I'm very lucky having found your side in the jungle of audio net forums.

I'm very interessted in designing my own step sequenzer, because the things on the market do not fit my needs and/or my wallet.

So here are my questions:

Is it possible change the user Interface of the Midibox SEQ into a panel with 4 or 6 rows (each representing one sound)   of 16 (or better 32) buttons(backlighted when switched on). And having 4 encoder rows (e.g. note, vol, dec, cut, res) to switch on one of the rows?

In the end to have the whole pattern in sight at a glance.

rgds

Asap

 

[Guest marr]

Re "and/or my wallet", you might want to price the parts for the standard configuration before thinking about having all that stuff on it. Let's say your encoders are $1 each, and you want 32 x 4. That's $128, and you still have to buy the knobs.  ;)

[goyousalukis]

Yeah, that's a good point marr. Thorsten did once have plans to support 4 rows of pattern Leds. You would still switch tracks with a button though.

Justin

[Asap]

Does this mean, that current software does not support 4 rows of LED and buttons??

I read that the os supports 4 rows to be programmed at a time, when switched to drum mode even 12 rows.

Yesterday I visited the local step sequenzer dealer, he showed several machines to me. Now it is clear for me that I'm aiming something between a doepfer Schaltwerk and MAQ 16/3 with detendet rotary Encoders and a of course more swing than the Doepfer machines.

Asap

p.s.: what are 128€ compared to 1800 € for a SAM???

[goyousalukis]

It might be possible to modify the application, but you need to have a good understanding of assembly language to tackle it. I don't think Thorsten would want to make such a huge change for what is intended to be a low cost machine.  Also, Thorsten has crammed a lot of features into the PIC processor, I'm not sure it would support everything you want.

Marr's price of $1 an encoder is actually quite low. The lowest I've seen them new is about $2.45 or over 300 us dollars for 128 of the encoders. I found a bunch on EBay for real cheap, but I haven't seen any more in over a year.

Even if you had a row of encoders for each track, the lcd display would have to switch between tracks every time you turn different encoders. I don't think you want 8 2x40 LCD's do you ?

Also, the sequencer already uses 44 buttons, so that is another expense to think of.

You do understand that the sequencer does play 16 tracks with 3 layers each at once right? You only have to press a button to switch tracks.

Currently the app does not support buttons for each track of the pattern. - only 16 for the track currently being edited.

from the hardware options page:

MIDIbox SEQ supports an option to handle 64 LEDs for all 4*16 steps of a pattern (which consists of 4 tracks) for people who think that this might be useful.

I don't think anyone has implemented this feature yet. Maybe you could be the first.

Justin

[Asap]

Thanks a lot to goyousalukis!!!

this brings light into the sequenced darkness.

Maby it is a little bit to much to have 4 encoder Rows (I thought of an premium delux edition) and in the end I do not realy want 4 LCD bars, thats right.

But what about the 4 track, it would be nice to have the programming visible and to have 4 rows of buttons for instant pattern programming without switching ( regarding that the Knobs are more affordable than Encoders). It seems to me that this +64 button option is not implemented into the core, but is it technical possible?

Or is there a way to control the SEQ patterns via an external midi device?

rgds

Asap

[Guest marr]

Asap, I'm definitely with you on the deluxe edition. Multiple rows of buttons and encoders would be pretty nice... maybe in combination with a big graphical LCD if it were fast enough.

I'm almost positive it would be possible to modify the software to accomplish multiple button rows , but I have only limited knowledge so far.

I think enough DIN can be chained together, so it would just be matter of knowing which row a button was a member of. People also talk about 'multiplexing' to handle many inputs but I'm still reading about the PIC instruction set and haven't gotten to study that yet.  :)

The other questions would be how long does this extra scanning take, and does this exceed the number of operations we can do for each period of time we get for number crunching before the next step needs to be played/executed.

--

Re encoders, I got these:

digikey.com   P10860-ND   ~$1.35 ea

http://dkc3.digikey.com/PDF/T042/1052.pdf

They look like the lowest-rightmost in the pic atop: http://rocky.digikey.com/WebLib/Panasonic/Web%20data/EVE%20G,H,J,K,L.pdf

Haven't battle-tested them on a working SEQ yet, but they feel alright. Who knows, maybe they are too cheap and I should've forked over a dollar or two more per encoder.

Check out the ones from VOTI too, TK endorses them.

[Guest marr]

this thread is related.. see page 5...

"MIDIbox SEQ: next attempt"

[Asap]

Thank you very much!!!

I will definitively go the way building my own SEQ.

Thorsten said to me that there will be a special drum programming mode with three drums a track, so it would make sense to build up a 12x16 matrix for LED and buttons.

If it will be 12x16 or a 4x16 matrix ( more compatile with the normal step mode and maybe easier) will be choosen later.

Now it will take some time for reading and planing.

Anyone to accompany me on this road is welcome.

rgds

Asap

[nebula]

Has anybody else had success with multiple rows of buttons for programming drum patterns?

4 rows is enough for me (although more would be awesome) - I would love to build a couple of boxes with 4 rows of 16 button/LED combos, and a box with encoders, put 'em all in the same rack and sync them together.