Greetings & Questions

[pappajackson]

Hello all,

I'm new to the forum and to the world of electronics, but I'm learning fast (I have books!;D) and I'm intent on jumping aboard the bandwagon and building my own ableton controller.

I've been DJing for a long time now and I want to integrate my vinyl skills with ableton - I've decided to build a slim little Midibox that can fit between my mixer and one of my technics. My mixer is a vestax PMC37 Pro, it's a great mixer with really flexible routing options and I've got it set out (on paper anyway)so that each deck is sent seperatly out of the mixer via the FX loops into ableton, while the master output from ableton is coming back into the third channel of my Vestax. At the same time the cuemix from Ableton is coming in on the return of the FX loop. It seems like the best way to route it, I can easily monitor the cue and master from ableton, as well as use VST effects on my vinyl (not too sure what the latency problems would be like for this tho but scratching through a beat repeat would sound sick :D).

Anyway, the audio stuff is all taken care of, the tricky bit's the Midibox64e. I want to have:

24 Illuminated Buttons split over a 6 x 4 grid to trigger clips over six channels

24 Buttons (4 per channel) for cue, mute, record cue and crossfader assign,

4 Buttons for transport (play, stop, record, loop)

4 Buttons for Scene triggering

1 Illuminated Button for Tap Tempo

6 Faders (not motorized) to control the channel level,

6 Rotaries for channel pan,

3 Rotaries for master volume, cue volume and groove

1 Pot for BPM

1 Crossfader

1 LCD

2 LEDs mounted near the crossfader so pretty blue light shines out.

So in total that’s 57 buttons 27 LEDS, 9 rotaries, 7 faders, 1 pot and 1 LCD. I think I’ve figured out what modules I need, could someone tell me if this is right or not?

1 X CORE

2 x DINX4  (for the buttons?)

2 X AIN (one for the rotaries and one for the faders?)

1 X DOUT (for the LEDs of the illuminated buttons?)

1 x LCD

1 x LTC (for communication to my computer)

Right, here are the questions

1) Is that all the modules I need?

2) Do I need both the AIN and the DOUT modules?

2) If I bought the Midibox64e set and the extra AIN and LTC modules from Mikes would they be pre-assembled or would I get a bag of components?

3) Does buying PCB kits mean I don’t have to burn my own PCBs? (I’m a busy man!)

4) Is it simply a case (in theory) of connecting the preassembled modules together and to the input switches/faders/rotaries etc, installing the Midibox operating system and pressing go? I know this is a very broad approach but I like to get things straight in my head that way.

5) If I use an LTC module, how easy is it to replace (or accompany) with the USB module at a later date?

6) Can I install the Midibox software using MacOS X or can it only be from a Windows box?

7) Check out this new crossfader - looks pretty swish. Reckon MidiBox could integrate it?

I’m sorry my questions are so lame and n00bish, I’ve been doing my research throughout the Midibox community but all this info can only run round my head a certain number of times before I go crazy, I just need a little reassurance I’m on the right track!

Thanks!

[stryd_one]

I hope you might find this addition I have just made to the Wiki helpful. You might have to re-count afterwards though ;)

1) See above, but you've kinda got the right idea.

2) See above and ucapps.de

2) Bag of components. It's a DIY project!

3) Yes. Thanks goodness for Mike and Smash, or people like us might not be able to find the time!

4) No, you are making a customized MIDIBox and you will need to make adjustments to the MB64e application, or some other app, to make it your own.

5) You will need to reconfigure the application, see above

6) You could install it from any OS which can send MIDI. The MIOS Studio Application runs in java, so yes you can do it from a Mac

7) What crossfader? Yes, probably!

Now I've done my best to answer your questions I'm going to balance that out by telling you that almost all of that information is freely available and not at all hard to come by if you look for it. You mentioned that you read around but it was all too confusing. Often we find ourselves in that situation, but the answers are here, so if you didn't understand them, I'd recommend that you take on a simple project first to get more familiar with how these kind of things work. You could start with something standard and simple like a clockbox with just a core and LCD, and then experiment by adding DIN's and buttons and writing a little code to make the buttons perform a certain function like playing a note or sending program change messages or something, and grow the project from there...

[pappajackson]

I hope you might find this addition I have just made to the Wiki helpful. You might have to re-count afterwards though ;)

That's great, clears a lot of stuff in my head. Looks like I'll need 3 DINX4's instead and only one AIN modue (that is if a single AIN module can take both faders and pots?)

Check it out the crossfader here. http://www.eclecticbreaks.com/proxfade/index.html It looks like a bit of a baddie, not sure if it's worth putting a scratch crossfader in though as I won't really be doing any scratching in Ableton.

Thanks again for you're help, someone give this man some good karma!

[Therezin]

that is if a single AIN module can take both faders and pots?

Electrically speaking, pots and faders are exactly the same thing. Since an AIN module can take 32 inputs and you only want 8, that's all you need.

[moebius]

Or actually if only 8 or less AINs are needed, those can be connected directly to the core.

M

[pappajackson]

Thanks guys, you've all been a big help. I hope one day I can be the guy answering the questions. :P

[stryd_one]

Glad I could help. This is a very frequent question around here, I should have written that long ago :)

Pots and faders are pretty much the same thing so there is no problem sharing them on a single AIN, but as Moebius pointed out, you only need 8, so you don't even need the AIN :)

You're right there's no need for such a fader on a MIDIBox. Crossfaders usually work like a pair of sliders built into one box with one knob to slide. Sliding to the left decreases resistance on the left channel and increases it on the right, and vice-versa when sliding to the right.

Scratch faders are specially designed to have two specialities over other crossfaders: Firstly, they are designed to have less friction when moving the slider so that you require less finger/wrist strength to move the fader, allowing for faster and more accurate fades. Secondly, they are designed to introduce less noise, because the higher fade speeds mean that as the electrical contacts in the fader move around, there can be some small arcs as the current flow is adjusted. Just slide any normal fader fast enough (if you can) and you will hear the arcing as a crackle.

Now, a DJ mixer's crossfader is not necessary because it is actually like two variable resistors in one. We don't need that, because one slider which can send one message, can then used to inversely control volume on two channels within your mixing software. Also, your MIOS application would probably need to be adjusted. I'm not sure of the rate which MIOS takes a sample of the slider's position (not off the top of my head anyway), but I would imagine that the speed at which you would need to send messages in order to fully take advantage of such a fader may require that MIOS be altered....  Not to mention the DJ software is unlikely to be configured for volume control at the speed of full-speed scratching.

But honestly, there are only a few DJ's who have the skill to move a fader accurately at such speed anyway, so sampling at the normal rate would probably be fine unless you're the kind of DJ to win most of the battles in your area - and I mean underground hiphop scratch battles, not techno DJ competitions. I guess what I'm saying is, knowing nothing at all about your personal abilities and going strictly on statistics, that you're probably not as fast as the fader could go, so you probably wouldn't need it, and even if you do, Ableton probably couldn't keep up with you. I've lived with a few DJ's in my time and I can say for 100% sure that no current software could keep up with these guys - hell the soundcard latency is greater than the time taken to do some of their fades, so even the PC hardware couldn't keep up. (think about your standard crab, that's 8 movements (four fingers, each pushing the fader down and the thumb pushing back up each time) within a 1/8th note. At 100BPM that's 26ms each movement, and you'd want at least a few volume gradients within that, say 8 of them, so there's just over 3ms per movement)

That said, a single pole fader could easily do the job, and there are certainly uses for a low-friction fader. You might want to look around for a low-friction, single channel fader, just so it feels a bit more like a scratch crossfader, without meaning that you have to spend too much money on overspec'd parts.

[pappajackson]

So that's why fader's crackle...:)

I'm pretty fast at scratching, I can put a chop on the 16th's on pretty much anything up to 120BPM and as a byproduct of having quite a heavy crossfader I learnt to emulate the crab sound without actually crabbing - a triple click  flare with a bit of a wobble on it is the only way to describe it really. The main factor for wanting a scratch fader was for durability really. I'll probably skip on the Eclectic Breaks fader (especially at the £90 it goes for) and go for a P+G one. I'd really like to put one of the non-contact magnetic Rane faders in, but it would probably be too hard to implement especially at my current skill level and cost a packet.

I'll try and post some designs for the unit soon, I was thinking about creating a blog to document the process . Unfortunatly I'm off to Poland for a couple of months so I won't be able to start the MidiBox until I get back,  but the two months will give me some time to build a good knowledge base regarding electronics.

[Nu-Audio-Science]

Pappa

Get an Infinium fader

You can get them in singles for £15

They are the new standard in Scratch faders and personally i prefer it over my ecclectic :) (Not that it matters but i have been a scratch DJ for twenty years)

Oh it looks like a work of art too.

I have a freind i'm going to ask to help me work out if it can be used, I don't want to ask here because i'll just get told to go and read Ucapps and the info isn't there, Actually the info is there and i am just not getting the whole electronics thing very quickly :(  (Googles electronics for aliens hehehehe)

I will get back to you about how to set it up once i get hold of him ;)

EDIT* Because i posted something that made me look like an absolute tit :(

[drin]

I have a freind i'm going to ask to help me work out if it can be used, I don't want to ask here because i'll just get told to go and read Ucapps and the info isn't there.

Hmmm, let's see...

o    2 minutes on the Infinium Technologies website, 30% of which was spent downloading the fader sell sheet.

o    90 seconds on the ucapps.de website, most of which was spent on a search for 'fader requirements'.

Yup, the answer's there. Perhaps instead of whining you should actually consider taking people's advice when they recommend reading? When that's suggested it's usually because the answer is there and people figure it'll be better for you in the long run to learn how the MIDIBox works rather than simply have someone else give you the answers.

-drin

[pappajackson]

Now now, don't turn my topic into a forum politics debate. :)

I will chip in my 2c tho - I'm new to this forum but I've been active on other web communities and (for lack off a better term) 'held positions of expertise' on similar tech based forums. I always tried to maintain a balance between helping out noobs and letting them find their own way - from what I gather from this community is that you guys have got that balance just right. I thought I might have thrown myself in at the deep end when I first signed up to the forums (it felt kind of like an official commitment to make a midibox), but from searching back through the forums and the rest of the resources I can feel my knowledge base growing exponentially every time I login. :)

NAS: Cheers for the skinny on the faders tho, I've heard of the Infinium faders but never got my greasy paws on one yet. I've got an almost redundant Edirol UR80 integrated control surface that is a bugger to use and ugly as hell - I'm probably gonna pinch the upfaders from that.

20 years scratching, that's along time indoors! You must be pretty good. How have you integrated Midibox into your sets? I'd be interested to hear how any other turntablists have as well actually...

[drin]

I simply pointed out the info wasn't there about that particular fader and i was going to ask a freind to help me sort it out (Probably by reading the Ucapps site) rather than ask on the forum and get told read ucapps.

No you didn't. You clearly said you'd "just get told to go and read UCapps and the info isn't there". That "just" makes your statement a whine, not a constructive comment. The info *IS* there, and all you have to do is search for it to find it. Assuming it isn't there simply makes you look lazy.

I know next to nothing about electronics myself and I've successfully built a MIDIBox by reading and learning. You could do the same by showing some patience and reading before asking for help or complaining that no-one will help you.

If I could make a recommendation, why not say "Hey guys, I'm trying to find out if component XXX will work in a MIDIBox, but I don't know much about electronics. Could someone help me to understand how component XXX works, and perhaps give me a pointer in how I might make it work in a MIDIBox?"

That's a MUCH more reasonable approach than simply whining that no-one will help you.

This community is a great place because by and large it's filled with people who WANT to learn how electronics work if they don't know already. They're willing to learn, to research and to explore and find out how they work. Only then do they ask questions, rather than just wandering in, not doing any legwork and assuming everyone's waiting to answer their every question. If you want to become a valued member, READ, LEARN and EXPLORE. Then feel free to ask from a position of some education. I suspect you'll get much farther that way.

-drin

/ok, rant off

[drin]

Nas, that wasn't my point, and you're pouting again (or so it would seem). All I was saying is to take the time to LEARN about things before posting that you don't understand them. The documentation on UCapps, the forums and the people on them are an invaluable resource. Just learn to use them appropriately instead of complaining that no-one will help you. You'll be a welcome member of the community when you try. That's all that's asked of you. Try.

I'm done. This is a waste of energy.

-drin

[stryd_one]

So that's why fader's crackle...:)

I'm pretty fast at scratching, I can put a chop on the 16th's on pretty much anything up to 120BPM and as a byproduct of having quite a heavy crossfader I learnt to emulate the crab sound without actually crabbing - a triple click  flare with a bit of a wobble on it is the only way to describe it really. The main factor for wanting a scratch fader was for durability really.

Yeh well it's a combination of the signal dropping out when the contacts in the fader lose contact and then arcing as they come back in contact with each other.... They get worse with age because of oxidation (rust) and dust/sweat/beer/weed/fragments of groupie's underwear messing up the contacts, hence making these disconnections and reconnections happen more and more often...

If it's durabiliy you want, you can't go past optical faders, at least electronically speaking... Of course the mechanics of it will vary...

Yeh all my DJ buddies learned on substandard gear - I think it forces you to have a greater skill - Clearly it has done in your case.

Flashback: All my DJ mates started out when we were about 14, we all pitched in to put together the $20 needed buy two crappy 2nd hand belt-drive decks from our local dodgy pawn shop. You can imagine the quality of a 10 dollar turntable ;) My good mate Flownez (who is a member of this board - I miss ya mate!) used his electronics skills to wire in some rotary pots which I believe he stole from his alarm clock (imagine what your parents would say) which acted as a pitch control. They mixed hiphop and 200BPM jungle on that crap... If that doesn't force you to develop mad skills... nothing will! :D Of course, no matter how skillful, there're some decks you just can't scratch on!  ;D

[pappajackson]

hah! that's a great story, $10 turntables - now that I would like to see.

As for the faders, surely the non-contact magnetic rane faders would last longer than optical faders? There's probably not much discernable difference really (9,999,999 cyclics instead of 10,000,000 or somehing :))

NAS: Don't worry man, I think these guys just read into your post wrong - don't let it put you off, after all, drin and stryd aint the only users here! Talk to me about how you're gonna use Midibox with you're scratching!

Why does ableton seem to bring flames to this forum?

Probably because all ableton users are bad-ass mu'fu'n DJ's yo. :)

[Nu-Audio-Science]

@Pappa

Yeah i'm planning on making a little Scratch controller out of an old SK5 for use with Ms Pinky and eventually it will work on our own DJ app too, Once the app is finished we are going to build our own custom controller for retail, There is a reason we have to do this but i dont really want to cover that here.

It has nothing to do with MIOS and the person designing the app and hardware has no experience or has ever looked at MIOS, Infact we will quite happily send Thorsten a device when it's finished so he can check it himself.

The reason i'm not just waiting for our device is that the lead in on Infiniums in bulk is  quite large and the device we have planned is pretty basic and i want some sample triggers and stuff on my controller, I also want to build it myself because i enjoy it.

If your a digital DJ you may want to check out Hotcakes at some stage, After chatting to the dev of Pinky and DJD the big thing they wanted was an underground white label style label, Hotcakes is that pretty much ;)

I don't own it i'm just signed to it, I think the site will be up in the next month or so.

I'm also designing the site so i have had a good chance to check out the content and for me the thing i was buzzin about was the battle weapons, They are extreme and this is why i'm desperate to get my Pinky system working fully without having to go back out from the PC into a DJ mixer, Completly digital would sort me right out :)

[Nu-Audio-Science]

Oh the one thing you do need to watch out for with the Infiniums though is that you can sometimes have problems in smoke, Not really that much of an issue if it is inside a case but we did have a couple of problems testing in a club when everything was just lying on a board and not in a case.

You know that crap that comes out of smoke machines and i suppose ciggarettes too.

For cleaning though the Infinium is a dream it really is, It comes apart in seconds but is very solid when together :)

Someone mentioned mechanical wear too, The good thing here is that you can buy just the mechanicals kit to fix your Infinium.

Anyway if you need any pics i can do some ;)

[Nu-Audio-Science]

@Pappa

How much EQ tablism do you do ?

Infinium have some rotaries coming out too, I don't have many details at the moment because they started getting a little vague about everything when they realised they weren't ROHS compliant with any of there products :(

I think that may have delayed them a little but i know they are back on track now because they have just filled an order for a freind ;)

The rep also mentioned switches but not for a while, Seems like they may have a complete contract free setup for mixers in the next year or so.

Pretty exciting time for scratch DJs ;)

[stryd_one]

Props to NAS for helping us making this thread so much more peaceful :)

Isn't it pretty now? :)

[Nu-Audio-Science]

No worries

I obviously acted like a dick

I'm too old to deny it  ;)

[pappajackson]

Ah Ms. Pinky eh! I'd love to have a play on that. I used an old copy of Final Scratch when I was DJing in Poland - it seemed quite responsive and stable, but there was definately a delay because the timing even on simple transform scratches sounded slightly out. I'm looking at Serato at the moment, I'm a big fan of rane and I've heard good things about it. Ms. Pinky does seem the cooler of the three, and I'm learning Max/MSP/Jitter for my digital arts degree so it sort of makes sense.

I tend to use the EQ a fair amount in my sets, my mixer has three-band upfader eqs on each channel and a really nice VCF filter built in so you can get some really smooth mixes, especially with stuff like Breaks or DnB. For scratching I don't tend to use it that much, I'm less of a battle DJ more of a kind of live mixtape guy (Lots of quick mixes, accapellas, instrumentals etc) so I use it to get things to sit nicely together.

Is the SK5 the stanton mixer? I've wondered about adapting audio mixers to act as a midi controller because I've got an old Gemini UMX5 scratch mixer lying around. It's a nice little thing, pretty sturdy but pretty basic too so there's probably a lot of space inside the box. Do you have any tips or any resources that I could look into on the subject?

This Hotcakes thing sounds good. I'm very interested in the whole digital music phenomenon, and have been hashing out ideas for underground distribution networks for months! I'd love to hear more about what you guys are doing. I go to quite a wacked-out art's college that's full of incredible musicians who don't seem to have either the commercial viability to attract attention from labels or an independent platform to get their music heard. Myspace has done a lot of unsigned musicians, but the site is bloated and spreads it' net too far resulting in less features for dedicated musicians, especially DJs.

The infiniums look great, I'm not sure how keen they'd be to sell me only 7 65mm faders tho, maybe I could blag them as samples or something...

[Rowan]

Serato scratch is the dogs bollocks! I live with a DJ who got one of the first units and have played with it a bit. I haven't tried FS or Miss Pinky, but Serato scratch get's huge props from me. The interface is excellent, stable as hell and very responsive. I've seen it being used by some very good sctatch DJ's and it seem's fine. One thing I have to say about Serato Scratch is the sound quality is amazing. I don't know if you know who Serato got their name? The Protools (and now also Logic) plug-in "Pitch 'n' Time" which is the BEST time compression/expansion and pitchshifting software avalible anywhere! If you want to know any details I'm happy to tell you what I know about, Serato is a New Zealand company and (which I also am) I've talked with the developers about the nuts 'n' bolts of how it works

Regards

Rowan

[Nu-Audio-Science]

Yeah i have all three here and can say that Final Scratch and Tractor ended up in the cupboard first and then Serato followed, Simply because the latency is slightly higher on both of those and the sound quality of Final Scratch is absolutly terrible.

I use Ms Pinky with DJD and designed my own interface for it, It is perfect for MIOS users because you can build the interface to have as many of the features you want and even make it look like your MIDIBox :)

I'm also more of a quick mix DJ than tablist really, My best mate is one of the best tablist in the world though DJ Haste.

Don't worry about the Infiniums because you can order upto 15 directly from there website and there is no lead time either :)

I know this for a fact because we have done it a few times now building prototypes for various crap ;)

The choice between Serato and Pinky really is subjective but if you get a really nice low latency ASIO card Pinky will be lower latency and Pinkys pink vinyls are perfect scratch weight but make sure you get two of each if you order, The black ones last a whole hell of a lot longer and are great for quick mixing :)

If your learning MSP then really there is no other choice simply because you get the sorce of the app and you can mix anything in MSP.

I'm getting Pinky implemented in Synthmaker too at some point because that is my modular of choice.

[stryd_one]

I'm too old to deny it  ;)

Ahhh, bollocks!

It takes a far greater man to admit to a mistake, than it does to avoid the mistake in the first place.