Interesting controller thread.

[Jidis]

It's been on the Gearslutz forum for a bit:

http://www.gearslutz.com/board/so-much-gear-so-little-time/140761-channel-strip-control-surface.html

Looks like quite an undertaking if it's supposed to link into the host's plugs for the GUI and all.

[stryd_one]

Controller: Easy.

Making the software interact with it in a useful manner: The reason I don't use PC's

;D

[cimo]

hey, this subject is seen more and more on different forums.. in the forum of my mindstream it s been a sticky one since ever..

.. i agree with S1 that the state of the art  controller hasn t been built, yet but i don t agree with him that this will make me part with my laptop for ANY reason ;-)

.. so many ideas but none is perfect and the producers just try to be the first to release some new feature instead of cooperating together to create some kind of standard that would benefit ... ehmm the user.. ok that s why they don t do that!

for example, instead of brainstorming about the controller layout it would be such a great thing to agree about the plug-in layout: i mean if the graphical layout of all the plugins would be somehow into a standard (about distances and placements of buttons, knobs, etc defined in pixels for example) then the controller, as physical layout would be much easier and user friendly.But what we ve got right now is CPU consuming fancy plug-ins graphs..

.this may also not be done by the plug-in designer but in the host itself: for example Live! gives you the possibility to see the "original" plug-in image but also a more general view of all the parameters where even the on/off buttons are represented by a fader (left=on, right=off), here is where you make MIDI mapping.

Following this concept we could have pots images instead of the faders images and in the physical controller we could have encoders with switch.Assuming that the host will create a "table" of parameter (in Live! it s always 2 rows with unlimited columns depending on the plug-in parameters number), the controller should re ensemble the same table.

Add ledrings/small lcds for each encoders if you like it, add support for non-plugins-items, such as the main mixer view, transport etc.

This is just an idea, the main problem is to agree about a common ground where to play.. it s so important to get used to your gear, that s a basic stuff.It s important to keep on experimenting but protocols are a base of modern electronic gears and not only on music.

Yeah, that was it now i go and grab my bag of peanuts  :P

Simone