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My soon to be Midibox64E, a few questions - progress


Resident-RobB
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Hi!

Originally I intended to make a Midibox 64. But after giving this quite some thought (1 year) I decided to go with an Midibox 64E.

I already finished al the pcb's for an MB64, 1 core 2 x din, 2 x dout, 2 x ain. I guess I'm gonna 1 or 2 Din's extra to complete this project.

Basically this is my design:

6 channels, consisting of buttons and pots, and an effect section constisting of rotary encoders with push button functionality.

The idea is when the bottom button on a channel is pushed the group encoders "beat repeater & effects" are dedicated for this channel.

This way I can stack identical effects on each channel en use them once the button of that channel is pushed.

After reading the tutorial, I assume this is a normal feature for a MB64E (group selection), or is my already poor english letting me down here?

Please give me a little advice about this one. I really hope I'm taking the right path here.

Is possible to place the buttons within the encoders in the same group as the encoder. So they both will shifted when an other group is selected?

controller_thumb.GIF

controller.GIF

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hi

groups will define encoders/pots and not buttons, although there is a way (the hard way!) to change this behaviour, i think that the  easiest way is to use  meta events to change MIDI channel instead of groups.Midi channel will affect buttons and  encoders/pots.Hope this help

Simone

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No, it isn't possible to group buttons with encoders in the firmware, and using meta events will make it even more complicated (especially because there isn't enough memory free to add such functions)

It's better to write a new application dedicated for your purposes. In principle it's very easy to realize for somebody with programming skills.

I've seen many requests in the last years for such an organisation of a MIDI controller, only question is: who would like to do the implementation?

Best Regards, Thorsten.

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Well, I don't have any programming skills. Offcourse I would like to make a contribution, but I wouldn't know where to start..

Will my original idea be possible, when using buttonless encoders? Or is it possible to program one 1 button, which will assign specific encoders & button to an other midi channel?

For now, I'm keen on design my frontpanel, so it can be ordered, and gettin all my components.

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Or is it possible to program one 1 button, which will assign specific encoders & button to an other midi channel?

You could use Special Function buttons to switch between different MIDI event setups located in different banks (see -> http://www.ucapps.de/midibox64e/midibox64e_sfb_table.txt) - but the big issue is, that informations which have been received before (e.g. absolute encoder positions or LED states) will get lost during a bank switch. Your host needs to support a "controller snapshot" function in order to update the encoder/LED settings.

On the other hand: are you sure, that banking isn't natively supported by your host software? So far I remember, it isn't a problem to setup this with Cubase or Nuendo (but I'm a Logic user and cannot help you here - different movie ;-))

The advantage of host based bank switching: always consistent, especially when you are changing parameters with the mouse or load a new song.

Today the MIDI controller support of DAWs is mostly so powerful, that only a really stupid hardware is required to communicate with the host. Thats one of the reasons why I haven't spent much more effort into the MB64/MB64E firmware implementation anymore.

Best Regards, Thorsten.

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  • 2 weeks later...
  • 1 month later...

hi

Give me your thougts;)

very pro looking, i need to work out a little art work for my panel, it looks so "empty" without it.

I see there is a common idea around ableton midi controllers (see sasha s, DBs, etc), i am more keen to have full control over plugins than tracks.I seldom use more than 3 tracks, what i use most is a bunch of plugins to tweak the sound in real time.

Some tech specs of your box?

simone

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@ Cimo: Well, as stated in the startpost it will be a 64E. there are 6 channels, and 16 encoders with push button on the right. I plan to have the bottom button on each channel to be a bank select button. This way the 16 encoders are dedicated per channel. That's a lot of tweaking in my opinion;). The pots on the channels will be used for 2 filters and LFO. Probably I won't use send-return because I generally stack all the effects directly in the channels to get some more radical effects.

I have:

- 42 pots (with 6 faders)

- 46 + 16 push buttons ( 6 per channel tot trigger clips and effects) 10 for navigation and menu

- 16 encoders

- Touchpad (Adesso easycat)

I don't know if I'm gonna use all the 6 channels at all time, but this way I could use channels 5 & 6  as effect returns if I feel the need for it.

@ Matrigs: Those are Ecler knobs. I got them from Ecler, via a large music store in The Netherlands. At first they couldn't really understand why someone would be needing 70 spare knobs, but eventually they delivered at fair prices (€ ,80 each). Now I am in need of 2 more buttons since my initial design was rather different. Getting those seems to be a lot more difficult...

Mayby a small tip for people using the Front panel designer from Schaffer AG: When incorporating artwork such as I've done in my design, take a close look at the drill selection. At standard a ,xx mm engraving tool is used. Since my artwork is 1 mm thick, I've selected the 1 mm drill bit. This brought down the costs for roughly 30%-40% for the artwork.

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