Aside from the Mackie and look/work alikes (with motor faders), It seems
there are already some of the ideas I had, out there and being used.
http://lividinstruments.com/hardware_baseii.php uses touch faders in some
interesting ways. First, they are sunken faders as I had thought would
give the best feel as it would keep the finger on the fader. Second, it
includes an LED bar for visual feed back (something I might not have
added). The third thing is probably what makes it the most interesting,
though it is not fully unique to a touch fader. This is the options for
how it is used. It can be used the same as any rotary encoder, showing
width, offset from center, or level. It is interesting to note that a
motor fader with a LED strip could do these things too, I have seen a row
of motor faders that in one mode default to center for graphic eq control.
An encoder is incemental in any case, and the touch fader can be set up to
be as well, that is, it could be set up to work the same as the belted
encoder. The motor fader could be set as incremental... so that it centres
when the finger is lifted without changing the value it gives, but I think
that is probably outside the best use of a fader where the knob give
position feedback.
The touch fader _can_ also work in the traditional fader way where the
finger position matches the level. This can work in two ways: a
semi-inteligent setting where the actual level would not change if the
finger was not right at the current level position until the finger moved
and then it would change the level more incrementally (what the mind would
expect). The other way would be to jump to where the finger is. (the video
show this) So it could go from full scale to no scale with one touch. (One
hopes this sends a slope from one level to the next and that the rate is
setable)
This particular unit is not designed as a DAW controller. It could be used
that way, but in my opinion it is over priced and awkward for that to be
it's main use. However, the faders and how they are used are interesting.
Personally, I would want my faders to have no buttons etc. below them, but
for the use this controller is made for (drum pads etc.) it probably makes
sense.
The cost for a membrane fader is about 75% compared to a motor pot and
still requires a LED strip if position indication is required. SO there is
no cost saving over a motor pot that I can see. The user has to want
something the membrane fader offers that can't be done with a motor fader.
- incremental use.
- less damage prone when thrown in a bag etc.
- Maybe last longer? (maybe not too)
For DAW control use, motor faders seem to be the better deal.
I do want to try the rotary encoder though. either with a large wheel
(actually 2-3inch is not that big) or belt with no LED strip. The on
screen fader position should be good enough.
--
Len Ovens
www.ovenwerks.net
I am wondering how those who like tactile feel in a fader would feel about
a sideways rotary control. I am thinking of something like the pitch or
mod. wheel on a synth. But no middle detent. Rotary encoders are great for
control surfaces, but the feel of a fader as compared to a rotary knob
makes faders easier to think with. I am thinking if I can use the same
idea with a fader feel where the control is endless, it would work well.
The box would have to be thicker of course and may be less use for stage.
The box could be made thinner by making it touch sensitive and self
centering like the pitch wheel, but I think that starts to make the
motorfader look better. The up side of the sideway encoder is that the
midi messages are just direction/number of ticks.
My first thought was a touch strip like the old guitar style stage
keyboards, have it inside a slot so it is easy to feel without seeing it.
Moving the finger up just sends up tics and moving it down gives down
ticks, so the finger can start anywhere on the strip which will be where
the (virtual) fader is now and move from there. I would have to use a adc
and take ticks off the LSB after doing a greater or less than calc. The
encoder has this out directly.
Also, ticks and direction happen to work well with the control board I
have on hand... the software can change that to a hard value if required
though.
--
Len Ovens
www.ovenwerks.net
I recently started writing jingles, because I need them for my podcast and
videos that our skeptic group produces. I did not want to use somebody
else's when I have the ability to write my own.
I found jingles to be a very complex and interesting material to work on.
So far I've written only one jingle that I am completely happy with and I
am presenting it to you here. It is a jingle that we use for our videos,
when the title of the video is shown and then the video proceeds to the
lecturer.
www.louigiverona.ru/files/TV_jingle_1.flac
Has anyone else had this experience?
--
Louigi Verona
http://www.louigiverona.ru/
This tube amp emulation is inspired by the Orange AD200, but didn't
intend to simulate this one.
However, the simulation use 2 x ECC83, 1 x ECC81 and 4 x 6550 tube
emulations, were the Orange usually use 1 x ECC83. This simulation use
one more ECC83 to avoid phase inversion.
Cabinet simulate a 4 x 10 and in front of all sitting a rectifier.
In opposite to the original AD200, which use a 3 band tonestack, this
one use again a 2 band baxandall tone control.
Again, I'm interested if this suite the need of the Bass players here.
get it here :
http://sourceforge.net/projects/guitarix/files/lv2/
Hi
I got a new laptop without firewire. So I bought a delock pcmcia
firewire card to be able to use my firewire soundcard. Since I couldn't
see any hardware specs for the cards I looked at before buying, I simply
went for the cheapest...
I've been working with firewire a lot in the past, but only with build
in controllers, so I'm not sure if I should do something special to get
this card going.
I obviously tried plugging it in and starting jack with the firewire
driver for all available interfaces, but I get these errors:
firewire ERR: FFADO: Error creating virtual device
Cannot attach audio driver
JackServer::Open failed with -1
no message buffer overruns
Failed to open server
10:35:53.707 JACK was stopped with exit status=255.
10:35:54.785 Could not connect to JACK server as client. - Overall
operation failed. - Unable to connect to server. Please check the
messages window for more info.
Cannot connect to server socket err = No such file or directory
Cannot connect to server request channel
jack server is not running or cannot be started
Those look familiar, they are exactly the same as on my desktop pc (that
works with wirewire) when I don't have the soundcard plugged in.
Of course it might be that the pcmcia card is simply not working under
linux (I have no other os running, so I have to assume the card is in
fact working under, say, windows).
But what actions could I take to either get it working or convince
myself that it's simply not supported?
NB: I run crunchbang linux (=debian wheezy), which were installed prior
to getting the card. The laptop is a Lenovo x220.
NB2: I couldn't see anything in dmesg after inserting the card and lspci
is the same with the card attached and detached...
Any pointers appreciated!
--
Atte
http://atte.dkhttp://modlys.dk
Hello,
An Alesis Control PAd is connected to Hydrogen. Channel 10.b It
works although quite often when hitting a same pad, the Hydrogen
instrument would not sound but instead some kind of a click is heard.
Makes this with any Hydrogen instrument. When I connect an Axion 25 to
Hydrogen and use the rubber pads, the Hydrogen sounds are always heard,
no matter how fast a hit is repeated.
Has anyone seen that kind of behaviour before and is there something
to do ? I tried varying the Control Pad sensivity/velocity
curve/threshold but still, the Hydrogen instument is oftentimes
replaced by a click.
Thanks !
Some of you may remember a while ago (year and a half or so) I was asking
about mixers for live use. I finally have some money to spend, so I went
back over the thread.
I also looked at some of the lower end digital boards like the A&H QU and
the Soundcraft Si series. I found it interesting that the mackie has
firewire but the other two have chosen USB2.0 even for a channel count as
high as 32 i/o. The manual says "standard compliant" and will work with
the Apple no extra drivers (nothing works with windows without drivers).
Has anyone tried one of these with alsa? Considering the cost of a high
count audio interface, the cost of this as an audio IF plus controler
starts to look not too bad.
It is obvious that the main cost is hardware, pots, switches and
connectors. The digital boards don't try to put in as much hardware, yet
seem to be able to give more features for the same price range. It is easy
to include a whole effects rack on almost a per channel basis only by
changing cpu/dsp power.
I guess in many ways that is what we are doing with a daw... time for the
open console design? Actually we have much of it already, it is just the
hardware parts we don't seem to have. I/O ports and control surfaces is
all thats missing.
--
Len Ovens
www.ovenwerks.net
Hi all,
The video recordings of the LAC'14 presentations have just been uploaded
to the conference website and are now directly linked from the archive:
http://lac.linuxaudio.org/2014/program
There are still a three videos missing and the workshop videos are also
yet to come. Currently they are also only available as vp8/vorbis/webm
(sorry IE and Safari users). But since it has been quite a while
already, we decided to not hold back the release of these already
finished videos any further.
Once the collection is complete, we will provide a .torrent. Meanwhile,
for those who prefer to download the videos incrementally, they are
accessible via rsync://linuxaudio.org/ [1].
Many thanks for Frank and Moritz to get those done in really outstanding
quality this year. Kudos to the complete stream-team.
enjoy,
robin - for the LAC'14 team
[1] example to get the 720p versions:
rsync -Pa --exclude "*360p.webm" \
rsync://linuxaudio.org/lac2014/ \
lac2014/
