Quatschmacher

Oh, what are you viewing on, please? That needs fixing. I’m guessing Windows as I just checked and it is indeed appearing incorrectly. Thanks for pointing that out.

I think it’s the “play” button that gives it away. 😆 Thanks. We’re quite pleased with it.

Website now has videos embedded showing some of the UI. Take a look.

Couldn’t seem to find an existing thread. Chris just bought my Morningstar MC8. He asked me to hold it for a few days, which I did. He then bought it as promised on the appointed day. Many thanks.

Do other controllers such as Morningstar do this across their TRS, DIN and USB MIDI ports? I have no idea.

For detailed hardware-based questions, submit them via the FB/Instagram route - not my field of expertise, I’m afraid and I wouldn’t want to fuel speculation or spread misinformation.

It’s the initial phase of getting material up. As I said, videos and other stuff that go into more detail will come in due course. This will be delivered to people’s inboxes when it’s available if they sign up. There’s a tonne of stuff to do that we’re having to fit in around our day jobs.

Yes, virtually no limit to how many messages of all different kinds to any number of channels you can assign to a single button press (and you could assign a bunch of envelopes and a sequencer to that same button at the same time). Contrast that with the 16-message limit on many controllers. Yes, any number of messages can be sent out from the steps of a sequencer too so you can control whatever you like.

It’s currently MIDI 1.0 so as with everything else, limited to 16 channels. The number of messages you can send is pretty much unlimited - you’ll run out of ideas before this runs out of processing capacity.

I’d suggest reading up on what the popular controllers do and you’ll see how this differs. In brief what this brings is this: big touch screen with everything visible and easily to manipulate; easy programming, both via the UI and via preconfigured device profiles; dedicated screens which have an entire device’s controls preconfigured and laid out; full DAHDSR envelopes with 1ms-60s stage times and fully adjustable stage curves from log to lin to exp; 64-step polyphonic sequencers to sequence notes and virtually unlimited parameters; expression control that has not been done elsewhere (more on that later) but as teaser, what other controllers do you know of that remember where each preset’s expression level was at when it was disengaged allowing you to not have any nasty value jumps when you reengage it? This has absolute, pass-thru and relative expression modes. As for price, of course there’s a ballpark-figure, but I’m not permitted to disclose it. Pricing will be announced when it has been finalised.

Never used one but I read through the manual and that was enough to put me off ever getting one. Sounds like utter tedium. A shame it didn’t have MIDI - Midium could’ve given it a new lease of life with a dedicated Device Surface.

Correct; I know very little about coding. I’m more on the side of feature and interface ideas and am the poor sap that has to sniff out and report the bugs. 😆 Thanks. It is useful to hear other perspectives; obviously we’re very enamoured with what we’ve done and sometimes that can blind us to certain issues. I think the main guy is acutely aware that this is going to be a niche product. Let’s see how it goes down at Synthfest.

That’s not strictly true - Chase Bliss stuff is analogue with digital control and doesn’t require a loop switcher, just TRS MIDI.

There are a few videos on the Instagram page and there’ll be more to come in due course. There’s a lot of stuff for us to tackle at the moment and we are few in number and fitting it in around our day jobs.

I would expect so. Not to mention the extra work in bug testing two versions as opposed to one. There is already enough to keep on top of as it is and we’re only human.

Yes.

I think I can grasp your thinking behind this - a lower-cost, stripped down firmware and a more expensive, fully-featured one - is that what you were suggesting? Sadly, I don’t think that would make an appreciable difference to the costs as the hardware and development costs would still be the same. Or if you meant more for simplicity’s sake, there’s not much need as the interface is so clean and simple as it is that the more advanced features won’t feel intimidating by their presence.

The irony is this would be perfect as an entry-level controller precisely because it’s such a doddle to program.

How you organise your scenes and presets is entirely up to you. A single preset can of course contain messages being sent to any number/combination of devices you want so I’m sure you’d find a way to set it up that works for you.

Yes, this is one of the devices I want to prioritise ahead of the show - it has so many under-the-hood features, some of which can only be accessed via the editor or MIDI. There are panel shortcuts for some but others are frustratingly inaccessible.

I can get behind that statement.

I meant in the role it fulfils, ie. a single pedal to control multiple MIDI devices at a time. Ah, yes, much of the core role is definitely the same. Its features like the poly sequencers, fully-programmable envelopes and LFOs, comprehensive expression control and the easy onboard programming are what take it to another level. There are a fair few other features that haven’t been mentioned yet too. More on those later…

There are plenty of people looking at MIDI controllers who don’t know the first thing about MIDI, period. (I was in the same boat about 4-5 years ago.) Anyone with a bit more experience of controllers will know how and why this is a step up from most stuff out there, and that is more who this is aimed at. Whether it does well or not remains to be seen. I obviously hope so as a lot of effort has gone into this. I’m not involved of any of the financial stuff so it’s not my place to worry about that side of things.