KVR Audio

justin3am · Post by **justin3am** » Fri Dec 07, 2012 7:52 pm

That ADC is more expensive, per unit, than the micro controllers most MIDI controllers use. And the micros used typically have built-in ADCs.

lfm · Post by **lfm** » Fri Dec 07, 2012 9:48 pm

Most is covered already about nRPN RPN and so forth.

Don't blame MIDI - blame plugin developers that only use the 7 bit stuff.

And there are still too many synths and plugins and daws that are not gapless anyway - moving controllers live create crackles and pops.

Jesse J · Post by **Jesse J** » Fri Dec 07, 2012 10:02 pm

How about copperlan and osc?

S0lo · Post by **S0lo** » Fri Dec 07, 2012 10:22 pm

lfm wrote:Most is covered already about nRPN RPN and so forth.

Don't blame MIDI - blame plugin developers that only use the 7 bit stuff.

And there are still too many synths and plugins and daws that are not gapless anyway - moving controllers live create crackles and pops.

Sorry if I sounded like blaming MIDI, it's surly a great protocol. It's just too old, well it's literally more than 20 years old. Isn't it time for an upgrade? I mean why should the standard be 7bit and special features be 14bit. Why not let the standard go 14bit and special features go for 32bit?

Infact the specification for HD-MIDI has already began since 2008 http://www.midi.org/aboutus/news/hd.php But the industry seams not following

I come from a computer networking field, usually the industry is faster than the standardization. We saw 802.11n wireless go to the market before the standard even got approved by the IEEE. People were buying working routers while the scientists were busy writing the book.

So your right, I think manufacturers and developers should do a better job.

afreshcupofjoe · Post by **afreshcupofjoe** » Sat Dec 08, 2012 3:00 am

Ashe37 wrote:joe:

1: calm down, breathe.
2: do some research, there *are* controllers that use RPNs and NRPNs to send 14-bit data. Behringer, Novation, and others make them.
3: look on youtube, you can find videos of people using Novation Remotes (or other gear) to control things like the Kawai K3 and the Oberheim Matrix 6... that is how its working, usually, through use of NRPNs. You can also find video of people using a Novation or Behringer to edit a Alesis Micron, which is ALL NRPNS.

Oh go f**k yourself with that condescending attitude. I asked legitimate questions. Nothing I said warranted such a snarky response. Seriously, f**k off dipshit.

Ashe37 · Post by **Ashe37** » Sat Dec 08, 2012 3:04 am

afreshcupofjoe wrote:
Oh go f**k yourself with that condescending attitude. I asked legitimate questions. Nothing I said warranted such a snarky response. Seriously, f**k off dipshit.

Nothing except your attitude and your expectation that people do all your 'homework' for you.

afreshcupofjoe · Post by **afreshcupofjoe** » Sat Dec 08, 2012 3:13 am

justin3am wrote:The problem isn't MIDI. The problem is hardware and cost.
NRPNs and other 14bit messages are great for transmitting high resolution messages from one application to another but controllers use 8-10bit ADCs to read analog pots and faders and 2 of those bits are usually eaten up by noise.

True. It's unfortunate that the ADCs in most microcontrollers have such poor resolution. Hopefully this will change.

justin3am wrote: To get 14bit resolution form a pot or a fader you would need a 16bit ADC for every control element or a complex method of muxing to get similar results using a few 24bit ADCs.

Nah. Muxing isn't really all that complicated and uses a minimal amount of inexpensive hardware. It's used everywhere in modern embedded systems. I don't see this as what is holding back the technology.

justin3am wrote: I would be willing to bet that very few would pay the price for a controller that used higher resolution ADCs. I may be wrong though.

I certainly would. I'm about to run out and pick up a Novation Nocturn over the holidays solely due to the seaching I've been doing as a result of this thread.

justin3am wrote: The best solution at the moment is to use encoders which can increment or decrement a value (rather than using absolute values). However, high resolution encoders are also expensive. Most encoders in consumer level devices have 24-32 step of resolution. This means that without acceleration curves you can't inc/dec more than 32 values in a single rotation. Most people don't notice this because of the use of acceleration curves but some don't find it satisfactory.

This is problematic. I've been digging around and there really aren't any high resolution rotary encoders available at anywhere near reasonable prices. Looks like muxing pots with a 16bit ADC is the highest resolution we're going to get for now.

afreshcupofjoe · Post by **afreshcupofjoe** » Sat Dec 08, 2012 3:27 am

Ashe37 wrote:
afreshcupofjoe wrote:
Oh go f**k yourself with that condescending attitude. I asked legitimate questions. Nothing I said warranted such a snarky response. Seriously, f**k off dipshit.
Nothing except your attitude and your expectation that people do all your 'homework' for you.

Oh screw off. I absolutely did do the research. All I could find were pages and pages of posts where people were complaining about NRPNs not being supported by Ableton Live or poorly supported in just about every other DAW.

I don't care what the specs say, or what should be possible with the technology. I want to find real world examples of people using these technologies successfully and instead all I hear is frustration from end users. That's exactly why I asked, because I couldn't find a damn thing. Maybe my Google search skills aren't up to par, but I could find painfully little information.

Ashe37 · Post by **Ashe37** » Sat Dec 08, 2012 3:29 am

NRPNs are CCs, not SysEX. They *should* work in Ableton. If they don't well, that's another hit against Ableton. REAPER records sysex just fine, so it should work there.

AdmiralQuality · Post by **AdmiralQuality** » Sat Dec 08, 2012 3:41 am

S0lo wrote: I'm really tiered of the stepping I hear (like on filter sweeps) on almost every digital or VA synth out there just because of MIDI. They try to compensate by some delay/lag but still thats not like the instantaneous continuous real analog sweeps.

Sure it is. Try Poly-Ana. Go nuts on the pitch bend, mod wheel or filter cutoff controls. Is it smooth? Yes. Is it fast and responsive? Faster than your fingers, yes.

There's just lots of products that do a bad job of this. Including lots of hardware. (I hear even the Moog Voyager suffers from zipper noise from it's wheels!)

justin3am · Post by **justin3am** » Sat Dec 08, 2012 3:58 am

afreshcupofjoe wrote:I don't care what the specs say, or what should be possible with the technology. I want to find real world examples of people using these technologies successfully and instead all I hear is frustration from end users. That's exactly why I asked, because I couldn't find a damn thing. Maybe my Google search skills aren't up to par, but I could find painfully little information.

I've found that it's easier to enter short messages manually in Max or MIDI Ox's Sysex editor than to transmit NRPNs from most hosts. Most implementations treat the Data Entry MSB (CC6) and LSB (CC38) as independent coarse and fine controls, without giving the user a choice to use them together as a single 14-bit value.

I use Max4Live to transmit NRPNs the way I want. I can scale values in whatever format I like and access specific NRPN addresses via a single list rather than having to figure out what what MSB and LSB I need to use. It requires some setup but it makes controlling things like DSI synths (some parameters are only available via NRPN and sysex realtime messages) relatively easy and since I'm using Max/MSP I can use LFOs and sequencers and such to control my hardware synths. Maybe my methods aren't practical but this is basically how software editors for hardware synths work.

S0lo · Post by **S0lo** » Sat Dec 08, 2012 11:42 am

AdmiralQuality wrote:
S0lo wrote: I'm really tiered of the stepping I hear (like on filter sweeps) on almost every digital or VA synth out there just because of MIDI. They try to compensate by some delay/lag but still thats not like the instantaneous continuous real analog sweeps.
Sure it is. Try Poly-Ana. Go nuts on the pitch bend, mod wheel or filter cutoff controls. Is it smooth? Yes. Is it fast and responsive? Faster than your fingers, yes.

There's just lots of products that do a bad job of this. Including lots of hardware. (I hear even the Moog Voyager suffers from zipper noise from it's wheels!)

I own PolyAna, just tried it again. It clearly steps when I MIDI learn my controller to cutoff. I tried it in both FLstudio and Reaper. Mouse resolution is obviously better but it's nothing like a real analog knob.

All aside, I like Poly-Ana, one of my favorite.

Ashe37 · Post by **Ashe37** » Sat Dec 08, 2012 11:47 am

in all likelihood, that's your controller, not the synth or host. its sending a CC

S0lo · Post by **S0lo** » Sat Dec 08, 2012 11:50 am

Ashe37 wrote:in all likelihood, that's your controller, not the synth or host. its sending a CC

If your talking to me, I can clearly see 0 to 127 steps in my Axiom 49 screen, this is standard 7bit MIDI which all controllers support. Not doing NRPN RPN here.

AdmiralQuality · Post by **AdmiralQuality** » Sat Dec 08, 2012 12:00 pm

S0lo wrote:
AdmiralQuality wrote:
S0lo wrote: I'm really tiered of the stepping I hear (like on filter sweeps) on almost every digital or VA synth out there just because of MIDI. They try to compensate by some delay/lag but still thats not like the instantaneous continuous real analog sweeps.
Sure it is. Try Poly-Ana. Go nuts on the pitch bend, mod wheel or filter cutoff controls. Is it smooth? Yes. Is it fast and responsive? Faster than your fingers, yes.

There's just lots of products that do a bad job of this. Including lots of hardware. (I hear even the Moog Voyager suffers from zipper noise from it's wheels!)
I own PolyAna, just tried it again. It clearly steps when I MIDI learn my controller to cutoff. I tried it in both FLstudio and Reaper. Mouse resolution is obviously better but it's nothing like a real analog knob.

All aside, I like Poly-Ana, one of my favorite.

Hmmm, what kind of controller do you have?

There's another dimension aside from resolution, and that's update rate. If your controller sends updates that are far enough apart in time then maybe you might hear some stepping.

Can you record some and send it to me as a .mid file? I'd like to check it out. Thanks! ( aq AT admiralquality.com )

HD Midi