U-he repro vs phase plant

[pdxindy]

At any rate, the point is that all of this necessary effort to establish a locked relationship between a controller and software instrument is a part of the difference between using hardware and using controllers.

...unless your controller automaps synths instantly like my Nektar Panorama P4

Now select a different track and your P4 is controlling a different synth. It is not a locked relationship to a specific synth like hardware. The filter cutoff knob on my Xerxes, controls the filter cutoff on Xerxes regardless of which track is selected or whether a track is record enabled. I can be recording my playing from another synth/controller on a different track, and still reach over mid-recording and tweak the Xerxes cutoff.

And obviously, the P4 is a generic controller. It does not have dedicated envelopes, LFO's, etc. Also, if I am mapping a controller like the P4 to a drum sequencer, it doesn't have 16 dedicated sequencer steps like my hardware groovebox.

Nektar does a fine job making the P4 as useful as possible given the wide range of devices it has to accommodate. I have almost bought one a few times. It is a useful and worthwhile tool. It still cannot come close to the hands on immediacy of the Roland TR8S interface for controlling the TR8S.

[TribeOfHǫfuð]

That helps, but, now you have to think carefully about how that mapping occurs.

I don't. P4 displays the functions ranging from 10%-95% of the synth. Usually I'd need no more than cutoff, res, amp env, filter env, and preferably filter env depth too. Envs are seemingly always mapped the same place if they are there. Filter features vary a little, but not more than is solved by looking at the display. When you get its metastructure, you know how it basically will map and get a somewhat steady and not arbitrary pattern (programmers are not that lame)

Keep in mind here that I'm coming from a hardware live experience and now work ITB

Yeah? I have 53 years experience being me. Into synths from I was 14. Don't think your appeal to authority would overrule mine with regards to my needs, use, and preferences. I am sure they would fit yours perfectly, though.

This is what you get with hardware. The muscle memory going from device to device is really important.

Yup, just like my P4, which is a hardware device.

Even using (almost) automatic controllers like the Maschine controller, it's not the same because the ordering of the controls doesn't make as much sense as it would on dedicated hardware.

I don't use Maschine and wouldn't know, but it sounds subjective to me. Do you have any statistics to speak on behalf of all Maschine users like this? Anyway, P4 makes great sense to me, thanks.

My controller situation now has machine front and center, mix controller to the right, push to the right of that and keyboard controller perpendicular to the table at the far right. This allows blind operation of the mix controller while playing machine with my left hand or playing the keyboard or push with my right. I'm never looking at the mix controller, I know the knobs by feel.
To get even close to the hardware synthesizer experience I cannot rely on maschine's or even push's automapping. I have to setup dedicated devices so that the controls are consistent. All of that is work. I don't want to read the screen to know where the cutoff or the oscillator mix is. They need to be in the same place.

That is you, and I would have no reason to think this is representative of anyone else, especially not me. Making analogies from yourself to the whole world of users always seems to fail when somebody feels different about it, yes? Sometimes I wonder why I am always the exception to all these universals about gear, which are throwned from the net.

So, yes, automatically mapping is helpful, but it is not identical.

...to you, according to your needs, which is perfectly all right with me, but not anyway near an argument for me to chance my ways nor set up above.

You are speaking for yourself, mate

[SLiC]

I have a Nektar P6 and its a good board, but I am still not convinced about any sort of automapping (on any controller). Ultimately the layout of the 8 knobs are always the same (and I found them a little cramped on the P6) and I always end up looking at the little 3 inch screen to see what mapped where and paging around. It works, but I don't find it very satisfying and frankly rarely use it...I tend to just map what I am using manually to a knob or slider (I prefer the sliders) as I am using it. It isn't anywhere near the same as a dedicated hardware layout, for example, my P8 has 50 perminaneltly labelled pots ready to tweak, its just so much more immediate and doesn't require any sort of screen.

[ghettosynth]

...

[pdxindy]

So, in order to do what I need, you will need two (or more) automatically mapping controllers and you need to be able to lock those controllers to specific synthesizers and that locking needs to stay fixed even if you move tracks or devices around in your host.

I haven't even dared to imagine the controller staying locked to a specific synth even if moved between tracks.

Doesn't seem like there is much development focus in this area with DAW's and Controller makers.

[TribeOfHǫfuð]

Now select a different track and your P4 is controlling a different synth. It is not a locked relationship to a specific synth like hardware.

And how should this make the tactile feeling of turning a knob different from turning on a dedicated synths?

The filter cutoff knob on my Xerxes, controls the filter cutoff on Xerxes regardless of which track is selected or whether a track is record enabled. I can be recording my playing from another synth/controller on a different track, and still reach over mid-recording and tweak the Xerxes cutoff.

What? My P4 does change automatically when I change track and displays the new synth's functions. How is that not a benefit? Should it had been locked to one synth only, so I have to use mouse for the rest? And again, how should this make the tactile feeling of turning a knob different from turning on a dedicated synths?

And obviously, the P4 is a generic controller. It does not have dedicated envelopes

Except that it does. If envs are mapped, they are always mapped from the sliders on the left from left to right. Its mapping of lfos and filters and other stuff vary a little but follow the structure of p4 itself and are displayed for anyone with reading cababilities.

I am mapping a controller like the P4 to a drum sequencer, it doesn't have 16 dedicated sequencer steps like my hardware groovebox.

Wow. My Reason has endless dedicated sequencer steps per drum machine, and I can start recording from P4 alone, and tab the drums in from its keys, pads or my Samplepad. So again, how should this make the tactile feeling of turning a knob different from turning on a dedicated synths?

You are making up non existent problems as far as my ways concern.

Nektar does a fine job making the P4 as useful as possible given the wide range of devices it has to accommodate. I have almost bought one a few times. It is a useful and worthwhile tool. It still cannot come close to the hands on immediacy of the Roland TR8S interface for controlling the TR8S.

All this concerns you. Not me. And hardly the world either unless you have proof. Accept it or continue your quest for universals without meeting the world on its own terms. Makes no difference to me, since none of it is valid to me.

[ghettosynth]

...

[TribeOfHǫfuð]

By your own admission, you do not have the same level of muscle memory because you have to "look" at your interface to see what you're changing.

And use my reading skills? Within seconds? A second's or less attention and reading, and then you are exhausted? Sorry, mate. Setting up my hardware devices in a mixer and running from unit to unit, which each their dedicated structure is way more exhausting in my life-long experience with this. Sorry, but you are reaching for straws here, mate.

Even using (almost) automatic controllers like the Maschine controller, it's not the same because the ordering of the controls doesn't make as much sense as it would on dedicated hardware.

Why? Sense to you or everybody? you forgot the argument to this

This isn't a statistical argument. I'm not speaking for all Maschine users, however, controls are demonstrably not in the same place, nor even on the same page. This isn't just an occasional thing, it's widely true across may synths.

And so what? Multifunctionality has not hindered sales of workstations and synths through history, nor Maschine, but you are presuming it is a problem in itself? I have used lot of workstations so it is quite trivial to me and not a problem. In Reason it sure is a benefit. Universals again.

You are speaking for yourself, mate

Which is all I need to disprove the universal claim that it's the same.

Which to me is a strawman so far, for the only ones I have seen express themselves in universals are you and pxindy. Maybe I missed a statement of @Bones somewhere? So, basically you are fighting real or imagined universal with universals. Know the saying "two wrongs do not make a right?"

You cannot dismiss the limitations because you don't see them as such.

Like reading a display? Besides, limitations are quite subjective too according to needs. Do you e.g. know the saying "less is more"? To some it really is.

You fully admit that you have to look at your controller to see what is mapped to what. That is a way of working but you're in denial to claim that it doesn't require additional mental processing steps.

Yes, my brain bleeds from reading and kills my creativity Sorry, mate, you got to give me something better than using my reading skills to make a hardware set up preferable to what I got now

[vurt]

chicks dig it.

[jancivil]

"now you have to"
I don't

"you have to look at your controller to see what is mapped to what."
I don't. All of it is mapped to the things; CC1 is CC1 and probably to modwheel. Pitch is pitchwheel. Controller in Key Editor goes to what it's assigned to do in the instrument.

One may make something as complicated to do as one likes, I prefer not. I come from some hardware synth use, quite a bit frankly, going back to 1974, and a fairly long history of controlling real instruments which need touch.

there are people in this world unlike one's mirror.

[ghettosynth]

...

[jancivil]

"All this concerns you. Not me."
A difficult concept for some, apparently

[ghettosynth]

chicks dig it.

Big hardware?

[vurt]

chicks dig it.

Big hardware?

their way out of eggs.

he wanted a reason, other than his reading comprehension.
i grasped!

just tryna help the guy out

[TribeOfHǫfuð]

I'm just going to stop you there. If you think that reading doesn't engage an additional mental processing step and that "seconds" is the time frame that matters, then I don't think that you're in tune with what we're talking about. This is a well understood phenomenon across basically the entirety of human experience. If you don't agree then, sure, for you it's the same thing. I don't think that I need to tell you though that your own experience isn't a proxy for what is universal.

https://medium.com/oxford-university/th ... b1cc4c4726

You are talking right into my profession, and there are no sugggestions here from this little resume that reading will impact muscle memory significantly. And certainly not any statements on software versus hardware can be taken from this. You would need to find peer reviewed research with experiments with synths in particular showing this, and reviews of cluster of these to take authority on that.

But it does not matter anyway if it ain't a problem to me and Maschine users. Some people do not even need use muscle memory at all beyond a mouse for making music. It is still subjective. If people suffered from lack of muscle memory in general, the units would not sell. As simple as that. Do you really think a few seconds reading would be harder than coordinating several hardsynths in a mixed set up? I can tell you that this is a quite harder pressure on the working memory, and has been among the reasons why many have preferred ITB productions from the dawn of Workstations. Your presumptions do not follow from the link and are contra-factual as well as contra-intuitive and contra-historical as far as the popularity of Workstations and DAWs concerns.