Breath Controller Petition

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I received my TEC Midi Breath Controller and it works great on windows 7. Very sensitive seems a little more responsive than the EWI USB sensor. It uses a similar Motorola pressure sensor design from what I can gather from the data sheet.

The supplied mouth piece and tubing aren't very responsive. This makes a closed air system that is hard to get an accurate control over. The mouth piece is tiny 1/8 inch 4mm hard plastic not very comfortable to have in your mouth.

This was remedied by making a midi breath control box style housing. I used a 4x2x1 enclosure, brass/plastic fittings and a control valve for limiting air flow. Input barb fits Camel Bak hose which is more comfortable and harder to kink the hose. I also put in a moisture drain and 6ft usb extension cord. This really helped make it more versatile. It weighs about a 1/3 of a pound with hose and will fit just about anywhere.

With the utility I can adjust breath curve and symmetry. The air control valve helps dial in the right amount of air flow through the box. I like the valve set similar to the Ewi Usb a little hard to blow through this creates a good pressure responsive environment. The curve and symmetry settings are great for custom tailoring breath response making it just a little better than the Ewi Usb configuration menu.

Overall I spent 145 for the BC shipped from Germany and another 25 for the box so 170$ in the end. Which seems like a lot but I like that it is compact washable serviceable and protected from damage inside the compact box. Also now I can free up my Ewi Usb and not have to block midi notes. I think it would be easy to build a headset pretty cheap too but I don't like equipment attached to my head.
The sleeper must awaken.
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diggler wrote:I received my TEC Midi Breath Controller and it works great on windows 7. Very sensitive seems a little more responsive than the EWI USB sensor. It uses a similar Motorola pressure sensor design from what I can gather from the data sheet.

The supplied mouth piece and tubing aren't very responsive. This makes a closed air system that is hard to get an accurate control over. The mouth piece is tiny 1/8 inch 4mm hard plastic not very comfortable to have in your mouth.

This was remedied by making a midi breath control box style housing. I used a 4x2x1 enclosure, brass/plastic fittings and a control valve for limiting air flow. Input barb fits Camel Bak hose which is more comfortable and harder to kink the hose. I also put in a moisture drain and 6ft usb extension cord. This really helped make it more versatile. It weighs about a 1/3 of a pound with hose and will fit just about anywhere.

With the utility I can adjust breath curve and symmetry. The air control valve helps dial in the right amount of air flow through the box. I like the valve set similar to the Ewi Usb a little hard to blow through this creates a good pressure responsive environment. The curve and symmetry settings are great for custom tailoring breath response making it just a little better than the Ewi Usb configuration menu.

Overall I spent 145 for the BC shipped from Germany and another 25 for the box so 170$ in the end. Which seems like a lot but I like that it is compact washable serviceable and protected from damage inside the compact box. Also now I can free up my Ewi Usb and not have to block midi notes. I think it would be easy to build a headset pretty cheap too but I don't like equipment attached to my head.

Interesting work here. I love to see a video demo of your setup!
waves break, but somehow it all makes sense.
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We're over 500 signatures on the Petition, That's only half way. Come on people let's get some more. If you can spread the word on other forums, please do.

http://www.ipetitions.com/petition/yamaha-bc3a/
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@diggler -- I got the TEC device too. I would love to see a schematic and/or photo/video of your mod so I could look into trying it. I can't quite make it out from just the verbal description you gave above. Thx.

CCL
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Just curious, when they bring the breath controller back, what are we supposed to plug it into? (Or do you mean also bringing back controller keyboards with a breath controller jack? It might also be possible that regular expression pedal jacks could be adapted for this, though I'm not sure offhand if the resistance range is similar enough.)
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As far as I know, it would have to be connected to one of these.
http://www.midisolutions.com/prodbth.htm
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MadmanST wrote:As far as I know, it would have to be connected to one of these.
http://www.midisolutions.com/prodbth.htm
I was going to comment that that's quite a waste of a MIDI cable, just to put one CC on it, but I see it has an input so presumably it merges the CC with the incoming MIDI. Question though: What if the incoming MIDI is already saturated and there's no space to insert the new events? (Granted, that will be rare, particularly if you're just putting it between a single controller keyboard and your DAW's MIDI input.)

Again, it might be possible to adapt typical expression pedal inputs to it. As far as I know they're both just variable resistors. And most modern keyboards let you calibrate the input range for the expression pedal (or in this case, breather).
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I don't have one myself, I use an EWI-USB. Just trying to help out with the petition. I haven't heard of anyone having that kind of a problem.

Pedals are less expressive as breath.
Last edited by MadmanST on Tue Dec 11, 2012 12:11 am, edited 1 time in total.
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MadmanST wrote:I don't have one myself, I use an EWI-USB. Just trying to help out with the petition. I haven't heard of anyone having that kind of a problem.
MIDI merge is always a gamble with the devil. Unlike USB, where the host allows each device to speak in turn, essentially "moderating" the bandwidth usage, in MIDI the devices assume they own the line entirely, and you can't merge more bandwidth than one MIDI cable can take.
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I'm interested in hearing what Diggler has to say about the usb breath device he just got. Might be the better alternative.
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he replied over at the patchman wind controller forum:

http://www.patchmanmusic.com/forum/view ... =37&t=3491

to summarize and paraphrase: he improved on it a bit to the point where he says it feels great.
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The TEC Controller is nice and compact. Creating a headset or breath box is fairly simple. You adjust the amount of air flow through and match sensitivity with the utility. This can be done in a variety of ways. I choose the breath box over the headset as a preference.

I don't think it is a proper replacement for use with hardware like the BCA but it works fine with windows.

It could be used to control hardware with a midi out interface and computer seems a bit elaborate though.
The sleeper must awaken.
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I found I actually still have my BC1 from the last DX7 I had.
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jancivil wrote:I found I actually still have my BC1 from the last DX7 I had.
What type of plug does it have? A 3.5 mm TRS if I remember correctly?

Do you have a multimeter so you can test the resistance when not blowing vs. blowing at the maximum? (Also, if I remember correctly, you can achieve "maximum blow" far easier if you plug the exit hole.) Curious if it just acts like a regular expression pedal, if there's a substantially different range of resistance, or if it's behaving in some other way entirely.
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jancivil wrote:I found I actually still have my BC1 from the last DX7 I had.
I still have mine as well (and I could connect it to my midi keyboard, as it has a connection for it), however I don't use it anymore as I also happen to have a WX5 :D
CrimsonWarlock aka TechnoGremlin, Moved to Reason and Rack Extensions exclusively (from Reaper and VSTs) several years ago.
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