A dream hardware controller for soft synths?

[sjm]

If your mapping are easy to exchange, the whole issue of having to map every synth under the sun soon falls away. Ship the controller with decent mappings for a whole range of the most popular VSTs and provide an online exchange for users to share their mappings. If the hardware takes off, that shouldn't be such a problem. It wouldn't be the first such approach. Also encourage VST devs to release mappings for their new products to get everyone on board.

What I think needs to be an absolute must is the automatic naming of the parameters on your control surface based on the VST parameter name. And the ability to rename and store the parameter on the display for future reference. Having dedicated knobs labeled on the controller doesn't make much sense.

The UC-33 that I have actually has a number of cut out overlays that you can place over the knobs with different mappings for a number of synths. And to be honest, the layout for "subtractive synth 1" is versatile enough to work for "subtractive synth 2" as well. The problem with the overlays is that "subtractive synth 1" works terribly for "GranularSynth", and even worse for "Flanger1". And the cut out obviously isn't customisable. Automap looks like it might have this partially down, but it doesn't properly work with my host (FL Studio), so I can't be sure.

The other thing I think is needed is some sort of navigation options. Having to switch from hardware controller to mouse/computer keyboard and back isn't good. It would be great to have not just the transport controls on the hardware, but a means of navigating between plugins and mixer channels. My personal preference without really having thought this through is to have a touch screen display for the mixer that can be scrolled left and right, setting the levels and panning quickly from the HW.

I think the real conundrum is how you communicate from VST/host to hardware. In an idea world, you'd be using a standard protocol supported by all DAWs. They'd provide the hardware with information like what plugins are in use, what the parameter names are etc. and handle special commands from the HW. A wrapper-based solution is really a workaround and has too many potential pitfalls. Proper DAW integration, rather than some half-arsed compromise is needed to take HW controllers into the 21st century.

But to do that, you'll have to fight things like proprietary implementations, and poor choices on the parts of DAW programmers. The fact that every piece of hardware needs its own implementation to work with FL Studio (generic only takes you so far) means that a lot of close cooperation with the DAW developers would be a must. FL Studio can't handle Automap; it can't even handle the UC-33 user library, because FL Studio doesn't support MIDI CCs and I need to remap everything anyway. Obviously this is an issue with gol's poor design choices, but every host has its idiosyncrasies. That's why I think some sort of MIDI-like protocol that covers navigation etc. is what we really need.

If someone comes up with a halfway affordable MIDI controller that has a large number of knobs/sliders, supports automatic parameter naming from the host and displays this information visually, AND works without workarounds in FL Studio, I'd buy it. I just very much doubt something like that is actually on the horizon.

[tehlord]

viewtopic.php?t=486392

[noiseboyuk]

viewtopic.php?t=486392

(discussed on p1)

[chk071]

The Roland System 8 is a good start point, and it can control other softsynths that have midi learn, I use it with Diva all the time.

The System-8 is very nice, no doubt. Bit out of my price range though, with 1.249 €. I do understand that you get what you pay for though, of course, as it has many controls.

The thing to consider though is, even with as many controls as the System-8, that will still only cover a fraction of the controls present in a normally featured soft synth. As i mentioned earlier, it's really a difficult thing to have what you have in hardware to control your soft synths. Guess you'll have to decide for yourself how many controls you really need.

[tehlord]

viewtopic.php?t=486392

(discussed on p1)

Doh!

[generaldiomedes]

I think this is what Macro knobs on VSTs are for, no? Twiddle with the patch until you find the parameters which are most useful and then map ‘em.

Otherwise I think a good touch screen is probably the only answer for morphing between soft synths on the fly.

[beely]

I think yes, everything on the surface.

Ok, then you don't want what I want.

To always have to flit between the two would be a huge drawback.

I don't find it is. I want immediacy to control the key sound parameters instantly, not the ability to access every parameter from thousands on a knob. I already have that on a Mackie Control - it's a bad interface, because you have to constantly swap between pages of parameters, which takes away the immediacy of knobs, and in which case, it's slower than just using the GUI. (Not saying the MCU interface is the best way of doing this, of course your solution will be better in this regard, but the principles still hold true.)

It needn't be too difficult to achieve either, with a good size touchscreen area. You might commonly have multiple oscillators on different tabs that share the physical controls, or if it were a minimoog type synth you'd probably have the real estate to have multiple oscillators always available.

Actually, I've found it's pretty doable on generic controllers for my needs, but then, I'm not trying to expose *everything*, so my requirements are less stringent...

I agree having things in a familiar area will be good, but just a cursory look at different synths Osc sections (or any other really) show that many have really important controls which are unique to the synth, so I think there would have to be some flexibility there. Diva's switching of osc types for instance. Omnisphere between samples and waveforms. Unison / width on some synths but not others. I just think a fixed box will always be too limiting.

Ok then, but if you want all parameters available, at a certain point all you are really doing is recreating a plugin's interface on another screen, and trying to fit it into the physical controls - and it will alway be a compromise. Whether it will be good enough though is the important thing, I guess...

In any case, my needs are not to replicate every control in a plugin on a different hardware device, I have that already and it just gets in the way of the useful stuff for me. I want a nice to use, modern dedicated synth-layout controller with flexibility and some nice solutions that will cover 85% of the basics for most synths, and the ability to push a bit further with flexibility and customisability if necessary...

[noiseboyuk]

I don't find it is. I want immediacy to control the key sound parameters instantly, not the ability to access every parameter from thousands on a knob. I already have that on a Mackie Control - it's a bad interface, because you have to constantly swap between pages of parameters, which takes away the immediacy of knobs, and in which case, it's slower than just using the GUI. (Not saying the MCU interface is the best way of doing this, of course your solution will be better in this regard, but the principles still hold true.)

The Mackie Control is designed for mixing but as a bonus can be made to jump through midi CC hoops - tbh it's not really comparable to a dedicated surface, broadly resembling a synth with large numbers of very clearly named hardware knobs and controls that reflect the UI of the synth. Simpler synths wouldn't need any tabbed interfaces at all, but the more complex ones would allow for this. Compromise? Of course, but any universal controller would be. The only question is what compromises are worth making (well, and whether the whole notion of a universal controller is fundamentally flawed).

I guess the difference in our philosophies is that you are happy to only control a fixed subset of parameters as a trade off for things always being in the exact same position. For me, I'd trade precise copying of a layout to enable fast working of the entire synth but with clearly labelled hardware controls.

But to be fair, I'm not sure I'm doing a very good job at enthusing anyone over the concept. If NI came out with what I described in the OP at NAMM, I'd be doing cartwheels, but it seems thus far its not really what most people are looking for. Still, that is why I started the thread, to gauge interest, or lack thereof.

[recursive one]

In order to give actual workflow improvements over generic controllers, a "dream hardware controller" must do these things:
- It should automatically map the most important parameters of a synth to its knobs/faders/touchscreens etc in the most logical/ergonomical way
- It should be compatible with widest possible range of different synths having different signalflow, different feature set etc.

Satisfying both criteria seems a very hard task because even among traditional subtractive synths the layout may greatly vary (it may vary even within the synth itself - e.g., the Diva modules), so it would propapbly require joint efforts from hardware manufacturers and plugin devs

The question is what are "the most important parameters". These may be perfromance oriented - like you play a preset, twist some knobs and something cool happens. For this matter macro knobs, which already are in many synths like Spire, Massive, Serum, might be enough. Should there be a universal standard that all synth plugins must have 8 macro knobs, the only thing that should be done on the hardware side it to make these knobs automatically mapped to the controller knobs (isn't it what NKS does, btw?). Then it will be up to preset designers to assign the macro knobs to something useful.

But if one want to design sounds in a VSTi from init or make deep edits of presets with a hardware interface having physical knobs, buttons etc, instead of mouse, I can hardly imagine what might it look like, except for custom controllers designed to work with specific VSTis.

[noiseboyuk]

But if one want to design sounds in a VSTi from init or make deep edits of presets with a hardware interface having physical knobs, buttons etc, instead of mouse, I can hardly imagine what might it look like, except for custom controllers designed to work with specific VSTis.

Can I push you a little more on that? What would be deficient about the OP proposal to meet that criteria?

[recursive one]

But if one want to design sounds in a VSTi from init or make deep edits of presets with a hardware interface having physical knobs, buttons etc, instead of mouse, I can hardly imagine what might it look like, except for custom controllers designed to work with specific VSTis.

Can I push you a little more on that? What would be deficient about the OP proposal to meet that criteria?

TBH, I initially understood the OP as a sort of "vision" - like "it would be cool to have something handy, slick-looking and versatile, with knobs and touchscreens" - rather than a specific concept, i.e. "it should look like this and that and do this and that". I don't quite understand how exactly you want it to work.

Is it like that? It has decent amount of knobs grouped like "osc section", "filter section", "envelope section" etc, and each knob has a little screen nearby displaying what this knob does depending on the plugin - which in turn is automapped each time you load a new plugin. What the big touchscreen you talked about is supposed to do? Should it display the whole synth GUI? Why do you need the knobs then?

[sjm]

Is it like that? It has decent amount of knobs grouped like "osc section", "filter section", "envelope section" etc, and each knob has a little screen nearby displaying what this knob does depending on the plugin - which in turn is automapped each time you load a new plugin. What the big touchscreen you talked about is supposed to do? Should it display the whole synth GUI? Why do you need the knobs then?

I think there is an argument to be made for a touch screen - if you can get it to integrate. Some things don't edit well with knobs. If you can draw waveforms/envelope curves with a mouse (rather than a few parameters), being able to access the UI would be funky. Modulation matrices are another example of where knobs/sliders tend to fail.

[recursive one]

Is it like that? It has decent amount of knobs grouped like "osc section", "filter section", "envelope section" etc, and each knob has a little screen nearby displaying what this knob does depending on the plugin - which in turn is automapped each time you load a new plugin. What the big touchscreen you talked about is supposed to do? Should it display the whole synth GUI? Why do you need the knobs then?

I think there is an argument to be made for a touch screen - if you can get it to integrate. Some things don't edit well with knobs. If you can draw waveforms/envelope curves with a mouse (rather than a few parameters), being able to access the UI would be funky. Modulation matrices are another example of where knobs/sliders tend to fail.

Yes, I see how touchscreen may be useful - actually I had an idea of a controller consisting of a keyboard with pitch and modwheels and an ipad-sized touchscreen. Something that might look like that
The touchscreen would display the GUI of the plugin which is currently in focus thus being a control sufrace.

[noiseboyuk]

TBH, I initially understood the OP as a sort of "vision" - like "it would be cool to have something handy, slick-looking and versatile, with knobs and touchscreens" - rather than a specific concept, i.e. "it should look like this and that and do this and that". I don't quite understand how exactly you want it to work.

The OP is a conceptual idea of course. The reason for posting is that a) I think it could be as good a solution as we'd ever get to a Universal Synth Controller b) it needn't be expensive yet c) nobody is producing anything remotely like it. So I was wondering why not, and if there was a demand for such a thing or if I was unique in some way. You mentioned that you couldn't imagine what a truly comprehensive synth controller would look like, so I was curious to know what might not work for you in my own description.

Is it like that? It has decent amount of knobs grouped like "osc section", "filter section", "envelope section" etc, and each knob has a little screen nearby displaying what this knob does depending on the plugin - which in turn is automapped each time you load a new plugin. What the big touchscreen you talked about is supposed to do? Should it display the whole synth GUI? Why do you need the knobs then?

I think broadly grouping in the way you describe would be helpful as a starting point, but couldn't be completely prescriptive. There might be many different ways to have the basic hardware, but one in my head that could work well would be a pure touchscreen area central and placed at the bottom, then surrounded left, right and top by the knobs and buttons. Starting with Osc on the left, filter top, Amp / effects right might be useful loose convention as a synth's home page. One real advantage of having the entire UI as a screen is that you could very easily move boundaries for these sections to fit by shading - as a developer if you needed the Osc to creep into the filter along the top a bit, just reshade it. Or you could have expand buttons that overlap into another area for detailed work (the Studer Vista uses this convention and it works very well).

As for the touchscreen, that's for everything else - an ARP, Omni's Orb, modulation matrix, preset / waverform browser / anything that doesn't work with a knob or button. It should in theory be a killer combo, as the touchscreen would be much more useful for some tasks than anything in traditional hardware, but for all those routine tasks like filters, envelopes etc it's hands-on and physical just like hardware.

[recursive one]

Well, as we are discussing this it's shaping up. So basically the control surface will have knobs for the parameters one would tweak most often (envelopes, filters, etc) and everything else will be controlled from touchscreen - or yuou may select a specific section of the GUI from the touchscreen and the physical knobs will be remapped to the parameters of this section. Proper automapping of the knobs I think is crucial here, this may be done via plugin-specific automap charts which may be made by plugin devs or somebody else.

Basically something like this could actually be more convenient than using a mouse, which is is the most important thing - it's technically possible to make many different kinds of control surfaces and mappings so the question always is if would it be actually preferable workflow-wise over using a mouse and/or generic manually assigned controllers.

I can see myself buying such a device if properly implemented.