Arturia Minilab 3 with Bitwig

[moxxi]

Hello people,

anyone using Arturia Minilab 3? I'm curious about the integration with Bitwig, also how the encoders and faders behave, do the parameters jump?

If anyone uses it and has any info it would be helpful. Thanks in advance.

[Fleer]

Did you watch the dedicated Arturia video on using MiniLab3 with Bitwig?

[moxxi]

I did, although nothing was shown about how the encoders and faders behave when controlling Bitwig instruments or plugins. Some people have encountered a problem that has been present for a long time on the Minilab MK2, parameter jumping when using the encoder. In the meantime, I ordered a Minilab 3, if there's going to be a problem, I'll just return it.

[brokenrazor]

I have the minilab 3 and was imediately disappointed. I have the MK 2 and the encoders worked perfectly in bitwig to control device perameters. the minilab 3 does not work the same way. there are jumps. i spoke with arturia support and they akknowleged its not working as intended. i think its due to there not being a ‘relative’ setting in the bitwig extension and/or the arturia midi control center for the encoders. i went back to using my mk2 but still have the 3 in the box waiting for a future firmware/midi control center update.

[solyon]

Hi!
The Arturia support has said that the relative mode will be added in the next update

[Jac459]

Did you watch the dedicated Arturia video on using MiniLab3 with Bitwig?

I have a mini lab 3 and overall I am very happy with the integration. Much better than the akai mpc mini mk3.

[moxxi]

I have to admit that I am satisfied with the Minilab 3. It would be great if the pads were a little softer and if the transport controls were separated from the pads, after about 4 months of use it turned out to be a very good controller with good integration. Excellent in that price range.

[AlQuzMar]

My experience:
1. The fact that the encoders are endless but only work as absolute encoders with no midi feedback feels ridiculous. AKAI MPK mini 3 does this much better with smooth inc/dec knobs.

2. The main knob integration to Bitwig's browser is useless because you can't add a new device to the end of the chain with it, nor can you browse the filters, only the rightmost column with all the possible entries of hundreds of items. Not very practical. The only thing you can do with it is to load up a new device to a track that doesn't have any or to replace an existing first device of a track, and even then due to not being able to filter those you're back on your keyboard and mouse.

3. The transport control works but takes two hands. With computer keyboard it's doable with one. So it's easier on computer keyboard, so you're not going to use that on Minilab 3 most of the time. The transport control is almost useless, exacerbated by the fact that there’s no way to navigate the timeline with it, so you’re again back on your mouse and keyboard.

4. The pads are borderline unplayable compared to AKAI MPK mini 3's pads. I wish Minilab 3 didn't have pads at all so I didn't feel disappointed about them every time I touch them. Their sensitivity and response make it quite a chore to play expressively, where AKAI pads are a joy to play, especially on MPK2-series, when set up properly. Sure, AKAI pads do double trigger, on some units more than others, but so do my Minilab 3's pads. I need to filter them all to get a clean play consistently.

5. Unmotorized faders on controllers are just a joke, and there's 4 of them. What's the use of having visual indication of values of parameters when most of the time the values have nothing to do with the fader positions - I'd rather have much more knobs than those faders, or a basic screen displaying the device that's being controlled, or whatever useful. Even empty space would be better, I could put a 6 key macro keyboard on it. Moreover, the faders don't control anything that could even theoretically benefit from being controlled with faders vs. knobs.

6. The keyboard is too sensitive for my taste. It reaches high velocity values with quite a light touch and it's a bit difficult to play with low velocity values. This might be an acquired taste, but there's no way to adjust the keyboard's gain or sensitivity, only its velocity curve, and even that has only three options to choose from. Customizing the response of Minilab 3 to match your other controllers and/or your taste isn't going to work out.

7. Minilab 3's preset editor program, MIDI Control Center, looks nice but it's not really streamlined to use. They've sacrificed usability to flashy graphics. You can't fly around it with a keyboard, writing values. You can't incrementally fill knob CC's or pad notes. It hasn't been designed to be easy to use, but to look nice. If only we had the presets in CSV format to fill out in a spreadsheet editor and then drag & drop them into MIDI Control Center. Again, AKAI's editor doesn't look as fancy, but it's much faster to use.

I'll add more when I can think of more complaints.

[moxxi]

Some of these features you mentioned are much better on the Nektar Impact LX Mini (which I own) compared to the Minilab 3. It also has the best integration with BWS. I don't know about the Akai MPK 3 mini because I don't have it.

[AlQuzMar]

Some of these features you mentioned are much better on the Nektar Impact LX Mini (which I own) compared to the Minilab 3. It also has the best integration with BWS. I don't know about the Akai MPK 3 mini because I don't have it.

Thanks! I'll test it whenever I can. To be honest, AKAI MPK mini 3 doesn't have much integration, since it's quite a simple and barebones one. That's one of its strengths though, it doesn't try to be more than it's capable of, and thus won't disappoint you with halfway-there features. The 8 knobs map straight to visible device pages and the pads to drum machine sounds, and that's all the integration it ever could have to offer.

It's of course not perfect, it's a small and cheap controller - the keyboard needs a tad more pressure than I'd like, but for me the response feels more familiar than that on Minilab 3. The joystick is difficult to control, but it can be modded by extending it. Still, the travel to extreme values is horizontally asymmetrical, probably as a result of cutting corners to save production costs. Pads double trigger a lot, but as I haven't yet seen pads that don't, I'm used to filter those out with the freely available Python script that has fit the bill nicely so far. The keyboard is a bit narrow, but I'm willing to sacrifice for portability. All in all, for the price it does deliver, and it's really small and easy to carry around.

Compared to Minilab 3, the Arturia one has 4 faders and the main knob, transport controls and clip launching integration that MPK mini 3 doesn't have. As I have a launchpad, I don't miss the clip launch option, though it doesn't hurt. Main knob doesn't do much in Bitwig otherwise. I'd be happy with Minilab 3 if it just had better pads and inc/dec knobs. I truly dislike those pads. I got it to get a better keyboard, but I can't adjust it to suit my playing, and I lost the pads. I'm not happy.

[strovoknights]

Are Minilab3 knobs now controllable relative to each other within Bitwig?
I can't figure out how to do relative control with my Minilab3 Firm Ver 1.1.1.
When I set Relative to 8 knobs in MCC, there is no difference from the behavior in Absolute mode.
Am I doing something wrong?

It would be best if we could control 8Knobs of Minilab3 relative to the resolution of the MCU

[PriyanshuKumar]

Are Minilab3 knobs now controllable relative to each other within Bitwig?
I can't figure out how to do relative control with my Minilab3 Firm Ver 1.1.1.
When I set Relative to 8 knobs in MCC, there is no difference from the behavior in Absolute mode.
Am I doing something wrong?

It would be best if we could control 8Knobs of Minilab3 relative to the resolution of the MCU

You can only change knob and pad behavior for User Modes (and not in DAW mode). So first you would need to switch to the user mode in which you have selected the relative knobs. And even then, you would need to update the controller script to work with relative knobs (if you intend to use the provided script).

Its a really half baked implementation of relative knobs, and in User modes the script does not change pad colours dynamically (i.e. you can only choose one fixed pad colour in the MCC, so pads don't reflect track colours or recording status anymore), and doesn't show text on the oled screen. So you lose those if you go the relative knobs route.

[rvlt]

Arturia need to update their firmware to support this. But at least there is hope since they did a better job on the new Keylab Essential Mk3, I guess it can be put into the ML3, too. Fingers crossed...

[strovoknights]

Thank you for the detailed explanation of how it works.
I like Arturia's corporate attitude and helpfulness in user support, so I will wait with anticipation for the next firmware release of Minilab3.

In my personal opinion, it would be the best controller for me if the resolution of the MCU could be applied to 8 knobs

[AlQuzMar]

Arturia need to update their firmware to support this. But at least there is hope since they did a better job on the new Keylab Essential Mk3, I guess it can be put into the ML3, too. Fingers crossed...

Arturia doesn't need to update the firmware, either Bitwig or Arturia needs to update the controller script.

Generally, integration in Btiwig is a bit of hit and miss, Minilab 3 being no exception. Akai's MPK249 has Bitwig integration scripts from 2015 Anno Domini, so those probably aren't gonna get updated anyway.

It's just stupid that controller manufacturers don't publish their sysex or other specs that would allow the community to write their own scripts. I bet if one did that their sales would jump up.