A small warning for anyone interested in the new Novation Launchkey Mk4 series.

[Mantras]

Overall I think it is great and clever designed products, but with one major issue.
The endless rotary encoders are so stiff, that it is impossible to for example do a full filter sweep in one go. You have to keep turning 2-3 times to reach 100% of whatever you are controlling.
If only Novation would implement a sensitivty setting for the encoders this issue could easily be fixed. However sensitivity settings only exist for the keys and the pads, not for the encoders..

I only have experience with the Mini, but I think the encoders on the bigger series is exactly the same.

[sin night]

In my opinion, it looks like the standard encoder behavior… I don’t know what encoders Novation used on their Lauchkey MK4, but often encoders have something like 12 steps per rotation… acceleration (which is done in software) may “mitigate” the issue and make an encoder feel more like a potentiometer, but unfortunately there’s only so much that can be done…

[Echoes in the Attic]

This is good to know. I was searching specifically about this but I definitely don't want it if the encoders takes three turns to do a full knob rotation. That's a shame.

[Tj Shredder]

Usually encoders react on the speed of turning. If not they should fix the firmware… Encoders have the advantage of being able to go beyond the range of 0-127. But they need to be implemented like that, also on the receiver side…

[danielh02]

Usually encoders react on the speed of turning. If not they should fix the firmware… Encoders have the advantage of being able to go beyond the range of 0-127. But they need to be implemented like that, also on the receiver side…

Just tried on my Launchkey 37 MK4. Turning the encoder very quickly gets me to 127 at about 90 degrees (about a quarter of a turn).

[Tj Shredder]

Usually encoders react on the speed of turning. If not they should fix the firmware… Encoders have the advantage of being able to go beyond the range of 0-127. But they need to be implemented like that, also on the receiver side…

Just tried on my Launchkey 37 MK4. Turning the encoder very quickly gets me to 127 at about 90 degrees (about a quarter of a turn).

This is an example of implementing a correct behavior inside the controller, but it doesn’t use the advantage of encoders…

An encoder should send increment and decrement values, and the receiver has to translate that to useful values. If you turn an encoder slowly, it would send +1 or -1 for every tick. If turned fast it could be +6 or -6 or even more. These values have to be added or subtracted from the actual value. If encoders send absolute values between 0 and 127, they trash their main advantage. They shine when used as relative change to whatever they control…
Often controllers implement this to avoid confusion as you get jumps to max an min values if the receiver side isn’t set up for relative inc/dec controls.

A serious firmware should be able to change the behavior with an editor. On the receiver side (your DAW) this has to be setup correctly as well. Usually things like that happen in the controller scripts…

[danielh02]

Usually encoders react on the speed of turning. If not they should fix the firmware… Encoders have the advantage of being able to go beyond the range of 0-127. But they need to be implemented like that, also on the receiver side…

Just tried on my Launchkey 37 MK4. Turning the encoder very quickly gets me to 127 at about 90 degrees (about a quarter of a turn).

This is an example of implementing a correct behavior inside the controller, but it doesn’t use the advantage of encoders…

An encoder should send increment and decrement values, and the receiver has to translate that to useful values. If you turn an encoder slowly, it would send +1 or -1 for every tick. If turned fast it could be +6 or -6 or even more. These values have to be added or subtracted from the actual value. If encoders send absolute values between 0 and 127, they trash their main advantage. They shine when used as relative change to whatever they control…
Often controllers implement this to avoid confusion as you get jumps to max an min values if the receiver side isn’t set up for relative inc/dec controls.

A serious firmware should be able to change the behavior with an editor. On the receiver side (your DAW) this has to be setup correctly as well. Usually things like that happen in the controller scripts…

Yes, when testing I was only looking at the values on the Launchkey display itself. I also tried it on a Kontakt instrument inside Logic and was able to see the same behavior in terms of value acceleration. Both slow and fast movements are relative to the plugin control's current value. Fast left/right movements of the encoder caused larger relative jumps on the plugin parameter.

The Launchkey has a good integration script with Logic, so there is a translation between the actual CC send and the plugin value. And when in plugin mode, the OLED display on the keyboard shows the values in terms of the plugin parameter's units. E.g., for "Color" in NI Noire, it shows it in terms of percentage.

[Tj Shredder]

With 2-way communication it can act like a motorized knob and has the advantage of having a fine control… If its a one way communication, the receiver side has to deal with it…

[sellyoursoul]

This is why I went with a MK3 that has pots with pickup. Of course I would have liked to have encoders, but what good are encoders when they don't work well? The pots with pickup work well.