Re: [linux-audio-user] Behringer BCA 2000 - has anyone tried it ?

Frank Barknecht <fbar@email-addr-hidden> writes:

> Hallo,
> Mario Lang hat gesagt: // Mario Lang wrote:
>
>> I've demonstrated already that it is quite simple to emulate
>> endless rotaries in software.
>
> Yes, I've seen this and it indeed is a possibility for SuperCollider
> or Pd (which I use) to make the Behringer work for ranges bigger than
> 0-127.
>
> However thinking about your solution a bit more, it occured to me,
> that it basically transforms the knobs to wrap-around knobs, carrying
> the same accessibility problem you pointed out before. Aren't you
> admitting by this, that wrap-around would be good to have?

No, not really. In fact, most controls in audio are
actually bounded. If you choose a frequency for instance, it doesnt make
sense to go -1000000 or whatever. Same for filter Q or
other typical parameters. You mentioned transport control, which
is a good candidate for endless data, but I dont need that actually.

My point is, bounded data is much more common than infinite data,
so IMHO, the default behavour of a knob should be to NOT wrap.
I can always add simulated endless data later on.
But by default, I personally prefer non-wrapping behaviour. Anyway,
I guess it comes down to personal preference (and therefore
customisability :-), and I am probably a bit biased
since "wrapping knobs" is deeply hardwired in my brain to
"unusable piece of hardware".

> That's actually all I would have expected Behringer to do in hardware
> (similar to the Doepfer devices): provide a wrapping mode as an option
> to customers. (Maybe they have this in their Windows software, who
> knows.)

Thats actually quite possible, I didn't really check. There is
a wide variety of settings you can apply to the individual knobs and
faders (making them send note on/off, MMC and so on), so it might
as well be that you can enable wrapping for individual knobs.
But since I cant see that LCD, I cant edit presets.
And since their preset editor is Java, I cant use that either.
Oh, isn't is a really charming world?

>> However, the wrapping problem is not that easy to overcome. Since I
>> do not have visual feedback, I can not look at the rotaries current
>> value and predict when I need to stop to turn the knob to prevent
>> wrapping. The day that infinite wrapping dials were introduced in
>> modern synths was the day accessibility died finally.
>
> I remember, that one or two years ago Julian Claasen brought up a
> similar question either here or when I met him in a person asking
> about some hardware synth - I forgot which - if it has wrap-around
> dials, which would make it practically useless to him. This indeed is
> a problem, which turned up when hardware synths were facing the
> problem of having enough memory to store more than like 127 presets or
> to make finer adjustments than this range allows. Just limiting the
> possible settings to small numbers isn't really an option nowadays,
> but doing something like a click when the wrap-around point is reached
> or similar accessibility methods would not only help visually impaired
> users.

Good point. Unfortunately, small markets are even less likely
to care about these problems. As someone once said,
10 we are a
20 minority in a
30 GOTO 20

-- 
CYa,
  Mario