DX7 controls.

[John Speth]

I think the plain and simple reason for machines not having mucho knobs is pure economics.  All that panel hardware drives up the cost of the product tremendously in parts cost, assembly, service, and reliability.  That all costs money.  Few people would buy a hardware programmer that costs more than what it needs to program.

But I DO agree with you.  I think a good middle ground can be achieved in the design of a hardware programmer.  My vision is a device that you connect to your PC.  The device has maybe 20 knobs with an LCD display beneath each knob.  On the PC is a program running that interfaces to the 20 knob programmer (using MIDI maybe) and also to the synth you want to program (also using MIDI).  The PC program would allow you configure the programmer and assign the knobs to 20 parameters that you'd want to edit at that time.  The LCDs would display the name of the parameters that the knob controls.  It's flexible in that it could be used for any synth with sysex editing.  All you'd need to change is the PC program.

John Speth
johns at oei.com

-----Original Message-----
From:	svetengr at earthlink.net [SMTP:svetengr at earthlink.net]
Sent:	Friday, October 10, 1997 9:35 AM
To:	synth-diy at horus.sara.nl
Subject:	Re: DX7 controls.

At 03:59 PM 10/10/97 +0200, you wrote:

>Yes, a company named Jellinghaus here in Germany
>did a hardware editor for the DX7
>ages ago, lots of knobs, it was a financial disaster,
>and it is said to  have
>brought the whole company quite down.

That was one of the BEST IDEAS I ever had....and now I'm glad I didn't
commercialize it....:)
Seriously, it IS a great idea. Perhaps it was too expensive.
If someone on here would like a real development challenge,
try making up some kind of FM system with real-time-changeable
knobs for all functions. It's got to be possible!......

(At this late date, I'm starting to feel that the vacuum tube
synth is the best idea I ever had....for good or for worse!)