[sdiy] modular synth controller

[Glen]

At 09:30 AM 1/12/04 , Rude 66 wrote:

>if you could design some kind of expandable midi controller system, that can
>be customized per vst-synth, i'd see a lot of potential for that. apart from
>the sound, people love analogue synths for their hands-on interface. look at
>the success of the alesis ion..

Are you planning to build a separate hardware panel for each VSTi synth?
That could get expensive. It would be nice, but most people wouldn't want
to pay for it. Heck, most people don't even want to pay for the VSTi in the
first place.  :)

Control hardware that is modular and reconfigurable would be an interesting
twist, but I'm not sure how it would be achieved. 

Put each button, knob, fader, joystick, etc in its own metal box, which has
a piece of Velcro on the bottom side, and some connector pins for
communication and power. Each box also has a small LCD that indicates the
function name of the control, and possibly provides visual feedback about
its current value. Then stick your desired modules onto a large substrate,
covered with a matching piece of Velcro, and a grid array of matching
connector pins. A computer would be connected to all the pins of the
substrate to keep everything sorted out. In theory, that should work.  :)

later,
Glen Berry