[sdiy] Alternatives to Faders

[Edward King]

Andrew,

you've actually described pretty much what I was thinking of, but instead of 
using mouse scroll wheels, I was planning on using something larger (such as 
pitch-bend or modulation wheels, but fully circular, not the semi-circular 
ones).

And instead of them being sideways, they point vertically.

The trouble with displaying the values on a display is that you would need a 
pretty large display to get more than 16 channels on it.

As in another earlier post, I am intending having the numerical value on 3 x 
7 segment displays above each "fader" and LED bargraph displays at the sides 
for approximation.

If I can find where to get wheels like pitch-bend / modulation wheels this 
will be a very cost-effective solution.

If you like, I can send a picture of my design to clarify....

Regards

Edward

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Andrew Scheidler" <xpandrew at ph.k12.in.us>
To: <synth-diy at dropmix.xs4all.nl>; <edwardcking2001 at yahoo.co.uk>
Sent: Tuesday, March 06, 2007 7:48 PM
Subject: Re: [sdiy] Alternatives to Faders


> Not quite what you're asking about, but here's what I would if I had the 
> know-how:
>
> (this is geared towards a step sequencer, but could be applicable for lots 
> of other uses)
>
> Instead of motorized faders, use a display that shows the position of the 
> faders.  When you change programs (or sequences, etc), the display would 
> change.
>
> To adjust the fader positions, there would be a (hardware) wheel below 
> each "virtual" fader shown on the display.  These would be like the scroll 
> wheel on top of a mouse; an encoder mounted sideways.
>
> So the display would show the fader positions and the wheels would be used 
> to adjust them.
>
> A similar idea (kind of like the Nord3) would be a LED ladder with each 
> wheel.  But you'd have to have a lot of LED segments to make it very 
> accurate.
>
> Andrew
>
>
>>>> "Edward King" <edwardcking2001 at yahoo.co.uk> 03/06/07 10:41 AM >>>
> Ive been playing around with my panel design for a little while (taking a
> break from soldering, woodwork, metalwork and the fiddly business of 
> slotted
> switches).
>
> One of the things that has always bugged me about any board that Ive 
> bought
> is the limit of channel / track controls.
> Since most synths are limited to 16 MIDI channels, this is usually what 
> you
> get. Plus a master volume control.
>
> Further, most workstations provide track / channel control through up/down
> buttons or in the case of newer DAWS, faders on a touchscreen.
> Neither of these options are very friendly and certainly dont provide a
> level of fluidity required for smooth control of tracks.
>
> The alternatives are of course faders, but herein lies the problem:
> What if you have more tracks / channels than you can cater for with 
> faders?
> They do - after all - take up a reasonable amount of space and the decent
> ones (of which I think Penny and Giles are probably the creme de la creme)
> cost a bomb. Quality does matter. A basic 100mm 0.50 pence fader will last
> only a few thousand operations before degredation is really noticeable. A 
> 50
> dollar fader will last a lot longer (probably the lifetime of the machine)
> but would you really spend 800 dollars for faders on a homebuilt?
>
> The problem remains though that if you have more tracks than faders, you
> have to abstract this out and use a bank switching arrangement. This
> introduces problems of its own...if you have fader #1 moved to 70% and 
> then
> switch banks so that fader #1 is now covering track #17, the fader will
> still be at its 70% position and this will cause a jump from whatever 
> value
> track 17 was at before to the 70% mark its controller now is.
>
> The only practical way around this I can tell is to use motorised faders
> that - when you switch fader banks - move the faders to reflect the values
> of the tracks they now represent.
> These are even more expensive and take up even more board real estate
> though, not to mention the increase in power and control and interfacing
> requirements.
>
> So, Im open to ideas (especially ones which enable me to use 16 faders to
> represent multiples of 16 tracks).
>
> I have a few of my own and this is the current favourite:
>
> I was playing around with a ball mouse, cleaning out the gunk from the
> rollers when it suddenly occurred to me that the sensing mechanism was 
> quite
> hardy, but very compact. I dont know if its common knowledge, but the
> sensitivity of mice can be adjusted from the mouse as well as the 
> operating
> system.
>
> So I set up an experiment to see whether I could get the right 
> sensitivity -
> versus - input ratio and it more than suffices.
>
> I figured that since pitch-bend or modulation wheels are commonplace on
> synths, they are immediately identifiable as control surfaces and have a
> proven track record.
> They are also the right size (ish) and becuase nearly 50% of their area
> would sit above the surface of the panel, they are reasonably compact.
>
> Of all the ball mice sensing components, some use an analogue led and
> phototransistor setup (which is then converted by the electronics), but 
> most
> use a logic output. Both types have drive electronics (usuats these 
> sensors at a cost which
> provides a cheaper and more flexible solution than all of the above. 
> Funnily
> enough though, it works out cheaper to buy 50 ball mice (which obviously
> contain 2 sets of sensors and electronics) than it is to buy the sensors
> themselves.
>
> Has anyone tried this method?
>
>
>
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